Ulysses S. Grant’s life was remarkable for the fact that he had almost no choice in any of it. The current of history swept him along at a breakneck pace and yet he managed to carve out a miraculous place for himself in its annals.
As a boy, his father decided to send him to West Point Military Academy. Grant had no desire to go and graduated middle of his class (the one area where he excelled was horse riding). Soon after, he fought as a soldier in the Mexican-American War, and was then assigned to west coast territory as the California gold rush of 1849 saw a flood of settlers traveling west and looking for riches. This two year stint in California and Oregon is where he developed his taste for alcohol, the consumption of which placated his depression at being so far away from his wife and family. (His “abuse” of alcohol would haunt him for the rest of his life.) He resigned from the military in 1854 due to his loneliness and went back to the Midwest, spending the next seven years in relative poverty as he tried to support his growing family, once pawning his gold watch to buy Christmas presents.
Then, with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the rest of Grant’s life took off like a racehorse. Truly brilliant at warfare, he steadily rose in ranks until he achieved the summit position: Commanding General of the United States Army. And, as we all know, he won the war for the Union side. He was then a shoo-in for President, accepting the job without campaigning, and served two terms before stepping down. He completed his life with a two and a half year trip around the world (a well deserved vacation) followed by a mad-dash to finish writing his memoirs as his health steadily declined. He died of throat cancer at the age of 63 due to a lifetime obsession with smoking cigars.
The most notable characteristic that comes across in this book is Grant’s emotional stoicism. Whether in the heat of battle or the turmoil of a Presidential cabinet meeting, his reaction to news of any kind was nondescript. Time and again, he was described by onlookers as unmoved, regardless the intensity of the situation. This is not to say he was unemotional, as there are documented occasions of him expressing joy or sadness (for example, his despair when his daughter Nellie married an Englishman and moved across the Atlantic), but these episodes are few and far between. When surrounded by military or political peers, he was unflinching. This, obviously, is a major contributor to his effectiveness as a general. Commanding an army requires the absence of emotional reactions to events in preference to rational analytical thinking.
Another aspect of Grant’s personality that is illuminated in Chernow’s expansive tome is his trustworthiness. This is also an element of necessity in warfare: a general must trust that his officers will carry out his orders. While this was of paramount importance in the Civil War, it hurt him tremendously in his Presidency and other business ventures as foes took advantage of his generous nature. Grant suffered from a rotating roster of figures in his Presidential cabinet with several departing due to scandals. To be fair, Grant was elected the leader of the United States at a time of tremendous economic growth (exemplified by the booming railroad industry and the expansion of farming and mining out west), and the money that resulted was tremendously tempting to those with the disposition for it. Corruption was rampant, as it always seems to be when money is ubiquitous and oversight is minimal.
The saddest affair of Grant’s Presidency was his perpetual struggle with post-war Reconstruction in the south. Despite his best efforts, blacks in the south were continually terrorized and murdered for decades after the war as they sought equal rights as citizens under the law. It would be another one hundred years after the Civil War before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Grant did his best, but he was depressingly unable to change the spirits of the racist south. The only remedy for that poison would be the slow and brutal passage of time.
All in all, Ulysses S. Grant lived a remarkable life. He was an honest man in a time of questionable morals. He knew Abraham Lincoln intimately in addition to the famed author Mark Twain (who published Grant’s memoirs to fantastic acclaim). He went from selling firewood on a lonely street corner to presiding over the richest country in the world in the span of a decade. He was a humble man, who never wavered from placing his faith in others despite the numerous times throughout his life this tendency backfired in spectacular fashion. Most importantly, at a time in history when it was scorned, he believed that all men and women should be treated equally in the eyes of God and the law, and he did his best to champion these ideas. Without him, the shape of this country would surely be a different one. We are all indebted to this stoic and trusting man for pushing the world closer to one of equality and harmony.