I am not a professional book critic. Aside from a few grade school book reports, I’m not even an amateur book critic, come to think of it. However, the power of the reaction I’m having to Ron Chernow’s “new” (2017) biography of Ulysses S. Grant has compelled me to come out of blog-retirement and try my hand at this critic game.
Let me preface this review by saying that, if there is a target audience for Grant, hoooooo boy am I it. Not only am I just generally into history, as someone who grew up in a town burned to the ground during the conflict, I am specifically into the Civil War. Plus, everyone loves a story where the good guys win, and the good guys won that war, and Grant won it for them!
And, while I recognize the flaws in the “Great Man” theory of history, there is just something inspirational about the idea that a single person can, through sheer force of will, manage to leave an indelible mark on the world that can be recognized as truly their mark. And there can be no doubt that Grant left his mark. The idea that a relative nobody, flawed in every way, dismissed from an army known for inebriation for his excessive inebriation, would rise to the rank of Lt. General, effectively secure the second election of Abraham Lincoln (“With malice toward none, and charity for all…” — ah, so great!!! So almost didn’t happen!), and defeat not just Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy but slavery itself in a war of brother against brother in the very land I grew up in, well… let’s just say that could be quite captivating.
I am the kind of person who thinks — regularly — that he doesn’t know enough about Reconstruction. It sorta gets skipped over in school along with the rest of the second half of the 19th century. Certainly there must be a book about it somewhere that might be pretty good? Oh, hey, luckily for me, Grant was President during Reconstruction, he did that too. So yes, there is a book, and it’s called Grant, and I’m going to read it now, thanks.
And, having read it, here’s the verdict: if you’re like me, and you live for this stuff, then don’t read it. Read literally anything else — it doesn’t even have to be about history. In fact, you’d be better off never reading again than reading this book. If you really want to read something about the Civil War, I cannot recommend Battle Cry of Freedom enough, but just don’t read this book. It is, just, like, really bad.
There are so many things wrong with it that it’s hard to know where to begin, but I’ll start here: I’ve been reading it for the past 6 months, and his presidency just finally ended. It’s something like 1400 pages (unclear how much of that is endnotes), and maybe two of those pages are interesting? I am not one to give up on a book — especially after 6 months — but if he doesn’t die soon I’m going to kill him.
If I had to pinpoint any one thing that makes the book such a slog, it’s the hamfistedness of the writing. This is partly organizational: the book unfolds pretty chronologically, which means that the major themes have to be woven into the book as they come up. Unfortunately, most historical figures don’t go through thematic phases in life, painters excepted, so that means themes are randomly interspersed and have to be called out explicitly when events supporting them happen. So, we find out that Grant pushed for black soldiers to be allowed into the Army during the war, which shows his ongoing commitment to civil rights for former slaves; 250 pages later, we find out that he sent federal troops into Louisiana to put down the Klan and secure black voting rights in 1871, which shows his ongoing commitment to civil rights for former slaves; and another 200 pages down the line, we find out he met with a delegation of black southerners at the White House in 1875, which shows his ongoing commitment to civil rights for former slaves. Not only is each instance called out exactly like that, each one needs a few paragraphs of introduction with callbacks to previous instances. It’s infuriating, and honestly, it’s boring, which is frustrating because I think if it was organized differently, it could be really interesting (not to mention, shorter).
Mr. Chernow, if you’re reading this (hahahaha), here’s a suggestion: rather than weave themes throughout the book which need to be called out so explicitly and repeatedly, start each section with a chronological history of what happened. Then, spend a chapter or more on each of the themes so we can see how they evolved during this section of Grant’s life. To re-use the above example: before the war, Grant marries a slave-owner and has an ambivalent relationship to slavery. During the war, he forms the opinion that slavery must be crushed in order for the rebellion to be put down and eventually grows to believe that it was wrong in the first place. He spends his presidency passionately and aggressively defending the rights of the newly freed, but ultimately the tactics of southern whites and northern fatigue make continued defense politically insupportable, and the descent to Jim Crow begins. After his presidency, well, I don’t know because I haven’t gotten there yet. Anyway, it’s not hard to weave a compelling narrative out of this, but the narrative that is woven in this book is hardly compelling.
