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Ronald C. White

American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant Hardcover – Deckle Edge, October 4, 2016

by Ronald C. White (Author)

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of A. Lincoln, a major new biography of one of America’s greatest generals—and most misunderstood presidents

Winner of the William Henry Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography • Finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Military History Book Prize

In his time, Ulysses S. Grant was routinely grouped with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the “Trinity of Great American Leaders.” But the battlefield commander–turned–commander-in-chief fell out of favor in the twentieth century. In American Ulysses, Ronald C. White argues that we need to once more revise our estimates of him in the twenty-first.

Based on seven years of research with primary documents—some of them never examined by previous Grant scholars—this is destined to become the Grant biography of our time. White, a biographer exceptionally skilled at writing momentous history from the inside out, shows Grant to be a generous, curious, introspective man and leader—a willing delegator with a natural gift for managing the rampaging egos of his fellow officers. His wife, Julia Dent Grant, long marginalized in the historic record, emerges in her own right as a spirited and influential partner.

Grant was not only a brilliant general but also a passionate defender of equal rights in post-Civil War America. After winning election to the White House in 1868, he used the power of the federal government to battle the Ku Klux Klan. He was the first president to state that the government’s policy toward American Indians was immoral, and the first ex-president to embark on a world tour, and he cemented his reputation for courage by racing against death to complete his Personal Memoirs. Published by Mark Twain, it is widely considered to be the greatest autobiography by an American leader, but its place in Grant’s life story has never been fully explored—until now.

One of those rare books that successfully recast our impression of an iconic historical figure, American Ulysses gives us a finely honed, three-dimensional portrait of Grant the man—husband, father, leader, writer—that should set the standard by which all future biographies of him will be measured.

Praise for American Ulysses

“[Ronald C. White] portrays a deeply introspective man of ideals, a man of measured thought and careful action who found himself in the crosshairs of American history at its most crucial moment.”—USA Today

“White delineates Grant’s virtues better than any author before. . . . By the end, readers will see how fortunate the nation was that Grant went into the world—to save the Union, to lead it and, on his deathbed, to write one of the finest memoirs in all of American letters.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Ronald White has restored Ulysses S. Grant to his proper place in history with a biography whose breadth and tone suit the man perfectly. Like Grant himself, this book will have staying power.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Magisterial . . . Grant’s esteem in the eyes of historians has increased significantly in the last generation. . . . [American Ulysses] is the newest heavyweight champion in this movement.”—The Boston Globe

“Superb . . . illuminating, inspiring and deeply moving.”—Chicago Tribune

“In this sympathetic, rigorously sourced biography, White . . . conveys the essence of Grant the man and Grant the warrior.”—Newsday

Print length

864 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

October 4, 2016
Dimensions

6.46 x 1.7 x 9.52 inches
ISBN-10

1400069025
ISBN-13

978-1400069026
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of October 2016: So who is buried in Grant’s tomb, anyway? That’s an old and insipid joke, of course, but considering what we think we know about the 18th President of the United States, a question worth asking might be hiding in there. With American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant, Ronald C. White endeavors over 800 pages (over 100 them being notes referencing primary and secondary sources) to shed light on one of our most influential yet enigmatic figures. This isn’t a revisionist biography; Grant already got that treatment in the early 20th century, when he transformed from a respected Civil War general and public servant into a craven opportunist and failed president, drunk and penniless at his death (just try imagining a destitute former POTUS in this era). White, author of the award-winning bestseller, A. Lincoln: A Biography, first redresses criticisms of his martial prowess—primarily that he exploited a huge numbers advantage by needlessly sacrificing troops in exchange for victory—with detailed accounts, maps, and illustrations of his conflicts, limning a battlefield acumen previously diminished through ad hominem barbs. White resuscitates Grant’s career as a public servant through his presidency and beyond—he was a defender of equal rights and an enemy of the Ku Klux Klan--by placing in the context of the complex postbellum landscape, where the war may have been won but the country was hardly whole. Serious, exhaustive, and likely definitive, American Ulysses is a tricky meld of comprehensive research and readable narrative, worthy of the pantheon of monumental presidential biographies. —Jon Foro, The Amazon Book Review

