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EVEN AS OTHER CIVIL WAR generals rushed to publish their memoirs, flaunting their conquests and cashing in on their celebrity, Ulysses S. Grant refused to trumpet his accomplishments in print.
Dismissed as a philistine, a boor, a drunk, and an incompetent, Grant has been subjected to pernicious stereotypes that grossly impede our understanding of the man.
The caricature of Grant as a filthy “butcher” is ironic for a man who couldn’t stomach the sight of blood, studiously refrained from romanticizing warfare, and shied away from a military career. “I never went into a battle willingly or with enthusiasm,” he remarked. “I was always glad when a battle was over.”
In fact, close students of the war have shown that the percentage of casualties in Grant’s armies was often lower than those of many Confederate generals.
A far-seeing general, he adopted a comprehensive policy for all theaters of war, treating them as an interrelated whole. However brilliant Lee was as a tactician, Grant surpassed him in grand strategy, crafting the plan that defeated the Confederacy.
“The evidence clearly shows that [Grant] created the most auspicious record on racial equality and civil rights of any president from Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson.”23
The imperishable story of Grant’s presidency was his campaign to crush the Ku Klux Klan.
In 1870 he oversaw creation of the Justice Department, its first duty to bring thousands of anti-Klan indictments. By 1872 the monster had been slain, although its spirit resurfaced as the nation retreated from Reconstruction’s lofty aims. Grant presided over the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave blacks the right to vote, and landmark civil rights legislation, including the 1875 act outlawing racial discrimination in public accommodations. His pursuit of justice for southern blacks was at times imperfect, but his noble desire to protect them never wavered.
Alcohol was not a recreation selfishly indulged, but a forbidden impulse against which he struggled for most of his life.
Since Jesse’s own father was ruined by drink, it would not have been surprising if he had championed the temperance movement as a way to conquer his own powerful temptations.
Jesse Grant committed the common error of willful fathers who try to stimulate their sons and overpower them instead. He doted on his eldest boy, smothering him with attention and attempting to live vicariously through him.
He told her she had little inkling of the moral authority she exerted over him and that whenever he felt tempted to do anything amiss, he thought of her and refrained from doing so. “I am more or less governed by what I think is your will.”
“Taylor was not a conversationalist, but on paper he could put his meaning so plainly that there could be no mistaking it. He knew how to express what he wanted to say in the fewest well-chosen words.”
While some nearby officers mocked Grant’s take-charge style of leadership, Taylor promptly endorsed it: “I wish I had more officers like Grant, who would stand ready to set a personal example when needed.”20 Through such quick-witted actions, Grant soon earned promotion from brevet second lieutenant to full second lieutenant.
“The better class are very proud and tyrannize over the lower and much more numerous class as much as a hard master does over his negroes, and they submit to it quite as humbly.”42 This last comment shows that Grant, early in his career, fully comprehended the barbarity of slavery.
Characteristically Grant experienced no schadenfreude as he observed Mexican troops surrender, only infinite pathos for their miserable plight.
This early experience made Grant tend to view war as a hard-luck saga of talented, professional soldiers betrayed by political opportunists plotting back in Washington.
The battle taught Grant indelible lessons about military leadership: the need for supreme audacity and the vital importance of speed, momentum, and the element of surprise. Scott praised Lee unstintingly, promoting him to brevet major.
“Since my last letter to you,” he told Julia, “four of the hardest fought battles that the world ever witnessed have taken place, and the most astonishing victories have crowned the American arms. But dearly have they paid for it! The loss of officers and men killed and wounded is frightful.”
But in time Grant saw how a wise, charitable policy toward a conquered civilian population restored peaceful conditions with impressive speed.
Besieged by beggars, Grant deplored the gross inequality of Mexican society and instinctively sided with the oppressed. “With a soil and climate scarcely equaled in the world,” he protested, Mexico “has more poor and starving subjects who are willing and able to work than any country in the world. The rich keep down the poor with a hardness of heart that is incredible.”92 Whatever his criticisms of their society, Grant never regarded the Mexicans as racial inferiors.
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.
“It is really my opinion that the whole race would be harmless and peaceable if they were not put upon by the whites,”
Indeed, his momentary disgrace can be seen in retrospect as his salvation, preserving him for a starring role in the Civil War instead of stranding him at a post in the hinterland.
