ULYSSES S. GRANT
18th President, 1869–1877
Overall Rank: 22
Total Score: 557
Grant’s 22nd-place ranking in 2017 is up from 33rd in C-SPAN’s 2000 survey, which is the largest rise in the rankings of any president. Historians have given Grant increasingly high marks in several categories, including international relations (from 33rd to 19th) and moral authority (31st to 19th). One of the only categories where Grant has failed to improve is administrative skills (37th in 2017).
Party: Republican
b. April 27, 1822, Point Pleasant, Ohio
d. July 23, 1885, Mount McGregor, New York
First Lady: Julia Dent Grant
Age entering office: 46
Historian: Ronald C. White
Ronald White, historian and Huntington Library fellow, talked about his biography of the eighteenth president, American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant. He was interviewed for C-SPAN’s Q & A on October 6, 2016.
[March 8, 1864, was] the first day Ulysses Grant met [Abraham] Lincoln. Lincoln had a habit of meeting his generals either at the White House or by going to where they served, but Grant was out in the West, so he had never met him before. They met that evening.
The troops were in their winter quarters, but Lincoln brought Grant east, preparing for what he expected to be the great spring campaign, which would start in May, the so-called Overland Campaign. Grant would march into Virginia, remembering that four times before, federal armies had marched into Virginia, and four times before they had withdrawn in humiliating retreats.
When Grant walked into the White House that March evening, nobody knew who he was. I tell the story of a tall Abraham Lincoln looking over the crowd and saying, “General Grant, what a pleasure to meet you,” and he just grasped Grant’s hands. They were in many ways a marriage of opposites. Grant was not a good public speaker; he was frightened by public speaking. Of course, we know that Lincoln was a tremendous public speaker.… Grant was not tall, five feet, seven inches, or so. He put on weight later on, but he mostly was 135 pounds. Not a man that you would particularly take notice of.
… Grant’s lack of pomposity, the self-effacement—that’s a part of who he is. He often wore a private’s uniform; the only designation would be the stars on his shoulder. It’s such a contrast to today’s leaders of all kinds. It just says so much about who this man is and why America didn’t simply admire him, but they really loved him.
[He was born in 1822 in] Point Pleasant, Ohio. [His parents] had migrated west. Although Grant is often lifted up as this great individual hero, he saw himself as part of a family story. He looked back through the prism of eight generations of Grants who would come in the 1630s to New England and gradually migrated west. His father had come west into Ohio as a boy and then settled finally in Georgetown, Ohio, and was a tanner.
[Grant] grew up in Georgetown and lived there until he was seventeen; it’s fifty-five miles east of Cincinnati, close to the Ohio River. His father told him that he wanted him to go West Point. It says something about the relationship of parents to children. Ulysses didn’t really want to go, but he said to his father, “If you think I should, I will.” His father saw West Point as a free education and one of the only two or three engineering schools.… So, Grant headed to West Point. At age seventeen and just five feet, one inch tall, he barely made the cut.
When Grant arrived [at West Point], his name was actually Hiram Ulysses, but the congressman who nominated him got it all mixed up, and so when he registered, they said, “We don’t have any Hiram Ulysses.” Grant said, “That’s my name.” They said, “Unless you are U. S. Grant, Ulysses Simpson Grant,”—the congressman had remembered his mother’s maiden name—“you won’t be registering.” So, he became U. S. Grant, and the other boys teased him, especially William Tecumseh Sherman, who called him Sam, “Uncle Sam has arrived.” He was known as Sam Grant at West Point.
… He was there until he graduated in 1843. He was then posted to the Jefferson Barracks, which was the largest [army] posting; it was in St. Louis. This was where people were posted who were heading west to protect the settlers. [In St. Louis,] he met his roommate’s sister, Julia Dent, about nine months after he arrived, and they formed a marvelous marriage.
He didn’t get married right away because her father protested. He didn’t want her marrying some vagabond soldier; he’d rather have her marry a businessperson.
So, Grant then participated in the war with Mexico, and did well, but he was a young man. He was assigned the duties of quartermaster, which he didn’t really want. He wanted to be in the fight, and he was on a few occasions. He then came back and married Julia in 1848.
He was taken, not with Julia’s beauty—she was afflicted by what people call strabismus, and it created a kind of a cross-eyed situation—but she was a woman of spirit, and he was drawn to her. She was much more vocal than he was. She was four years younger. They both loved horses and would ride together at White Haven, her family’s country home. They just found this incredible match.
