Grant

“It seems crystal-clear that Ulysses S. Grant modeled himself after his mutely subdued mother, avoiding his father’s bombast and internalizing her humility and self-control.”

In discussing Grant’s childhood, Chernow tries to trace many of Grant’s qualities and patterns in life to his early experiences. Among these is the influence his mother had on him, including Grant’s reserve and his harmful level of trust in individuals.

“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.”

Chernow credits Grant with having a “grand strategy” (143) for defeating the Confederacy. This approach to tactics overall relied on Grant being able to move his army quickly.

“The issue of whether to extend slavery into the new territories had precipitated a showdown over its future.”

This passage refers to the Mexican-American War. Chernow argues that by expanding the territories of the United States, the conquests resulting from the war disrupted the balance between free states and “slave states,” setting the stage for the Civil War.

“If the men regarded Grant as overly harsh at first, they soon grew to admire his fairness, competence, and aplomb. He never threw temper tantrums, never engaged in theatrics, and performed his duties in a placid, levelheaded manner.”

Grant’s leadership qualities are described here. His talents as a leader overlap with Grant’s personal qualities, especially what Chernow describes as his “sense of fair play” (22). These qualities are seminal to his engendering trust in both his superiors and subordinates and contributed to his political success.

“A modern general, Grant retired outmoded forms of chivalry, showing that gentility had given way to a stark new brand of modern warfare.”

Chernow credits Grant with being a modern general. In this case, Grant’s insistence on total surrender, rather than following rules of “gentility” (182), in his negotiations showed that he represented a new kind of warfare that took new methods of machinery and guerilla tactics into account.

“Shiloh peeled away any lingering romance from the war, showing the sheer destructive power of modern combat.”

Warfare had also changed as a result of the industrialization of warfare. The shift in warfare resulting from industrialization included not only the power of warfare, but also an increased acceptance in going after civilian targets. Rather than relying on Napoleonic tactics with organized lines and drills, “total war” now included all aspects of society.

“Because most Washington politicians had never set eyes on Grant, he was largely a mythical figure, a cipher on whom they could draw caricatures.”

One recurring point that Chernow suggests is that Grant was a legend in his own time. This manifested in both positive ways (his fame as a general who ended the Civil War) and in negative ways (the frequent rumors about his alcoholism).

“Lincoln and Grant shared much common ground. They were both westerners, awkward in their movements, rough and uncouth in manners. Both had domineering fathers and ambitious wives. Both had married into slaveholding families that evinced insufferable conceit about their standing in the world. Both were fastidious and had grown up refusing to hunt or swear; Lincoln also eschewed tobacco, alcohol, and gambling.”

Grant and Lincoln not only shared common political goals such as ending slavery. They were also friends, something Chernow attributes to their shared backgrounds.

“[Grant’s] new militance on abolition, coupled with his encouragement of black [sic] recruitment and devotion to ‘contraband’ welfare, established a political outlook that would govern the rest of his career, setting an agenda from which he never deviated.”

Grant’s views changed over time. In particular, his views on slavery and African American rights developed toward abolition and civil rights. Rooting Grant’s beliefs in personal experience supports Chernow’s overall argument that Grant was sincere in his belief in civil rights for African Americans, in contrast to the view represented by some historians that Grant was not an advocate for African American civil rights (xxi).

“Although Grant would do everything in his power to make it happen, the promised era of postwar forgiveness and tranquility never truly came to fruition. For the South surrendering was one thing, but acceptance of postwar African American citizenship and voting rights would be quite another.”

As dedicated as he was to civil rights, Chernow admits that the full reform of the treatment of African Americans in the South was never accomplished. Still, Chernow presents this as a credit to Grant, rather than a mistake or a weakness.

“Abraham Lincoln was rudely snatched away just as many Americans had learned to appreciate his benevolence and farsighted wartime leadership. Nobody could have served as a fit successor to Lincoln, but the rise of Andrew Johnson was an especially cruel stroke for the nation.”

Chernow agrees with the traditional historical view that the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was a tragedy for Reconstruction. Although we cannot know exactly how Lincoln would have approached Reconstruction, for Chernow it is apparent that Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, took an approach that was disastrous for the goal of making the South peacefully accept the end of slavery and achieving civil rights for African Americans.

“Most consequential for Grant’s historic reputation was the way southerners of the Lost Cause school would begin to idealize Lee, portraying him as a gallant, noble general who had far outshone Grant and lost the war only because his opponent was backed by limitless manpower and industrial machinery.”

