For the last few months, I’ve been reading — now, re-reading — Chernow’s biography, Grant. At 960 pages of text, that means I’ve been swimming in the life of U.S. Grant for a while now. No words can convey my awe of the man, the enigma of him, and my amazement at all he endured and achieved.
My wonder parallels that of those around him at the time: his closest military aides, commanders and soldiers in the field, journalists, the spies sent from Washington to report on whether he was a drunkard but who quickly fell under his spell. Chernow quotes lavishly from them all. (The book is historical biography at its best: riveting.) All who met him -- except those determined to undermine him for their own ignoble purposes (and there were many) -- seemed to struggle to account for this very unassuming, extraordinary man.
But for all his elusiveness, it is clear that he was the indispensable man of his time: the only general that Lincoln could trust to win the Civil War, and, once Lincoln was gone, the only one to make the winning of the war count, to set the nation on a path towards a more equal, more perfect union. Read Chernow; you’ll find out. (If you know everything already, please take the poll at the end: I’d like to know if I’m the only one who knew practically nothing about U.S. Grant.)
In all these days of reading and obsessing about Grant, not one day passed when I didn’t stumble upon something happening now that hearkened back to what happened then. Joe Biden’s son and brother are hauled before a Congressional committee? That happened to Grant’s son and brother. (The former was cleared of wrongdoing; the latter was soon understood to be in the midst of a descent into madness, thus accounting for his bizarre testimony.)
A president having to appear at a courthouse? (You know who.) Grant’s penchant for speeding around the streets of Washington in his horse buggy got him a trip to the police station and a fine – as president, no less. BTW: he humbly acknowledged his lawbreaking and paid the fine. (Question: is Joe Biden allowed to drive his Corvette as president? Perhaps best not.)
Joe Biden has designated another new National Monument, with help from his Sec. of Interior, the first Native American to serve in the cabinet? Grant was the first president to create a National Park – Yellowstone, in 1872 – and appointed Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian, to head Indian affairs, the highest government position held by a Native American until that time.
And one more: In May, Biden appointed his 200th federal judge, the majority of them women and people of color, fulfilling his promise to diversify the federal judiciary. Grant, similarly, oversaw the hiring of blacks and Native Americans into jobs with the federal government in record numbers, so many that Frederick Douglas was “simply staggered by their number. ‘At one Department at Washington I found 249 . . .’ ”(p. 642). That’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion before it had a name, but in Grant it had an early champion.
Well, one more: Grant was the first president to attend a worship service in a Jewish synagogue. (In part, he was atoning for an ill-conceived general order he had issued -- then rescinded -- early in the war that unfairly targeted Jewish citizens.) The relevance to our current moment is obvious.
Apart from these events, there are some quirky similarities between Grant the man and Biden. Grant had a remarkable memory for faces; Special Counsel Hur noted Biden’s “photographic . . . recall of [his] house.” (Note: Grant was the first president to hire a Special Prosecutor.) Biden, by way of explanation, told Hur that he was a “frustrated architect.” Grant: he enjoyed and excelled in the drawing classes he took at West Point. Here’s a sample of his work:
[In case you’re wondering about art classes at a military academy: They had just been introduced when Grant arrived there. It was the nascent days of cartography, and the thought was that drawing would be a useful skill for officers needing to sketch battlefield maps. Robert Weir was the much-loved instructor who went on to teach at West Point for 40 more years. While Grant was his student, Weir was working on his own painting, “Embarkation of the Pilgrims,” a commission for the Capitol Rotunda, that was installed there in 1843 — the very Capitol that Grant was later charged to protect from Lee’s army; the very rotunda that was not invaded by Confederate flag-wavers until 2021.]
These two presidents share more substantive qualities. Both are known for extraordinary compassion: Grant, towards the generals and soldiers he vanquished; the citizens of the southern towns through which he led his army; animals — in spades! One of the few times he was observed to lose his temper was at a teamster mistreating his horses; Grant ordered that the man be “tied up to a tree for six hours as a punishment for his brutality” (Chernow, p. 402.) — and, especially, the initially enslaved, then freed, Black people of the South.
