I knew very little about Ulysses S. Grant before reading Ron Chernow’s recent biography of him. Grant was a cigar-chomping Union general in the Civil War who at some point became President with a corrupt administration. It’s on the latter basis that I gravitated towards reading about Grant sooner rather than later, and I am glad that I did.
My chief visual image of Grant came from a brief cameo in the 1981 Lone Ranger movie, wherein at the end the Lone Ranger rescues the President from something terrible happening on a train. It’s a forgettable movie, Jason Robards as Grant notwithstanding. But that image is all I had for Grant. The Lone Ranger opens the door to a car, there’s President Grant smoking a cigar, and the Lone Ranger says he’ll save him.
Would that saving Grant could have been so simple.
Grant’s life story is fascinating. His is a very American story, of a man from middling stock who falls quite low and then rises to the highest level. Grant was a man of contradictions that were ultimately resolved: An abolitionist who married a slaveowners’ daughter, a brilliant general beguiled by financial schemers; a general who unleashed total war, but later declared “let us have peace”.
Grant was born into a middle-class family in Ohio. His father was a businessman who operated a tannery, and was something of a blowhard who would vex Grant all through his adult life. Grant loved animals, especially horses, and could not abide working in the tannery, and through a family friend, gained an appointment to West Point.
Shortly after graduation, Grant served in the Mexican-American war, alongside many other others who would be future Civil War generals on both sides. Lee, Sheridan, Sherman, and others, all cut their teeth fighting on the same side, before squaring off in opposition later in life. I learned so much more about the Civil War in reading Grant’s biography, and in many ways, Grant’s time in the war was when he was his personal best. However, that success would only come after a series of setbacks.
After the Mexican-American war, Grant served in some other postings and met the woman who would become his wife, a bit of a southern belle in a slave-owning family in Tennessee. Although Grant came from an abolitionist family, and butted heads with his future father-in-law, the two married and lived a pretty typical army life: she moved with him to a posting in New York, though she returned to live with her family when he took a posting out west.
Grant’s first recorded case of corruption is, in Chernow’s telling, a misplacing of cash he was responsible for, and fighting a political fight he could not win. He was all but forced to resign, whereafter he lost almost all his personal money to a financial grifter who, when Grant asked for his money back, said “come back next week”, and left the next day. Henceforth, the Gullible Grant.
Grant lived in poverty until an army buddy recognized him, barely, and got him enough money to get home. He lived on his father-in-law’s estate with his wife, eking out a living by dragging wood into town. Disheveled and destitute, Grant’s glory days seemed over, and his fate sealed. But then, the Civil War broke out.
Ulysses S. Grant and the Civil War
As the United States fell into Civil War, both sides eagerly sought capable officers to lead their forces into battle. Grant, disgraced from his previous ouster, was able to gain command of a company near his home town, and from there, advanced his military career in a fashion that was rapid even for a full wartime footing.
Lincoln is famously said to have quipped, in response to the allegations that Grant drank too much, that whatever Grant was drinking should be handed out to all his other generals. Grant won several battles in short order, enough so that his political enemies in the US Army chain of command could not deny his ability. As for the drinking, in Chernow’s telling, Grant generally abstained from drinking, and was noted on several occasions of having turned down drink, keeping his wine glass upside-down at formal dinners. Yet, alcohol was a weakness for Grant, and while he knew it, he could not always fight it. He relied on intimate allies to keep temptation away from him, whether his wife or his chief aide, and more or less, Grant was sober.
In any case, Grant was a very winning general. In the early part of the war, the Union frequently lost to, or, at best, fought to a standstill, their Confederate counterparts. Grant took chances and pursued the enemy. Over time, his approach became what we would now call total war. It is not enough to evict the enemy from the contested area of battle; they must be pursued and destroyed as a fighting force. The means of war must be destroyed: factories, supplies, and famously, railroads. Grant’s approach was bloody and abhorred by contemporaries, but it was this approach that transformed the Civil War from a back-and-forth armed debate into a decisive struggle. Victory must be plain and undeniable.
After the war Grant, alongside Lincoln, supported re-integrating rather than subjugating the South. This was a controversial position then, and even vexes political discourse today. After a Civil War, especially one as bloody as the American Civil War, what is to be done with the losing side? Are they all to be punished? Only the leaders? How to address lingering animosities related to the original impetus of the war?
Radical Republicans wanted to punish the South. Grant and Lincoln tried to balance support for the rule of law, particularly for freed slaves, with the former Confederate states being allowed back into the Union, with Senators and Representatives and all the other rights that states have for participating in the Federal government. This is commonly recognized as the difficult yet wise path of reintegration, allowing the states to return to their internal sovereignty at the expense of not fully uprooting the deep prejudices against black Americans.
Prior to the war’s end, Grant was widely cheered by the Union, and Lincoln eyed him warily as a potential competitor for President in 1864. Grant wisely did not run against his political champion, but still nearly suffered a similar fate as Lincoln: part of the plot to assassinate Lincoln included plans against Grant, plans which very nearly came to fruition. Even later, after Lincoln’s assassination, Grant was the target of several conspiracies.
