gilda_elise | Entries tagged with ulysses s. grant

The moving story of Ulysses S. Grant's final battle, and the definitive account of the national memorial honoring him as one of America's most enduring heroes

The final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant, the victorious general in the Civil War and the eighteenth president of the United States, is a colossal neoclassical tomb located in the most dynamic city in the country. It is larger than the final resting place of any other president or any other person in America. Since its creation, the popularity and condition of this monument, built to honor the man and what he represented to a grateful nation at the time of his death, a mere twenty years after the end of the Civil War, have reflected not only Grant's legacy in the public mind but also the state of New York City and of the Union.

In this fascinating, deeply researched book, presidential historian Louis L. Picone recounts the full story. He begins with Grant's heroic final battle during the last year of his life, to complete his memoirs in order to secure his family's financial future while contending with painful, incurable cancer. Grant accomplished this just days before his death, and his memoirs, published by Mark Twain, became a bestseller. Accompanying his account with numerous period photographs, Picone narrates the national response to Grant's passing and how his tomb came to the intense competition to be the resting place for Grant's remains, the origins of the memorial and its design, the struggle to finance and build it over the course of twelve years, and the vicissitudes of its afterlife in the history of the nation up to recent times.

I don’t know whether to feel proud of the Americans who wanted to honor the man who saved the Union by building a monument where his body would reside. Or to feel great shame because Americans would then turn around and allow that monument to fall into such drastic disrepair.

In hind site, it would have been better to bury him at West Point, at Arlington National Ceremony, or the Old Soldiers’ Home in Washington, D.C., where the grave would get the respect, and the upkeep, it so richly deserved. But New York was eager for him to be buried in New York City, which also lined up with what the family preferred, as Julia Grant, his wife, wished to be buried next to him when her time came.

The book covers the years from Grant’s death until the present in almost minute detail. In some ways, perhaps too minute, as the story can at times be painful to read. What it does show is how little most Americans know, much less revere, their own history.

It appears that the disrepair has finally been addressed. Lighting has been added, and the tomb taken back from the gangs and homeless who had claimed it. I’ve often wished to visit the monument, but, given how fast things can turn around, am rather afraid at what I might find.

( Mount TBR 2024 Book Links 1-40 )

41. Queen by Right by Anne Easter Smith
42. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan
43. Yankee Privateer (Lyon Family #1) by Andre Norton
44. Say Goodbye for Now by Catherine Ryan Hyde
45. Midnight Mass by F. Paul Wilson
46. Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman
47. The Zero Stone (Murdoc Jern #1) by Andre Norton
48. Before Versailles: A Novel of Louis XIV by Karleen Koen
49. Boy’s Life by Robert R. McCammon
50. Caballero: A Historical Novel by Jovita Gonzalez, Eve Raleigh
51. The Upwelling (The Hidden #1) by F. Paul Wilson
52. Xeno by D. F. Jones
53. Grant's Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon by Louis L. Picone

Goodreads 53

The astonishing story of the longest and most decisive military campaign of the Civil War in Vicksburg, Mississippi, which opened the Mississippi River, split the Confederacy, freed tens of thousands of slaves, and made Ulysses S. Grant the most important general of the war.

Vicksburg, Mississippi, was the last stronghold of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River. It prevented the Union from using the river for shipping between the Union-controlled Midwest and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The Union navy tried to take Vicksburg, which sat on a high bluff overlooking the river, but couldn’t do it. General Grant moved his army south and joined forces with Admiral Porter, but even together they could not come up with a successful plan. At one point Grant even tried to build a canal so that the river could be diverted away from Vicksburg.

In Vicksburg, Donald L. Miller tells the full story of this year-long campaign to win the city. He brings to life all the drama, characters, and significance of Vicksburg, a historic moment that rivals any war story in history. Grant’s efforts repeatedly failed until he found a way to lay siege and force the city to capitulate. In the course of the campaign, tens of thousands of slaves fled to the Union lines, where more than twenty thousand became soldiers, while others seized the plantations they had been forced to work on, destroying the economy of a large part of Mississippi and creating a social revolution.

Ultimately, Vicksburg was the battle that solidified Grant’s reputation as the Union’s most capable general. Today no general would ever be permitted to fail as often as Grant did, but in the end he succeeded in what he himself called the most important battle of the war, the one that all but sealed the fate of the Confederacy.