Here’s a good example of why this is so infuriating: just last night I came across a 1-paragraph description of a more-likely-than-not apocryphal “Grant is drunk” story while he was on his post-presidential world tour in India. It starts after a completely unrelated sentence ending, “reflecting his lifelong concern for the dignity of women,” (because that needs to be called out explicitly too) and begins, “One high-ranking Briton whom Grant met in India… left a damaging account of a drunken Grant making an utter fool of himself.” The paragraph ends a page later, “This was the sole allegation of Grant’s getting drunk on his extended trip, despite numerous temptations,” before starting a new, completely unrelated thought with “From India the Grants penetrated east to Burma and Singapore” (Grant, 877-878). This is a central theme in the book! Why is it getting a single paragraph in the middle of his world tour? Why isn’t this story simply referred to, I don’t know, when we were actually talking about Grant’s drinking problem? Oh right. Because this book is bad. Sorry, I forgot.
This problem is particularly pernicious when discussing Grant’s drinking, as the evidence Chernow provides often seems contrary to the conclusion that is drawn, which is all the more painfully obvious when the conclusion is stated in such certain terms (didn’t anyone ever tell Chernow to show, not tell?). This disconnect leads to some of the more hair-pulling sections of the book. I wish I had read this with the intent of writing this book, because I’d love to be able to pull out quotes here, but I’m not going back over the thousand-odd pages I’ve read just to ragepost about this into the void, so you’ll have to make do with hearsay and paraphrase. He’ll say something like, “Grant basically had his drinking under control during the war. Here are three instances where he got just wildly, crazily drunk, which shows his commitment to sobriety,” or my favorites (yes this one comes up more than once), “Grant didn’t have even a sip of alcohol at the event, other than the ale prescribed by his doctor and the champagne that was opened in his honor.” It is hard to get lost in a book when you’re constantly questioning if you read something correctly. Of course, if this was laid out in a sane way, you could paint the picture that his drinking was largely under control, in the span of four or five years he went on three disputed binges and never near an active front or command, and you can go into detail on why further accusations are unsubstantiated and likely politically motivated, and you can sort of tick them off one-by-one rather than constantly introducing new instances of him drinking, or not drinking, or maybe drinking, but how much did he really have to drink, and does it count anyway?
I use Grant’s drinking as an example here because it really is one of the key themes in the book, the purpose of which seems to be simply to rehabilitate Grant’s image. It’s almost as though Chernow, having successfully rehabilitated the image of Hamilton, is looking to recreate that success with another downtrodden figure from America’s past. The problem with that idea is that Hamilton is both a more sympathetic and more unjustly downtrodden figure. You can cast his story as either a rags-to-riches tale of gumption and pluck or as a wealthy coastal elite exercising his power over the little man, so he has some dynamic range. He’s a great character who, depending on the current narrative around him, can be redeemed as the embodiment of the American dream or cast down as the embodiment of American greed and hubris, and it happens that prior to that book coming out, he was mostly being cast as the latter.
Grant, on the other hand, is… well, he’s well-understood. The principal themes in this book seem to attempt to redeem Grant across three broad areas: his drinking problem, his reputation during the war as a “butcher” and an inelegant strategist, and the corruption that hounded his office as president. The problem with this approach is that Grant either didn’t really need redeeming or isn’t redeemable in these traits.
Take his drinking problem, for example. It is well-documented and beyond serious doubt that Grant had a bit of a problem with the bottle before the Civil War. This problem would hound him during the war and after (as mentioned above), but this book makes a pretty solid case that his drinking was mostly, if not completely, under control and never an issue on or around the battlefield or during his time in office or thereafter — which would be redeeming if Grant hadn’t already been redeemed in that regard: “Recognized today as an illness, alcoholism in Grant’s time was considered a moral weakness. Grant himself believed it so and battled to overcome the shame and guilt of his weakness,” says James McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom in 1988, who links to a footnote detailing the current (mind you, now 30-year-old) debate about the state of Grant’s alcoholism. McPherson then to come down firmly on the side that Grant’s alcoholism was not a problem during the war: “Grant stayed on the wagon nearly all the time during the war. If he did get drunk (and this is much disputed by historians) it never happened at a time crucial to military operations,” going so far as to say his alcoholism may have even helped him: “…his predisposition to alcoholism may have made him a better general.” I’d consider any redemption on the subject provided in Chernow’s book to be, oh, about 30 years too late.
