Grant

by Ron Chernow

  Ulysses S. Grant led a vagabond life, leaving behind a string of residences. I learned much about his boyhood from Greg Roberts at the U. S. Grant Birthplace in Point Pleasant, Ohio, and Ellen McCaughey at the U. S. Grant Boyhood Home & Schoolhouse in Georgetown, Ohio. The scenes of Ulysses and Julia Grant’s courtship at White Haven are easy to imagine at the beautifully kept Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site in St. Louis, where superintendent Timothy S. Good and historian Pamela K. Sanfilippo brought that era to life. In Galena, the staff at the Ulysses S. Grant Home offered a comprehensive tour. I found the visit to Grant’s final residence on Mount McGregor especially moving. I am indebted to site manager David Hubbard and to William Underhill of the Friends of Ulysses S. Grant Cottage for opening up the house before the official summer season while William Meyer kindly furnished photos. Special thanks to Laura Cohen Apelbaum, former executive director of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, for taking me to Adas Israel, the small synagogue whose dedication Grant attended in June 1876.

  Many friends have accompanied me on these historical adventures and their questions and company have always been invigorating. My stalwart friend Bruce McCall steered me through six straight battlefields, from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, as we re-created the Overland Campaign. I also want to thank John and Ronna Schneider for driving me around Grant’s boyhood haunts; Theresa and Denise Melroy for a freezing but memorable trip to Galena; John Tosi, who escorted me to Fort Donelson and the former site of Fort Henry along with a side trip to Fort Pillow; Martha Stearn and Nancy Norton, who were delightful companions on the visit to the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site; and Courtney Lobel, who joined me on informative trips to Antietam and Gettysburg.

  I enjoyed the aid of two fine research assistants: Nick Lehr, who dredged up many useful articles for me, and Michelle Long, who showed special diligence in researching some tough assignments. Many friends alerted me to Grant-related materials that I might have missed. Philip Kunhardt advised me on Abraham Lincoln books and photographs. Adam Goodheart gave me an overview of nineteenth-century newspapers. Walter Stahr apprised me of Grant mentions in Edwin M. Stanton’s papers at the Library of Congress as he pursued his own Stanton biography. Lynn Sherr generously shared her extensive research files on Susan B. Anthony and her 1872 vote for Grant, a subject largely ignored by earlier biographers. Leon Friedman provided information about Grant’s selection of Supreme Court justices. David Michaelis told me of papers related to Ulysses S. Grant III. Karenna Gore pointed me to books and blogs on the Civil War. Liz Robbins provided me with a rare first edition of an 1868 campaign biography of Grant. Hans Binnendijk jogged my imagination with probing questions about Grant. Douglas Schwalbe unearthed a packet of faded newspaper clips about the Grant Cottage in Long Branch, New Jersey. Otis and Nancy Pearsall and Marcia Ely brought to my attention a forgotten reminiscence of Julia Grant in the memoirs of Mrs. Roger A. Pryor. Mercer Warriner and Elizabeth Diggs alerted me to the unpublished memoir of Alexander Murray Ferrier with its recollections of Galena. Michael Evenson steered me to Ian Hope’s important work on West Point during Grant’s tenure there. A host of Grant descendants, including Ulysses Grant Dietz, Claire Telecki, Miriam Sellgren, John Griffiths, and Julia Castleton, passed along impressions about their famous forebear. I also wish to thank Judy Goldstein, who allowed me to use her lovely apartment as I recuperated from ankle surgery one summer, giving me time to pore over the Civil War trilogies of Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton. Finally I would like to thank Harriet Simon, the widow and able colleague of John Y. Simon, for her encouragement and support.

  Research on alcoholism formed an important part of the project. My brother, Dr. Bart Chernow, plied me with vital information and journal articles. Polly McCall, an addiction specialist with long experience with alcoholism, was a fountain of useful ideas. Dr. Henry D. Abraham was generous with his views on the subject of Grant and drinking. Judy Collins helped to educate me about the history of the temperance movement and the early influence of the Washingtonian movement. Many friends and acquaintances, who shall remain nameless here, discussed with me their struggles with alcoholism and I am especially grateful for their candor.

