Grant

by Ron Chernow

“It is at all times a sad and cruel business. I hate war with all my heart, and nothing but imperative duty could induce me to engage in its work or witness its horrors.”

However brilliant Lee was as a tactician, Grant surpassed him in grand strategy, crafting the plan that defeated the Confederacy. The military historian John Keegan paid homage to Grant as “the towering military genius of the Civil War” and noted the modernity of his methods as he mobilized railroads and telegraphs to set his armies in motion.17

Recent biographies have begun to rehabilitate Grant in a long overdue reappraisal. While scandals unquestionably sullied his presidency, they eclipsed a far more notable achievement—safeguarding the civil rights of African Americans. Even eminent historians have gotten wrong—sometimes badly wrong—Grant’s relationship with the black community. Typical is the view of C. Vann Woodward: “Grant had shown little interest during the war in emancipation as a late-developing war aim and little but hostility toward the more radical war aim of the few for black franchise and racial equality.”20 In truth, Grant was instrumental in helping the Union vanquish the Confederacy and in realizing the wartime ideals enshrined in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

This biography will contend that Grant was an alcoholic with an astonishingly consistent pattern of drinking, recognized by friend and foe alike: a solitary binge drinker who would not touch a drop of alcohol, then succumb at three- or four-month intervals, usually on the road.

Whatever the case, the family agreed on Hiram Ulysses Grant, which translated into the unfortunate initials H.U.G. The boy would show a decided preference for Ulysses and gradually discard Hiram, especially when other boys “teased him about his initials.”2 But this didn’t halt the taunts since Grant was known as “Ulyss” or “Lyss,” soon bastardized by malicious schoolmates into “Useless Grant.” The name Ulysses S. Grant was the product of a later bureaucratic error that stuck.

Abraham Lincoln ventured into politics as an ardent Whig, characterizing the party as one founded to depose that “‘detestable, ignorant, reckless, vain and malignant tyrant,’ Andrew Jackson.”

Once, when quarreling with an acquaintance, he was provoked to say “Darn.” During the Civil War, Grant recounted this episode to someone who recalled him saying “that the very sound of the word to his ears bothered him, so that for an entire week it continued to literally haunt him.”

unpleasantness. It reached Hamer the night of March 3 and, instead of being vindictive, he graciously agreed to submit Grant’s name. In his haste, he listed the applicant as Ulysses S. Grant. The confusion came about either because Hamer confused Ulysses with his younger brother Simpson or because he assumed Ulysses was his first name and he had taken Hannah’s maiden name for his middle name. (Grant himself blamed Senator Morris for the long-lived error.) The mistaken name, which persisted at West Point and beyond, was the bane of the young man’s life and seemed symbolic of his almost comic passivity under Jesse’s heavy-handed tutelage. As Grant later confessed to his wife in frank exasperation, “You know I have an ‘S’ in my name and don’t know what it stand[s] for.”69

He then discovered, despite his unavailing protests, that he had been nominated for West Point under “Ulysses S. Grant” and perhaps began to suspect that fate had pasted this label permanently on him. As soon as fellow cadets, including William Tecumseh Sherman, spotted the name “U. S. Grant” on the bulletin board, they made great sport of it and promptly branded the newcomer Uncle Sam Grant, or “Sam” Grant for short.

Grant later laughed at the primitive tactics, based on musket and flintlock weapons.

Looking back on his life, Grant declared that his happiest day was his last as president—with the possible exception of graduation day at West Point.

finally said, ‘Ulys! I told these people you were a fascinating and wonderful conversationalist. I think they have gone away disappointed. Why can’t you be as interesting to them as you are to me?’”56

Grant hardly needed another despotic father figure in his life, but that is exactly what he got. It did not help matters that the abolitionist Grants came to detest the slave-owning Dents and vice versa, leaving Julia and Ulysses caught in a cross fire that lasted for decades. It could only have damaged Grant to be at the mercy of both an adoring but overbearing father and a hypercritical future father-in-law who thwarted his desire to marry for several years. Trapped between these two men, the young officer was condemned to experience a prolonged adolescence in which he could never fully assert himself without getting slapped down.

Far from being openly outraged by the war, he reported to Julia, “the most numerous class of Mexicans are much better pleased with our form of government than their own” and “would be willing to see us push our claims beyond the Rio Grande if we would promise not to molest them in their homes and possessions.”14

“He puts me in mind of old Taylor, and sometimes I fancy he models himself on old Zac.”18 Grant confirmed this hunch: “There was no man living who I admired and respected more highly” than Taylor.19

Grant insisted the Civil War was “largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.”