On the subject of his strategic prowess, Chernow seems to chafe at the description of Grant as a butcher and someone who simply brought to bear an overwhelming superiority in men and materièl. He quotes people at length comparing Grant’s Vicksburg campaign to Napoleon at his height. Here’s the problem with that analysis: Grant’s army at Vicksburg had about 75,000 men and the campaign covered somewhere around 200 miles in the Mississippi Delta. Napoleon’s Grande Armée at its height had about 10 times as many soldiers and had to march from the Atlantic coast of France a thousand miles away to Austerlitz, defeating along the way the entire allied force of all of the professional armies of Europe. So, those are a bit different?
Regardless of how Napoleonesque the Vicksburg campaign may or may not have been, the true test of Grant as a butcher comes during the Overland Campaign. Here’s how that breaks down, even in this book. Basically, Grant makes ready to cross the Rapidan River, and Robert E. Lee looks at his army from the other side and says, “He can’t cross the river, if he does we’ll pull him into this wilderness here and just ravish his army.” Grant looks at the same wilderness and goes, “Man, if I were Lee, I’d try to pull my troops into that wilderness to neutralize my superior numbers and arms, and I’d ravish my army.” Grant then proceeds to cross the river, Lee pulls his army into the wilderness, and Grant’s army gets ravished, much as Grant fears and Lee hopes for. And when it’s all over, Lee melts away, having done his worst (and his worst was really bad you guys — the descriptions are truly horrific for both sides), and the Army of Northern Virginia gets to fight again.
And here’s where Grant really shines, because to his credit, where prior commanders of the Army of the Potomac would have turned and run because they just got absolutely manhandled by the bogeyman Robert E. Lee, Grant looks at the carnage, shrugs, and stays where he is because, hey, the Confederates pulled out. Grant has the field. He doesn’t need to run, all he needs to do is replace the men he’s lost with available, fresh troops and continue fighting. He knows two things; he can win a fight simply by staying in the fight longer (he’s done this before, for example at Shiloh), and he can wear down the enemy with a never-ending supply of fresh troops and provisions, while the enemy has almost nothing and men are deserting in droves. So, his strategy — and an effective strategy it is — is to just throw men into the grinder and replace them with fresh troops. So, does that make him a butcher? Yes. Does it make him an inelegant strategist? Yes. But is he an effective strategist? Sure! His strategy is probably why the Union lost almost twice as many men during the Overland Campaign as the Confederacy despite outnumbering them significantly, but it’s also why that campaign is considered a Union victory — and it’s probably also why the Union ultimately won the war.
Having dwelt so long on the other points of Grant’s abortive rehabilitation, I won’t belabor the third. Suffice it to say that it is a central theme in the book that the scandals plaguing Grant’s presidency (and his life before and after) were due to his only flaw: being too honorable himself to believe that others might ever attempt deception. That is — no joke — how it is presented in the book, repeatedly. It is beyond wild to me that Chernow defends Grant’s presidency by saying he just wasn’t that good at picking people when that is most of the job of being President; also please remember that we are talking about how the mind of the world’s most incredible military strategist since Napoleon is incapable of believing that someone might attempt to deceive him.
The unnecessary and unsuccessful saving of Grant from his own reputation in this book is all the more infuriating given the very real, not to mention currently relevant, role that Grant played in defeating the Klan and protecting the newly-freed black vote during Reconstruction. You could write a pretty good book just focusing on the balancing act that Grant has to play as political support for northern occupation dwindles and he has to compromise his principles to placate his wearying power base while the seeds that will create Jim Crow begin to germinate in the south, but instead we are treated to an exhausting sideshow about annexing the Dominican Republic and an assurance that it wasn’t Grant’s fault that his administration was full of crooks and criminals, it was his strength.
Ultimately, Grant is a somewhat captivating, if flawed, character who had an outsized role in American history, and I believe there is a place for a shorter, better organized, more nuanced exploration of that character. It’s unfortunate that Chernow spends so much of his book trying in vain to reclaim someone who never needed reclaiming in the first place, and that he does such a bad job of it at that. In the end, though, there is no place for this. At least, don’t make a place for it on your bookshelf.