Review

“White delineates Grant’s virtues better than any author before. . . . By the end, readers will see how fortunate the nation was that Grant went into the world—to save the Union, to lead it and, on his deathbed, to write one of the finest memoirs in all of American letters.”—T.J. Stiles, The New York Times Book Review

“Ronald White has restored Ulysses S. Grant to his proper place in history with a biography whose breadth and tone suit the man perfectly. Like Grant himself, this book will have staying power.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Superb . . . illuminating, inspiring and deeply moving . . . The Grant we meet in American Ulysses is richly deserving of a fuller understanding and of celebration for the man he was and the legacy he left us.”—Chicago Tribune

“American political thinking has a way of coalescing around concepts that hold the public’s attention for a time, then fade. ‘Temperament,’ for example, is on many tongues this election season, after years of not being much on anyone’s mind. That may be why [American Ulysses] seems especially relevant. . . . [Ronald C. White] portrays a deeply introspective man of ideals, a man of measured thought and careful action who found himself in the crosshairs of American history at its most crucial moment.”—USA Today

“Magisterial . . . Grant’s esteem in the eyes of historians has increased significantly in the last generation. . . . [American Ulysses] is the newest heavyweight champion in this movement.”—The Boston Globe

“A game-changing biography . . . of one of the most consequential figures in American history.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“In this sympathetic, rigorously sourced biography, White . . . conveys the essence of Grant the man and Grant the warrior. . . . [Grant] deserved better from posterity, and from White he gets it.”—Newsday

“With American Ulysses, White has made a bold new case for immediate reconsideration of its subject on many levels. . . . His effort more than pays off with a fresh, detailed look at a man who, in his lifetime, saw a medal cast with the images of Washington, Lincoln and himself. And that’s pretty damn good company.”—Houston Press

“A fresh, friendly reassessment [of the] . . . military hero who became his country’s leader.”—The Dallas Morning News

“Ronald C. White has written a biography for the ages.”—Real Clear Books

“Certain to be recognized as the classic work on Ulysses S. Grant, American Ulysses is a monumental examination of one of the most compelling figures in American history.”—General David H. Petraeus (Ret.)

“In this thorough and engaging new book, Ronald C. White restores Ulysses S. Grant to the pantheon of great Americans. As a soldier and a president, Grant rendered his nation invaluable service, and White’s epic biography is invaluable as well.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times bestselling author

“A fresh assessment of this enigmatic leader, who, like his Homeric namesake, failed at many things before he succeeded in life. . . . . [White] ably [portrays] a sense of the transformation of his subject from civilian to soldier and, from there, to reluctant hero. . . . An engaging resurrection of Grant featuring excellent maps and character sketches.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A remarkable biography of a remarkable life . . . [White’s] style is fluid and engaging. . . . His mastery of history is clear on every page.”—Publishers Weekly

“This thoughtful and sympathetic portrayal will be appreciated by Civil War enthusiasts and readers of presidential history alike.”—Library Journal

“[A] necessary and large-scale reevaluation of one of America’s greatest—and most underappreciated—presidents.”—Brooklyn Magazine

“Bestselling author and historian Ronald C. White combines exemplary scholarship and storytelling in this monumental and well-illustrated re-evaluation of an extraordinary character, life and career. . . . [An] inspiring biography.”—Shelf Awareness

“White at last solves the Grant Enigma—reconciling in character and ability the hero of Appomattox with the (allegedly) failed president. This is the biography that Grant deserves.”—Richard Norton Smith, former director of the Lincoln, Reagan, Eisenhower, Ford, and Hoover presidential libraries

“Ronald C. White is a master biographer, and his American Ulysses is the beautifully told culmination of a major revival of Grant studies; rarely has an epic life met so fruitfully with its talented author.”—David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass: A Life

“In the generations after his death in 1885, Grant’s reputation as a general and president spiraled downward until a current generation of biographers and historians has persuasively resurrected it. American Ulysses represents a culmination of that process.”—James McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom

“Ronald C. White’s superb new study of Ulysses S. Grant completes the vindication of one of the greatest Americans. More than biography, American Ulysses is a revelation.”—Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy

“With this sweeping, exhaustively researched biography, Ronald C. White has done justice to the remarkable life and turbulent times of Ulysses S. Grant.”—Joan Waugh, author of U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth

