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Throughout his life, he had a superstitious dread of turning back—a perfect metaphor for his bullheaded determination—and
Here Grant would learn not battlefield theatrics but the essential nuts and bolts of an army—the mundane stuff that makes for a well-oiled military machine.
Sincere himself, he could never imagine how deviously other people could behave. “Neither Grant nor myself had the slightest suggestion of business talent,”
the officers dined and engaged in animated discussion, while Grant, with customary sangfroid, officiated in silence at the head of the table. “We thought he was hard-hearted, cold and indifferent,” noted one soldier, “but it was only the difference between a real soldier and amateur soldiers.”
He had improvised new solutions when the original battle plan went awry—a key mark of military leadership.
Here was Grant’s matchless strength: he did not crumble in adversity, which only hardened his determination, and knew that setbacks often contained the seeds of their own reversals.
Few things secured the fate of the Union as much as the bond of loyalty struck between these two generals who believed themselves wronged by the world’s estimation of them.
hence General Grant came to look upon the war as a divine punishment for the sin of slavery.”
“The question of supplies may now be regarded as settled,” Grant telegraphed proudly to Halleck, saying he could switch his attention to offensive operations.14 His old logistical skills, dating back to the Mexican War, had rejuvenated the army under his command, which felt a new guiding intelligence.
When brought a request for a major expenditure, Grant approved it with startling speed. Rusling asked Grant if he was sure he was correct. “No, I am not,” Grant shot back, “but in war anything is better than indecision. We must decide. If I am wrong we shall soon find it out, and can do the other thing. But not to decide wastes both time and money and may ruin everything.”
Like Grant, Sheridan struck people as too slight to be a fearsome warrior and was therefore underestimated.
Grant never raised his voice, lost his temper, or scolded people and did not abuse his power by indulging in moody behavior.
Awaiting the din of battle, Abraham Lincoln was glad to set down, at least a bit, the heavy mantle of military leadership that his earlier mediocre generals had forced him to shoulder. On April 30, he sent Grant a letter that exuded confidence in him and granted him total freedom. That confidence arose in part because he and Grant agreed on so many military matters. Not expecting to see you again before the Spring campaign opens, I wish to express, in this way, my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of your plans I neither
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Washburne “said that Napoleon often indulged in only four hours of sleep, and still preserved all the vigor of his mental faculties.” Grant, who needed seven hours, sounded dubious. “Well, I, for one, never believed those stories. If the truth were known, I have no doubt it would be found that he made up for his short sleep at night by taking naps during the day.”
If Grant’s confidence made him an inspirational leader, it could also expose him to catastrophic mistakes engendered by overconfidence.
Lincoln conveyed that he came to learn, not to lecture. “I don’t expect I can do any good, and in fact I’m afraid I may do harm, but I’ll just put myself under your orders and if you find me doing anything wrong just send me right away.”83 Grant cheerfully agreed.
Early now led his fifteen thousand men toward Washington, their numbers magnified in the minds of panicky northerners.
“I do not want to hamper him any more in the future than in the past with detailed instructions,” Grant said. “I want him to carry out his ideas freely in the coming movement, and to have all the credit of its success.”
He again showed he knew how best to motivate commanders by delegating authority to them—a trust that worked well with the talented, but could backfire with incompetents.
Throughout the City Point visit, Badeau claimed, Mary Lincoln kept attacking her husband in front of other officers: “He bore it as Christ might have done; with an expression of pain and sadness that cut one to the heart, but with supreme calmness and dignity.”
“Do not say another word on this subject. I would not distress these people. They are feeling their defeat bitterly, and you would not add to it by witnessing their despair, would you?”140 It was the observation of a man who had known terrible shame in his own life and understood the extreme need for self-respect at moments of failure.
Grant would long wonder if his presence at Ford’s Theatre might have altered things and whether Julia’s dislike of Mary Lincoln had inadvertently modified the direction of American history.
Another time, upon receiving a costly overcoat, he commented, “There have been times in my life when the gift of an overcoat would have been an act of charity. No one gave it to me when I needed it. Now when I am able to pay for all I need, such gifts are continually thrust upon me.”
Of this unwanted assignment, Grant told the president flatly, “It is a diplomatic service for which I am not fitted either by education or taste.”
“Nothing in the world can prevent your nomination by the Republican party, as things are now. They dare not and cannot nominate anybody else . . . All you have to do is to stand still. Say nothing, write nothing & do nothing which shall enable any faction of any party to claim you.”21 This suited Grant, who had a clever way of placing himself in the pathway to success, then calling it fate.
He still urged his Washington staff to withhold letters he received, knowing the majority would come from people badgering him for jobs.
He wrongly assumed that the skills that had made him successful in one sphere of life would translate intact into another.
“I entered the White House as President without any previous experience either in civil or political life,” he admitted. “I thought I could run the government of the United States, as I did the staff of my army. It was my mistake, and it led me into other mistakes.”
Grant exhibited another serious defect in managing appointments. In the fast-moving world of warfare, it was a virtue to act decisively and make snap judgments based on intuition. In the White House, by contrast, he was too quick to hire people, then too quick to fire them.
THE SAME FLINTY DETERMINATION that informed Grant’s spectacular campaign against the Klan harmed him when dealing with the Santo Domingo treaty, an obsession he could not discard.
So many New York newspapers harped on Grant’s putative drinking that George Templeton Strong erupted in indignation: “If it be true that a beastly drunkard, without a sense of decency, can successfully conduct great campaigns, can win great battles, and can raise himself from insignificance to be a lieutenant-general and President, what is the use of all this fuss about sobriety?”
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883. Not until 1957 would Congress dare to pass another civil rights bill, and it was only with the long-overdue Civil Rights Act of 1964 that many of the 1875 legislation’s protections for blacks became the enduring law of the land.
The exhibition advertised the technological prowess that had powered American progress and featured every mechanical marvel from Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone to Remington’s “Typographic Machine.”
at 3 East Sixty-Sixth Street,
