Grant

Ron Chernow, “Grant,” Penguin Books, 2017, 959 pp.

Anyone reading this nearly 1,000-page book is quite likely very familiar with the Civil War battles Grant was involved in.  However, author Chernow emphasizes and documents that Grant was not the butcher historians have portrayed.  In fact, Grant is shown as particularly talented in strategic planning—coordinating all Union forces and widely attacking the South’s lines of supply.  Lee, although tactically Grant’s equal, generally had the advantage of being on the defensive and having the interior lines.  Lee didn’t do well when on the offensive as at Gettysburg and Antietam.

Sherman, another talented tactical and strategic commander could have easily taken Grant’s place.   However, Sherman’s more than generous treatment of General Johnson when Johnson surrendered is puzzling.  Grant’s treatment of Lee at Appomattox was generous and understandable.  The book never explains why Sherman exceeded the terms Grant had given Lee.  Sherman’s terms were then disavowed by Congress.

Grant fought to preserve political rights in the South and his stance on this issue was a large factor in his 1868 election.  However, Reconstruction soon failed and another hundred years was needed before blacks attained their political rights and it would again be safe to be a Republican in a southern state.  The North quickly tired of having to respond to the violence in the South and Grant's heroic efforts to effect a fair Reconstruction were thwarted.  It makes the reader question just what good was the Civil War.  (Another example of the futility of getting too far ahead of broad public sentiment with government dictates; abortion allowed by the courts rather than by the states is another).

As I previously said in my report on “American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant,” by Ronald C. White, I now repeat for Chernow’s book: Grant had a loving marriage and his sense of honor made him agonize over debts; he was fundamentally a decent man.  I have always maintained that no-one ever exceeds his own expectations; perhaps Grant is the exception that proves the rule.  Although I do believe Grant was an alcoholic, he gained control over his drinking; the book brings up his drinking way too much.  

When evaluating Grant, it is important to note that he was mostly blameless for the corruption that erupted during his second term.  But I still find it hard to forgive a president for trusting friends too much.  The job of a president is to choose able and competent department heads.  His naive trust in others continued after his presidency and eventually, through his trust of Ferdinand Ward, financially ruined Grant.  When Ward’s Ponzi scheme fell apart, Grant was left with a total net worth of $210.  Only his heroic effort to complete his memoirs saved his wife from destitution. More than 300,000 two-volume sets of his Personal Memoirs were sold, yielding $450,000 to Grant’s wife.  Mark Twain would always be proud to have published Grant’s Personal Memoirs.

What to make of Grant’s two terms (1869-77) as president?  The specter of scandals in his second term has tended to demolish the accomplishments of both terms.  Yet Grant as president defended the political rights of African Americans, battled against the Ku Klux Klan and voter suppression, reimagined Indian policy, rethought the role of the federal government in a changing America, and foresaw that the US would now assume a larger place in world affairs, a durable peace with Great Britain would provide the nation with a major ally.

My Notes:

Pg. xx.  Grant finished his Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant on July 16, 1885, one week before his death.  It was a heroic effort and done to ensure financial survival of his family.  Mark Twain helped get it published but did not ghostwrite it, as has been charged.  It is amazing how many times Grant was scammed out of his money by charlatans.

Pg. 56f:  Grant fought in the Mexican-American (1846-8) war in which 13,283 Americans died from combat and disease.  He gained invaluable experience as a quarter-master in supplying an army in the field and distinguished himself with his bravery and horsemanship.  The war culminated with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, expanding American territory by nearly a quarter.  The US gained Texas with the crucial Rio Grande boundary as well as New Mexico and California—territories encompassing the current states of California, Nevada, and Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico and part of Colorado. 

Pg. 68:  The Mexican-American war led to incidents which resulted in the Civil War.  Through the Compromise of 1850, California was admitted as a free state while other territories wrested from Mexico were left free to adopt slavery or not.  In exchange, the North appeased the South by submitting to a strict new fugitive slave law that made many northerners feel like accomplices in the hated institution of slavery.

Pg. 113f:  Grant arrived in Galena, Illinois in April 1860 to work in his father’s store. He actually spent less than a year in Galena.

 On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected president.  Lincoln won less than 40 percent of the popular vote, he did not win a single vote in the Deep South, where his name failed to appear on the ballot; however, he carried every northern state, except for New Jersey.

