A new take on a guy named Grant
Following his death in 1885, the reputation of Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general and 18th president, went into a slow but steady tailspin. In 1918, historian Henry Adams wrote witheringly that "the progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin." During much of the 20th century, history textbooks depicted Grant as a heavy-drinking butcher who, through a long war of attrition and tens of thousands of deaths, bludgeoned the Confederate Army into submission. And in 1982, a survey of scholars ranked him as one of the worst presidents to occupy the Oval Office because of the various bribery and corruption scandals that marred his two terms in office from 1869 to 1877.
But this relentlessly negative view is being challenged in a spate of new books that portray Grant as the Dwight Eisenhower of the 19th century, a great general and an admirable president. These authors--and a growing number of like-minded academics--argue that Grant not only won the Civil War for the North but also helped to invent modern U.S. military strategy. "Without Grant, we might very well be living in two separate countries," says Marshall University historian Jean Edward Smith. "He provided the margin of victory for the United States, and his rocklike presence in the White House returned stability to the country." Even the new $50 bill that will begin circulating in late September is giving Grant a fresh new look--literally. His portrait on the new bill will be considerably more prominent.
Heavy losses. But why did Grant's reputation sink so low in the first place? For one, the career soldier was not given to self-aggrandizement: He was so modest that he rarely wore his officer's stripes on his uniform. And as Mark Perry notes in his new book, Grant and Twain: The Story of a Friendship That Changed America , Mark Twain had to press Grant to write an autobiography, which later set the standard for presidential memoirs. Still, the scholars who wrote the first Civil War histories were distinctly unsympathetic to Grant: They portrayed him as a brute who won only because superior northern troop strength enabled him to replenish his losses more easily than the Confederates could. (Grant did lead some bloody assaults: During one attack in 1863 at Cold Harbor, Va., he lost 6,000 Union men in one hour.)
Grant's political cronies put the largest stain on his reputation, however. While Grant was doggedly moral, and there is little evidence to suggest he was personally corrupt, federal officials discovered during his presidency that his private secretary was involved in a large bribery ring that defrauded the government of liquor taxes. Later, Grant's secretary of war was found to be on the take as well.
Unsung abolitionist. Still, the recent wave of historical analysis is finding much more success than failure. Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which for a time helped to protect the civil rights of former slaves in the South, and he sent troops to South Carolina in 1871 to protect blacks. "Grant probably did more than anyone except Lincoln to destroy the institution of slavery in North America," writes Michael Korda, editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster and author of Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero , due out in October. Grant also pushed an unpopular bill through Congress that secured U.S. currency with gold, a move that fostered the post-Civil War economic recovery by curbing inflation.
Grant's military record has also been reexamined--and found to be quite distinguished. Many historians now believe that Grant's single-minded focus on Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was the war's deciding factor. Grant's strategy can be summarized in an order he gave Gen. George Meade: "Lee's army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also." This focus on chasing down enemy forces rather than simply gaining territory has become a tenet of modern warfare. "American military tradition stems from Grant: Bring together large numbers of forces and focus them at a critical point to destroy the enemy army," says Josiah Bunting III, the former superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, whose Ulysses S. Grant will be published in September. A recent case in point, says Bunting: military leaders' decision to have U.S. troops bypass many Iraqi cities last year and march straight toward the bulk of Saddam Hussein's loyalists in Baghdad.
New research also shows that Grant did not needlessly sacrifice troops. He avoided a costly, frontal assault on the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Miss., for instance, by sending Union troops down the Mississippi River and attacking from the east. In his recent book A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant's Overlooked Military Genius , Edward Bonekemper, a lecturer at Muhlenberg College, analyzed Civil War casualty statistics and found that during the course of the war 15 percent of Grant's men were killed or wounded. By contrast, Lee lost 20 percent. "It was Lee who was unnecessarily aggressive and devastated his own army," says Bonekemper.
Now, revisionists like Bonekemper and Bunting believe it is long past time for Grant to take his rightful place in the American pantheon. "Americans have always loved a modest, genuine, relatively inarticulate hero--a Gary Cooper, a Lou Gehrig. That's Grant," says Bunting. Faults notwithstanding, "he is exemplary of the American character."
Ulysses S. Grant: Arms and the man
1822: Born on April 27 in Point Pleasant, Ohio.
1843 : Graduates West Point, 21st in a class of 39.
1861 : Civil War begins. Grant appointed to command volunteer regiment, then promoted to brigadier general.
1862: After a series of successful but bloody battles in the Tennessee River Valley, Lincoln tells critics calling for Grant's removal: "I can't spare this man--he fights."
1864: Appointed general in chief of the armies of the United States, Grant begins his long drive south, taking terrible losses--in one two-day engagement, he loses 18,000 men.
1865: Accepts Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
1868: Upon winning the Republican nomination for president, Grant writes: "Let us have peace." It becomes the party's slogan.
1869 -1877: Serves as the 18th U.S. president.
1876: After years of scandal involving several members of his cabinet, Grant addresses Congress one last time: "Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit," he says. "But I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right."
1885 : Dies on July 23 in Mount McGregor, N.Y.
This story appears in the August 2, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.