AHD Archives - Ron Chernow and Grant, 2017

my name is Ron chernow the author of grand and thank you for watching authors voice welcome to authors voice I'm Daniel Weinberg and you're listening to one of the many shows we have on authors voice which connects authors to the world and we're on a house divided and we welcome you to this wonderful show this is an extraordinary one for us even and we have very good shows if you're watching live as you are if you'd like to send in a question please feel free to do it you're gonna see right underneath your viewer there you see a button ask a question push it and please send it in but give us your name and where you're from so we can say hello to you and and thank you for interacting with us while we're live if you're watching on YouTube on the archives we probably have sign books still available first editions that's what we do we help you build a first edition signed library that you can be proud of and maybe passed down as well that makes an impact on others around you so we thank you for being here I want to give you're a draw your attention to a friend and a colleague who is doing something very similar to us using the Internet to inform and educate and interact for that matter gerald Polka Povich Civil War talk radio you should get that into your mind Civil War talk radio which is the original Civil War history podcast and if you search for impediments of war org impediments of war org on the web are on Facebook you can find Civil War talk radio they have over 400 episodes already recorded which are free on iTunes and Voice of America so Civil War talk radio I hope you will go to it they're doing as I said what we're doing and I think you'll enjoy the Civil War that's their well today is a banner day for us we have returning to us Ron chair know who lives in Brooklyn New York winner of the 2015 National Humanities medal prize-winning author of six books of these some of these are the house of Morgan which won the National Book Award you may have heard of Alexander Hamilton inspired a play and won the American history book prize also tighten the life of john d rockefeller senior he was on our show for his Washington a life book which won a Pulitzer for biography just two weeks after he was on this show so I know for going in actually yeah I think so too Utley that was what's swept the jury yeah and if now if we can't do the same for granted at least maybe we can push grant the music all right so we'll see waiting but we can dance life I could tell you does not move to a hip-hop beat that I can say with certainty well there or did your first there you go see if you can make it happen so today's his latest book grant a thousand seventy four undaunted Ella straited from the penguin press and has $40 and I think this gives great insight to grant and to the Civil War both he's such a central figure in the war and reconstruction I think that this is really a must read and so first of all it must be nice to have a former US president review your book so Bill Clinton who is like Sidney Blumenthal by the way who was writing for vol work on Lincoln as a political animal there are both outside historians but inside the political mind and Clinton's review frankly if you can get it itself contains enough revelations that on the political mind that I think it's a good preamble almost to your book so what is it like to have a president review Europe well interestingly enough you know when I first started writing the book I ran into Bill Clinton who asked me what I was working on and when I said ulysses s grant he told me that he had not only read grants personal memoirs but had read three biographies of grant and he wasn't kidding because he had pertinent comments to make about each of the three biographies that convinced me that he had you know indeed read them and he's a true student of history and I thought that there was great humility if I can put it that way in his review in terms of really keeping the focus on grant and the book rather than himself so I was just thrilled beyond description by that review it was in New York Times was the cover of the new yes book reversal right how long does it normally take you to research a new subject okay grandma took me six years and so that broke down into four years of research and two years of writing and interestingly enough since Washington had been my previous book in with Washington had to cover some small things like the Revolutionary War the Constitutional Convention the forging of the federal government but actually working on grant I felt as if I was working on an even larger canvas not only to do the Mexican War and they you know pre-war travails of ulysses s grant but to try to master the Civil War and reconstruction is a very very daunting task is again you know I was kind of new to this material I had spent 11 or 12 years toiling in the vineyard of the founding era but here I really kind of had to in many places build my foundation of knowledge from from scratch not an easy thing to do no but it bore fruit because this is a book that it's nice to have an outsider as it were come into the field and give a perception of what they see anew and I think that's what this book has perceptions that maybe we've not listened to before well this has been you know my whole career because I didn't I didn't study history in college I did two degrees in English literature so I spent much more time you know my younger years thinking about narrative you know then thinking about history so the books really it's all been self-taught material but I think that one of the advantages accession numbers boyish enthusiasm you know that I've to the to the subjects is that you know I don't remember you know a history teacher who was telling me how to perceive a particular you