James Longstreet served as best man and two groomsmen, Cadmus M. Wilcox and Bernard Pratte, were to join him in the Confederate army; all three later surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.

Heavy drinking was commonplace in frontier garrisons, making it difficult for Grant, stranded in freezing Detroit, to abstain. The problem was neither the amount nor the frequency with which he drank, but the dramatic behavioral changes induced. He and Julia kept a pew in a Methodist church led by Dr. George Taylor, and perhaps realizing his newfound responsibilities as a father, Grant sought counsel from his pastor about his drinking. “I think that Dr. Taylor helped Grant a great deal,” said Colonel Pitman. “It was said that he had a long talk with Grant at that time and told him that he could not safely use liquor in any form and Grant acknowledged this and took the pledge and thereafter used no liquor at all in Detroit.”33

Officer Robert Macfeely observed: “Liquor seemed a virulent poison to him, and yet he had a fierce desire for it. One glass would show on him,” his speech became slurred, “and two or three would make him stupid.”

he was more candid in later private conversations, telling Civil War chaplain John Eaton that “the vice of intemperance had not a little to do with my decision to resign.”20 To General Augustus Chetlain he admitted that “when I have nothing to do I get blue and depressed, I have a natural craving for a drink, when I was on the coast I got in a depressed condition and got to drinking.”

“Most of his leisure time he spent in reading. He was one of the greatest readers I ever saw.”79

As his life steadily unraveled, he pawned his gold watch and chain for $20 on December 23, 1857, to purchase Christmas presents for his children—perhaps the symbolic nadir of his life.

Both he and Julia were still superstitious, so he consulted a French fortune-teller, who forecast his defeat. “I will come within an ace of being elected, but I will be beaten,” he reported to Julia. “In a short time we will leave the city and I will engage for a time in a mercantile business. Something will happen very soon and then I will begin to rise in the world.”138

Had Grant remained in Missouri, riven by internal strife, he would never have enjoyed the same chance for rapid advancement in the coming war.

When informed of what had happened, he shook an angry fist and exclaimed, “Davis and the whole gang ought to be hung!”47

Many regular army men had been fighting Indians or protecting western settlers, and only four thousand served east of the Mississippi River.

When she tried to nudge her husband toward the Douglas Democrats, he shot back, “I took a solemn oath to support the government and the administration, and that is now Republican.”57 But Julia, a practical woman, recognized the vast potential for wartime glory for her husband and faithfully followed his path, saying Ulysses “could no more resist the sound of a fife or a drum or a chance to fire a gun than a woman can resist bonnets.”58

The time had come for Grant to wash his hands of the retail job he detested, and he never again set foot in the hated leather goods store.

He envisioned a war that would destroy the South’s export markets for cotton and render worthless slaves working in the cotton fields. Colonel Dent didn’t heed the warning and remained an unreconstructed rebel throughout the war.

Since Washburne had served longer than any other House Republican, Grant had enlisted the allegiance of a champion with extraordinary clout in Washington.

A big, rawboned man with a thick nose, tufted gray eyebrows, and long gray hair that swept over his collar, Washburne had the bluff, backslapping manner and hearty laugh of a western politician. Energetic, restless, and impatient, he struck many people as brusque but honest. One of eleven children born to a Maine storekeeper, he had enjoyed little formal schooling and worked as a farmhand and a printer’s devil as an adolescent. Largely self-taught, he had been introduced to Shakespeare and Dickens at public libraries, finally gaining admission to Harvard Law School. He became one of three Washburne sons elected to the U.S. Congress from different states, rising to become chairman of several influential committees, including Appropriations, Commerce, and Military Affairs. As young lawyers, he and Lincoln had argued cases before the Illinois Supreme Court and remained so close that Washburne had written a campaign biography for him the year before.

Charged with assembling volunteer companies and appointing their officers, northern governors such as Yates came to wield enormous power. An entire army was being created overnight with coveted military titles handed out wholesale.

The initial war objective, however, was preserving the Union, not eliminating slavery. Grant’s thinking would evolve quite rapidly on the slavery issue as the war progressed.

Grant described his first whiff of fright as his heart “kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt.” To his relieved astonishment, Grant discovered that Harris and his men had absconded in response to his approach. “My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him.”34

Under a spreading oak tree, he set out a pine table and surveyed maps, marking them with a red pencil. Significantly, he ordered a new set of maps with an expanded overview of the region. Already a grand strategy began to germinate in his mind of how to exploit the broad waterways that provided entry into the heart of Confederate territory.

