***
The presidency changed neither Ulysses S. Grant’s approach to leadership, nor his character. In the White House, Grant exhibited the same even-tempered ability to guide the nation through eight years of tensions after the Civil War as he did in his most important victories on the battlefield at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg and Appomattox.
His has been, perhaps, one of the most underrated presidencies in American history, as charges of cronyism have rung down through the decades, but the facts remain: Grant kept the nation from certain turmoil during one of its most volatile, postwar periods, when Nathaniel Bedford Forest’s Ku Klux Klan was attempting to wreak havoc in the South, when southern leaders simply traded one form of racial oppression for another and when America was on the brink of war with Spain. As president, Grant signed civil rights legislation, oversaw the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment and set up America as an arbitrator on the world stage. After a failed third term campaign, Grant toured the world to much fanfare from Japan and China and Russia, thus serving as a kind of “coming out party” for the nation for which he had fought so nobly years earlier.
Clearly, Grant’s presidency was not without accusations of scandal. Perhaps the most famous affair was Black Friday, in which gold speculators Jay Gould and James Fisk seduced Grant’s brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, and assistant treasurer Daniel Butterfield into the action. While Grant was never directly linked to the scandal to use the government to raise the price of gold for speculative purchasing, Butterfield and Corbin were the real and unsuspecting culprits, with Gould pulling the strings in the background. With the price of gold eventually reaching a little less than $160, Harris Fahnestock of Jay Cooke and Company was among bankers wiring telegraphs to Washington calling for government intervention:
Immediate interference in this gold market is imperative. Exchange of four millions gold for bonds immediately done would change current at once. Otherwise, advance [in the price of gold] is indefinite.
Fully aware of the gravity of the situation, treasury secretary George Boutwell suggested to Grant that the government buy $3 million in gold from the New York subtreasury. In characteristic coolness, one can imagine Grant uttering this terse command:
I think you had better make it five million.
And what of Fisk and Gould? Jennie and Abel Corbin made a special trip from New York to appeal to Grant to help Corbin’s his now-suffering friends who had played too heavy a hand in their speculative ventures. Smith recounts the episode in elucidating detail:
Grant listened politely, puffed on his cigar, and then rose from his chair, cutting his brother-in-law off in mid-sentence. ‘This matter has been concluded,’ the president said. ‘I cannot open up or consider the subject.’ The United States, for the first time, had intervened massively to bring order to the marketplace. It was a watershed in the history of the American economy.
Here is Grant at his presidential best, and Smith at his authoritative best: Grant, displaying the same decisive adroitness that carried many a crucial battle in the Civil War and Smith painting a sharp image of his subject’s calm demeanor and simple logic.
In “This Mighty Scourge, ” historian James McPherson leaves it to Union general John Schofield to give the best account of the driving force behind Grant’s decisiveness under pressure:
It is one thing to describe Grant’s calmness under pressure, his ability to size up a situation quickly, and his decisiveness in action. It is quite another to explain the inner sources of these strengths. Ultimately, as Sherman noted, the explanation must remain a mystery. … Schofield noted that the most extraordinary quality of Grant’s ‘extraordinary character’ was ‘its extreme simplicity—so extreme that many have entirely overlooked it in their search for some deeply hidden secret to account for so great a character, unmindful that simplicity is one of the most prominent attributes of greatness.’ Grant made it look easy.
Grant, who left the active campaigning to others during the 1868 election, did not receive the Republican nomination for a third term. As Smith said, he was relieved, telling John Russell Young that the happiest day of his life was when he left Washington. “I felt like a boy getting out of school,” Grant said. Smith concludes the biography with the words of James Garfield:
No American has carried greater fame out of the White House than this silent man who leaves it today.
As Smith well notes, Grant wrote his memoirs while watching the clock and dying of cancer. Despite Grant’s circumstances while gathering his thoughts, historians have described the memoirs as lucid and engaging. “Action verbs predominate:,” Smith said. ‘move … engage … start … attack.:'”
Grant is generous with praise and sparing with criticism. He admits mistakes: ‘I have always regretted that last attack at Cold Harbor was made …. No advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained.’
Further, McPherson wrote about Grant’s work:
To read the Personal Memoirs with a knowledge of the circumstances under which Grant wrote them is to gain insight into the reasons for his military success.
In “Grant” through Smith we see a man who seems void of most, if not all, of the contemptible qualities that we can recognize in less backboned leaders: disloyal, dishonest, fake, egotistical and pompous. For all of his accomplishments in the Civil War and in the White House, perhaps Grant can be granted a notch or two of slack for his one obvious character flaw: loyalty to a fault.
In any case, we can credit Smith for bringing the full breath of Grant’s life into crystal clear view in the most digestible, accessible biography I have ever read.
[rating: 5.0]