Grant

Jean Edward Smith

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780684849270
• eBook ISBN: 9780743217019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Ulysses S. Grant was the first four-star general in the history of the United States Army and the only president between Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson to serve eight consecutive years in the White House. As general in chief, Grant revolutionized modern warfare. Rather than capture enemy territory or march on Southern cities, he concentrated on engaging and defeating the Confederate armies in the field, and he pursued that strategy relentlessly. As president, he brought stability to the country after years of war and upheaval. He tried to carry out the policies of Abraham Lincoln, the man he admired above all others, and to a considerable degree he succeeded. Yet today, Grant is remembered as a brilliant general but a failed president.
In this comprehensive biography, Jean Edward Smith reconciles these conflicting assessments of Grant's life. He argues convincingly that Grant is greatly underrated as a president. Following the turmoil of Andrew Johnson's administration, Grant guided the nation through the post- Civil War era, overseeing Reconstruction of the South and enforcing the freedoms of new African-American citizens. His presidential accomplishments were as considerable as his military victories, says Smith, for the same strength of character that made him successful on the battlefield also characterized his years in the White House.
Grant was the most unlikely of military heroes: a great soldier who disliked the army and longed for a civilian career. After graduating from West Point, he served with distinction in the Mexican War. Following the war he grew stale on frontier garrison postings, despaired for his absent wife and children, and began drinking heavily. He resigned from the army in 1854, failed at farming and other business endeavors, and was working as a clerk in the family leathergoods store when the Civil War began. Denied a place in the regular army, he was commissioned a colonel of volunteers and, as victory followed victory, moved steadily up the Union chain of command. Lincoln saw in Grant the general he had been looking for, and in the spring of 1864 the president brought him east to take command of all the Union armies.
Smith dispels the myth that Grant was a brutal general who willingly sacrificed his soldiers, pointing out that Grant's casualty ratio was consistently lower than Lee's. At the end of the war, Grant's generous terms to the Confederates at Appomattox foreshadowed his generosity to the South as president. But, as Smith notes, Grant also had his weaknesses. He was too trusting of his friends, some of whom schemed to profit through their association with him. Though Grant himself always acted honorably, his presidential administration was rocked by scandals.
"He was the steadfast center about and on which everything else turned, " Philip Sheridan wrote, and others who served under Grant felt the same way. It was this aura of stability and integrity that allowed Grant as president to override a growing sectionalism and to navigate such national crises as the Panic of 1873 and the disputed Hayes-Tilden election of 1876.
At the end of his life, dying of cancer, Grant composed his memoirs, which are still regarded by historians as perhaps the finest military memoirs ever written. They sold phenomenally well, and Grant the failed businessman left his widow a fortune in royalties from sales of the book. His funeral procession through the streets of Manhattan closed the city, and behind his pallbearers, who included both Confederate and Union generals, marched thousands of veterans from both sides of the war.

Notes

Preface

1. Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885).

2. G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century xxxvi (London: Longmans, 1913).

3. William B. Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant: Politician vii (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1935).

4. David Herbert Donald, in “Overrated and Underrated Americans,” 39 American Heritage 48–63 (1988). Donald won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1961 for Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960) and again in 1988 for Look Homeward: A Life of Thomas Wolfe (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987).

5. See especially, William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981).

6. As Princeton historian James M. McPherson points out, “Even in the fighting from the Wilderness to Petersburg during the spring of 1864 . . . Grant’s casualties were proportionately no higher than Lee’s even though Grant was fighting on the offensive and Lee’s soldiers stood mainly on the defensive behind elaborate entrenchments. Lee had lost as many men in Pickett’s assault at Gettysburg (and proportionately four times as many) as Grant did in the equally ill-fated June 3 Assault at Cold Harbor,” 27 Civil War History 365 (1981). Also see Richard N. Current, “Grant Without Greatness,” 9 Reviews in American History 507 (1981); John Y. Simon, untitled book review, 65 Wisconsin Magazine of History 220–21 (1982); and Brooks D. Simpson, “Butcher? Racist? An Examination of William S. McFeely’s Grant,” 33 Civil War History 63–83 (1987).

