Grant

by Ron Chernow

  Church bells tolled and muffled drums resounded as the funeral procession glided past buildings shrouded in black, The New York Times likening the uninterrupted flow of humanity to a giant “river into which many tributaries were poured.”154 The honor guard of mourners stretched for miles, taking five hours to reach the burial site. Like a wraith haunting the crowd, a slim, pale young man, his identity masked by smoked glasses, watched as the canopied hearse rolled by. He was, by his own description, America’s most hated man. It was Ferdinand Ward, still awaiting trial, who had bribed his way out of the Ludlow Street Jail for several hours to attend the funeral. Ward remained unrepentant, preferring to see himself as a victim rather than a perpetrator of the Grant & Ward scandal. He remained totally delusional about his relationship with Grant. “Our friendship never changed through all the period of stress and trouble,” he told the press years later, “but remained until the time of his death.”155 The anger of Grant’s family and friends toward Ward and Fish had never abated. “Wall Street killed him,” Sherman stated baldly. “There isn’t any doubt about it. He would have been alive to-day, if he hadn’t fallen into the hands of Ward and those fellows.”156

  By midafternoon, in bright sunshine, the funeral cortege reached the small temporary brick tomb at Riverside Drive and 122nd Street. Warships floating in the Hudson River let loose a cannonade in tribute to Grant. A lone bugler blew taps at the vault—the same tune that had floated over Grant’s army camps during the war. As the notes drifted over the crowd, Sherman stood ramrod straight, his body shaking with tears. It was a memorable sight: the bête noire of the South, seemingly impervious to softer feelings, overcome with profound emotion.

  A dozen years later, on a cool spring day, with more than a million people in attendance, President William McKinley presided over the dedication of the General Grant National Memorial—“Grant’s Tomb” in popular parlance—financed by public contributions. Leading the fund-raising drive had been the lawyer Richard T. Greener, the first black graduate of Harvard College, which would have pleased Grant. An opulent domed affair of granite and marble, Grant’s Tomb was the largest mausoleum in North America. When Julia Grant died of heart failure in 1902 at age seventy-six—in later years she befriended Varina Davis, the widow of Jefferson Davis, and supported the suffragette movement—she and Ulysses were entombed together. They lay encased in red granite sarcophagi housed in an open structure much too monumental for these two simple midwestern souls. The mausoleum’s spectacular scale testified to Grant’s exalted place in the nineteenth-century American mind, perhaps rivaling that of Lincoln, and the site soon evolved into New York’s number one tourist destination, drawing half a million people annually.

  Perhaps nobody had watched the funeral procession on August 8, 1885, with a wider range of emotions than Mark Twain, who stared down for five hours on the somber pageantry from the windows of his publishing office at Union Square. He would always be indescribably proud to have published Grant’s Personal Memoirs, even though its commercial success distracted him from his own writing career. At the end of the funeral, when the crowds had dispersed, he and William Tecumseh Sherman retreated to the Lotos Club, where they sat down over liquor and cigars to wrestle anew with the mystery of Grant’s personality—a source of never-ending wonder to both men. Sherman always insisted that Grant was a mystery even to himself, a unique intermingling of strength and weakness such as he had never encountered before.

  Now he said categorically to Twain that Grant had no peer as a military genius: “Never anything like it before.”157 Perhaps sensing that the man would soon harden into a monument, with the rich flavor of his personality lost to posterity, Sherman laughed at the chaste image of Grant purveyed by the newspapers. “The idea of all this nonsense about Grant not being able to stand rude language & indelicate stories!” he thundered in disbelief. “Why Grant was full of humor, & full of the appreciation of it.” He recalled how Grant would roar with mirth at the salty, off-color stories peddled by Senator James W. Nye of Nevada. “It makes me sick—that newspaper nonsense. Grant was no namby-pamby fool; he was a man—all over—rounded & complete.”158 The comment made Twain realize that in supervising the Memoirs, he had failed to press Grant on one key point that would have completed the human portrait and now he kicked himself for this critical omission: Grant had not addressed his struggle with alcohol. It was a contest, Twain reckoned, as huge as any of the titanic battles he had fought and won. “I wish I had thought of it!” Twain exclaimed with frustration. “I would have said to General Grant, ‘Put the drunkenness in the Memoirs—& the repentance & reform. Trust the people.’”159 But he knew that no hint of that existed in the narrative, that it had been too sore a point with Grant, who, in his quiet, inscrutable way, carried his private thoughts on the subject to the grave.

  Ulysses S. Grant looking restless but unbowed after his devastating defeat at Cold Harbor.

  Grant’s prim mother, Hannah Simpson Grant, in her later years, when she seldom saw her son.

  Jesse Root Grant, the overbearing and meddlesome father who constantly tried Grant’s patience.

  Julia Grant with her adored father, Colonel Frederick Dent; her daughter Nellie; and her youngest son, Jesse. Grant found it difficult to share the adoration for his father-in-law.