know character or a set of events and maybe there's some value to that there's great value now you've written as I've said biographies of some powerful figures in dominant figures what drew you to all these different personalities and did you find any common denominators or traits amongst them well I have a lot of different criteria before I choose a subject whenever I address writing students I always tell them as a biographer the single most important decision is choice of subject and I always say it's a lot like marriage if you choose the right partner nothing can go wrong and if you choose the wrong partner nothing can go right I'm looking for people I'm not just looking for to spend an interesting yarn I'm looking for people who created the basic building blocks of American history and to that extent grant fits perfectly with the earlier people that I wrote about but there's there's one critical difference of this book from everything that I have ever written because all the people that I've written about before whether is JP Morgan john d rockefeller Alexander Hamilton George Washington as I was researching them I could feel even writing and researching they're adolescents that I can put it this way they were built for success that there was an ambition and a drive and an enterprising nature you knew that this person was going to do something spectacular in life grant story is is different he didn't have what we would call fire in the belly when he graduates from West Point his highest ambition is to be an assistant math professor at the Academy not mind you a full math professor but an assistant math professor as Shakespeare said ambition should be made of sterner stuff than that right and so by the time the Civil War breaks out you know he's nearly 40 and it looks like he's destined for a completely obscure and forgettable life and he doesn't feel like he was built for success he feels like he required a very precise historical circumstances and as we biographers know biography is about character revealed under the pressure of a circumstance and we really don't begin to see the greatness in this figure until he's in his late thirties I want to talk about character a little bit and what you found in that man you know Lincoln even his friends said he's somewhat inscrutable they had him surrounded but they couldn't really get to the core and you write that those around Grant felt the same thing was Sherman who called him a mystery even to himself so what did you see how did you assess his character as he went through life and of course as you say you needed that sob Lowell perhaps on some award one of the things that I loved about this again quite unlike the other people that I wrote about you didn't sense with grant that he was someone who was lusting for fame or glory or fortune quite the the contrary the fame and the glory and the fortune come as a byproduct of a man simply doing his patriotic duty there was a line having the book that I loved where Walt Whitman says of grant nothing heroic and yet the greatest of Heroes and I felt you know something like Alexander Hamilton was setting out from the beginning to be a hero so that there was kind of a larger element of ego than in the case of grant and it's interesting because Grant had experienced so much failure prior to the Civil War but on some level his self-confidence was not dented because as he begins to assume tremendous power because he goes from the time the war breaks out two months later he's a colonel four months later ease of Brigadier General ten months later he's a major-general and then by the end of the war his general-in-chief with a million soldiers under his command but it's interesting that for someone who had so much failure you know in his earlier life as he begins to acquire this tremendous power and responsibilities he doesn't really seem fazed by it he with mazing quickness given his history amazing quickness he kind of incorporates the new responsibilities in this very kind of quiet determined grant way into his life I want to go back a little bit away from grant for just one second because we see historians all the time now on the tube on cable as talking heads and the media is courting them for their knowledge of history to to understand today Clinton himself quoted flocker in that reviews saying the past is never dead it's not even past and Mark Twain famously said a history does not repeat itself but it rhymes so what is your perspective on learning from history well I have to say that more and more and certainly you know in the time since the events in Charlottesville I just feel more and more of a sense of mission about history and the importance of it because I really feel that it politics boils down to the stories we tell ourselves about our past and as we you know we've seen with the controversy over the Confederate monuments there are these two competing narratives and so fourtner's absolutely right that we're now you know 150 years later we're dealing in a way with all the unfinished business of the Civil War and reconstruction because we didn't really you know resolve things back then and I think that you know knowledge of history is absolutely vital to our democracy because you know our republic it's not simply the question over the you know words written down on the parchment of the Constitution it's not simply question of the institutions and doctrines that have been created you know democracy is really something and that has to be in the mind of every citizen and that mind has to be formed from memory in the basis of the memory is history so it's wonderful and I've nothing against did I do it myself people read history for escape and pleasure and entertainment but I think that we all see at the moment that history is really the sum and