A lengthy biography of General and President Ulysses S. Grant (given name, Hiram Ulysses Grant), Mr. Chernow is enamored with the General. Yet, it is hard to dispute that in many ways, both as General and as President, earlier revisionist historians and biographers have done a great disservice to Grant.
Born in the Midwest, not an outstanding student, a total failure in every business venture, he was betrayed many times by those he trusted and, in some cases, protected and promoted. Totally honest and honorable, he could never reconcile his personal sense of honor against those in business, the military and in politics lived by very different standards. Chernow points out that while the popular memory of Grant’s Presidency was riddled with corruption, much of it was started under the term of Andrew Johnson and was exposed by the Grant Administration. No corruptions during his administration were tied in any way to him and were the results of the patronage system which riddled every administration and was controlled by powerful member of Congress. Indeed, it was Grant who took major steps to stop it, including the first steps to create a civil service above politics and he moved powerfully against the corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs to protect those tribes that had settled on reservations.
Regarding his military career, Chernow points out that Grant re-joined the Army after the Secession to preserve the Union, but as the war went on, he became more convinced of the need to have total victory to eliminate the scourge of slavery. Grant, early on, recruited and armed tens of thousands freed slaves, believing that their willingness to fight would demonstrate that the “negroes” could stand on their own two feet after the war. When the war ended, Grant took a hard line on Reconstruction to preserve the rights of the freed slaves and when the KKK began its wave of terror against Southern Republicans and black sheriffs, legislatures, farmers, etc., his administration waged a successful war to bring to justice numerous Klan leaders and followers. There were many murders in the South and as the North tired of maintaining troops in the South as more States were re-admitted to the Union, his ability to muster support for battles against a resurgent White ruling class diminished and was totally dropped by the next administration.
Grant’s memoirs of the war, written while he was in terrible pain from cancer (he could not eat nor drink without suffering for hours afterwards) were written in record time after he suffered one last financial betrayal by a trusted friend. Concerned for the well being of his wife after his death, he sat for hours each day handwriting in his clear prose which required little if any editing. He willed himself to life, dying just one week after the completion of his book which is still considered a classic of military history. Thanks to the promotion and skills of Mark Twain, the memoirs sold hundreds of thousands of copies and Grant’s wife was never in need of financial help. One cannot help but come away with a feeling that this man was a great General and President. A failure in every civilian opportunity, he was a man born for command; his grasp of the modern manner of war assured the defeat of Lee, a man stuck in the wars of the previous century. In politics, he was willing to make hard and difficult decisions against powerful interests and was a man who favored the average man of the times. In short, this book is an inspiration to read and I highly recommend it.
