Grant

by Ron Chernow

During his maiden battle, Grant discovered something curious about his own metabolism: he was tranquil in warfare, as if temporarily anesthetized, preternaturally cool under fire. The night of the Palo Alto battle he fell into a deep, dreamless slumber on the battlefield. The next day, as he surveyed the terrain, he was powerfully affected by the carnage around him, including sixty American casualties. He told Julia it was a “terrible sight” to see the ground “strewed with the bodies of dead men and horses.”33 To the youthful Grant, “the engagement assumed a magnitude in my eyes which was positively startling.” Years later, hardened by the unspeakable casualties he had seen in the Civil War, he mused, “Now, such an affair would scarcely be deemed important enough to report to headquarters.”