substance of politics there's a wonderful quote from George Orwell let me see if we can get it right you know who controls the present controls the past and who controls the past controls the future I think I often mix it up I think I got it right bad timing let's go to his early life what informed him most what shaped him most people are places would you think well let's just start with the sense of place because I feel that it's so central to this story he's born in the southwestern corner of Ohio about an hour from where Cincinnati is today he's poor in a very tiny town on a very bucolic stretch of the Ohio River and I think that what's very important about sense of place is that the Ohio River at the time was the dividing line between the slave-owning state of Kentucky on the one hand in the free state of Ohio on the other in fact you know winter nights if the Kentucky at the Ohio River was frozen over fugitive slaves would sprint across the ice to freedom and I think kind of looking ahead Mattox I think it's significant that Grant has kind of born in this border region where he's kind of straddling in a way both north and south is exposed to both North and South has an understanding of those two different cultures and he came from a strong abolitionist family it was also a very very devout Methodist household the grants frowned on dancing and drinking and God playing and almost anything else that could be considered fun was outlawed in the Grad household and he had a very powerful and rather overbearing father Jesse groot grant was a Tanner especially I think so actually discovered that even the doctor delivered grant was an abolitionist and grandfather sent him to a school run by John Rankin who was a very noted abolitionist at the time so I don't know that pollution ism was dominant in the air but there was definitely a strong current of abolitionism in the area and so grant was definitely exposed to it in fact the you know the grants felt so strongly about abolition that when there Ulysses later married into a slave-owning family in Missouri not only were they horrified but the entire grand family boycotted the the wedding which is a rather powerful statement for this you know rather close-knit family and you feel getting into a slaveholding family it was a very difficult situation for one thing the the the grants I think we saw julia dent grant that daughter-in-law as a southern belle and something of a wastrel and that she'd come from this slave-owning family and they never fully accepted her and grant adored his wife and that as you can imagine was always a sore point with him that he felt that his wife was being ostracized from the family and Julia herself was very very conflicted about slavery and great by his own admission again kind of going back to what I was saying yes earlier that this is someone who doesn't set out to be a hero but he just has a sense of fairness and decency and honesty by his own admission he was not an ardent abolitionist he's only kind of converted to this really during the the war and really just from his exposure to runaway slaves and then to black soldiers and develops a tremendous admiration for them so it's kind of a you know a slow dawning awakening I'm going to bring up something I was going to bring up later when it bounced around and there's much too much ladies and gentlemen to go through in this hour that we have you're gonna have to read the book there's so much in there that you're going to want to and find out the back stories of some of the things we're just going to touch on so I guess I'm going to say this that here he is before Vicksburg on the 15th of June of 63 and here he's showing to and telling an ordnance officer that he should go out and get 3,000 rounds of ammunition to give to armed Negroes who are this is a June of 63 just before you know a couple weeks before and here he is getting our Negroes in defense of plantations leased by the government and this is certainly in June before I was official policy from Lincoln certainly he and Stanton maybe we're even ahead of Lincoln at that point well the Emancipation Proclamation we never should have been officially promulgated January 1st 1863 had to authorized you know raising black militia but see introduced thinking about the timing of this but I think makes it very significant is that it's right around the timing right around the time of a battle at Milliken's Bend on the Mississippi River and that is really a very formative event for for Grant because it's the first time that he gets to observe remotely as it were but first time that he gets to observe blacks in battle you know because they have been recruiting and equipping and training blacks but this is the first time where they're really in a combat situation and Grant was tremendously impressed both by the competence in the bravery that they showed and Millican been I think was the first or second week of June 1863 and then as I was saying he was kind of a slow convert to this but then boy does he get religion on it and he says to Lincoln that you know arming blacks will be the heaviest blow yet against the Confederacy which is what Abraham Lincoln is saying Lincoln made this famous statement that the appearance of you know fifty thousand black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi would cause the Confederacy to immediately surrender and I think that one of the things that I felt strongly about in researching the book was that this marvelous rapport that springs up between Grant and Lincoln I'm his principally based on the fact that the grant in the West is winning one battle after another which God Only Knows was not what was happening in Virginia but also the fact that Grant is completely harmonious with Lincoln politically and deeply believes in the agenda