Instead, with Lincoln’s assassination, the nation was granted Andrew Johnson, quite probably the worst president the United States has ever had, or at least, the worst man ever to hold the office. Thus, when Grant ran for office, he had the benefit not only of his own exceptional reputation, but he also gained from the martyred spirit of Lincoln and countered the dyspeptic reputation of Johnson. Grant won easily.
Grant’s Presidency
Grant’s first term was also early days for Reconstruction, and he strongly supported the rights of African-Americans. Grant supported the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted Africa-Americans the right to vote, and signed legislation creating the Justice Department, which pursued the Ku Klux Klan. Furthermore, Grant signed into law a bill explicitly titled the Ku Klux Clan Act, which allowed the suspension of habeas corpus and the implementation of martial law to support federal prosecution of Klansmen. Grant’s Postmaster General hired many freedmen into the Postal Service.
Unfortunately, Northern sentiment about Reconstruction began to wane, and after conservative Democrats gained power in the House of Representatives, it became harder and harder for Grant to support the firm action that was required to ensure civil rights in the South. As late as 1872, armed militias fought each other over a disputed gubernatorial election in Arkansas, and in Louisiana white supremacists attacked a local courthouse over another disputed election, defeating the mostly-black militia and subsequently murdering dozens of them in cold blood.
Grant appointed a Native American to be his Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Until this point in time, US relations with Native Americans had been through treaties, of which there were hundreds; going forward, they would be treated as wards of the government instead . US expansion and powerful economic interests were difficult for Grant to fight against, though he did advocate restraint and treating the Native Americans fairly.
One of the more curious schemes Grant fell into as President was considering the annexation of the Dominican Republic. As I read this chapter of his Presidency, I grew more incredulous, and essentially, it’s an early example of Grant being led along by powerful financial interests down a road that any reasonable person would see would not end well.
Basically, the President of the Dominican Republic colluded with an American land speculator to pitch the idea to Hamilton Fish, Grant’s Secretary of State, and after sending an envoy to assess the value, Grant lobbied hard for Congress to support a set of treaties more-or-less buying the country and leasing Samana Bay. At one point Grant appointed Frederick Douglass to a commission to study annexation. In any case, Congress remained opposed, and so the United States did not annex the Dominican Republic.
In the economy, Grant’s first term worked to get the country back on the gold standard. During the Civil War, the US had printed currency that was not backed by gold or silver, aka “hard currency”, and basically Grant’s administration began a process to swap out these “greenbacks” for currency backed by actual gold in US vaults. Being a process controlled by the Treasury, this created a situation ripe for corruption, chiefly by Jay Gould and his associates. Grant was convinced to lower the price of gold, which caused a market panic. Later, in Grant’s second term, he signed a law that ended bi-metallism, but by no means ended the debate about the gold standard. Every President in this period afterwards would have to contend with the gold standard as a political issue.
Grant’s post-presidency
Grant and his wife liquidated some of their investments and set out on a two-and-half year world tour, visiting leaders of nations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia. In the courts of Europe they were generally regarded as ill-mannered Americans who didn’t understand the finer points of courtly etiquette, but they were well-received by the populations, and in emerging nations outside of Europe, their visits were signs of good faith from America.
As I mentioned earlier, Grant’s administration was known for corruption. Chernow’s telling, as well as most of the supplemental reading I’ve done, falls along the line of Grant not personally profiting from corruption, and in general being very loyal to people who were corrupt in a way he could not understand.
Grant seemed beguiled by wealthy businessmen and generally took them at their word when seeking advice about the economy, and within his administration there were numerous scandals wherein a Grant appointee would use his office, or connections made through his office, for personal profit.
I generally agree with this assessment. Grant came from the military, where loyalty is paramount, and is a two-way street; subordinates will only be loyal to superiors who support them. Grant was a splendid strategist and general, but he was out of his depth when it came to the self-interested world of finance and business.
By the end of his second term, the various scandals, as well as economic troubles, led the Republicans to abandon Grant. In those days he might have run for a third term and indeed, following the Rutherford B. Hayes, there was support for a third Grant Presidency. However, Grant opted not to run, and instead began one of the first modern post-presidencies with his grand tour of the world. While in modern times we are accustomed to former Presidents continuing to cut a figure on the national and world stages, at this point in American history, that was unusual.
Following the tour, Grant was briefly a front-runner for the Republican nomination in 1880, but eventually lost out to James A. Garfield. Grant set out in business, first to build a railroad in Mexico that could support free trade with the US, which did not materialize. He also lent his name to an investment brokerage with his son and Ferdinand Ward, called Grant & Ward.
Unfortunately, Ward and another banker were essentially running a Ponzi scheme (this pre-dated the literal Ponzi scheme that would give the practice its name), and when it failed, Grant was nearly broke. It was only through the generosity of William Henry Vanderbilt that Grant managed to stay in his New York home. There was sympathy for Grant, who probably didn’t know he was in business with a crook – a crook who would be sentenced to six and a half years of prison after Grant died.
