Customer Reviews

Gilded Age Cato: The Life of Walter Q. Gresham

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As a collector of biographies of Civil War Generals, I picked up the biography of Walter Gresham to fill a gap in my collection. Civil War Buffs will be disappointed. The war is over by page 40. Gresham was rewarded with a General's rank after the war ended. He probably could have had it before, but he was reluctant to engage in the politics of self-promotion that was so prevalent in that conflict. This continues to be a constnnt refrain in his life. He quarrelled in Indiana politics with both Governor Morton and future President Benjamin Harrison, allowing both of them to outshine him because he wasn't as quick as they were to sieze opportunities or organize support. He had some Presidential support in the election that finally nominated Garfield, but his diffidence and poor campaign organization doomed that to failure as well. Falling out with his party, he eventually became the Democratic President Cleveland's Secretary of State and had to deal with some touchy issues, including the Dole-led coup in Hawaii that overthrew the queen, and US ralations in Samoa. An opponent of Manifest Destiny, he was out-of-step with the popular sentiment of his time. He took a lot of newspaper abuse. Despite the abuse, he worked long hours addressing aspects of his cabibet post that could have been probably delegated to others, and eventually worked himself into ill health that led to his death.
This is a bare outline of a life that turned out to be far more interesting than I expected it to be. The book is well researched with good footnotes.