  Five readers vetted the manuscript and they have enriched the book throughout. As one of our leading authorities on both Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, John F. Marszalek was exceedingly generous in providing copious, insightful commentary, even when he differed with some of my conclusions. Harold Holzer, former chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and a renowned and prolific Lincoln authority, was especially helpful on that and many other dimensions of the story. With great patience, he allowed me to pester him with questions at frequent intervals. Frank Williams, retired chief justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, founding chairman of the Lincoln Forum, and president of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, brought his wide knowledge to bear on many topics. Brenda Wineapple, author of Ecstatic Nation, a superb history of the Civil War and Reconstruction era, proved especially perceptive about Grant’s psychology. Oskar Eustis, head of the Public Theater in New York and a great history buff, gave the book a warmly appreciative reading amid many demands on his time. These five readers saved me from many errors of fact and interpretation and I am deeply grateful for the time they took to wade through my long manuscript.

  At Penguin Press, I must thank Casey Denis for her adept editorial assistance, Sarah Hutson for her energetic publicity work, and copy editor Maureen Clark and senior production editor Bruce Giffords for their scrupulous attention to my text. Evan Gaffney created the beautiful jacket, Lucia Bernard the handsome interior design, and Jeffrey L. Ward the terrific maps. At this point in the acknowledgments, I usually thank my editor, Ann Godoff, and my agent, Melanie Jackson, for their sterling contributions to the book in question and I must do so here again. Melanie had many profound reflections on Grant, and Ann had a particularly fine sense of the complex architecture of the story. But with this book—my seventh with Melanie, my sixth with Ann—I must also thank them for the loving encouragement and expert guidance they have given me throughout my career. They have enabled me to enjoy a life as a biographer far more interesting and rewarding than I had any right to expect when I quit my ambition to be a novelist thirty years ago. Quite simply, I am the luckiest writer in town to have these two exceptional ladies so solidly in my corner. When they are on my side, I feel as if I can never go too far wrong.

  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS

  EBC. Edwin Booth Collection, Hampden-Booth Theatre Library, The Players Foundation for Theatre Education, Players Club, New York City

  EBWP. Elihu B. Washburne Papers

  EMSP. Edwin M. Stanton Papers

  FL. Raymond H. Fogler Library, University of Maine

  GFP. Grant Family Papers

  GMA. Grant Monument Association

  GPL. Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi (S = Series; B = Box; F = Folder)

  Grant, Memoirs. Ulysses S. Grant. Memoirs and Selected Letters. New York: Library of America, 1990.

  HGP. Hamlin Garland Papers. Copies used for this book at Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library. Originals at Special Collections, Collection no. 0200, USC Libraries, University of Southern California

  JHWP. James H. Wilson Papers

  JSPP. James S. Pike Papers

  Julia Grant, Memoirs. Julia Dent Grant. The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant. Edited by John Y. Simon. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1975. Reprint.

  LLP. Lloyd Lewis Papers

  LoC. Library of Congress

  LRGP. Lucretia Rudolph Garfield Papers

  NL. Newberry Library

  NYHS. New-York Historical Society

  OEBP. Orville E. Babcock Papers

  OR. War of the Rebellion . . . Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. Washington, D.C.: Gov
ernment Printing Office, 1880–1901.

  PUSG. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Edited by John Y. Simon et al. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967–2012.

  Richardson, A Personal History. Albert D. Richardson. A Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant. Washington, D.C.: National Tribune, 1868.

  SCP. Sylvanus Cadwallader Papers

  Sheridan, Memoirs. Philip Henry Sheridan. Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, General, United States Army. 2 vols. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1888.

  Sherman, Memoirs. William Tecumseh Sherman. Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman. New York: Library of America, 1990.

  TNC. Thomas Nast Cartoons, Steven K. Yasinow Collection

  USGA. Ulysses S. Grant Association

  USGH. Ulysses S. Grant Homepage. Interviews. www.granthomepage.com/interviews.htm.

  USGP. Ulysses S. Grant Papers

  Washburne, Biography. Mark Washburne. A Biography of Elihu Benjamin Washburne: Congressman, Secretary of State, Envoy Extraordinary. Vol. 2, Illinois Republican During the Civil War and the Rise of Ulysses S. Grant. N.p.: Xlibris Corporation, 2001.