EDIT

 On December 20, 1860, Charleston South Carolina, voted to secede from the Union.  In January 1861, the following month, a crescendo of state secessions occurred as Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana departed from the Union, seizing control of federal forts and arsenals and widening the rift with the North.  Then in February, the seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, and elected Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy.  On April 12, 1861, Fort Sumter was fired on. 

Pg. 153:  The Confederacy blundered by invading Kentucky.  Their invasion now put Kentucky on the Union side, Kentucky had been wavering, but now allowed the Union to come in as liberators.  Grant moved on Paducah, KY.

Pg. 186:  Grant’s conquests at Forts Henry and Donelson severed the extended Confederate defensive line from Bowling Green to the Mississippi River.  This enabled the North to command Kentucky, western and central Tennessee, and portions of the Mississippi Valley while driving a wedge into Alabama and the Deep South. 

Pg. 188:  After Grant’s conquests at Forts Henry and Donelson, his boss General Halleck worked steadily to undermine Grant and ordered Grant to provide daily reports on the number and disposition of his forces.  Halleck was then outraged when he didn’t get these reports (it turned out later that a Confederate sympathizer at the telegraph office never forwarded the order).  Halleck essentially placed Grant under house arrest.  Both Halleck and McClellan, having been upstaged by Grant, were determined to knock him down.  However, either Grant or his chief of staff, John Rawlins, or the two together, sent Congressman Washburn copies of the correspondence between Grant and Halleck, and Washburn promptly brought them to the attention of Lincoln.  Lincoln, fuming over chronic stalling by McClellan, could not afford to sacrifice a general who took the initiative and had won an unbroken string of major victories in the West.  Grant had been ready to resign, but Sherman talked him out of it.

Pg. 195f: Shiloh:  With the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson the next logical step was to sail up the Tennessee River and take Corinth in northern Mississippi near the Tennessee border.  Grant began gathering his troops twenty miles north of Corinth, at Shiloh.  On April 2^nd Confederates under Albert Sidney Johnston advanced on Shiloh to surprise Grant before he was reinforced by Buell.  On April 6 rebel soldiers burst from the woods and attacked near Shiloh church.  A ghastly toll of seven thousand Union soldiers were killed or wounded and up to three thousand captured that first day.  Sherman found Grant that evening, stating “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?”  “Yes,” replied Grant.  “Lick ‘em tomorrow though.”

Pg. 205:  Grant told Sherman that when both sides seem defeated in battle, the first to assume the offensive would surely win.  Accordingly, Grant instructed all commanders to attack at 4am the next morning.  Grant made a sound calculation of his strength on the morrow.  He would be replenished by Lew Wallace’s wayward division and the arrival of Buell’s 25,000 man Army.  In the morning, the tide shifted significantly against the rebels.  Beauregard withdrew to Corinth.   Of the more than one hundred thousand soldiers who pitched into the battle, twenty-four thousand had been killed or wounded.  Shiloh peeled away any lingering aura of romance from the war.  (I walked these fields in 2016).

Pg. 228:  Had the Union in September of 1862 lost at Antietam, it is likely that the British and French would have recognized the Confederacy.  But, the Union victory enabled Lincoln to release his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation; its official release was January 1, 1863.  Eventually, 179,000 black troops would fight for the North.

Of course, the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, did not turn out well with Lincoln’s choice of General Burnside replacing McClellan.  (I walked these grounds as well, in 2014).

Pg. 233:  Grant’s father, Jesse, continued to attempt gaining business favors because of his son’s position.  Grant was so infuriated by his attempts that it led to his issuing the infamous General Orders No. 11:

General Order No. 11 issued by Grant on December 17, 1862, ordered the expulsion of all Jews in his military district, comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The order was issued as part of a Union campaign against a black market in Southern cotton, which Grant thought was being run "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders," (including his Father). Grant issued the order in an effort to reduce corruption.  Two weeks later, Lincoln reversed this order.  Even on his deathbed, Grant still regretted he had ever issued this order.

Pg. 236:  When New Orleans fell to a Union fleet under David Farragut in April 1862, it left Vicksburg as the last formidable Confederate fortress on the Mississippi River.  By May 1862, Grant and his fifty thousand soldiers began to encircle Vicksburg, with thirty-one thousand Confederate soldiers inside.  (The complexity of taking Vicksburg cannot be easily summarized here, read the book for these complex details which exhibit Grant’s outstanding tactical abilities. Many military historians rate it his masterpiece, the preeminent campaign waged by any general during the war.  On July 7, 1863, after Vicksburg, Grant was named major general in the regular army).

