Grant

by Ron Chernow

Proud of his resourceful soldiers, Grant had no qualms about dismounting from his horse to lend a helping hand. More and more he had developed a mystique as the unglamorous man who got things done. “There was no Bonaparte, posturing for effect,” observed an officer. “There was no nonsense, no sentiment; only a plain business man of the republic, there for the one single purpose of getting that command across the river in the shortest time possible.”

having a staff officer reply crisply, “General Grant believes that he has no more than done his duty, for which no honor is due.”

One soldier, revolted by Butler’s unsightly form, wrote of him: “Call before your mental vision a sack full of muck . . . and then imagine four enormous German sausages fixed to the extremities of the sack in lieu of arms and legs.”

When they sat down for lunch, Lincoln told of the rough journey aboard his steamer, confessed to having been seasick, and complained of an upset stomach. “Try a glass of champagne, Mr. President,” an officer said. “That is always a certain cure for seasickness.” Lincoln’s face crinkled with humor. “No, my friend,” he replied. “I have seen too many fellows seasick ashore from drinking that very stuff.”84 Lincoln’s witty retort provoked laughter. Aware of Grant’s reputation for drinking, he had gracefully sidestepped the issue.

want to hang Confederates so much as hang on to them.

The cigar still served as his trademark, though he scaled back consumption from twenty per day during the war to ten, feeling virtuous in his self-restraint.

He admitted to having owned slaves, but boasted of never having sold one, as if that would somehow ingratiate him with his visitors. He presented himself as a kindly master who had been “their slave instead of their being mine.”

On the way home, Grant boarded the train at Garrison Station, across the Hudson River from the academy, but Bowers, running late, tried to leap onto the train as it left the station. Unable to find a solid footing, he got trapped between the train and the platform and was dragged along, then fell to the tracks and was run over by one wheel, which mangled his face, severed his arms, and killed him on the spot. When

Grant rhapsodized about the beauty of the American West, only regretting the “three epidemics” that had plagued it: the pistol, the bowie knife, and whiskey.24

As at Appomattox, Grant attempted to smooth over an awkward situation with a little levity and small talk. “You and I, General,” said Grant, “have had more to do with destroying railroads than building them.”11 Lee would not be drawn into this sort of pleasantry. According to Badeau, he “refused to smile, or to recognize the raillery. He went on gravely with the conversation, and no other reference was made to the past.”

Adams got his revenge with a series of withering aperçus about Grant that have clung like barnacles to his historical reputation. He said the initials “U. S.” stood for “uniquely stupid.”31 His most barbed comment was that Grant had single-handedly refuted Darwinian evolution: “The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin.”32 The comments, both hilarious and totally unfair, have been irresistible fodder for historians.

When one reformer asked if he planned to modify his Indian policy, Grant replied, “I do not believe our Creator ever placed different races of men on this earth with the view of having the stronger exert all his energies in exterminating the weaker.”54

the same time, sensitive to scenic beauty, he established Yellowstone as the first national park on March 1, 1872. President Lincoln had signed a bill in 1864 that permitted California to preserve the Yosemite Valley and the giant sequoias of the Mariposa Grove, but it was Grant who initiated the modern national park system.

In his last annual message to Congress, he confessed with artless candor, “It was my fortune or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training . . . Under such circumstances it is but reasonable to suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred.”

He rightly noted that, as a president coping with the daunting sequel to the Civil War, he had wrestled with herculean challenges: “Nearly one half [of] the states had revolted against the Govt. and of those remaining faithful to the Union a large percentage of the population sympathized with the rebellion and made an ‘enemy in the rear’ almost as dangerous as the honorable enemy in the front.”60 He had overseen the trajectory from slavery to full-fledged freedom for four million black citizens. As the first president to govern after the Fifteenth Amendment, he had guaranteed the exercise of brand-new black voting rights and opposed the spate of domestic terrorism it engendered. He had been a good steward of the nation’s finances, having slashed taxes, trimmed debt, and watched the trade balance turn from deficit to surplus. He had shown that government could make good on its pledge to repay war debt and restore American credit.

Americans today know little about the terrorism that engulfed the South during Grant’s presidency. It has been suppressed by a strange national amnesia. The Klan’s ruthless reign is a dark, buried chapter in American history. The Civil War is far better known than its brutal aftermath. Without knowing that history, it is easy to find fault with Grant’s tough, courageous actions.

Grant deserves an honored place in American history, second only to Lincoln, for what he did for the freed slaves. He got the big issues right during his presidency, even if he bungled many of the small ones.

In the words of Frederick Douglass, “That sturdy old Roman, Benjamin Butler, made the negro a contraband, Abraham Lincoln made him a freeman, and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant made him a citizen.”

in the simple prose of T. Jefferson Martin of Michigan, who wrote to Grant after he left office: “As a colored Man I feel in duty bound to return you my greatful and heart felt thanks, for your firm stedfast and successful administrations of our country, both as Millitary chieftain and civil Ruler of this nation . . . My Dear friend to humanity.”

Meanwhile, the Earl of Derby shuddered at the boorish general from America. “He is certainly the roughest specimen we have yet had from the west,” he commented. “Anyone who had seen him today would have said that his manners & intelligence were about on a par with those of a bulldog.”

The Grants must have sensed the snobbery, for Julia turned unusually feisty. When the queen referred to her myriad duties as monarch, Julia feigned sympathy. “Yes, I can imagine them: I too have been the wife of a great ruler.”

Bismarck commiserated with Grant upon the countless fatalities of the Civil War. “But it had to be done,” Grant replied. “Yes,” said Bismarck, “you had to save the Union just as we had to save Germany.” “Not only save the Union, but destroy slavery,” Grant added. “I suppose, however, the Union was the real sentiment, the dominant sentiment,” Bismarck inquired. “In the beginning, yes,” agreed Grant, “but as soon as slavery fired upon the flag . . . we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.”

Then, after a long pause for dramatic silence, he uncorked his showstopper: “And if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.”149 Grant fell apart with laughter. “I fetched him! I broke him up utterly!” Twain exulted to his wife. “The audience saw that for once in his life he had been knocked out of his iron serenity.”150 To William Dean Howells, he added, “I shook him up like dynamite & he sat there fifteen minutes & laughed and cried like the mortalest of mortals.”

During his two-week Florida stay, he also gushed about the state’s economic future. “This is becoming a great resort for invalids and people who wish to avoid the rigors of a Northern Winter,” he told his daughter.16

Nobody doubted that William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip H. Sheridan would serve as honorary pallbearers, but Julia Grant knew her husband would have wanted two Confederate generals to balance their northern counterparts, so Joseph Johnston and Simon Buckner represented the South.

Frederick Douglass wrote: “In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.”