Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero (Eminent Lives) [Paperback]

Military history is often a tragedy the first time around and a farce when it repeats, as this perceptive book makes abundantly clear in outlining and assessing the career of America's greatest general.

Fans of Robert E. Lee may well argue about the "greatest", the blunt fact is that Grant understood Lee better than Lee understood Grant. Korda makes the point again and again that Grant, except on rare occasions, was able to correctly assess battlefield conditions and quickly exploit every indication of weakness.

Grant was bitterly criticized as a butcher, similar to Gen. George "Blood and Guts" Patton in World War II. Veterans of Patton's armies have told me Patton's success was based on "his guts, our blood". But I've yet to meet anyone who regrets having served with Patton. The same is true of Grant; good soldiers always praise a general who wins, dead soldiers don't complain.

Grant understood that victory meant killing enough soldiers to make the Confederate states quit. He understood the war was won at Gettysburg; just as Gen. Dwight Eisenhower knew World War II was won in Normandy. The tragic legacy of Grant is that too many generals since then have copied his "butcher" qualities without understanding his tactical brilliance; thus the appalling slaughter of World War I.

Grant was the perfect American success story; literally a "barefoot" buy who rose to command the armies of the nation and then serve two terms in the White House. He was also the "perfect" American because of his absolute trust in the essential goodness, decency and honesty of others; politicians and business people took cynical and unlimited advantage of these qualities, which left his administration mired in the deep stink of scandal.

In war, Gen. Grant faced one massive task -- victory. Everything was directed to one goal. In peace, President Grant as a politician faced a thousand simultaneous large and petty challenges, something he was never able to handle. His astounding successes were two great single-minded challenges; the war, and writing his autobiography as he was dying of cancer. Facing these two great challenges, he succeeded brilliantly.

The contrast with today's politicians could not be more dramatic. Grant was instinctively drawn to the sound of the guns fired in anger; too many of today's politicians, who blithely send others to war which they cleverly avoid themselves, have never hear a shot fired in anger let alone a voice raised in anger in the White House.

This book, and the story of Grant, is vividly relevant in today's world. Everyone who reads it will understand at least some of the fundamentals of success, and of America's greatest general.

This is one of two brief biographies of Grant (1822-1885) I recently read, the other written by Josiah Bunting III which is part of Times Books' "The American Presidents" series, with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. serving as general editor. Although both Korda and Bunting cover much of the same material, there are significant differences between their respective approaches to the18th president of the United States.

For example, Bunting clearly disagrees with, indeed resents the fact that Grant is generally remembered "as a general, not a president, [which] explains in part the condescension - there is no better word for it -- from which pundits and historians have tended to write of him." Bunting asserts that if judged by the consequences of Grant's common sense, judgment, and intuition, his presidency, "so far from being one of the nation's worst, may yet be seen as one of the best."

Korda indicates no inclination to view Grant's presidency as "one of the best." He duly acknowledges the problems which awaited Grant after he was elected to his first term in 1869. "What did Grant's reputation as a president in, however, (and continues to do so today whenever journalists and historians are drawing up lists of the best presidents vs. the worst ones), was the depression of 1873, which ushered in a long period of unemployment and distress, made politically more damaging by accusations that the president's wealthy friends were making money out of it." Given that the United States was growing too fast, in too many different directions at once, and the inevitable consequence was corruption and an unstable economy, "it would have taken a more astute man than Grant to slow things down or clean them up."

This last observation by Korda is consistent with a contemporary assessment of Grant by the Edinburgh Review, one which Brooks Simpson quotes in his own study (Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction 1861-1868), and which Bunting also cites: "To bind up the wounds left by the war, to restore concord to the still distracted Union, to ensure real freedom to the Southern Negro, and full justice to the southern white; these are indeed tasks which might tax the powers of Washington himself or a greater than Washington, if such a man is to be found."

In his Epilogue, Korda explains that he wrote this book because, from time to time, "it is necessary to remind Americans about Grant, first of all because his is a kind of real-life Horatio Alger story, exactly the one that foreigners have always wanted to believe about American life...and that Americans want to believe about themselves." Yes, his presidency was severely flawed but as a general, Grant "defined for all time the American way of winning a war": It must have an essentially moral base to earn and sustain the full support of the American people, it must take full advantage of its great industrial strength and depth of manpower, and it must apply aggressively - without hesitation -- all of its resources to achieve the ultimate military objective, total victory.

However, Korda suggests that any politician contemplating the use of military force should first consider lessons which Grant learned from failed Reconstruction initiatives in the South: "armies of occupation are no substitute for political thought, and that generals are not be necessarily the right people to institute basic political reforms or to reconstruct society."

It remains for others much better qualified than I am to comment on the relevance of that statement to America's current military involvement in various parts of the world. However, I greatly appreciate Korda's attempt to provide a balanced view of Grant in terms of his character, talents, and values...all of which served him so well on the battlefield but which proved insufficient to the political challenges which he encountered later as the 18th president of the United States.

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Bunting's biography as well as Grant's Personal Memoirs.

This is a short book, but is in my opinion a brilliant expose of a great American who exemplifies that nation's love of the self made man...and President Grant had to do that more than once. No wonder we Europeans queued to see him. That this man could summon the courage to write his memoirs while in the last painful months of his life is so very admirable. Anyone on this side of the Atlantic with an interest in the American Civil War should read this book, all Americans must read it.