“Ronald C. White’s extensive earlier work on Lincoln prepared him to capture Lincolnian elements in Grant that many have missed: quiet charisma, measured confidence, concern for equal rights, and unusual literary skill. White’s own writing talent makes this book impossible to put down.”—Richard Wightman Fox, author of Lincoln’s Body

“This refreshingly new comprehensive study of a genuine American hero rises above overworked analyses of Ulysses S. Grant.”—Frank J. Williams, president of the Ulysses S. Grant Association

“No one reading this marvelously researched and superbly written book will ever again be able to see U. S. Grant as other than a great person.”—John F. Marszalek, executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association’s Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library

About the Author

Ronald C. White is the author of three bestselling books on Abraham Lincoln, including most recently A. Lincoln. White earned his Ph.D. at Princeton and has lectured on Lincoln at hundreds of universities and other organizations, and at Gettysburg and the White House. He is a Fellow at the Huntington Library and a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum of Washington, D.C. He lives with his wife, Cynthia, in La Cañada, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1

“My Family Is American”

My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.

—Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs

Although he was celebrated in his lifetime as a prime example of the mythic American self-made man, Ulysses S. Grant understood the formation of his life to be a family affair. His appreciation looked back through the prism of seven generations and two hundred years of Grants.

Matthew and Priscilla Grant sailed from Plymouth, England, on March 20, 1630. Married for five years, the Grants were “West-country people” from Dorsetshire in southwest England. Their home that spring would be the Mary and John, a four-hundred-ton wooden ship very much like the Mayflower, which had carried the first Pilgrims to a new England only ten years earlier. The Grants sailed with 138 other passengers who traveled together as members of a congregation, complete with two ministers and lay officers.

The Mary and John would be one of seventeen ships sailing from England to the New World between February and August 1630. In the next eleven years, nearly three hundred ships would carry twenty thousand passengers in a huge exodus called “the Great Migration.” Disdainfully dubbed “Puritans” by opponents, these immigrants hoped to purify the Church of England according to the best ideas of the Reformed or Calvinist churches of Europe, which traced their origins to John Calvin of Geneva in the previous century. The Grants joined Puritans who hoped to restart their lives in a new land where they could escape persecution by both King Charles I and Archbishop William Laud and put their religious and political ideas into practice.

After seventy perilous days sailing across the North Atlantic, the Mary and John made its way into the narrow entrance of the Boston harbor. Following their arrival in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first American Grants helped settle the new town of Dorchester (now part of Boston). Priscilla Grant died after bearing four children in as many years.

In 1835, five years after his arrival, Matthew Grant linked his dreams with the Reverend John Warham and fifty-eight members of the Dorchester parish in journeying 105 miles to begin another new town, Windsor, at the confluence of the Connecticut and Farmington rivers in the Connecticut Valley. The first English settlers traveled west, displacing Native Americans, who were already being killed off in large numbers by disease. Matthew would come to occupy a central place in the new community, serving as town clerk, county surveyor, and deacon of First Church.

Henry Reed Stiles, writing The History of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut in the nineteenth century, stated, “Few men indeed filled so large a place in the early history of Windsor, or filled it so well, as honest Matthew Grant! His name figures in almost every place of trust.” Grant represented, for Stiles, “a type of the best settlers of New England, and left to his descendants an untarnished name and the example of an unswerving fidelity to the public trusts committed to him.” In reflecting on the Puritan priority of the community over the individual, Matthew Grant declared: “I have been careful to do nothing upon one man’s desire.”

The next five generations of Grants were Connecticut Yankees, spreading across Windsor, East Windsor, and Tolland, Connecticut. Young Ulysses knew the story of his great-grandfather Noah, Matthew Grant’s great-great-grandson. Born in 1718, Noah grew to manhood as the English and French struggled for domination on the North American continent. Ulysses enjoyed recounting how Noah and his brother Solomon held commissions in the English army in the war against both French and Indians. Noah and Solomon were killed in separate battles in New York in 1756.

Noah’s son, also named Noah and Ulysses’s grandfather, was only nine years old when his father and uncle were killed fighting under the flag of the king of England. Born in 1748, this Noah enlisted in the Continental army after the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Ulysses would recount proudly how his grandfather was present at the Battle of Bunker Hill. He believed his grandfather served through the entire Revolutionary War, and this heritage would become central to Grant’s self-identity.