that Lincoln is defined for the war you know initially preservation of the Union but then you know freeing the slaves and then really incorporating the former slaves into the the war effort and it was a very very big thing we eventually had hundred seventy nine thousand blacks fought on the Union side and Frederick Douglass made the great statement you know that when the black soldier has a must the black soldier has it must get on his shoulder and what was it in his in his partner bullets in his pocket there's nothing on earth that can stop him from earning his citizenship and that was true once we had ya there interestingly who said that that was he made the Negroes a contraband Abraham Lincoln a Ben Butler made the Negro contraband Lincoln made him a Freeman and grant made him a citizen citizen doing the presidency yeah that grant you know but first is general-in-chief for four years after the war and then during two-term president say you know he completes the Lincoln agenda and because Lincoln is assassinated you know grant is really the one who inherits that legacy far more than anyone else that would have been something that Lincoln would have done you know what Whitman said grants presidency and reconstruction he inherited a problem you know even more difficult than the the way the war itself and we could only you know guess whether or not Lincoln would have you know done the things that grant you know dead during Reconstruction happened to think that he would have we could talk about that they know later late later on but the bond between Lincoln and Grant is I think as much of a political as a military button and also as you were saying even though outwardly they seem very different there are certain similarities to them that they both are you know rather inscrutable characters they're both grant has an amazing capacity to go throughout his life they both had rather dry and delightful sense of humor Lincoln's was the kind of little bit more drove and folksy with Grant had a delightful wit they're both great raconteur is they're both very self-consciously Westerners and felt very relaxed you know and I find it very interesting that Lincoln in order to get a little escape and relaxation in the final months of the war keeps running down to trans headquarters at City point of Virginia it seems very funny that a president you know escaping through some relaxation oh she was something about you know how somber the atmosphere must have been in the White House but Lincoln said that he very much loved the camaraderie around the campfire at get away down there yeah Tiffany yeah Janet from Pasadena Thank You Janet for this question with so many books on grant what new scholarship were you able to uncover that brings us a new side of grant and what did you discover about grant that you found most surprising Thank You Janet well I like to think that there are a lot of new dimensions to grant in the book when I started working on it my friend Harold Holzer known to this bookstore a great Lincoln Authority Harold said to me said you know for 150 years people have been debating about grant and drinking and it would be nice to get to the bottom of it and I like to think that I have because what I noticed you know when earlier years grant was the hopeless drunkard and then in more recent years the more admiring books have tended to say oh no no that all it was kind of overblown and those were just stories invented by his rivals and a very very detailed portrait of grant and drinking throughout his life and I really think that I have marshaled overwhelming evidence that he was an alcoholic he had the classic earmarks by his own admission he said he could not have just one glass one glass and led to the next of the next two other classic trait of an alcoholic it immediately triggered off personality change no he went from this rather tightly buttoned character to a rather jovial and even silly character sometimes who slurred his words and stumbled about the room but no this is kind of an amazing story of an alcoholic because this is not someone who drank every day in fact he was a periodic or binge drinker he could go four to three months without touching alcohol and yet enough control over the problem that he was almost able to schedule these benders he never drank on the eve of about certainly never drank during a battle he would never have done anything like that to jeopardize the safety of his men or his own performance but what happened after the battle you know when the pressure was off he would then take a trip side trip to another town where his soldiers and his staff officers would not seamen he would have like a two or three day bender and according to Sherman he would come back fresh as a rose that you were never sort of imagined you know where he'd been and what had happened I spent a I mean interesting for me unusual part of my research for this book was that I spent a lot of time talking to friends who were in AAA and they had a couple of reactions that were quite similar one they all said Oh grant sounds like what we call in a a high-functioning alcoholic that is he was able to bear a tremendous responsibility at the same time that he was dealing with the drinking problem and then I spent a lot of time in the book talking about his relationship with John Rollins a young lawyer from Galena who becomes his chief of staff and yeah actually now did he charge of his alcohol well what happened was you know grant had known Rollins from Galina grant was the son of an alcoholic I discovered that he feared that he himself was an alcoholic and so when grant invites him on to step adjutant and then really chief of staff Rollins does so on one condition that grant not touch a drop of liquor for the rest of the war and if he did Rollins said that