  WCCP. William Conant Church Papers

  WFSP. William Farrar Smith Papers

  Wilson, Rawlins. James Harrison Wilson. The Life of John A. Rawlins: Lawyer, Assistant Adjutant General, Chief of Staff, Major General of Volunteers, and Secretary of War. New York: Neale Publishing, 1916.

  Young, Around the World. John Russell Young. Around the World with General Grant. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Reprint.

  INTRODUCTION: THE SPHINX TALKS

  1. Ward, A Disposition to Be Rich, 236.

  2. Ibid., 235.

  3. Grant, Memoirs, 1:5.

  4. Flood, Grant’s Final Victory, 73.

  5. The Saturday Evening Post, September 9, 1901.

  6. Flood, Grant’s Final Victory, 165.

  7. Green, “Civil War Public Opinion of General Grant.”

  8. Kaplan, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, 276; Flood, Grant’s Final Victory, 140.

  9. Twain, The Letters of Mark Twain, 3:261.

  10. Flood, Grant’s Final Victory, 130-31.

  11. Paine, “Mark Twain’s Letters.” Letter to Henry Ward Beecher, September 11, 1885.

  12. Fowler, Patriotic Orations, 164–65.

  13. USGA Newsletter, April 1964.

  14. Wilentz, “The Return of Ulysses.”

  15. Young, Around the World, 378.

  16. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 464.

  17. Keegan, The American Civil War, 124.

  18. Ibid., 328.

  19. Wilentz, “The Return of Ulysses.”

  20. Woodward, “The Enigma of U. S. Grant.”

  21. Douglass, “U. S. Grant and the Colored People.”

  22. Ibid.

  23. Wilentz, “The Return of Ulysses.”

  24. Murthy, “Facing Addiction in the United States.”

  CHAPTER ONE: COUNTRY BUMPKIN

  1. USGA Newsletter, January 1971.

  2. GPL. S2 B54 F36. Letter from Henry K. Hannah to Hamlin Garland, September 9, 1896.

  3. Simon, “Ulysses S. Grant and the Jews.”

  4. Grant, Memoirs, 1:17.

  5. Grant, “The Early Life of Gen. Grant.”

  6. Grant, Memoirs, 1:17.

  7. Grant, “The Early Life of Gen. Grant.”

  8. Dorsett, “The Problem of Ulysses S. Grant’s Drinking During the Civil War.”

  9. Grant, Memoirs, 1:18.

  10. Corum, Ulysses Underground, 41.

  11. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 7.

  12. Ibid., 1.

  13. Grant, Memoirs, 1:19.

  14. USGA Newsletter, October 1970.

  15. White, American Ulysses, 20.

  16. Cramer, Ulysses S. Grant, 128–29.

  17. Richardson, A Personal History, 58.

  18. Cramer, Ulysses S. Grant, 59–60.

  19. Smith, Grant, 22.

  20. New York Graphic, September 16, 1879.

  21. Troy Intelligencer, April 17, 1892.

  22. GPL. S2 B54 F9. “Interview with W. E. Wade.” HGP.

  23. The Castigator, February 27, 1827.

  24. Ibid., January 15, 1828.

  25. Grant, Memoirs, 1:30.

  26. USGA Newsletter, October 1970.

  27. The Castigator, September 25, 1832.

  28. Donald, Lincoln, 129.

  29. Stevens, Grant in St. Louis, 86.

  30. GPL. S2 B54 F39. Letter from G. N. Merrymasher to Hamlin Garland. HGP.

  31. Ibid. S2 B54 F9. “Interview with W. E. Wade.” HGP.

  32. Perret, Ulysses S. Grant, 10.

  33. USGA Newsletter, October 1970 & January 1971.

  34. New York Graphic, September 16, 1879.

  35. The Philadelphia Press, December 20, 1879.

  36. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 9.

  37. Smith, Autobiography of Mark Twain, 1:476.

  38. Chicago Daily Tribune, November 1, 1879.

  39. Burlington Free Press, July 29, 1885.

  40. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 27, 1897.