Biden’s compassion, extending to his rescue dogs (though not, apparently, to his Secret Service), is so much remarked upon as to be definitional, and he has fostered, from his early years in Delaware politics, a special connection with the Black community that played a critical role in his his first election.
Neither man, upon first impression, seemed destined for greatness; each tended to be underestimated; and each traveled a rocky road. Grant was so unassuming at to be quickly dismissed: when one soldier pointed out to another that it was the General who was passing by, the reply was, “I guess not. That fellow doesn’t look like he has the ability to command a regiment, much less an army.”
Grant was scorned by the Washington generals as being a man of the West, rough, not polished in the way that the Eastern “elites” were. (Biden seems to have felt that folks in Washington rather disdained his lack of an Ivy League education, something the Orange Dullard referenced in last week’s infamous debate).
Grant, for his part, was not interested in the trappings of being a general and thought poorly of those who felt differently. No wonder, then, that when he walked into Washington’s Willard Hotel (!) for the first time, having left his command in the West to become lieutenant general over all the Union forces, the hotel clerk “treated him with casual contempt.” Grant played along until, after signing his name, the tone changed and he was given the most prestigious room, where Lincoln had actually slept (Chernow, p. 340)
By the time Grant entered the Willard hotel in 1864 and took up his new command, he had already earned fame for all his victories in the western theater of the war: the taking of Vicksburg, securing Union control of the vital Mississippi River and thereby dividing the Confederacy in half. Nonetheless, he could not, before or after, avoid recurring bouts of terrible press.
After Shiloh [1862], Grant was vilified in the press with a fury that surprised him. He was shocked that the northern press construed the battle as a Union loss. Never before had he faced such national scrutiny or virulent attacks. As the war of words grew fierce, Grant was traumatized. Union camps swarmed with correspondents who wrote for partisan papers and weren’t overly scrupulous in their methods. They trafficked in rumors that quickly found their way into print. . . legends sprang up overnight, filling entire newspaper columns (Chernow, p. 208).
(The echo of now is deafening.)
Shiloh lost him his command, and, in despair — not at the battle with its horrendous losses, which he viewed as having been unfortunate but essential; he despaired at having no army to lead — he was on the verge of resigning. Luckily for the Union cause — luckily for us — he was restored to his command and went on to victory in the West. Then in the East and Lee’s surrender. Then two terms as president. (The odious Johnson intervened between those last two. What a different country we might otherwise have been! )
[Can’t resist — length be damned: It was Gen. Sherman, who was in the fight at Shiloh, who got word of Grant's intention to resign and intervened, persuading him to stay on for a few more weeks and just see. So Sherman didn’t view Shiloh as disqualifying. Rather, after the first day’s battle, Sherman sought Grant out and, finding him smoking a cigar under a tree in the pouring rain, remarked, “ ‘Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?’ . . . ‘Yes,’ replied Grant with a drag on his cigar. ‘Lick em tomorrow though’ “ (Chernow, p. 205). And they did, because Grant was “not a quitting man.” He was, though, a man of few words. He became president without ever engaging in a debate. Speechifying is something he learned over time. He did not have a stutter.]
But, even after Vicksburg [surrendered on July 4, 1863], when he took command of the Army of the Potomac — oh! how the people cheered! — and battled Lee through Virginia all the way to Richmond, Grant wasn’t free of attacks from the press. The Battle of Cold Harbor, VA, was one such flash point. Losses were horrific.
The opposition press feasted on Cold Harbor’s casualties. “What is the difference between a butcher and a general?” . . .After Cold Harbor, Grant could never cast off the butcher epithet, a mortifying burden for this plain, decent man. . .Despite the carnage, Lincoln never wavered in support of Grant or doubted his strategy” (Chernow, pp. 408-9).
When the going got tough, when the loss of one battle looked like the loss of the war and the people despaired of the outcome, Grant pressed forward, never appearing to flinch.
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