Pg. 326:  Grant’s reputation zoomed to new heights after the November 1863 battle of Chattanooga.  Within a month, he had done what seemed impossible.  His victory pried open more rebel territory to Union penetration, Tennessee had been cleaned out and the invasion of Georgia was now open. 

The Battle of the Wilderness, fought May 5–7, 1864, was the first battle of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Campaign against Gen. Robert E. Lee.  This battle was on the same grounds as the previous Chancellorsville battle.  Grant had hoped to get through this forest and engage Lee on more open ground where Grant’s artillery could be effective.  Both armies suffered heavy casualties but, Grant unlike previous Union commanders, headed south again hoping to beat Lee to Spotsylvania.  Grant would continue these move to his left flank all the way to Petersburg.  This move, always to the left, kept his army between Lee and Washington.

Pg. 353:  Grant and Lincoln operating theories were identical: that the Union army should destroy Confederate armies, not take cities or territory; that it should exploit its massive resources by simultaneous attacks against the enemy across many fronts; that military decisions were inseparable from political goals; and that only one final, savage, protracted burst of fighting could end the conflict. 

Pg. 357:  Beginning with the attack on Lee at the Wilderness, General Meade, accompanied by Grant, would continue to make direct frontal assaults on Lee, attempting to drive him back toward Richmond, while General Butler, stationed on the James River southeast of Richmond with 30,000 men, would advance on Lee from that direction, trapping him in a pincer movement.  Meanwhile, General Siegel would plow through the Shenandoah Valley, destroying granaries and rail lines, and Sherman would aim for Atlanta, slicing vital railway links to Lee, and draining the South’s interior of precious resources.  After successfully capturing Atlanta on September 2, 1864, he began his march to the sea in a campaign from November 15, 1864, to December 21, 1864.  (The capture of Atlanta ensured Lincoln’s coming election in November.)

Pg. 357f:  After the Wilderness and the movement to the left, the next battle site was Spotsylvania Court House.  It was at this time that Grant authorized Sheridan to take 10,000 cavalrymen and mount a full-scale challenge to Jeb Stuart’s cavalry.  For the next sixteen days, Sheridan played havoc with Lee’s army, even penetrating Richmond’s outer defenses.  On May 11, 1864, at Yellow Tavern near Richmond, Sheridan mortally wounded Stuart. 

Pg. 401f:  The Cold Harbor battle began, May 31, 1864, following Spotsylvania Courthouse.  This was one battle that Grant deeply regretted, losing 7,000 men, mostly in the first hour, against 1,500 casualties for Lee.  Cold Harbor culminated a four-week campaign distinguished by a savagery unseen in the war, producing appalling casualties: sixty-five thousand for the Union versus thirty-five thousand for Confederates.  The Confederate losses, though much less than the Union, represented 40 percent of the Army of Northern Virginia. 

Pg. 410:  Grant next aimed to take his 115,000 men and link up with General Butler taking a point south of the James River  Grant surmised that if he could seize the vital railroad junction of Petersburg, twenty miles below Richmond, he could sever southern railroads that sustained Lee’s army.  If Petersburg fell, Richmond and Lee’s army would eventually fall. 

Pg. 452: Lincoln received a resounding vindication in the election, winning by a landslide 212 electoral votes versus 21 for McClellan.  However the popular vote told a much less encouraging tale, Lincoln surpassed McClellan by fewer than half a million of four million votes, drawing only 55 percent of the popular tally.  Soldier’s votes had tipped the balance, favoring Lincoln with 78 percent of the popular vote.  However, the Confederacy gazed with dismay at the election results since its whole strategy had been predicated on fomenting northern fears and defeating Lincoln at the polls.

Pg. 453:  On November 7, 1864, Jefferson Davis endorsed a plan to buy forty thousand slaves who would take up arms for the South and receive freedom at the end of the war.

Pg. 459:  Grant remained the presiding genius of the war effort.  Sheridan’s successful rampage through the Shenandoah Valley, Thomas’s demolition of Hood’s army at Nashville, Sherman’s conquest of Atlanta and Savannah—all formed part of the scheme Grant had envisaged when he became general in chief. 

Pg. 469:  Early 1865 witnessed the slow-motion unraveling of Lee’s army.  Lee confessed to Jefferson Davis that desertions were 8 percent in January and another 8 percent in February.  Southern conscription covered boys as young as fourteen and men as old as sixty.