he Rollins would call him on it and and and and quit we know that Grant had many lapses how because in the grand presidential library discovered all of Rollins correspondence with his fiancee and then his wife or he's giving her an almost daily report on Grant in the drinking so we know for certainty that there were many lapses but what happened was that Rollins did was as good as his word in terms of quarrel and grant out on it but where he wasn't as good as for it he didn't quit and he didn't quit because Rollins and he was a messianic figure you can't see it in that picture Rollins was a fiercely patriotic human being who felt very very strongly that the fate of the Union cause rested on the shoulders of Grant and so it may be why grant said of Rollins he came nearest to being indispensable to me of any man in this service and I think all the people around grant understood exactly what that indispensable hue from ism meant we've spent a lot of time on the alcohol at so many other things to get to that make him I just wanted very briefly he didn't mention anything in his memoirs no and I actually spoiler alert I end the book the day of Grant's funeral with Mark Twain who was the publisher of the memoirs kicking himself that he did not get rent to write about the alcoholism because Twain had discussed that with Grant at length we have you know let's get into the war a little bit it seems central we have some photographs of two carts Devi's each signed by grant and Lee so how would they have been compared to contrast for 150 years how would you evaluate them as generals humans estatua Ziva well I feel like Lee who was a brilliant tactician as General Lee had a strategy for winning individual battles I feel like grant had a strategy for winning the war there was a very good formulation of this from William Tecumseh Sherman who was grants main commander Sherman said that grand strategy encompassed a continent Lee's strategy encompassed a single state of Virginia and you know what granted when grant was brought east in March 1864 as General in chief he debts did something that had not been done before the separate Union armies were fighting in the various theatres of war without their movements being coordinated and when grant becomes General in chief he decides that the way to win the war is by coordinating these various armies so that they functioned as a single fighting unit that would apply unremitting pressure against the Confederacy actually across a 1500 mile area and by that point Abraham Lincoln who'd become a pretty good strategist that was exactly what Lincoln thought needed to be done and grant accomplished it grant always felt I mean he clearly respected recently a very tough time during the Overland campaign but great felt that Lee was overrated as general and and made some very crucial strategic errors the one that he talked about the most was during the last ten months of the war when grants Army has lays siege to Richmond and Petersburg he said that because of his emotional attachment to Richmond and the state of Virginia that Lee hunkered down and you know defended Richmond and Petersburg grant said that what we should have done as soon as Sherman invaded Georgia was to abandon Richmond and Grant said that had Lee done that the war would have gone on at least a year longer so he really felt that Lee had played into his hands very briefly here because it's such a big question but let's talk about Sherman since you you said that what was his grants relationship with his General Sherman in particular this is from Chris in Clayton North Carolina thank you Chris yeah I mean grant really has two relationships with Sherman an extremely warm clothes and harmonious one during the war yeah I mean Sherman came up with this line perhaps facetious but revealing where he said grant stood by me when I was insane or that he was called insane I stood by Grant when he was drunk and they had this wonderful loyalty the two commanders whom grant admired more than any by far were ressure Minh and Phil Sheridan and grant made the telling comment in terms of Sherman's march to the city after the fall of Atlanta grande said that he would not have entrusted any other commander with that task and that the greatest proof of the confidence that Grant had in Sherman was that he delegated an enormous power to them to him because during the march the seal in the march up to the the Carolinas grant and let you know that they're going to lose touch with Sherman so Sherman and his sixty seventy thousand soldiers are on their own so this is kind of an operation unlike any other grant is picking up snippets of information from the Confederate press which finally realized you know and then kind of embargo that information and said there was an enormous you know grant of pardon the pun grant about Tom and autonomy to William Tecumseh Sherman but but I also discovered I spent a lot of time in the book because that's always the part of the story that's told less important who is that politically they were very much at odds after the war because Grant became the strongest proponent of reconstruction and Sherman who was very conservative and even quite racist sharply dissented from grant on reconstruction well yes and again going going forward a bit you know grant was the first as you know to speak about Indian rights in his inauguration yeah and he had a very soft war plan against the Indians in west of the Mississippi a things didn't work out with that plan and he became more Sherman s conceived why did he change well yeah I mean this is interesting because grant becomes president you're absolutely right in his inaugural address you know in terms of Indian policy he says he would like to Christianize and civilize and ultimately turn the Indians into citizens and