Grant’s family was totally antislavery, strongly antislavery Republicans. Her family was strongly pro-slavery. Her father owned thirty slaves. Grant’s family refused to come to the wedding. Her father gave her four slaves, which he called “servants.” I think these two young people didn’t quite understand really the dynamic of the family situation they were marrying into. They [eventually] had four children; three boys and Nellie, the single girl.
He was posted after the war with Mexico in both Michigan and New York, and then in 1852 he was sent to the Pacific Coast. He couldn’t take Julia because she was pregnant. He was posted first in Oregon, near Portland, and then at Fort Humboldt, in northern California, near Eureka. Missing Julia, terribly missing her, he fell into despair, and probably drinking, and was threatened with court martial. And, literally, the day he received the letter appointing him to be captain, he wrote a letter back to the secretary of war, who was Jefferson Davis, and offered his resignation. He returned to Julia at their place beside her father in St. Louis.
Drinking was a part of his life. It was a part of military life. You had people who swore that he did a lot of drinking, people who swore he didn’t do a lot of drinking. Probably, he drank when he was away from Julia.… I don’t believe he was a drunkard. I don’t think he was an alcoholic, and I think that the drinking disappeared when he became president. This was part of a younger person’s life. But drinking was an issue he had to deal with.
The next seven years were very, very difficult for him—not always his fault. I don’t want to say he necessarily failed, but the circumstances—the markets around them, farming, the weather—it didn’t go well for him. They moved to Galena, which is in far northwest Illinois. They moved there in kind of a humiliating situation. His father said, “All right, I’ll give you a place in the family leather business now. It’s also in Galena. You will serve underneath your younger brother.”
In the Grant story, there’s almost been no mention of a faith story, but when Grant did move to Galena, a young twenty-seven-year-old pastor arrived fairly at the same time, whose name was John Heyl Vincent. He would become, thirty years later, founder of the famous Chautauqua that we know in New York State. He became a spiritual mentor to Grant. He visited him at City Point; he spoke for him at Galena; they corresponded; and so, there’s a Methodist faith story here. Grant’s parents were Methodist. Julia’s grandfather was a Methodist minister. The first national church in Washington was not the National Cathedral. The Methodists were the largest Protestant denomination by 1850. They built the first national church, and they dedicated it four days before Grant was inaugurated as president, and Grant was a trustee. That’s a story that hasn’t been told.
Grant was [in the army the first time] from graduation in 1843 until 1854. He then re-entered in ’61 [when the Civil War began].
I think the most fascinating [of Grant’s early successful Civil War battles] is Vicksburg [in 1862]. The topography, the geography of it is just amazing.… There were no trees at that time; they’d cut them all down so they could have this free-fire zone. This was the most complicated battle; it took the longest to win. It was very important because it would secure the freedom of access in the Mississippi River for the Union forces. And so, with all the difficulties, this was a master stroke. [Lincoln] writes Grant a letter after he learns that Grant has won the battle at Vicksburg. He says, “Dear Mr. Grant, I know we’ve not had the privilege of meeting. I merely wish to say, when you decided to do this, I thought that was wrong. When you thought of doing that, I could not agree less. When you did that, I didn’t understand that.” And Lincoln ends his letter by saying, “General Grant, I merely wish to say, I was wrong, and you were right.”
[During the Vicksburg campaign]… Grant was very, very excited—angry—about the fact that Salmon Chase as secretary of the Treasury was allowing trading to take place in the very same area that the Union forces were trying to shut down the Confederacy. This trading, Grant believed, was really aiding the Confederacy because it was giving them supplies that he was trying to interdict. Grant, along with many others, believed that Jews were the leading traders. So, he issued what Julia later called “that obnoxious order,” Order Number 11, in December of 1862, which was an order expelling Jews from his lines. When this order came forward and Abraham Lincoln saw this order, it was immediately rescinded.
Historian Jonathan Sarna tells us that Grant learned from this [mistake]. Grant became incredibly repentant for what he did.… Grant, more than any person up to that time, appointed Jews to significant positions in his administration; he attended the installation of the first Jewish synagogue in Washington; he reached out, and Jews became very appreciative of Grant’s efforts on their behalf as president of the United States. So, yes, what he did [in 1862] was terrible, but he learned from it and changed his future dealings with Jews.