7. 2 Personal Memoirs of Philip Henry Sheridan 204 (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1888).

8. Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet 639 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932).

9. James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox 17 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896).

10. T. Harry Williams, McClellan, Sherman and Grant 105 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1962).

11. Grant, 1 Memoirs 38–40.

12. Ibid. 248–50.

13. Ibid. 570.

14. Grant, 2 Memoirs 493.

15. Gen. Edward F. Beale interview, Washington Post, July 24, 1885.

16. New York Times, August 9, 1885.

CHAPTER ONE: THE EARLY YEARS

1. Ulysses S. Grant, 1 Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant 18–19 (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885); cf., William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography 4–5 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981).

2. Admiral Daniel Ammen, “Recollections and Letters of Grant,” 141 North American Review 361 (1885).

3. Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant: His Life and Character 3, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1920).

4. Grant paid homage to his mother’s fierce partisanship in his Memoirs. “Until her memory failed her, a few years ago, she thought the country ruined beyond recovery when the Democratic party lost control in 1860.” Her son’s success as the Republican standard-bearer in 1868 and 1872 did not moderate her stance. During the eight years Grant was president, Hannah never visited the White House. Grant, 1 Memoirs 23.

5. Ibid. 25.

6. Ibid. 24–25.

7. Lloyd Lewis, Captain Sam Grant 22 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950).

8. Grant, 1 Memoirs 26–31.

9. Garland, Grant 13–15; also see Bruce Catton, U.S. Grant and the American Military Tradition 11–12 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954); Lewis, Captain Sam Grant 31–34. Garland won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for A Daughter of the Middle Border (New York: Macmillan, 1921).

10. Ibid. 50–51. Henry Clay, Jr., commanded a regiment of Kentucky volunteers during the Mexican War and was killed rallying his men at the battle of Buena Vista.

11. Grant, 1 Memoirs 32. Emphasis in original.

12. Lewis, Captain Sam Grant 57.

13. Hamer to Sec. of War, March 4, 1839, National Archives. Also see 1 The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant 22 note, John Y. Simon, ed. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967).

14. “Descriptive Book of Candidates,” manuscript, USMA. A photo of Grant’s oath of enlistment, signed “U.S. Grant,” appears facing page thirty-two in Garland, Grant. Grant never acknowledged the middle name Simpson, and simply used “S.” as his middle initial. His acquiescence to his name change speaks volumes about his attitude toward life. He attempted three times to call the army’s attention to the mistake, but when that failed he simply accepted the situation.

15. Grant, 1 Memoirs 34–35.

16. Grant to R. McKinstry Griffith, Sept. 22, 1839, 1 Grant Papers 4–5. Emphasis in original.

17. Ibid. 7.

18. Lewis, Captain Sam Grant 69.

19. William Tecumseh Sherman interview, New York Herald, July 24, 1885.

20. The comments are those of General Lucius Clay, quoted in Jean Edward Smith, Lucius D. Clay: An American Life 35 (New York: Henry Holt, 1990).

21. Lewis, Captain Sam Grant 81. For Grant’s comments on Lyon, see John Russell Young, 2 Around the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• List of Maps
• Epigraph
• Preface
• One: The Early Years
• Two: Mexico
• Three: Resignation
• Four: War
• Five: “Unconditional Surrender”
• Six: Shiloh
• Seven: Vicksburg
• Eight: Chattanooga
• Nine: General in Chief
• Ten: The Wilderness
• Eleven: Grant and Lee
• Twelve: Appomattox
• Thirteen: Reconstruction
• Fourteen: Let Us Have Peace
• Fifteen: Grant in the White House
• Sixteen: Diplomacy
• Seventeen: Great White Father
• Eighteen: Reconstruction Revisited
• Nineteen: The Gilded Age
• Twenty: Taps
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright