Grant

Grant. By Jean Edward Smith. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

In this work Jean Edward Smith, the John Marshall Professor of Political Science at Marshall University, provides an in-depth and interesting view into the perplexing life of Ulysses S. Grant. Though scholars have devoted as much ink to analyzing the life of Grant as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, Smith’s addition to the scholarship breaks with the previous biographers through his rather positive depiction of Grant’s presidency. Despite his reappraisal of the actions of the Grant Administration, Smith devotes nearly half the work to Civil War developments and Grant’s monolithic success as commander of the Army of the United States. Smith’s narrative proceeds chronologically through Grant’s life and creates context and depth through providing extensive background information. Though previous historians have characterized Grant as an inarticulate, unintelligent, and a ragged failure, Smith casts Grant as an unlikely hero who drew upon a lifetime of failure to drive his successes.

Beginning with his experiences as a West Point cadet, Grant displayed little interest or aptitude for military life. Smith notes that Grant merely tolerated life at the academy and demonstrated a penchant for mathematics, art, and horsemanship. Grant’s disinterest in things military at the academy is reflected in his finishing twenty-one out of thirty-nine in the 1843 graduating class. One experience immediately following West Point stayed with Grant for the rest of his life. While on leaving Grant returned home dressed in his freshly tailored regimental uniform. When he arrived in Cincinnati the town’s people jeered him calling him “a no-account tin soldier” (29). Later, a drunken stable boy, dressed in a mock uniform paraded around making fun of Grant. Smith argues that Grant’s distain for formal military garb resulted from this experience.

Smith also gives insight into Grants experiences during the Mexican War. Personally Grant disagreed with the political objectives of the war. Despite these feeling, Smith argues Grant was a good soldier and found a model in Commander Zachary Taylor. Grants experiences during the war also impacted Grants subsequent role as Commander during the Civil War. Smith argues that in Mexico Grant learned the “intricacies of military logistics from the bottom up” and that these experiences gave him an awareness and appreciation of the experiences of the common soldier (52). Following the war Grant resigned from the army with a serious alcohol problem and from 1854 to the beginning of the Civil War Grant tried and failed at a number of professions including real estate sales, rent collector, and farmer. Perhaps Smith could have provided more detail as to why Grant failed these occupations. Nevertheless, the author argues Grant drew upon such failures to create the unparalleled successes he experienced later in life.

Regarding the Civil War, Smith challenges previous historians who have depicted Grant as the “Butcher” who won the Civil War simply because of his willingness to sacrifice thousands of infantrymen in the offensive pursuit of Robert E. Lee’s army. Instead Smith casts Grant as a military genius who added a “new dimension to military strategy” by shifting the federal army’s focus to destroying Lee’s army (15). According the author Grant’s military legacy also includes the American victories in World War I and II and the Persian Gulf. Grant’s magnanimous nature toward enemy troops following the Federal victories can also be attributed to failures he experienced prior to the war. Smith argues Grant would not inflict upon others the humiliations he experienced in life and thus extended generous conditions to those who surrendered. Perhaps the greatest example is Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox. Though Grant required total surrender, with compassion toward the small farmers, who composed the majority of Lee’s army, he allowed them to return home with their horses. Moreover, Grant single-handedly preserved Lee’s life after charged with treason.

Grant’s efforts to heal the schism between the North and South continued during his presidency. Smith demonstrates that Grant tirelessly worked to preserve the rights of freedmen in the South. Grant also worked to mend the damage in Anglo-American relations resulting from the Civil War. However, despite his glowing characterization of Grant, Smith suggests that during his presidency he was loyal to those who had served under him, to a fault. Ultimately, Smith’s work is a readable and compelling biography of the enigmatic life of Grant.

Jacob W. Olmstead

Jean Edward Smith, a political scientist by occupation and historian by avocation, presents the definitive biography of Ulysses S. Grant. This one-volume narrative is accessible by both an academic and general audience. The author’s training as a political scientist brings a fresh perspective to a traditionally historical figure. Smith is the author of many other historical works such as John Marshall: Definer of a Nation and Lucius D. Clay: An American Life. He taught political science at the University of Toronto for over thirty years and currently serves as the Drinko Professor at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. By applying his skills in legal and military affairs, the author presents a somewhat revisionist picture of the general who won the Civil War and later became the eighteenth president of the United States.