I’m not sure what kind of message the author was trying to convey. That Grant was a great general who saved the Union? Or that his victory was a drunkard’s plain good luck? Because while he lauds Grant with praises after the victory at Vicksburg, before then he misses no chance to bring up every accusation against Grant regarding his drinking.

Was Grant an alcoholic? If so, Miller doesn’t seem to understand what makes an alcoholic and how stopping overnight is something rarely, if ever, done. Yet Miller takes none of that into consideration, more often than not making it sound as if Grant could have stopped anytime he wanted to. But many historians think that many of the accusations were from those who would have gained from Grant’s removal.

As far as the history of the actual battle (which, going by the title was what I thought was the focus of the book,) there’s plenty of information given. Perhaps a bit too much, as the book focuses on the entire Mississippi campaign. Several other battles are also covered.

Several times Miller writes as if he knows what someone was thinking at the time, or what they actually planned, often going against what that person later wrote. It made it hard to not take anything he wrote without a huge grain of salt.

Yet the book is interesting enough. I only wish the author would have kept his own feelings about Grant and others out of it.

( Mount TBR 2024 Book Links 1-15 )

16. Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDevitt
17. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
18. The Plots Against the President: FDR, A Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right by Sally Denton
19. The North Woods by Douglass Hoover
20. NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
21. Upon Dark Waters by Robert Radcliffe
22. Dread: 22 Tales of Terror by Kevin Bachar
23. Escape from Hell (Inferno #2) by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Jennifer Hanover (Illustrator)
24. Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy by Donald L. Miller

Goodreads 24

MAY - "Face Off" - Read a book with a face on the cover. Bonus points if you take a #bookface photo!⁠

Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign That Broke the Confederacy by Donald L. Miller

Shortly after losing all of his wealth in a terrible 1884 swindle, Ulysses S. Grant learned he had terminal throat and mouth cancer. Destitute and dying, Grant began to write his memoirs to save his family from permanent financial ruin. As Grant continued his work, suffering increasing pain, the American public became aware of this race between Grant's writing and his fatal illness. Twenty years after his respectful and magnanimous demeanor toward Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, people in both the North and the South came to know Grant as the brave, honest man he was, now using his famous determination in this final effort. Grant finished Memoirs just four days before he died in July 1885.

Published after his death by his friend Mark Twain, Grant's Memoirs became an instant bestseller, restoring his family's financial health and, more importantly, helping to cure the nation of bitter discord. More than any other American before or since, Grant, in his last year, was able to heal this—the country's greatest wound.

I’ve developed such an admiration for Grant, and the more I read about him, the greater it becomes. In so many ways, this book truly solidified that admiration. He was the reigning hero of the Civil War; this book shows how much of a hero he was away from the battlefield.

I can’t even begin to imagine the pain he was going through as he raced to finish his memoirs. But he carried on, without complaint, the rock for his family that he had been for the country. From both North and South, words of praise and condolences would pour in.

He was the truest as well as the bravest man who ever lived.” Words from ex-Confederate General James Longstreet, Grant’s wife’s cousin and a fellow cadet at West Point. But I think his character was best summed up by the words of his friend, Mark Twain: ”He was a very great man and superlatively good.”

Few books have shown Grant’s character so well, or the regard felt by so many of his fellow countrymen. For that alone, the book is well worth reading.

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
2. The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig
3. The Autumn Throne (Eleanor of Aquitaine #3) by Elizabeth Chadwick
4. Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year by Charles Bracelen Flood

Goodreads 4

A. The Autumn Throne by Elizabeth Chadwick

B. The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

G. Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year by Charles Bracelen Flood

M. The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

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.

A comprehensive and extremely readable biography of one of America’s greatest heroes. So much of his legacy has been lost or misrepresented; this book sets it right.

Starting with Grant’s first American ancestor, who left England in 1630, the book traces the family through their travels from Massachusetts to Connecticut, to Pennsylvania, and, finally, to Ohio. In 1822 Hiram Ulysses Grant would be born. But his father would always call him “my Ulysses.”

