I have been studying history since my grandfather gave me some of his American Civil War books when I was young lad of eight and one of the figures in that war who I became quite fascinated with is Ulysses Grant, the man who rose through the officer ranks to become commander of the Union Army in the later part of the war, and successfully end the war when other generals had fallen short, and then went on to become President of the United States.
When I was a kid, I sought out Grant’s memoirs, which were hard to find; I didn’t find them until I was in college. As I read more of his life and there were many biographies that came out, many of which I’ve read, I realized there was something very special and compelling in the life of a man who was a war hero at a young age (during the Mexican War), went on to be viewed as a hard-drinking failure by most contemporary observers, leaving the post Mexican War army under a cloud and struggling through a number of jobs. By the time of his return to the army at the beginning of the Civil War, he was working as basically a junior to his younger brothers in their store. The Mexican War officer ended up at one point having to hawk firewood on the street in order to make ends meet. He had reached lows that would have broken many men but an opportunity to improve his station in life came into being in 1861 with the outbreak of the Civil War and thus began one of the most meteoric rises in American history and quite likely, all recorded history.
His military experience brought him up to the rank of Brigadier General very quickly and a series of successes on the battlefield like Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and a draw like Belmont brought him a mostly positive reputation at a time when most other Civil War generals on the Union side were meeting defeat. Within three years of the beginning of the war he was to rise to command of the entire Union Army, and lead that army to victory against the Confederacy in another year. Within eight years of having reached that personal low he was to be President of the United States, in which he served two-terms. It is a truly inspirational story and one that I’ve always found interesting.
As a figure who has generated such interests with his ups and downs, there have been many biographies on him over the years. In fact each fall book season of the last two years has seen a release of a major biography of him. Ronald White released his biography last year and now Ron Chernow released his.
I’ve read quite a few of the biographies available and it was my opinion last year that the Ron White was probably the closest we were going to get to a definitive biography. Then I read that Ron Chernow was releasing his own biography and I knew that that would have the potential to be even better if that was possible. Ron Chernow is the critically acclaimed biographer of John D. Rockefeller, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, among others. All three of those biographies are among my favorite biographies of anyone, with the George Washington biography being a strong contender for being my favorite one-volume biography.
His book, Grant, which was just released two weeks ago is a rather mammoth tome. The text is 957 pages with generous and detailed endnotes. There are plenty of pictures and the maps are very good.
I did find that the biography moved rather quickly through his early life. For example, the Ronald White biography goes into more detail on the Mexican War years, an important development as it established the experience that Grant would come to bear when the Civil War actually broke out a little over a decade later. The book does go into detail about the “wilderness years” for Grant, the period of time where he tried his hand at different work and seemed in the eyes of many who knew him, to be a failure in life and barely able to provide for his family. The coming of the Civil War transformed him and his quiet determination and lack of panic in any situation carried him through many successes in the war and the book covers this period extremely well. I am going to guess that this is the part of Grant’s life that more people will find to be the most interesting and roughly 400 or so pages of spent on it. Grant ended the war the top general in the US and the man who succeeded in defeating the tricky Robert E. Lee and he had to follow the war sucked deeper and deeper into politics and the intrigues of Abraham Lincoln’s presidential successor, Andrew Johnson. There is plenty of activity in this period and Ron Chernow deftly goes into describing this period and all its complexity as Grant gradually becomes Johnson’s enemy and ultimately succeeds him as president. The presidency of Grant, all the intrigues of his enmity with Senator Charles Sumner and even tension in his relationship with his wartime comrade-in-arms, William T. Sherman, come out in detail in the book, followed by his trip around the world after the presidency and subsequent disastrous financial association with Grant and Ward that wiped out his finances and forced him to go hat in hand to William Vanderbilt and led him down the path of writing his memoirs. That part of the story turned even more dramatic as he learned that he suffered from throat cancer that forced him into a race against time to produce his book and leave a lasting legacy and provide financially for his family. The book does an excellent job of going into this period in detail.
Many biographies of Grant minimize or skip the issue of his whether he was a heavy drinker or not. Ron Chernow dives right into this issue and the complexity of a situation where you had a man who could go off on a bender on occasion but not let it affect his performance in battle. There were conflicting reports from eyewitnesses at the time in which some accused him of being a drunkard and others swore he never was one. It’s a lot to go through but the Chernow book is the best job I’ve read of tackling the issue.
Grant is right up there in list of top biographies, a worthy successor of Ron Chernow’s other works. Very readable with plenty of detail and clearly plenty of research, it is a fine continuation of American history accounts.
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