[Lincoln appointed Grant commander of all US forces in March of 1864, and several factors led to his success as commander.] If you think about it, no one had ever led an army of more than 14,000, which Winfield Scott led in the war with Mexico. So, you might have graduated first in your class at West Point, but that didn’t mean you could manage an army of 150,000, 200,000, 250,000 men. Grant had the ability of what Lincoln called “pertinacity” to keep fighting.… He gave his chief generals the ability to manage their own theater of operation. He was not a micromanager. He trusted them, and this gave them the confidence to move forward. The difficult relationship was with George Meade, who had been the commander at Gettysburg in charge of the Army of the Potomac. Meade was sure that Grant would remove him when he came east. Grant said, “I’m not removing you. I’m placing my confidence in you.” That allowed Meade to move forward and to play his role in the final months of the campaign.
[After the war, Grant] continued to be general in chief, in fact, quite remarkably, during Reconstruction. Even while he was running for president in 1868, he was both general in chief and candidate of the Republican Party. He retired from the military when he became president.
[As]… general in chief, he was very deferential to civilian leadership, so he wanted and tried to work with [Democratic president] Andrew Johnson, but pretty quickly discovered he could not. Andrew Johnson quickly [assessed] that Grant was very probably going to be the candidate of the Republican Party hoping to replace him in 1868.… Grant did become much more conversant with Congress. For a time, he even served as secretary of war; he was in Johnson’s cabinet. So, he continued an active life during those three years of Reconstruction.
[Johnson and Grant’s relationship became] more and more fraught with difficulty. Johnson tried to figure out a way to displace Grant, but he also understood the popularity of Grant. He tried to order him to Mexico.… [For his part] Grant was very reticent to criticize a political leader, but he finally just broke with Johnson. They literally stopped speaking. Not that Grant spoke out loud publicly, he just wouldn’t speak anymore. He would attend the cabinet meetings, and he would give his particular military report from the War Department, and then he would excuse himself. He said, “I’m not going to participate in the rest of it.”
[Their differences were over] the fact that the Congress, led by Republicans, was putting in place the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fifteenth Amendment [the Reconstruction amendments extending new protections to African Americans], and Johnson did not recognize this. Johnson wanted to re-seat all of the former Confederate states [in Congress], and often the delegates would have been Confederate generals. Grant saw that this was a way of destroying everything that had been fought for [for] four years, the whole meaning of the Union.… Johnson was a Southerner, and so he led from that point of view. He felt that the South had been unfairly maligned, and he wanted to bring them back into the story. And… Johnson was not for the voting rights for African Americans.
[In 1868, Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House and barely survived the Senate vote. Democrats sought a new presidential candidate and chose New York governor Horatio Seymour; Republicans did nominate General Grant, who won with 52 percent of the vote.]
[During Reconstruction, Grant began accepting gifts from the public.] This was not unusual. In other words, people stepped forward to give homes to war heroes; they did this for Sherman. But in faulting Grant, he should have been far more aware that there’s no free lunch. Once he begins to take money from these people, is he, therefore, in any sense beholden to them? Grant received a home in Philadelphia; he received money to buy a home in Washington; he received a home in Galena.… Did Grant, therefore, hanker after something that had never been a part of his life before—some money to support himself, perhaps in a style that he could never quite imagine? He also became cozy with business leaders.
Mark Twain wrote his book, The Gilded Age,… and Grant and the scandals of his second administration are often a part of that story.… Grant brought people into his administration who had been loyal, able people in the Civil War and then could not quite believe or understand how power began to corrupt them. And so, when other people began to make charges against him, Grant would be defending them when they shouldn’t have been defended. They became part of his Gilded Age, part of his rushed, earned money. Grant was never implicated in any of these scandals.… Nobody ever accused him [of corruption]; what they accused him of was not being awake and aware, not being astute enough to understand that this is happening around him, and then failing to recognize when it did take place to say, “All right, I see what you’re doing, and I can no longer support you.”
I’d give Grant a high mark [on racial justice]. At the end of his presidency, he convened a meeting of African American leaders in the White House. He said to them, “… I look forward to the day when you can ride on a railroad car, when you can eat in a restaurant, when you can do so along with every other person, regardless of their race. That day must come.” It took ninety years for that day to come. Grant was the last American president to hold those kind of views [for many decades].