The Lost Cause was a revisionist historical take on the Civil War, one that presented a more sympathetic view of the Confederacy and of slavery. Here, Chernow describes how this Lost Cause myth portrayed Grant as simply fortunate in his victories due to the forces behind him, rather than analyzing Grant’s military decision-making.

“[Grant] feared the Democratic Party had become a haven for rebel sympathizers who refused to accept the basic tenets of Unionism, and he saw it as his duty to stand as the Republican nominee.”

Grant did have a genuine ambition to become president despite his modesty. At the same time, Chernow suggests, as he does in this passage, that Grant saw his political career as continuing the work of reincorporating the South into the United States and establishing civil rights that began with the Civil War.

“[Grant] wrongly assumed that the skills that had made him successful in one sphere of life would translate intact into another. He entered into no consultative process, engaged in no methodical vetting of people, and sent up no trial balloons to test candidates, making his decisions maddeningly opaque.”

Chernow admits that Grant’s presidency was plagued by corruption. However, he is also careful to argue that Grant himself was not corrupt. Instead, Grant was naïve, overly trusting, and did not play to political lenses.

“Grant saw absorption and assimilation as a benight, peaceful process, not one robbing Indians of their rightful culture.”

Besides Grant’s approach to African American civil rights, Chernow also discusses Grant’s approach to Indigenous Americans. On this topic, Chernow admits that Grant’s views and goals are less in line with modern ideals. Specifically, Grant did not want the Indigenous Americans subjected to violence and poor treatment, but he did believe the goal of any Indigenous American policy should be the assimilation of Indigenous Americans into white culture.

“Organized in thousands of scattered groups and billing itself as the Invisible Empire, the Klan launched a new civil war by clandestine means.”

The Ku Klux Klan was a major part of the violent, racist reaction of the South to Reconstruction. In fact, as Chernow argues, the widespread use of violence by groups like the Ku Klux Klan represented another kind of civil war.

“Grant had the misfortune of presiding over America in the corrupt Gilded Age.”

Chernow admits it was mostly Grant’s “childlike” (823) confidence in others that led to corruption. Still, he also views Grant as a victim of outside forces, in this case the deregulationist attitudes of the Gilded Age.

“Black leaders echoed Grant’s view that the merger of Liberal Republicans and Democrats threatened their welfare. Their views were vitally important because some southern states possessed enormous black [sic] populations that, coupled with Republican votes in the North, could easily determine the electoral outcome.”

One of the key aspects of the Reformation era was that African Americans emerged as a significant voting bloc. As a result, Democratic and Southern efforts to repress their ability to vote had significant consequences, especially for the Republican Party, during the Reformation era.

“In this heyday of laissez-faire economics, citizens didn’t automatically expect the president to manage the economy or cushion downtowns. Economic fluctuations were regarded almost like vagaries of weather.”

Laissez-faire capitalism dominated American political thinking in this era. The idea that either federal or state governments should significantly regulate businesses, even the growing national corporations of the time, was mostly unknown. Of course, this also contributed to the corruption of the Gilded Age.

“The world of politics was filled with duplicitous people and Grant was poorly equipped to spot them, remaining an easy victim for crooked men.”

Again, Chernow asserts that Grant was not corrupt. If he had a fault, it was that he was too trusting and therefore subject to con artists.

“Slavery had been abolished, but it had been replaced by a caste-ridden form of second-class citizenship for southern blacks [sic], and that counted as a national shame.”

One of the reasons the Reformation era could be seen as a failure was that it had not even completely purged slavery. Instead, the Reformation era saw slavery replaced by a less brutal but still repressive system where African Americans were subjected to harsh, discriminatory laws.

“During his eight years in office, Grant had been bedeviled not so much by his policies, where his record was often excellent, but by personalities, where his record left much to be desired.”

This is a key part of Chernow’s argument about why Grant should be considered a successful president. The most notorious part of his presidency, the various corruption scandals, had been caused by Grant failing to trust the right people, rather than by his actions.

“A new national consensus took a more conciliatory view of secession and blasted Reconstruction as an outright failure, giving Grant an additional motivation to publish his memoir and counter this growing revisionist view.”

The revisionist take on the Civil War that would become known as the Lost Cause myth started with the “national consensus” Chernow describes. Along with Grant’s need for money after he was the victim of fraud by Ferdinand Ward, Grant wrote his memoirs to combat the changing view of the Civil War.