Just as Grant cherished his newfound worth as a general, General John C. Frémont, commanding the Western Department, replaced him at Ironton with Brigadier General Benjamin M. Prentiss.

breathtaking act of hubris that confirmed talk of his imperial rule. Without consulting Lincoln, Frémont declared martial law in Missouri, ordered the death penalty for captured Confederate guerrillas, and enunciated his own emancipation proclamation: he would free rebel slaves who took up arms for the Union.

Despite his exemplary sense of duty, Grant proved almost laughably inefficient when it came to filing paperwork, much as in his hapless real estate days. He had an absentminded habit of stuffing letters into his pockets

Grant never discussed publicly his drinking pact with Rawlins, but he must have taken it to heart since Rawlins became his right-hand man and alter ego during the war. He allowed Rawlins to be the moralistic scourge and resident conscience of his staff. Later in the war, Grant wrote that Rawlins “comes the nearest being indispensable to me of any officer in the service.”

If taking Columbus seemed a masterstroke from a military standpoint, it counted as a colossal political error. It destroyed any pretense of Kentucky neutrality, incited the state legislature to a more belligerent Unionism, and opened the way for Union forces to march into the state under a banner of liberation.

To pacify them, Grant issued a proclamation boldly written in the first person. He cleverly assumed that he was addressing loyal people and made common cause with them: I have come among you, not as an enemy, but as your friend and fellow-citizen, not to injure or annoy you, but to respect the rights, and to defend and enforce the rights of all loyal citizens. An enemy, in rebellion against our common government, has taken possession of, and planted its guns upon the soil of Kentucky and fired upon our flag . . . He is moving upon your city. I am here to defend you against this enemy and to assert and maintain the authority and sovereignty of your Government and mine.5 For the first time, Grant demonstrated his fine political tact and a command of the English language that would assist his success. He only stayed in Paducah for a day, leaving behind strict instructions that occupying soldiers should refrain from plunder and respect the rights of residents. When Lincoln set eyes on Grant’s proclamation, he was impressed. “The modesty and brevity of that address shows that the officer issuing it understands the situation and is a proper man

to command there at this time.”

Not long after the town surrendered, Julia went to Paducah and had a conversation that shows her speedy conversion into an ardent Unionist.

On a personal level, Belmont was Grant’s baptism of fire. He had shown a boldness bordering on impetuosity and a preternatural coolness under fire. He had improvised new solutions when the original battle plan went awry—a key mark of military leadership.

By nature a spectator, Halleck was the sort of military bureaucrat who preferred to keep a safe distance from the battlefield. He severely punished army infractions and kept a tight rein on subordinates. He carped at generals in a way that offended rather than motivated them. At first taken with him, Lincoln came to view Halleck as a paper-pusher who ducked tough decisions in the field. Hay later encapsulated Halleck’s conduct by saying he “hates responsibility; hates to give orders,” while Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles groused that he “suggests nothing, is good for nothing.”43 Such insights still lay in the future, however, and for the moment Halleck was riding high, winning the admiration of Grant, Sherman, and other generals.

Unfurling a map, Grant showed how twenty-five thousand men, backed up by gunboats, could grab the two riverside forts. Halleck, having none of this, rudely interrupted him: “Is there anything connected with the good of your command you wish to discuss?” When Grant returned to his map, Halleck brushed him aside. “All of this, General Grant, relates to the business of the General commanding the department. When he wishes to consult you on that subject he will notify you.”68 Having pulled rank, Halleck stormed from the room while Grant stood nursing his wounds. “I was cut short as if my plan was preposterous,” he wrote. “I returned to Cairo very much crestfallen.”69

him as one of the finest gentlemen he had ever encountered. From the outset, Grant predicted McPherson “would make one of the most brilliant officers in the service” and came to regard him as a virtual member of his family.

Fort Henry’s location represented a colossal miscalculation by the Confederates, for its natural features gave the advantage to attacking forces. When the river was swollen with rain, as now, buoyant enemy ships actually gazed down on its earthworks.

unanimously endorsed. In the flush of victory, Halleck still meditated what the Confederates might do to Grant, rather than what Grant might do to them. He chose to regard Grant as a rival and a threat rather than as a valued extension of his own power and secretly connived to replace Grant with another general. “Hold on to Fort Henry at all hazards,” he notified Grant.

“What answer shall I send to this, General?” Grant inquired of Smith, who answered categorically: “No terms to the damned Rebels!”30 With that, Grant sat down at the kitchen table and composed a classic statement in American military history. In lapidary prose, he wrote: “Sir; Yours of this date proposing Armistice, and appointment of commissioners, to settle terms of capitulation is just received. No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.”31