The book covers more of Grant’s childhood than most, even to identifying some of Grant’s friends. Also, how Hiram Ulysses’ name evolved. In 1839 he was accepted in West Point. A local draftsman would make him a trunk, riveting Grant’s initials, H.U.G., into the trunk with brass tacks. Knowing how the other cadets would plague him, the initials were reversed. Hiram Ulysses Grant became Ulysses Hiram Grant. But the paperwork sent in by his congressman was botched. Instead of Hiram, his middle name was given as Simpson. Since it would take approval by the secretary of war to have his named changed, Grant compromised by signing his name as U. S. Grant. It didn’t take long for his fellow cadets to come up with a name for the “S.” Grant would be Sam Grant from then on.

Another surprise was that Grant was quite the artist.

Horse eating

It’s personal and professional information like this that is the book’s strength. Through his romance with Julia Dent, who he would marry, his initial time in the army, his time away from it, his incredible career during the Civil War, his presidency, his world travels, and, finally, to his last years at home, every segment of Grant’s existence is brought to life. It’s an incredible book about an incredible man.

Mount TBR 2021 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry
2. Polaris (Alex Benedict #2) by Jack McDevitt
3. How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
4. Mikhail Baryshnikov's Stories From My Childhood: Beloved Fairy Tales from the Queen to Cinderella by Mikhail Baryshnikov
5. The Fateful Lightning (Civil War: 1861-1865, Western Theater #4) by Jeff Shaara
6. Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
7. The Petticoat Men by Barbara Ewing
8. Lily Pond: Four Years with a Family of Beavers by Hope Ryden
9. Running with the Demon (The Word & The Void #1) by Terry Brooks
10. The Gentle Giants of Ganymede (Giants #2) by James P. Hogan
11. Ararat (Ben Walker #1) by Christopher Golden
12. If It Bleeds by Stephen King
13. American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Ronald C. White Jr.

Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War by Charles Bracelen Flood

Started Nov 12, completed Nov 28 4 stars

They were both prewar failures—Grant, forced to resign from the Regular Army because of his drinking, and Sherman, holding four different jobs, including a much-loved position at a southern military academy—in the years before the firing on Fort Sumter. They began their unique collaboration ten months into the war, at the Battle of Shiloh, each carefully taking the other's measure. They shared the demands of family life and the heartache of personal tragedy. They shared similar philosophies of battle, employed similar strategies and tactics, and remained in close, virtually daily communication throughout the conflict. They were incontestably two of the Civil War's most important figures, and the deep, abiding friendship they shared made the Union's ultimate victory possible.

Poignant, riveting, and elegantly written, Grant and Sherman is a remarkable portrait of two extraordinary men and a singular friendship, forged on the battlefield, that would change the course of history.

I appreciated the book beginning with an overview of both mens’ lives Both had graduated from West Point, Grant serving during the Mexican-American War, Sherman in California. But both had resigned, for different reasons, but both would answer their country’s call, and find greatness.

Getting to that greatness would take time, especially for Sherman. While Grant had confidence in himself, Sherman did not. But Grant’s drive would bring him the leadership role in the attack on Fort Henry. In a fortuitous happenstance, Sherman would be ordered to ready men and supplies to send to Grant, who appreciated Sherman’s methodical work ethic. And so it would begin.

From Fort Donelson, to the terrible victory at Shiloh where they would finally meet and begin to know each other’s worth. The siege at Vicksburg, probably their crowning achievement, would also be the catalyst that would eventually send them their separate ways, at least for the duration of the war. Grant was now Lincoln’s man, and soon after the battle at Chattanooga would be promoted to Lt. General, a rank only George Washington had ever held.

Though now fighting on opposite sides of the country, Grant and Sherman would stay in touch by telegraph. Then, with the war entering its final phase, they would meet with Lincoln to discuss how the final battle would play out. It would be Grant harrying Lee to Appomattox, while Sherman in the West would try to bring Joseph Johnson to heel.

Lincoln’s assassination, and Sherman’s lenient surrender terms to Johnson would create dissent, but Grant was able to save his friend from his unintended misstep as the War finally came to an end.

After the War, they would have disagreements, but would remain friends, with Sherman lending support to Grant as he fought the cancer that would take his life. It was a friendship forged in battle, yet would remain vital in peace. Concise and easy to read, this is a book not to be passed by.

( Mount TBR 2020 Book Links )

2020 MONTHLY MOTIF - "Dynamic Duos"

A book with a couple of characters that make the perfect pair whether in business or in love.
(Ex. Sherlock & Holmes, Elizabeth & Darcy)