As a new nation emerged after the war, Noah Grant struggled to make a living as a farmer and cobbler in the Connecticut Valley. When his wife, Anna Buell Richardson Grant, died, he decided to join some of his neighbors in settling lands opening in western Pennsylvania. He traveled 475 miles before building a cabin along the wooded banks of the Monongahela River near Greensburg in southwestern Pennsylvania. There, Noah married Rachel Kelley, daughter of an Irish pioneer, and began acquiring more babies and lands.

Jesse Root Grant, who would become Ulysses’s father, was born on January 23, 1794.

When Jesse turned five years old, the Grant family moved yet again. At age fifty-one, Noah loaded his family on a boat, the popular means of transportation west. At the village at Fort Pitt (today’s Pittsburgh), they turned southwest and floated onto a broad watercourse known as the Ohio (adopted from the Seneca O-hi-yo, meaning “Great River”). They stopped at the first village beyond Pennsylvania, a picturesque hamlet that fronted a serpentine bend of the majestic river. This was Fawcettstown (now East Liverpool), named after its founder, Thomas Fawcett, who had established the community just the year before.

The newly settling Ohio Country was part of lands ceded by the British to the United States at the end of the Revolutionary War. Four seaboard states, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia, gave their western lands to the new federal government to form the Northwest Territory. On July 13, 1787, Congress ratified the Northwest Ordinance, establishing a system of government for this territory reaching all the way to the Mississippi River.

Even though the new federal government, in order to attract the participation of all thirteen colonies, had not taken a stand on slavery in the new Constitution, the founding Congress looked far to the future and decreed, “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.”

By 1800, the young nation comprised five million people divided into sixteen states plus the Northwest and Mississippi territories. On February 19, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson signed the law authorizing Ohio as the first state organized in the Northwest Territory and the seventeenth state in the United States.

When Jesse turned ten, Noah moved the family forty-five miles through virgin forests to Deerfield Township in Warren County. One year later Jesse’s mother, Rachel Grant, the family’s stable center, died. At age fifty-seven, Noah—work-shy and too fond of alcohol—decided to break up his family. The two oldest children, Susan and Jesse, were expected to find their way with relatives or neighbors. For the next three years, Jesse would work for several farmers in the area, earning his board and room but not much more.

In 1808, Jesse went to work for the Tod family on their farm near Youngstown, Ohio. Over the next two years, a new world opened up for the fourteen-year-old. George Tod, a respected politician and jurist, was a father figure to young Jesse, introducing him to political discussion. Among Jesse’s playmates was little David Tod, only three years old, who would become governor of Ohio during the Civil War.

In the evenings, with George often away serving as a judge on the Ohio Supreme Court, his wife, Sally, furthered Jesse’s reading through books she provided. Encouraged by his eagerness to learn, the Tods sent Jesse to a subscription school for two winter terms—the only formal education he would receive in his life. Years later, Ulysses would recall his father saying that Sally Tod was “the most admirable woman he had ever known.”

The Tods suggested to Jesse that the occupation of tanning would be more financially rewarding than farming. At this time, technological innovations were facilitating the purchase of leather goods by all classes of society, because leather products became cheaper and the process became more accessible. In 1805, Sir Humphry Davy, a British chemist and inventor, found that trees other than oak could be utilized in the tanning process. Ash, chestnut, hemlock, and mimosa trees, all plentiful in the United States, quickly expanded tanning resources. American Samuel Parker further advanced the tanning industry in 1809 by inventing a machine to split hides. With the aid of Parker’s invention, one man could split up to one hundred hides in a single day. The need for leather goods grew apace with rapid population growth in the West.

Jesse had watched his own father, Noah, begin with extensive property and lose nearly all of it. During his teenage years, Jesse determined to work diligently in order to acquire the culture and possessions he had discovered in the Tod home.

Jesse set out to be a tanner. In 1810, he traveled to Maysville, Kentucky, to ask his older half-brother, Peter, if he could learn the tanning business as his apprentice. Under Peter’s guidance, Jesse saw that he could advance by tanning leather for everything from shoes and boots to harnesses and saddles. In addition, Peter taught Jesse how to manage his financial affairs and run a business, skills equally important to the craft of tanning and something their father, Noah, had never learned.