  THE TOWERING AMERICAN GENERALS OF THE MEXICAN WAR

  Grant borrowed more of his strategy from Scott and more of his style from Taylor.

  Old Fuss and Feathers, General Winfield Scott

  Old Rough and Ready, General Zachary Taylor

  John Rawlins, left; Grant, center; and an unidentified officer. Rawlins functioned as Grant’s chief of staff, adviser, and conscience throughout the Civil War, and the indispensable watchdog of his drinking problem.

  Congressman Elihu B. Washburne of Galena, Illinois, was the tireless sponsor of Grant’s military career from the outset of the Civil War until the very end.

  GRANT’S WARTIME STAFF

  A full-blooded Seneca, Ely S. Parker, was one of Grant’s military secretaries during the war and commissioner for Indian affairs during his presidency, the first time a Native American had been elevated to such a lofty government post.

  A military secretary for Grant during the war and a diplomat during his presidency, Adam Badeau, was outwardly fawning and obsequious toward Grant, while secretly envious and resentful.

  Grant with Orville E. Babcock, right, and Adam Badeau, left. After serving as wartime aide-de-camp to Grant, Babcock became his most confidential secretary in the White House but betrayed him with his duplicitous behavior during the Whiskey Ring investigation.

  GRANT’S TWO FAVORITE GENERALS

  William Tecumseh Sherman in his later years. He revered Grant as a soldier but grew increasingly critical of his Reconstruction policies as president.

  Philip H. Sheridan, standing at left, with his officers, including George Armstrong Custer, seated at far right. The high-spirited Sheridan overcame the early superiority that the Confederacy enjoyed in cavalry warfare.

  GRANT’S WARTIME NEMESES

  For Grant, Benjamin F. Butler epitomized the inept political generals who made his life miserable during the war.

  General John A. McClernand tried to trade on his friendship with Abraham Lincoln to supplant Grant in the military campaign against Vicksburg.

  A brilliant armchair theorist, Henry W. Halleck lacked Grant’s visceral sense of battle and was often two-faced in his treatment of his star general.

  Robert E. Lee, seated, with eldest son Custis, left, and aide Walter Taylor, right. Lee’s titanic struggle against Grant in Virginia formed the climax of the war.

  Grant’s old friend James Longstreet was Robert E. Lee’s most dependable commander and showed genuine courage after the war in supporting Reconstruction.

  Traditionally called “the last photograph of Abraham Lincoln from life,” this picture was taken on February 5, 186
5, two days after the president met with the three Confederate peace commissioners aboard the River Queen, anchored off Hampton Roads. The image shows a crack in the original negative.

  Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad glancing at a photo album on February 9, 1864, one month before Grant met the president at the White House. Lincoln brought Tad along when he visited Grant at City Point, Virginia.

  Mary Lincoln’s high-handed treatment of Julia Grant led the Grants to rebuff an invitation from the president to attend Ford’s Theatre the night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

  Grant clashed with rough, brawling President Andrew Johnson, left, over his dismissal of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, right, a controversial action that contributed to Johnson’s impeachment.

  President Grant, Julia, and their youngest son, Jesse, relaxing in 1872 at their cottage by the sea at Long Branch, New Jersey, often dubbed “the first summer White House.”

  The photograph of Julia Grant shows the remarkable force of her personality during the years of her husband’s presidency, when she threw lavish dinners at the White House. Because she was cross-eyed, she always preferred to pose in profile.

  Grant was a doting father to his four children. Clockwise from top left: Frederick Dent Grant, Ellen “Nellie” Grant, Jesse Root Grant Jr., and Ulysses S. “Buck” Grant Jr.

  THE ORNAMENTS OF PRESIDENT GRANT’S CABINET

  As secretary of state for eight years, Hamilton Fish compiled an outstanding record, including settlement of the Alabama claims, giving the administration much-needed stability.

  As attorney general, the crusading Amos T. Akerman supervised the foremost accomplishment of Grant’s administration, crushing the Ku Klux Klan by bringing indictments against thousands of members.

  THE 1872 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

  In his reelection campaign, Grant had no more ardent supporter than Frederick Douglass, who insisted that “to Grant more than any other man the Negro owes his enfranchisement.”

  The presidential standard-bearer of the Liberal Republicans and the Democrats, the eccentric Horace Greeley urged a more conciliatory attitude toward the white South. Grant mocked the New York newspaper editor as “a genius without common sense.”

  In the 1872 presidential race, Susan B. Anthony cast an illegal vote for Grant—the only time she ever voted for a president—as a way to protest the absence of female suffrage.

  As the imperious chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Charles Sumner defied Grant’s proposal to annex Santo Domingo. Grant protested that Sumner “has abused me in a way I have never suffered from any other man living!”

  The flamboyant, dandyish Roscoe Conkling, senator from New York, was one of Grant’s most faithful champions in the Senate. The president richly rewarded him with patronage jobs in his state.

  During his round-the-world tour, Grant met with Li Hung-chang, China’s northern viceroy, in 1879 and pioneered a new role for ex-presidents by helping to mediate China’s dispute with Japan over the Loo Choo (Ryukyu) Islands.