he's full of good intentions we have all sorts of beautiful high-minded statements he said that the Indians needed as much protection against the white man as the white man needed against the Indians came up with a very powerful statement he said I can't believe that the Lord put different races on earth so that you know the stronger race should exterminate you know they were the weaker race and actually from time that he was posted to the western frontier even in the 1850s enormous sympathy for Native Americans there are no kind of racist comments at all in Grant's papers but so when he becomes president one of the first things that he does he appoints men he knew from Galena Eli Parker who's a full-blooded Seneca say to me points him as his commissioner for Indian Affairs there had never been Native American appointed to a high post like that or maybe any post in the in the government grant immediately tries to clean up the whole system there were all these corrupt writers who were exploiting Indians on the reservations and grant begins to appoint Quakers didn't replace them because he thinks of Troy Quakers will be more honest but you know the generals who were carrying out his Indian policy like Sherman and Sheridan really had a very bloodthirsty attitude towards Native Americans Sheridan of course famously said you know it was the only good Indian is a dead Indian or variants thereof Sherman and the similar vein rights in one letter to share it and he says well Maury Indians we kill this year the fewer will have to kill next year you know Sarah to people who have a terrible attitude toward Native Americans but grants policy he felt that the hunting and gathering society and economy of the Indian tribes was doomed because this was a period where there's an enormous westward expansion of settlers and mining companies and transcontinental railroads and they of course increasingly clash with the Indians so grant not only wants the Indians to retreat to reservations but he wants them to become farmers to learn English to become citizens and while his intentions were very good he was essentially offering them a kind of suicide pact for their culture because if they had done everything that he was proposed would certainly would have safeguarded their community but it would have destroyed the culture of the community and so the story has a really sad ending because in July 1876 in other words brought about nine months until the end of grants presidency or a second term Custer and his men are massacred at Little Bighorn and as soon as word of that filters back east of what has happened all sympathy for Native Americans is lost and there is a very bloody outcry for revenge and for boosting military expenditures for these frontier Garrison's fighting the Indians and so here was grant you probably had the best intentions there's good intentions as any 19th century president it just ends in a fiasco something that's that's kind of all current first of all our man here was very well known for his letters of bereavement the Bixby letter for instance on the Colin letter so at least letters are calls of condolence such a families of slain soldiers seems to be newsworthy today grant had to write them as well a good example was James V McPherson dutiful so how did he handle that part of his professional duties yes it was a kind of a you know handsome - and courageous and very very competent general and you know grant often said that if he were killed in battle that he could have imagined three generals taking his place the first two won't surprise anyone Sherman and Sheridan but he also said James McPherson who then is killed in Atlanta right before it falls in Grant sits down he writes a condolence letter trying to remember whether it was a Macpherson's wife or grandmother is remember the young thing and this beautiful letter that ends you know your grief cannot be greater than my own it's kind of powerful winkta to write to the to the grandmother for most of this bereavement letters to other did he write much although no he did not write a lot simply because you know he was so busy he ultimately has you know a million soldiers under his command so I mean he wrote it you know he wrote those letters in cases you always read a beautiful letter in those cases we had a personal relationship and he wrote beautiful letters of bereavement during the Mexican War I think we actually maybe have more of those letters because more of his you know personal friends had died his responsibilities were not great and also maybe maybe death was still much more of a novelty he was a young man in the in the Mexican War well if he was writing those I'm wondering about is I'm asking about his writing style of young his memoirs of course are well known and is a great writing style in there and does that reflect the writing style he did in his orders for instance so we have a letter a question that came in also but first of all was he the same in his memoirs as he was in orders and other letters throughout the year it's a very good question you know because grant writes the famous memoirs during the last year of his life you know he's dying of cancer of the throat in tongue also he was wiped out financially he was afraid he would leave his with a desperate and a Mark Twain who was the publisher thought they were a masterpiece first of many people to say that he said they could be classified alongside Caesar's commentaries he said their style is flawless no man can improve upon it but so I think that the world was very surprised at suddenly ulysses s grant turned out to monk his other talents I was major literary talent but for grant himself in the people who knew him it was a little less surprising because grant had always prided himself on his writing he prided himself on the