Our book group has just finished reading Ron Chernow’s voluminous biography Grant (2017), which illuminated a period of American history that we knew little about. Chernow uses the life of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1888) to give us perspectives on the Mexican War, the coming storm between the North and the South, the Civil War, and the continued strife and violence against blacks who were denied their full rights for decades after the war.
Heretofore, Grant was perhaps best known for two things: the Union General who defeated Robert E. Lee ending the Civil War only because he had superior numbers and resources and secondly, as the two-term 18th President of the United States whose administration was embroiled in corruption and scandal.
Chernow dispels both of these harsh judgements. Although in the early part of his life “Grant had been a failure, battered by life at every turn,” his life changed as dramatically as if it were a fairytale. An 1843 graduate of West Point Grant served in the Mexican War but left the military in 1854 under duress. As an unsuccessful businessman mostly because he was susceptible to being duped, he was barely able to support his family. Suffering from alcoholic binges did not make things any easier. When the Civil War broke out in 1860, he was a shopkeeper in Galena, Illinois. Eight years later he was a war hero and President of the United States.
General Grant
Unlike Lee who was tactician in battle, Grant was a strategist who led the Union to early victories at Fort Donelson, Fort Henry, (Shiloh not so much) and then went on to capture Vicksburg in 1863—a campaign rated by military historians “a masterpiece, the preeminent campaign waged by any general during the war.” His army suffered horrible losses against Lee in Virginia in the summer of 1864, where he was called "Grant the Butcher" by northern critics. Eventually he cornered Lee in an untenable defensive position that ultimately led to the end of the war. Chernow writes:
“Grant was the strategic genius produced by the Civil War. He set clear goals, communicated them forcefully, and instilled them in his men. While Lee stuck to Virginia, Grant grasped the war in its totality, masterminding the movements of all Union armies (including Sherman’s). It was Grant who best apprehended the strategic interactions of the eastern and western theatre.”
President Grant
Unfortunately, the corruption and scandal of Grant’s presidency overshadowed his relentless efforts to give newly freed blacks not only the right to vote, but the ability to do so without risking their lives. Chernow does not gloss over the scandals, but he establishes that it wasn’t Grant who was corrupt himself. But Grant had major flaw in trusting the wrong people who took advantage of him throughout his life (unlike his alcoholism which he controlled through total abstinence).
An abolitionist before the war (more so than Abraham Lincoln) Grant was a fervent believer that blacks should be able to vote without intimidation, hold office and during his first term he enacted laws to strengthen the rights to vote. He used Federal troops to disembowel the nascent Ku Klux Klan “unquestionably the worst outbreak of domestic terrorism in American History” writes Chernow, and he created the Department of Justice to indict and convict over a thousand Klansman. (A reincarnation of the Klan was formed in the 1920s.) In other words, there was only a short period of reprieve before the white Southerners and Democrat power structure formed new militant groups. This coupled with Northern “Reconstruction fatigue” led the evaporation of voting rights for blacks. (During Lincoln and Grant's tenure it was the Republicans who were the champions of Reconstruction and securing the rights of blacks. The Democrats where the party of the white Southerners who had no intention to succumbing to new order proposed by Lincoln.)
Chernow maintains that it would be another 96 years after Grant (1968) that another fair election would be held in many parts of the South. “Slavery had been abolished,” writes Chernow, “but it had been replaced by a caste-ridden form of second-class citizenship for southern blacks, and that counted as a national shame.”
Post Presidency
After serving two terms in office Grant made a two-year world tour, but upon his return stateside failed to win the Republican party's nomination in 1880. At the end of his life, he was swindled in a Ponzi scheme that left him penniless. Moreover, he soon he was in declining in health from throat cancer. Fortunately, an important writer and publisher of the time—Mark Twain—understood that he could restore Grant’s wealth by publishing the general’s memoirs. While in intense pain, Grant finished his two volume Personal Memoirs just a month before his death and it eventually sold 300,000 copies which provided Grant's devoted wife Julia with generous royalties.
More About the Book Group
In the spirit of transparency. our book group—consists of just two people (easy to schedule get togethers and everyone reads the book!) and it began in the summer of 2020 as a way for two college chums and new retirees to "support" each other to read challenging books and avoid inflicting our "intellectual" chatter on loved ones. Our first book was Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and have just finished Chernow. We keep notes, ramblings, observations, (sometimes irreverent like a comparison between Ulysses S. Grant and Donald Trump) on our discussion board available here (but you must scroll down).
And you can order the book Grant from our blog partner Destination: Books.