Pg. 511:  After Lee’s April 9, 1865, surrender at Appomattox, the war was essentially over even though Johnston’s army in North Carolina, Richard Taylor’s in Alabama, and Edmund Kirby Smith’s in Texas remained at large. 

  Pg. 516:  The Civil War claimed 750,000 lives.  As a portion of the total population, this was seven times as many American soldiers as WWII.  More than one-fifth of the young men in the south perished.

Pg. 562:  By the end of 1865, so-called Black Codes began to forge a new caste system in the South, a segregated world where freed slaves worked as indentured servants, subject to arrest if they left jobs before their annual contracts expired.  This established the foundations of the Jim Crow system that later ruled southern race relations.  In South Carolina, blacks were confined by law to their plantations, forced to work from sunup to sundown.  In Florida, blacks who showed ‘disrespect’ to their bosses or rode in public conveyances reserved for whites, could be whipped.  Thus, within six months of the end of the Civil War, there arose a broadly based retreat from many of the ideals that had motivated the northern war effort.

Pg. 685:  After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and the Fourteenth conferred citizenship rights upon blacks (anyone born in the U.S), the Fifteenth prevented states from denying voting rights based on race, color, or earlier condition of servitude. 

Pg. 706:  Grant signed the third Enforcement Act, commonly known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, on April 20, 1871, empowering the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to combat the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other white supremacy organizations.  Under the Klan Act during Reconstruction, federal troops were used rather than state militias to enforce the law, and Klansmen were prosecuted in federal court, where juries were often predominantly black. Hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned, and habeas corpus was suspended in nine counties in South Carolina.  However, after Grant, it was little used with predictable results.

Pg. 709:  By 1872, under Grant’s leadership, the Ku Klux Klan had been smashed in the South.  (Its later twentieth-century incarnation had no connection to the earlier group other than a common style and ideology.)  However, despite Grant’s stunning success, a certain moral fatigue began to afflict the North, where racism remained widespread.  Segments of the Republican Party pulled away from the idealism of earlier days. 

Pg. 727:  Settling the Alabama claims importance cannot be overstated, for it showed the value of international arbitration, banished lingering ill will between the US and Great Britain and launched a new fraternal relationship of major consequence. 

Pg. 733:  Grant had made a genuine effort at civil service reform and deserves credit as the first president to do so, but he hadn’t produced lasting change.  Only with the 1883 Pendleton Act would competitive exams be required to fill a portion of federal jobs. The assassination of President James A. Garfield moved the Civil Service Reform from city organizations to a leading topic in the political realm. President Garfield was shot in July 1881 by Charles Guiteau, because Guiteau believed the president owed him a patronage position for his "vital assistance" in securing Garfield's election the previous year. Garfield died two months later, and Vice President Chester A. Arthur acceded to the presidency. Once in office, President Arthur pushed through legislation for civil reform.  The Act initially covered only about 10% of the U.S. government's civilian employees.  However, there was a provision that allowed outgoing presidents to lock in their own appointees by converting jobs to civil service. After a series of party reversals at the presidential level (1884, 1888, 1892, 1896), the result was that most federal jobs were under civil service.

Pg. 739:  Grant established Yellowstone as the first national park on March 1, 1872.  Lincoln had signed a bill in 1864 that permitted California to preserve the Yosemite Valley but it was Grant who initiated the modern national park system.

Pg. 749:  Despite conspicuous blunders in Grant’s first term, notably cronyism and the misbegotten Santo Domingo treaty, Grant had chalked up significant triumphs in suppressing the Klan, reducing debt, trying to clean up Indian trading posts, experimenting with civil service reform and settling the Alabama claims peacefully.

Pg. 777:  In September 1873, Wall Street banks started to fold in a cascading series of closures that sparked chaos in the financial district.  It turned out that Jay Cooke & Company, unable to sell Northern Pacific bonds, had gone bust.  Its failure fanned a jittery situation into a full-blown panic, toppling one Wall Street house after another.  Not since 1837 had such a spasm of fear flashed through Wall Street.  The crisis persisted for more than five years and would be termed ‘the Great Depression until eclipsed by the 1930s downturn.  Grant was talked out of a large-scale ambitious and farsighted plan to combat unemployment through large-scale public works project, which would have anticipated FDR's New Deal.

Pg. 839:  In 1876 the Supreme Court handed down two rulings, United States v. Cruikshank and United States v. Reese that gutted portions of the Reconstruction Enforcement Act of 1870 and narrowed the powers of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.  (It is worthwhile to check out these two acts in Wikipedia).