fact that he wrote will of his own wartime orders in fact people you know who worked with him on his staff you know would describe him writing like 30-40 rapidly 30 40 consecutive order its each one kind of perfectly phrased leaving no doubt you know in the readers mind you know exactly what he wanted to do and then grant took tremendous pride that he wrote all his own speeches and state papers as president and there's a very interesting he had general Adam Bhutto who was his military secretary and you know helped him with the the memoirs Bedok at one point kind of angrily demanded you know more of the royalties of the book and grant wrote him an extremely revealing letter in which grant says how proud he's always been of his writing that he didn't need Bedok and he was writing his own to where time what is he was writing his own you know speeches and papers as president and it's as emotional letter is grant ever wrote in his life that his writing ability was it became an issue yeah this person did not unfortunately give his or her name if your research revealed the president again with the memoirs he do research reveal the same inconsistencies and misstatements between grants memoirs and the original records as detailed in Frank Barney's General Grant and the rewriting of history I you know I think they don't know the frame for any books I don't quite know how but I will say just because grants memoirs are is all of you know terrific and must reading for anyone interested in grant and the the Civil War but when I first started working on the book I ran into a friend said to me Ron how do you write a great bog if you have someone who wrote a great autobiography and had to save for a few days it kind of knocked me flat on my back but then the more that I thought about it was actually very very helpful comment because I went back and I looked at grants memoirs and there's smaller missions like no mention it was two-term President say they're not it's not really inaudible ography it's it's it's a military memoir generals who wrote very well yeah surprising but I realized that what my task is a dutiful biographer is is to identify all of the evasions and the silences you know in the memoir so we were talking earlier that this is not worried about the alcoholism he didn't want to face that at the end I there's a period in the 1850s where Grant is living in st. Louis and they're so down and out that in order to support his wife and four children he's reduced to selling firewood on street corners and st. Louis well if you look in the personal memoirs a two or three year period of desperate poverty grant skips over in a line or two so my job really is to talk about what the subject did not want to talk about so that that was actually very very helpful comment because in terms of you know some of the emphases of my book it was kind of those things grant didn't want to talk about it when things like you know and I went down to the Library of Congress I went through every page of the manuscript just because so many people said to me was Mark Twain the ghostwriter so I went down I looked through every page of the manuscript virtually all of it is in grants handwriting but I noticed for instance you know the colossal error that he makes at Cold Harbor was very interesting because that was one of the few things that was on a loose sheet different colored paper and he writes on the side to his son you know to kind of where to interpolate this in the manuscript so that was a belated decision to talk about the disaster at Cold Harbor so one can you know see that there were distressing things that grant did not want to talk about well the annotated version of the memoirs has just come out just beautifully it's a beautiful additions to let us go urges and we had John here weeks ago speaking about her and I would suggest everyone here if even if you've read it already once or three times you're gonna get something out of this annotated version as well no that's like an essential book on ones you know bookshelves not necessarily one if you've already read the memoirs that you'll want to you know sit down again and read it cover-to-cover but there were so many things that illuminating for me in terms of just passing references and the memorization that scum in that I have that question - well this is submitted by the AP US history class at st. Louis University hi he was watching like that how did Grant's military career influences leadership style as president of the United States you know he had such success with his staff and what he did during the war did that or how did it not translate to the president oh great now it's you know thank you ap history class out there that's a wonderful and very very sophisticated question and it's very central to grant's presidency because grand said after his two terms in office where he admitted that he had made many errors and offices did George Washington said the same thing grants said that he tried to transfer the structure of his wartime staff to his cabinet and he said it was a mistake and it led to other mistakes you know during the the war I remember when I was doing the Washington bogey-free during the Revolutionary War George Washington is trying to operate by consensus yes a lot of counsels of war they have long debates you know at the end of the long debates they take a vote among the generals you know whether to fight grant did not do that I mean people who read the book you'll see maybe once or twice there's account there's almost never councils of war that Grant has and he's very secretive very mysterious he said one of the reasons that he was so secretive was that he felt the element of surprise was so important for a general and he felt that if he even told the few members of his staff that the word would