Ulysses S. Grant

Grant by Ron Chernow

Tier 1

One of the catalysts that led me to set out to read a biography of every president was reading this book.

My dad is the one who instilled a love of history in me. He’s a man with firm beliefs in who was right and who was wrong during a particular moment in history. I have countless memories of being a boy and listening to him explain a moment or figure in history with a passion and acumen that I will never forget and always admire. And likely, my dad’s favorite president and American is Ulysses S. Grant.

I purchased this book for him years ago as a gift and loved listening to him regale me with a story from it every time I saw him. Whether it was a recounting of Grant’s military genius at Vicksburg or his fight against the Klan as president, the story was always vivid and told with brimming excitement. Naturally, I had to read it myself.

After finishing the book, I found I couldn’t move on. I would read other things, but a part of me longed to return to the world of Grant. I had an itch that needed scratching, and the only thing for it was to read a biography of every U.S. President. So that’s what I did.

Unfortunately, few compared to this book. Chernow is one of the great American biographers, and this is his greatest book. He’s better known for his biographies of Hamilton (thanks in no small part to a little musical based on that book) and Washington, but this is the one. This is the book that all his other writing was leading to.

In the same way, Chernow set out to rehabilitate Hamilton’s reputation. He did the same for Grant here. No figure in American history was more unfairly and effectively maligned and besmirched than Grant. The cowards and traitors who lost the Civil War made quick work of creating a false narrative. The “Lost Cause,” as it’s become known, was, and still is, as pervasive as a weed. It’s why you still see fools flying Confederate Flags and claiming that the war was about States’ Rights. It’s a despicable narrative that should’ve died along with that racist failure that was the Confederacy.

And Grant was the primary victim of this reshaping of history. He was shown in comparison to the vaunted, heroic generals of the CSA, most notably Lee and Jackson. It was repeated, ad nauseam, that the Union only prospered because of brute force. That the talent and ingenuity, and bravery lay with the Confederacy. That the Union Generals were little more than butchers throwing men forth to their deaths. And Grant was the lead butcher.

But that wasn’t enough. They didn’t stop at simply belittling his military abilities. They went deeper. They painted him as a wild, out-of-control alcoholic who made countless follies during and after the war based on his alcoholism. They even went so far as to fabricate a story about him vomiting on his wife during intercourse to drive home the idea that he was some pathetic alcoholic.

Then they described his presidency as an abject, unmitigated string of failures. Everything he did was cast in the light of a corrupt, vindictive, incompetent man who never belonged in the White House.

Was any of this true? No. Not really. His presidency was not an unbroken string of successes, but it was far from the total failure these revisionist historians made it out to be. I would say, on balance, there was more good than bad in it. And as for the rest, it is a string of lies and exaggerations meant to disparage and destroy one of our greatest Americans.

Grant, in many ways, sufferers from living in the shadow of Lincoln. It was, of course, Lincoln who gave him the command of the entire Union Forces, a million-man army spanning the breadth of the nation. Lincoln, whose faith in him never wavered, saw in this man a kindred spirit. Ultimately, and not unfairly, the Union’s victory is seen as Lincoln’s. There’s nothing wrong with that. Lincoln stood steadfast in the face of constant setbacks and never hesitated from the path he was on. He deserves the credit, but so too does Grant.

I won’t spend much time discussing the various military points, strategies, or movements. I’m far from an expert on them, and if you’re interested in those kinds of things, read this book. I will say that the only military genius the Civil War produced was Grant. It was not Lee or Jackson. It was not Sherman or Sheridan. It was Grant. A man whose life had been shaped by defeat and knew that the only way to victory was moving forward. A man who commanded the entirety of the Union forces (Lee only ever had command over his Army of Virginia) and brilliantly deployed them to victory. And, if you need some specific tactical genius, just look up Vicksburg. Lee never could’ve pulled that off.

Grant is a figure of particular importance to me, given how his enemies dragged him for his alcoholism. It’s a despicable way to treat a man who, before there were any twelve-step programs or therapists, managed to mostly overcome his addiction and go on to succeed as he did. As someone who is quite a few years sober, I find this narrative appalling. We have a penchant in this nation, and as a species writ large, to focus on someone at their lowest. We seem to love to look down on someone and judge them forever by their failure. I choose to see Grant in the opposite vein. I do not, as Chernow does, try to dismiss his alcoholism. Instead, I see it as one of his crowning achievements. He was a man trapped in that familiar spiral and managed to pull himself out of it. That is not a story of shame. That is a story of victory. 

There is fair and accurate criticism surrounding Grant’s presidency. He was embroiled in scandal, and it is appropriate to criticize him for that. Chernow works to excuse away many of those scandals, but I think it’s fair to hang them on Grant. If we are to believe he was as brilliant and sharp as Chernow makes him out to be, we can’t excuse the corruption by claiming he was simply too trusting a man (even if that is a contributing factor). Still, the scandals are all anyone seems to remember from his presidency, which is a shame. He fought for reconstruction and to ensure a more equitable South. He was a strident abolitionist and a champion of Black suffrage during his time as President. He fought and defeated the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan, which at the time was a formidable domestic terrorist organization. And, if not for later concessions and failures, Grant would’ve been seen as the architect for a more equitable South. The fact that reality did not come to pass shouldn’t be placed on him.

I discussed last week how Lincoln’s depression and alleged failings were largely responsible for his success as president, and Grant is very much cut from the same cloth. After the Mexican American War, Grant was on the verge of poverty and drowning in alcoholism. He was a broken man. It is one of my favorite passages in Chernow’s book where Grant is at Galena, barely able to keep his head above water, as the Civil War hurdles toward him. If you had told someone who saw him then that he would go on to become the most acclaimed General in American history and the President of the United States, they’d have laughed in your face.

But that’s the thing. Life is long, and even when we sit in the depths of despair, there is a chance at a bright, glorious future. And it’s a man like that, who’s felt those failures, who’s known what it's like to taste defeat, who was needed to win the Civil War, the defining moment in American history.

There’s a story from Shiloh that’s one of my favorites. The Confederate army had surprised the Union forces and driven them back to the Tennessee River. It was raining, and Grant’s army was bruised and battered and all but defeated. Sherman had spent the day fighting in the middle of enemy fire. He’d seen the destruction the Confederate forces had wrought on the Union Army. He went out in that rain to find Grant and to discuss the best means for retreat. But when he finally found Grant standing under a tree, hat pulled down over his face, collar up, cigar chomped between his teeth, he reconsidered. Instead of mentioning retreat, he said, “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?”

And Grant responded, “Yes. Yes. Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.”

And, of course, that’s exactly what they did.

That is the story of a man shaped by failure and defeat. And that is a man who, perhaps, most exemplifies our nation at its best. Not a perfect man. Not a man who never stumbled. But a man who always got back up and pressed on. I cannot help but agree with my dad's unadulterated respect for Grant.

This is my single favorite one-volume biography. Not just presidential biography, mind you, but biography in general. Part of that is due to my love of discussing Grant with my dad, but most comes down to Chernow’s brilliant writing and Grant himself. A man we can all learn from both in failure and victory.