In 1815, having completed his commitment to Peter, Jesse returned to Ohio. He wanted to go back to the land and people he knew, but he would also say later of his move back across the Ohio River, “I would not own slaves and I would not live where there were slaves.”

In Ohio young Grant, now twenty-one, went to work for Owen Brown, a burly man who operated a successful tannery in Hudson, twenty-five miles southeast of Cleveland. In his year with the outspoken Brown family, Jesse heard constant conversation about the evils of slavery. While participating in a cattle drive to an army fort, Owen’s son John had seen a young black boy beaten with an iron fire shovel. John Brown returned to his family filled with an anger that would grow until it exploded decades later in Kansas and finally at Harpers Ferry in 1859. In Hudson, John Brown would assert his indictment of slavery to anybody who would listen. Jesse listened.

In 1817, Jesse was invited to become the operating partner of a tannery in Ravenna. Within two years, his hard-work ethic turned the joint venture into a success. He saved his earnings and accumulated the considerable sum of $1,500—nearly $27,000 in today’s money.

In January 1820, Grant moved to Point Pleasant, a village on the Ohio River twenty-five miles southeast of Cincinnati, to work as foreman in a new tannery. Thomas Page hired Jesse in part because he wanted him to teach the craft of tanning to his own son. Jesse’s new goal became acquiring enough money to start his own tannery.

At age twenty-five, Jesse had another goal: finding a wife. Page pointed his young employee thirteen miles north, near the crossroads town of Bantam, to the home of John and Sarah Simpson. Descended from Scottish Presbyterians, the Simpsons, while living in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, had caught “Ohio fever.” They headed west in the summer of 1817, gliding the final miles on a flatboat. Upon arriving in Bantam, the Simpsons purchased six hundred acres of fertile land for $6 an acre from Page and built a brick house.

Jesse appreciated the stability he encountered in the Simpson family, enjoyed the books he read in their house, and felt comfortable in their company. Of the three Simpson daughters, he felt drawn to the eldest, Hannah. Jesse described Hannah as “a plain unpretending country girl, handsome but not vain.” A neighbor described her to be of “Christian character,” whom everyone found “graceful in manner.” Five years younger than Jesse, she attracted him with her quiet kindness and patience. Hannah seemed quite a contrast to the voluble Jesse.

Sometimes, opposites do attract. Jesse and Hannah married on June 24, 1821, in her family home.

The young couple moved into an unadorned one-story frame house Jesse had rented next to the tannery in Point Pleasant. Built in 1817 of Allegheny pine, the small house was 16 by 19½ feet, with two rooms and a large fireplace on the north side. A majestic expanse of Indian Creek flowing south into the Ohio River dominated the view from the front of the cabin; standing in their doorway, Jesse and Hannah could watch the Daniel Boone and the Simon Kenton, stern-wheel steamers named for two heroes of the Kentucky frontier, pass by on the way to St. Louis or Pittsburgh. In the back, a hill sloped up to the surrounding forests of ash, oak, and walnut.

Ten months and three days after their marriage, on April 27, 1822, Hannah gave birth to their first child, a boy weighing a hefty ten and three-quarter pounds. Jesse decided this first member of the eighth generation of American Grants would remain unnamed until a proper family convocation could be held.

A month later, the Grant and Simpson families gathered at the Simpson family home for a naming ceremony. The lusty infant, a charmer with blue eyes and reddish-brown hair, held center stage as a remarkable dialogue began. Hannah, a fierce Democrat, suggested the name “Albert,” in honor of Albert Gallatin from her home state of Pennsylvania, who had served both in Congress and as secretary of the Treasury under President Thomas Jefferson. Hannah’s younger sister, Anne, suggested “Theodore.” John Simpson favored “Hiram,” which he thought a handsome name. Sarah Simpson, caught up in reading French novelist François Fénelon’s The Adventures of Telemachus—the romantic story about the son of mythical Greek general Ulysses, who defeated the Trojans—spoke up strongly for “Ulysses.” Jesse seconded her nomination, in part because he had loaned his mother-in-law this book from his personal library and wanted to please her. In the end, someone suggested drawing lots to decide. After depositing the names in a hat, the youngest Simpson, Anne, drew out the name “Ulysses.”