  When Grant returned from his global tour, he sought an unprecedented third term as president.The cartoonist portrays a drunken Grant trying to stagger from a lamppost marked “2nd term” to one marked “3rd term.” A policeman standing in the doorway wonders cynically, “Will he make it?”

  This engraving shows Ferdinand Ward in the early 1880s, at the time he swindled Grant and left him destitute.

  Operating as a publisher, Mark Twain helped to rescue Grant from poverty by boosting the royalty offered for his Personal Memoirs by an earlier editor. Twain called Grant “the most lovable great child in the world.”

  Less than a month from his death, a stoic Grant pens his Personal Memoirs on the porch at Mount McGregor, the fatal tumor on his neck shrouded by a scarf.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The first person I must thank is someone who is no longer alive and whom I never met: John Y. Simon, the editorial genius behind the The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, published by Southern Illinois University Press. Over the span of more than four decades, starting in 1967, he published thirty-one of the thirty-two thick volumes of Grant’s papers. There had never been any edition of Grant’s papers before this magnum opus of sustained scholarship. Packed with fifty thousand documents, this splendid edition has transformed our understanding of the man, making Grant biographies from earlier generations seem dated. Blessed with this abundant trove of papers, historians can no longer caricature Grant as an empty-headed dunce, a stereotype that has particularly damaged assessments of his presidency. The Grant who emerges from these papers is articulate and thoughtful, with a firm grasp of many issues.

  Once the Grant publication project was completed, the massive store of materials accumulated by John Y. Simon was transferred to Mitchell Memorial Library at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi. There, under the able leadership of John F. Marszalek, the Grant papers have found a new home under the rubric of The Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library. In addition to the fifty thousand documents from the published papers, the library contains another two hundred thousand documents that never made it into print—a scholarly feast for anyone even remotely curious about Grant. I especially profited from the numerous oral histories, profiles, newspaper interviews, letters, and diaries that conjure up Grant’s life with extraordinary vividness. With his invaluable insights and suggestions, nobody contributed more to this book than John Marszalek, and he and his wife, Jeanne, were exemplary hosts into the bargain. The first-rate team of archivists and assistants at the library provided help with unfailing courtesy and efficiency. I will thank them in alphabetical order: Amanda Carlock, Aaron Crawford, Meg Henderson, Bob Karachuk, David Nolen, and Ryan P. Semmes. I also enjoyed many stimulating discussions with the historians Doug Forrest and L. B. Wilson, who accompanied me to the library each day.

  I am extremely grateful to the good folks at the Library of Congress—especially Michelle A. Krowl, its Civil War and Reconstruction specialist, and Jeffrey M. Flannery, head of the Reference and Reader Services Section at the Manuscript Division—for permission to examine the original manuscript of Grant’s Personal Memoirs, bound in nine volumes and ordinarily kept under lock and key. To see Grant’s slanted, wobbly handwriting in his final days was indescribably moving. I also salute the staff at the Newberry Library in Chicago, which houses the revealing Orville E. Babcock Papers. Nelson D. Lankford, vice president for programs at the Virginia Historical Society, guided me through their collections. I also wish to thank Steve Laise, chief of cultural resources at Manhattan sites of the National Park Service, and Stephen Keane, for providing access to the archives of the General Grant National Memorial, stored at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. Frank J. Scaturro and the Grant Monument Association added welcome encouragement. At the New-York Historical Society, Marilyn Satin Kushner directed me to the riches of the Steven K. Yasinow Collection of Thomas Nast Cartoons. I also wish to thank Louise Mirrer, the society president; Michael Ryan, the vice president; and Ted O’Reilly, head of the manuscript department. At The Players Foundation for Theatre Education in Manhattan, Raymond Wemmlinger provided access to Adam Badeau’s evocative letters to Edwin Booth, a hitherto overlooked source of information. These papers form part of the Hampden-Booth Theatre Library.

  One reward of Grant research was that it lured me to many corners of the country that had been terra incognita for me. Anyone who has made the rounds of Civil War battlefields must admire the professionalism and encyclopedic knowledge of the guides and park rangers. I want to thank James H. Ogden III, chief historian at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park; A. Wilson Greene, president and CEO of Pamplin Historical Park in Petersburg; Susan Hawkins at the Fort Donelson Visitor Center; Peter Maugle, a park ranger and historian at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park and his colleague Steve Connelly; and Park Ranger Ben Anderson at the Cold Harbor Unit of the Richmond
National Battlefield Park. Bob Swift offered superb commentary at the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. I was impressed by the deeply informed battlefield tours given by John W. Schildt at the Antietam National Battlefield and Joel Busenitz at the Gettysburg National Military Park. I was fortunate to receive a private tour of the Shiloh battlefield from two excellent historians from the University of Mississippi: Joseph P. Ward, then the chairman of the history department, and John R. Neff, director of its Center for Civil War Research. I would also like to thank Morgan Gates and the staff of the Vicksburg National Military Park.