Grant

By Ron Chernow, Penguin Press, 2017, 959 pages
Reviewed by Jim Stasiowski, October 15, 2023

Julius Caesar, appearing before an adoring gathering of Roman journalists, read from a press release written by his PR firm: “Veni, vidi, vici,” the Latin equivalent of, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

General Ulysses S. Grant would have to add one more clause, whatever the Latin is for, “I screwed up.”

Born in 1822 in rural Ohio, Grant fashioned a Caesar-like military-political career, whipping the Confederacy in the Civil War, winning presidential elections in 1868 and 1872, and striving, in the name of morality and liberty, to tame the wildest reconciliation in U.S. history.

Wildest to date, that is.

But, exempting his solid marriage, Grant would have needed all of Caesar’s PR prowess to condense his losses: to alcohol (euphemistically, he only suppressed that enemy); to unscrupulous politicians and businessmen (they were sharper than Brutus’s dagger); and to gullibly bad money management (surely the man who preserved the Union didn’t deserve an impoverished retirement).

“Grant,” Ron Chernow’s densely populated paean to that man, is addictively readable, skillfully paced so that the summits and gutters of Grant’s life seem evenly spaced, as if divinely designed to represent the core steadiness of the man.

In this, our first quarter of the 21st century, it is Abraham Lincoln who dominates our thoughts about the making of the second-half of the 19th century and beyond, and who can argue? But Lincoln – this unavoidably will sound callous – had the advantage first of leading a lofty moral crusade from above the battlefields, then dying before he had to grapple with the consequences of victory.

Grant, on the other hand, not only bivouacked in the mud and the blood, but also was the one left to bandage a reunited nation’s rawest wounds. And, because acknowledging Lincoln’s flaws seems unAmerican, historians have found it convenient to point at post-bellum Grant as having primary responsibility for Reconstruction, which ignominiously constructed the lengthy, painful Jim Crow period.

I couldn’t shake the impression that Chernow was offering 959 mostly laudatory pages as restitution for a Grant reputation undeservedly stained by ordinary human flaws.

Still, the explanations and illustrations throughout the book are well-reasoned.

For instance, as he charted the progress of the 1868 presidential-election season, Chernow deftly linked Grant’s overpowering popularity with a political reticence bordering on diffidence, meaning the Republican nomination came to him. Chernow summary: This suited Grant, who had a clever way of placing himself in the pathway to success, then calling it fate.

On the negative side, every modern biographer tends to overdo attributing thoughts to those who cannot be interviewed, so Chernow’s prose is frequently annoyingly speculative: “… one wonders … perhaps … doubtless … were sure to … must have trembled.” Further, he also too frequently uses italics to emphasize a word or phrase, and his clichés are tiresome. Are we to assume that no contract in history was ever agreed upon with being “hammer(ed) out?”

Here is a brief summary of Grant, the human being’s, highs and lows: A skilled horseman (high) gets to West Point (higher still) but as a student, doesn’t show much (low). In the Mexican War, he proves himself a good soldier (high) and solid organizer (high-plus), but after the campaign, his military career seems doomed to mediocrity (neutral). Then, booze, a foe more implacable than Robert E. Lee, washes him out of the Army (metaphorically, down-in-the-gutter low), which pushes him into civilian financial distress, abysmal at business and the Elmer Fudd of farmers (irretrievably low?).

Then, paradoxically, the country plunges into Civil War, elevating him to the top, the first warrior who earned a skeptical Lincoln’s trust in the wake of the seemingly never-ending cavalcade of Elmer-Fuddsville generals who, in the early years, marshaled Northern armies to delays, defeats and dejection. Chernow is at his best in describing how a feckless civilian transformed into a latter-day Caesar:

Once he took command, a remarkable change overcame Grant, mirrored in his letters. He now sounded energized, alert, and self-confident, as if shaken from a long slumber. Working with clockwork precision, he briskly issued orders. In his understated style, he was fearless and exacting.

You can see that Chernow tends toward Grant apologist, the backwoods boy who grew into front-page greatness.

I have attached to this review my favorite photo of Grant, taken after the bitter loss of a battle, to Robert E. Lee’s forces, at Cold Harbor in Virginia, part of the agonizing Wilderness Campaign. No photo reveals everything, but this one captures the words that Chernow used to describe, post-battle, the full range of Grant’s personality:

If Grant’s confidence made him an inspirational leader, it could also expose him to catastrophic mistakes engendered by overconfidence.

A bonus: Chernow is Grant’s equal as a brilliant strategist. One example: Periodically throughout the book, he inserts colorful descriptions of Grant’s irreplaceable subordinate generals, Sherman and Sheridan. The result is episodic, satisfying mini-bios of too often overshadowed heroes.

Neither I nor Chernow can top the cadence of Caesar’s summary, so we’ll step aside and let the (free)man of letters, Frederick Douglass, speak for us two pages from the biography’s final line: “In (Grant) the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.”

Blessed with Chernow’s humility, Caesar would have found a Douglass to speak for him.