Wanting to honor his father-in-law, Jesse announced that the baby’s name would be “Hiram Ulysses.” But Jesse never called him “Hiram.” Bubbling with pride, he insisted from the beginning on calling his firstborn son “my Ulysses.”

“Ulysses” was certainly not the name of any previous noteworthy American. It was not the biblical name—Matthew, Samuel, Noah—of the previous Grant generations. “Ulysses” would be the most unusual name of an American Grant.

The baby boy with the Greek name had much to live up to. Fénelon tells the story of the moral and political education of Telemachus, the young son of the Greek hero Ulysses. In the course of the novel, Telemachus travels to every part of the Mediterranean world. Along the way he learns, by trial and error, the virtues of courage, humility, patience, and simplicity. These were all the traits he would need if he was to succeed his heroic father, Ulysses, as a ruler.

Jesse and Hannah Grant, on naming day, were putting their family hopes on little Ulysses.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; First Edition (October 4, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 864 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400069025
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400069026
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.46 x 1.7 x 9.52 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #70,586 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #53 in American Civil War Biographies (Books)
- #216 in US Presidents
- #341 in Black & African American Biographies

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Ronald C. White

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Ronald C. White is the New York Times best-selling author of the presidential biographies A. Lincoln: A Biography and American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant. USA Today said, “If you read one book on Lincoln, make it A. LINCOLN. His biography of Grant won the William Henry Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography.

White is also the author of Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural, honored as a New York Times Notable Book, and a Washington Post bestseller. The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words [2005], was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. White’s essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Harper’s. He has lectured at the White House and been interviewed on the PBS News Hour. He has spoken on Lincoln in England, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and New Zealand.

He attended Northwestern University and is a graduate of UCLA and Princeton Theological Seminary, earning a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He has taught at UCLA, Whitworth University, Colorado College, and Princeton Theological Seminary. He is a Reader at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum in Washington, D.C. He lives with his wife, Cynthia, in Pasadena, California.

White’s forthcoming books are Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President [May 4, 2021], and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain: A Biography [2022], both to be published by Random House.

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John Berry

More To Ulysses Than Meets The Eye!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 23, 2017

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American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant
This happen to be another book recommended to me via Amazon which I am pleased to report is well worth reading. I had been meaning to read a book about Grant so the timing was just right. What I discovered was a much more complex individual than I had been lead to believe via general history one might receive via formal education. My idea had been that he was a General that used his military as an unlimited resource, a man that had a terrible drinking problem throughout his life and a Presidency that was fraught with fraud and scandal. Mr. White clearly painted a picture of an individual that was so much more and nothing like he has been portrayed.

I do tend to be fascinated by Grant's rise to power after being a retired Army Captain (retiring under suspicious circumstances which may have involved drinking) to failing as a farmer, lumber man and briefly working for his younger brother in the family tannery, to President of the United States. His wife's family was well do do in St. Louis with ownership of many slaves of which the Grants came to own three as a gift from his wife's father! Grant entered the war as a recruiter and a Brevet Captain. He showed such an initiative however he rapidly advanced to General and then Lt. General reporting to Lincoln. If one wanted to learn how to be a leader, this book carefully helps one arrive at this learning by reading how he dealt with conflict. I would have respected this gentleman for many reasons. His ability to change his mind as facts were presented which seems to be missing in leadership today, is certainly a mark of a great leader. The skill of listening to others prior to making a decision, yet never showing his cards until all sides were heard. And most importantly, he never gave up but yet continued to seek solutions. He was totally ambivalent to the slavery discussion early on and in fact never really gave that as a reason for going to war. Later he became a strong abolitionist and even earned high praise for his reconstruction and civil rights leadership although the public sentiment was mostly otherwise. African American leaders of the time did not believe Lincoln was a trusted friend; however Fredric Douglas pointed out they had no greater friend than Grant. Grant also knew the war could not be won from a defensive position resulting in always attacking with controversial massive loss of life from his own troops. And for me of course; he had a noted reputation for his horsemanship. The only reference I read of him disciplining his men is when he had a man physically and harshly reprimanded for beating a horse. After his Presidency, he took a world tour and his horsemanship almost always came up in discussion. Horse racing was the very popular elitist sport of England but he never accepted invitations to attend because he believed horse racing was cruel.