We think of Barack Obama as the first president elected with a nonwhite majority, but Ulysses S. Grant was actually the first president elected with a nonwhite majority. He only won the popular vote in 1868 because four hundred thousand African Americans voted for him. By 1890, only a few thousand were still able to vote in the South. This is a story of Ulysses S. Grant that needs to be told, that has not really been told, of a person who stood up against the voter suppression of his day. That was really the goal of the Ku Klux Klan, to suppress the vote.… He wanted to stop [voter suppression] and give these African Americans—freed people—their right to vote.
Grant retired from the presidency in March of 1877. Rutherford B. Hayes was elected, Reconstruction came to an end, and Grant set off for Europe on what he thought was going to be a private tour.… He arrived in Liverpool, England, and to his great surprise, he was treated as an American hero. He set off on what he thought would only be England, Scotland, and western Europe; then, money was provided through a good investment of his son, and he spent twenty-six, twenty-eight months traveling the entire world. He came back and did a variety of business ventures. His son, Ulysses Jr., went into a business venture on Wall Street, not realizing that the partner, Ferdinand Ward, was a crook. Ulysses Sr. put all of his money into this Wall Street firm, and in one day, everything collapsed. He walked home to Julia, and between them they had $130.
At that point, The Century magazine approached him to write his memoirs. He didn’t want to write memoirs. Grant did not like memoirs because they were about settling scores, they were about lifting one’s self up. But now, he needed money, so he agreed. The Century magazine… offered him $10,000. He was about to sign on the dotted line when Mark Twain heard this. Mark Twain rushed over to Grant’s home.… He said, “I’ll publish your memoirs.” He persuaded Grant, which was very difficult, to step away from the contract. Twain said, “I’ll sell three hundred thousand copies of your memoirs.”
Almost at that moment, Grant was diagnosed with throat cancer. So, what I call “The Final Campaign” is his race against death as he writes these memoirs to earn money for Julia. There was no presidential pension until the years of Harry S. Truman. Grant completes the memoirs three days before he dies. It’s an amazing story. Twain publishes them, offers Grant 70 percent of the proceeds—not the standard 10 percent royalty—and the memoirs are still never out of print. It would earn for Julia $450,000 in nineteenth-century money. They are the classic American memoirs. Just remarkable.
There is no egocentrism in these memoirs. There is a wonderful power of writing, there’s immediacy. Grant puts us right into the story, as if maybe Lee could win, maybe he would win. He masters the idea of writing with action verbs, and he eschews adjectives and adverbs. John Russell Young, who was traveling with him as a correspondent for a New York newspaper, elicits from Grant all kinds of personal reminiscences about the key figures of the era—Abraham Lincoln, George McClellan, Robert E. Lee. These become then part of the memoirs where Grant gives his own thumbnail sketches of why Abraham Lincoln, in his words, is the greatest figure of this whole era. It’s just memorable to read this. It’s in very clear, fair English language.
It took him probably about thirteen, fourteen months [to finish]. At one moment, the word was out that he would die before the morning came. Twain is living in Hartford, Connecticut, and he wrote in his journal, “The whole nation waits to hear whether Grant is alive or dead, and if Grant is to die, in every community across this nation, there will be bells that will be rung every thirty seconds. Sixty-three bells, that is the stature of Grant that is held by the entire country.” Grant soldiered on, and he went to Mount McGregor near Saratoga Springs in the summer to try to get away from the heat and humidity of New York, and he was able to finish the memoirs. It’s an amazing story. The doctors believed that Grant only lived as long as he did because he knew he had to complete the memoirs.
In a speech [in Grant’s hometown of Galena, Illinois,] in the year 1900, the first year of the twentieth century, Theodore Roosevelt said, “Mightiest among the mighty dead loom the three great figures of Washington, Lincoln, Grant.” This is the way TR understood it. But, Grant fell [in public esteem as time went on]… because of what we call “The Lost Cause,” the idea first propagated by Confederate generals that the better side lost,… and they only lost because they were overwhelmed by greater numbers of military troops and by a greater industrial might. And, [they posited that the South lost the war because] “that butcher Grant” was willing to sacrifice his men. Our best Civil War historian, James McPherson, and others, have shown us that the casualties under Grant were actually less than the casualties under [Confederate general Robert E.] Lee.
The story that I want to tell is that Ulysses Grant defended the rights of African Americans, and surely he did.… The surprise is that when we get to the civil rights era of the 1960s and the whole abolitionist story is recast in a positive way, Grant doesn’t seem to be a part of that story. He deserves to be.… I think Grant deserves a much higher ranking in terms of American leaders.