The Grants delighted in holding hands and kept their love affair fresh. “He was the tenderest and sweetest of husbands,” Julia declared.77 When Ulysses teased her, she interpreted this dry mirth as shot through with deep love. She was fond of dresses with enormous bows tied in back, and Ulysses liked to slip behind her and unravel the knot. “Ulys!” she would cry in mock anger. “You must leave my bows alone!”78 The couple seldom quarreled, but when they did, Grant withdrew in silence. When he returned, they immediately made up and embraced.
“I don’t know why a black skin may not cover a true heart as well as a white one.”
Grant hired free black workers and paid them a decent wage, which bothered slave-owning neighbors.
That Grant was progressively more troubled by the immorality of slavery became patently clear that spring. He had acquired from Colonel Dent the mulatto slave named William Jones who had worked on Dent’s farm and was now thirty-five years old. It was the only time Grant ever owned a slave and Jones may have come as a gift. Then, on March 29, 1859, Grant appeared at circuit court in St. Louis to file papers that declared “I do hereby manumit, emancipate & set free said William from slavery forever.”136 Still struggling financially, Grant could have earned a considerable sum had he chosen to
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“Mister, do you want to fight?” Grant countered: “I am a man of peace; but I will not be hectored by a person of your size.”
However much he feared the supposed extremism of some Republicans—an exaggerated fear Burke attributed to Grant’s long residence among Missouri slave owners—Grant realized that Unionism and abolitionism had become intertwined issues.
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.”
He knew that, to project authority, he had to transcend petty anger.
He never threw temper tantrums, never engaged in theatrics, and performed his duties in a placid, levelheaded manner.
“He believed slavery to be an anomaly in a free government like ours; that its tendency was subversive of the best interests of the master and the enslaved . . . that it resulted in denying the slave the rights of his moral nature.”
“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 This anticlimactic moment was formative for Grant, who never forgot the nugget of practical wisdom learned.
“The generals who insisted upon writing emancipation proclamations . . . all came to grief as surely as those who believed that the main object of the war was to protect rebel property, and keep the negroes at work on the plantations while their masters were off in the rebellion.”56 With few exceptions, Grant would qualify as a model general who accepted military subservience to civilian leadership.
Unlike other Union generals, who freely invented excuses for inaction, the restless Grant always scanned the horizon for reasons to fight.
Instead he was becoming the most self-confident of Union commanders, perhaps needing to wipe away the stigma of earlier failures in civilian life—failures that had implanted in him a high level of motivation that no other general could quite match.
Instead of sweetheart deals, he favored open, competitive bidding.
As always, Grant rated speed and timing as more important than having every soldier in perfect position.
“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.”
ungenerous and unchivalrous terms which you propose.”33 A modern general, Grant retired outmoded forms of chivalry, showing that gentility had given way to a stark new brand of modern warfare. He did not soften his words in deference to past friendship with Buckner and delivered a powerful military message instead.
“Why should we go through with vain forms and mortify and injure the spirit of brave men, who, after all, are our own countrymen,”
The U. S. Grant legend began taking shape as papers identified him as someone who personified the American heartland, a folksy character partial to homespun speech. “I was so brought up,” Grant explained, “and if I try fine phrases I shall only appear silly.”47 He was a superior version of the ordinary American and the public loved it. As a general, he epitomized the fighting soldier, bashful and self-effacing, who went about his grim business without any self-aggrandizement.
He had already told Sherman that when both sides seem defeated in battle, the first to assume the offensive would surely win.
Shiloh’s casualties eclipsed the total of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined.
“He then went on to say that when it had been made clear that the Negro, as an independent laborer . . . could do these things well, it would be very easy to put a musket in his hands and make a soldier of him, and if he fought well, eventually to put the ballot in his hand and make him a citizen. Obviously I was dealing with no incompetent, but a man capable of handling large issues. Never before in those early and bewildering days had I heard the problem of the future of the Negro attacked so vigorously and with such humanity combined with practical good sense.”
Not surprisingly Grant felt a special antagonism against war profiteers, who not only extracted southern cotton but often vended useful articles, such as medicine, flour, and salt, to southern buyers.
It was the most sweeping anti-Semitic action undertaken in American history.