  41. Richardson, A Personal History, 48.

  42. Corum, Ulysses Underground, 78.

  43. The Philadelphia Press, December 20, 1879.

  44. PUSG, 12:332. Letter to Julia Dent Grant, October 20, 1864.

  45. Grant, Memoirs, 1:27.

  46. PUSG, 15:329.

  47. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 9.

  48. Grant, Memoirs, 1:19.

  49. USGA Newsletter, October 1970 & January 1971.

  50. GPL. S2 B54 F35. Letter from Nathan Fenn to Julia Dent Grant. HGP.

  51. Porter, “Personal Traits of General Grant.”

  52. Simpson, “Butcher? Racist?”

  53. Perret, Ulysses S. Grant, 14.

  54. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 166.

  55. Grant, “The Early Life of Gen. Grant.”

  56. The Philadelphia Press, December 20, 1879.

  57. USGA Newsletter, January 1971.

  58. Grant, Memoirs, 1:26.

  59. LoC. USGP. Series 4, Vol. 1. Original manuscript of Grant’s Memoirs.

  60. Grant, Memoirs, 1:26–27.

  61. USGA Newsletter, January 1971.

  62. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 214.

  63. Richardson, A Personal History, 60.

  64. GPL. S2 B54 F12. Letter from Richard Dawson to Hamlin Garland, July 17, 1896. HGP.

  65. White, American Ulysses, 22.

  66. GPL. S2 B54 F3. “Interview with Jane Howard Chapman.” HGP.

  67. Grant, Memoirs, 1:28.

  68. PUSG, 1:3.

  69. Ibid., 36. Letter to Julia Dent, August 31, 1844.

  70. New York Herald, July 24, 1878.

  71. Richardson, A Personal History, 60.

  CHAPTER TWO: THE DARLING YOUNG LIEUTENANT

  1. Richardson, A Personal History, 66.

  2. Grant, Memoirs, 1:29.

  3. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 11.

  4. Grant, Memoirs, 1:33.

  5. PUSG, l:5. Letter to R. McKinstry Griffith, September 22, 1839.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid., 1:6.

  8. Ibid., 6.

  9. Foote, The Civil War, 1:701.

  10. The New York Times, July 24, 1885.

  11. GPL. S2 B54 F12. “Interview with Fred Dent.” HGP.

  12. Snell, From First to Last, 8.

  13. White, American Ulysses, 41–42.

  14. “Grant Reminiscences.” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 1, 1885.

  15. Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen,
256.

  16. Porter, Campaigning with Grant, 342.

  17. Young, Around the World, 378.

  18. The New York Times, July 24, 1885.

  19. Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant, 16.

  20. Young, Around the World, 261.

  21. Ibid., 433.

  22. Ibid., 304.

  23. Grant, Memoirs, 1:32.

  24. GPL. S2 B54 F23. Letter from M. T. Burke to Hamlin Garland, September 26, 1896. HGP.

  25. Perret, Ulysses S. Grant, 28.

  26. Ibid., 31.

  27. Grant, Memoirs, 1:33.

  28. Ibid., 33–34.

  29. Ibid., 34.

  30. Catton, Grant Takes Command, 24.

  31. Fry, “An Acquaintance with Grant.”

  32. Ibid.

  33. Ibid.

  34. McFeely, Grant, 16.

  35. Badeau, Grant in Peace, 401.

  36. Grant, Memoirs, 1:35.

  37. GPL. S2 B54 F23. Letter from M. T. Burke to Hamlin Garland, September 26, 1896. HGP.

  38. Grant, Memoirs, 1:39.

  39. Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox, 5.

  40. GPL. S2 B54 F13. “Interview with Julia Dent Grant.” HGP.

  41. Casey, “When Grant Went a-Courtin’.”

  42. Stevens, Grant in St. Louis, 17–18.

  43. Julia Grant, Memoirs, 33.

  44. Casey, “When Grant Went a-Courtin’.”

  45. Julia Grant, Memoirs, 39.

  46. Farmer, National Exposition Souvenir, 58.

  47. Julia Grant, Memoirs, 37.

  48. Ibid., 35–36.

  49. Ibid., 34–35.

  50. Casey, “When Grant Went a-Courtin’.”