Yes there was scandal while he was President but there was scandal, bribery treachery all over our union after the war. However, none of the scandal was of his doing or as a lack of leadership. Our country was vastly divided after the war and we will never know how Lincoln might have handled matters. But what we do know is that Grant gave Lincoln a great deal of credit for setting examples for him which resulted in the right leadership from Grant at the right time in history. Reconstruction was not popular and President Grant didn't seem to ever travel the most popular roads, so it seems history has thrown somewhat of a cloud over his Presidency. Mr. White has helped remove that cloud and I would recommend any history lover to read this book. It is not a quick read, but I read it quickly because the author captured my interest from the very start. For me when the war ended in the book I assumed my interest would wan, but that was far from the case. I am still captured by the thought of former President Grant giving up all his most valued possessions of military history to pay a debt of which the debtor didn't even care if he was paid back. He was a fascinating character in our history and this was a fascinating book for me.

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Dr. John F. Gibson

Great Grant Book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 26, 2022

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Great read about a little known President, that is finally coming into his rightful place as one of our best Presidents.

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American Ulysses is a beautiful biography of a great American hero Ulysses S. Grant by a superb biographer Dr. Ronald C White

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 16, 2016

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Wow! Books like American Caesar make reading history a joy learning about our nation's bloody past. Dr.Ronald C. White the author of a great book on Abraham Lincoln turns his historical and literary skills on US Grant (1822-1885) the commanding general of the Civil War and the eighteenth president of the United States.
Grant's rise to prominence from Ohio obscurity as the son of a tanner is the stuff of which Horatio Alger made famous! Grant was born to Jesse Grant an antislavery man who raised his son in what today would be called middle class life. Grant loved to fish (but not hunt), ride horses (he was an expert rider and horses loved him) read and study and always do a good day's work. Once set on a mission or with a goal to accomplish he would not quit. Grant went to West Point graduating 21st in a class of 39. He served with distinction in the Mexican War fighting and learning lessons in leadership from both Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. He married the love of his life Julia Dent the daughter of a Missouri slaveholder. The two had several children and loved one another with deep and mutual respect. Grant was a good husband, father and a kind man. After resigning from the military he farmed in Missouri and worked his Dad's harness shop in Galena Illinois. His Civil War record is unmatched in brilliance! Grant won the battles of Belmont, the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the arduous and challenging Vicksburg Campaign, victory at Chattanooga and defeat of the vaunted Army of Northern Virginia under Robert Edward Lee in the Overland Campaign, Petersburg and the final campaign of Appomattox. He had trouble getting along with Andrew Johnson and won two terms as POTUS. Grant favored African American and the American Indians and their civil rights and fought hard against the Ku Klux Klan. His administration was, however, marred by Wall Street panic and scandal among his cabinet members. Grant fought a courageous battle against cancer and completed his great memoir with the help of Mark Twain.
White points out that while Grant has fallen out of the spotlight he deserves to be restored to prominence in the public consciousness. White is a person who writes with a novelist gift of telling a great American story in understandable and poetic prose. The book has many well drawn maps and period prints and illustrations. in a day of poor leaders in America this book revives my sense of pride in what kind of man or woman can rise from humble beginnings to achieve greatness. I loved this book. As a past president of the Louisville Ky Civil War Round Table and a lifetime student of the Civil War I strong recommend this biography! A great book about a great man. We need heroes like Grant in our lives!

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chattahoochee

A wonderful portrait of a great man

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 24, 2020

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Biographies of historical figures can be a bit heavyweight going. This isn’t. It paints a picture of a humble man with his foibles but who climbed to greatness and never forgot his roots, had great compassion and believed in the unity of all the states. A highly recommended read.

One person found this helpful

Musichound

Excellent book - a total joy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 1, 2017

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Excellent book - a total joy. The only reason it gets four stars rather than four is that the bulk of it is devoted to to his life up to the Civil War. I would have liked a bit more on his 8 years as President. But recommended as a great book.

One person found this helpful

bigmuzza

Outstanding Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 28, 2018

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Having only ever read about the main American presidents, Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy etc, it was a marvellous education to read about US Grant and what a man he was!

Would highly recommend!

Michael Brahams

Quite comprehensive.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 5, 2019

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A good biography. Quite well written but not in the same class as those written byDavid McCullough.

C. Stacey

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 24, 2018

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An underestimated legend

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