Grant developed cancer of the throat, and in his final months sought to find a way to secure his wife financially. He had written articles for magazines and had a book deal for his memoirs. Mark Twain, a friend of the family, felt Grant had signed a poor deal for his memoirs, and offered a substantially higher royalty rate; there is a whole study to be done on how Twain’s publishing house pre-sold the book in an era just on the edge of mass communication, enlisting former Union soldiers to go door-to-door soliciting “subscriptions” (buyers) before the book was even published. The book was a great success, and Grant died with high regard from the nation he had served.
Grant’s Legacy
As it happened, in the time since I finished reading Chernow’s biography and completing the first draft of this essay, I finally visited Grant’s Tomb, here in New York City, near Riverside Church in the Upper West Side. I’d tried a few times before, but it would be closed, either for a holiday or refurbishment of the grounds. In September of 2019, I was spending the day with friends wandering Riverside Park and Columbia University, and in between, we stopped at Grant’s Tomb.
High above the entrance, the slogan of Grant’s first Presidential campaign are engraved, “Let Us Have Peace.” It’s easy to see only irony, to read the words of a Civil War general with deep cynicism and a sly eye at Grant’s habit of throwing more and more men into battle until it was won. Yet, I believe Grant really meant it. Those words can only have meaning from someone who knew directly what it meant to not have peace, one who knew and had directly borne the cost of that peace.
The American Civil War is the bloodiest, if not darkest, chapter in US history. Its terribleness is only overshadowed by the slavery that preceded it, and the burning embers of racism that followed in Reconstruction. Grant’s Presidency was faced with radical Republicans on the one hand and conservative Democrats on the other, the North and the South still at each other’s throats, even if the rifles and bayonets had been put down. Ensuring the civil rights of black Americans in the South while preventing the North from completely subjugating the South was a challenge that few Presidents could rise to meet, and in my opinion, Grant’s handling of that situation alone merits praise.
Grant’s Tomb has sarcophagi for him and his wife; technically above-ground, hence, no one is actually buried in Grant’s Tomb, per the old joke. They are surrounded by busts of his generals, and in the atrium above, small rooms hold the battle flags of various Union regiments, with murals high up depicting key moments in Grant’s campaigns. Ulysses S. Grant had many faults, but he was an excellent warfighter and strategist, and if not for him, the Civil War might have been lost or conceded in a draw. He fought to preserve the Union, and won. Let Us Have Peace, indeed.
U.S. Grant Today
The key issues of Grant’s day revolved purely around civil rights and Reconstruction. Grant eventually led the Union to victory over the Confederacy, and in so doing was responsible, in part, for immense destruction and loss of life. Afterwards, he strongly supported civil rights and did what he could to protect the rights of freedmen, as former slaves were called.
It is hard to overstate the level of racial animosity that remained in the South for years, and indeed, after Grant left office, political support for black Americans faded from the national level, and Jim Crow began to take root in the South.
Now, nearly one hundred and fifty years later, despite the gains made in civil rights for African-Americans, not to mention other constituencies, many of those gains are being eroded. Rules meant to ensure electoral equality at the polls in Southern states have been lifted. Redistricting and gerrymandering are locking in political dominance by one party or the other in certain areas. On top of all that, loosening of restrictions on political spending have allowed a superwealthy minority to have an outsized voice in elections across the country.
Could Grant be elected today? It’s difficult to say. Grant was elected after literally the most politically divided period in American history. He led the Union to victory and then succeeded one of the most divisive Presidents in US history.
Yet Grant is also rare in that he was a military man, and that is an unusual path to the Presidency – only Washington, Taylor, Grant, and Eisenhower come to mind as top generals who ascended to the Presidency. Each of them came to power not long after a major war, and that’s just not something the country has gone through recently.
I am doubtful that Grant could be elected as President today, without a major war to put him in the spotlight, and a political party looking for a shining star to put forward.
Hopefully, the state of the nation will not come to that. It is said that we are bitterly divided, but the lines of division seem to be shifting. While the core issues of civil rights and economic equality remain, the proposed solutions and the constituencies that support them have changed.
There are populists in support of socialist ideas, and there are populists adamantly opposed to them. Billionaires have been observed campaigning in favor of wealth redistribution, yet also in opposition of “soaking” the rich in taxes. There is no specific geographic region holding one position or another; instead, political analysts organize us by race and economic class. Any civil war today would be as likely to be online as in real life.
Let Us Have Peace? I sincerely hope so. I would like to see an America again where someone can start in the middle, find a good career, fail badly, and find his way to the highest post. I would like a country where our families can disagree without killing each other, yet I would also like an America where the military doesn’t have to be deployed in order to guarantee civil rights – as was the case nearly a hundred years after Grant’s Presidency. If we can’t have a Grant, let us at least have a nation like him.