Smith’s publication offers a highly favorable re-evaluation of Grant's political career. While many previous biographies of Grant, one hundred and thirty four total, contrast the general’s outstanding military career with a failed political administration, Smith strongly disagrees with this assessment. He argues that Grant applied the same determined and focused personality traits in the White House as he demonstrated in the Civil War. The author also notes that Grant was the only president between Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson to be elected to two consecutive terms of office. This ranks as no small feat in the near fifty years that witnessed the tumultuous period of Radical Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era.

Smith begins his biography of Grant by relating his unexpected rise to fame by emphasizing the environment of Ohio as a shaping influence on the young boy. Ironically, the man who eventually ended the Civil War was born during the “Era of Good Feelings.” The author continues by recounting Grant’s unpleasant experiences at West Point and points out that the only area in which he excelled was horsemanship. Graduating twenty-first in the 1843 class of thirty-nine men, “Grant viewed the academy as a necessary evil . . . [H]e learned to tolerate military life but never embraced it” (27). Grant’s negative opinion of the military academy proves interesting in light of the fact that he later ranked as the first four-star general in the history of the United States Army.

Smith presents the more well-known years of Grant’s life by discussing the general’s unexpected but exceptional service in Mexico, his resignation from the Army in 1854, and his unanticipated return to the military in 1861. After personal and financial failures in real estate, freighting, and farming, the 39-year-old Grant worked as a lowly clerk earning $50 a month in his father's leather-goods store when the Civil War began. Grant's incredible rise from clerk to commander to national war hero is a remarkable story of perseverance and tenacity. The author portrays Grant as a man of resolute character and moral courage. With every challenge and defeat Grant suffered, it seems as if each instance only made him stronger and more determined. According to the author, the higher the stakes, the cooler Grant appeared. The more difficult the task, the more capable the general became.

To the surprise of many readers, Grant emerges as a man of sophisticated intellect and political savvy. His grasp of the incredible emotional and physical devastation of the South allowed him to present General Robert E. Lee with exceedingly generous terms at Appomattox. He allowed Confederate soldiers to return home with their side arms and horses in order retain some degree of pride and to begin plowing their fields. With these few sentences included in the terms of surrender, Grant opened the era of Reconstruction.[1] Interestingly, one of his final acts as president would be the negotiation of the 1876 presidential election, the formal end of Reconstruction.

In Grant’s final years, he remained as focused as ever at whatever task lay before him. He struggled to complete his personal memoirs as he endured a slow and painful death due to throat cancer. As always, the general completed his duty. Grant finished his account of his life on July 22, 1885. He died the next day. Reflecting his dedication to reunion and emancipation during his life, his funeral depicted national reconciliation. Major General Winfield Scott Hancock marched alongside former Confederate generals John B. Gordon and Fitzhugh Lee as the men led a procession of over 60,000 mourners. Of the one and a half million spectators who lined the streets of New York, veterans of the Confederate Army stood shoulder to shoulder with veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic. Following Grant’s instructions, an equal number of Southern and Union generals served as pallbearers. His closest military confidants, William Tecumseh Sherman and Phillip H. Sheridan, marched with Joseph E. Johnston and Simon Bolivar Buckner as the ultimate example of national unity. But Grant’s tomb presented the general’s final command: Let Us Have Peace.

Smith’s biography of Ulysses Simpson Grant ranks as a masterpiece of synthesis in reassessing a phenomenal individual in American history. Well-written and well-researched, any biographer would be wise to consult this particular work. Without a doubt, this version of Grant’s life and legacy will rank as the definitive biography for some time to come.

[1] James Longstreet was Julia Dent’s cousin and introduced Grant and Julia. Longstreet served as Grant’s best man at his marriage to Julia. Cadmus Wilcox and Bernard Pratte served as ushers. All three men surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.