Grant

by Ron Chernow

Lacking Napoleonic ambitions, Grant did not envisage himself at the helm of vast armies and merely aspired to head a regiment or cavalry brigade. As always, he studiously avoided jockeying for position. Reared with Methodist modesty, he could never admit nakedly to the true depth of his ambition. In this way, he was strictly Hannah Grant’s son, not Jesse’s. Ethical and honorable, he wanted to receive jobs based squarely on his merits, a faith he held so unalterably he called it “one of my superstitions.”84 Refusing to grovel, he considered it unseemly to profit from favoritism. It irked him to watch others maneuver for position, and he was “sickened at the political wire pulling for all these commissions and would not engage in it,” he wrote.85 Chummy with few politicians, Grant labored at an extreme disadvantage in securing a commission. “I was a carpetbagger and knew but few of them.”