you know leak leak out and so there are you know moments in the in the story where grant was tell his commanders we're moving at tonight or we're moving out in the morning and you're soldiers to take this road but the commanders have sort of no idea where they're going or what's afoot well grant tried to kind of train for that rather secretive style to the presidency in the parentheses of presidency you need both with your you know your cabinet and with the public greater transparency well so Grant was a very intuitive thinker now something like George Washington kind of agonized over decisions grant would think a thing but then the decisions would flow very rapidly from his mind and from his pen and sometimes I felt as president particularly in dealing with personnel issues whether it was cabinet members or a Supreme Court that he was sometimes too impulsive you know and that was something that served him very well in a wartime because one of the reasons Ram was a great general is that we all know everyone generally goes into battle with an intricate plan and the plan falls apart the opening minutes of the war and so the great general is then able to improvise in the heat of battle and grant really came alive he was extraordinary at those moments and would start issuing a whole new set of you know bulletins to his commanders but that kind of a very you know quick intuitive style did not work in the political arena for instance grant was slow as president in terms of developing a good collaborative vetting process in terms of appointees and including people because that had not been his wartime stuff one if I think it was Horace Porter on his staff were two Robideau said that grant was someone you know at night at the campfire you know they'd be talking strategy and grant would be say would be saying anything he kind of be eavesdropping on conversation and then a week or two three weeks later suddenly grant would issue orders and they realized that he had been listening to what they were saying that he would very much kind of keep his own counsel again oh is that element of surprise was very strong get to this in another way grant had said that he was mistaken I thought he said I could run the government as I did the staff of my army oh I've asked this question before I'm Wesley Clark for instance was one who was here years ago I asked this question what are the problems a military person becoming a president whose which is political inherently political job versus a politician becoming commander-in-chief what does more challenging what are the problems each has do you think well just for starters you know in terms of grant grant of course had gone to West Point a lot of the same cast of characters you know in the Civil War you see them already you know in Grant's class or the other classes when he was at West Point you know he then serves for several years in the the Mexican War after the Mexican War he's rotated among you know four different army Garrison's in the United States so by the time that the Civil War breaks out in April 1861 grant has a history he has knowledge of all of these people you know he's encountered robert e lee enjoyed when cullen and Beauregard you know on the underline the entire cast of characters and it's interesting both during the war and then in his memoirs how frequently he refers to his knowledge of people at West Point next more in terms of anticipating for instance what Confederate generals could do or even in terms of Union generals what they were capable of doing and so he has this inventory in his mind of knowledge of all the different generals on both sides I think he then goes to Washington and although he wasn't completely novice in Washington after all he had been General in chief last year for the war then during the four-year period between the end of the war and his presidency he still as general and chief he's even Acting Secretary of War and there so he's not a complete political novice but still you know a president in that period had to make thousands of patronage appointments and so you know although Grant's knowledge of the generals during the war was very wide and very deep he doesn't have that same knowledge about a vastly larger pool of people and he makes a lot of his mistakes have to do with his appointees rather than with his policies which were good I have a number of questions that would take an hour each and maybe you can just briefly give us your ideas and some of these for instance of both Lincoln well Lincoln certainly felt when the coming of the war it had to come now and that why kick it down the road any further they just had to come so and war came he was ready to let it come it wasn't a war present he wasn't trying to make that but you know if it had to be it did grant also had a bit of that feeling is that correct yeah grant was really outraged by secession again this is I think something that he he discovers a deep patriotism in himself as the south starts talking about secession I think that he must have been surprised by the depth of his own emotions I think that friends and family you know were and suddenly he finds his voice a very kind of militant you know voice about the other war he also was very upset as always happens at the beginning the war there's a euphoria and grant unlike the people who were experiencing euphoria grant had actually seen war and had seen people killed and also he knew first-hand experience he knew a lot of the Confederate generals and so he was not under any illusions he knew that they would fight very hard and that there wouldn't even be a lot of very competent people fighting on the Confederate side having said that that Grant did I think everyone did underestimate the length and scope of the war you know and he said that after Shiloh and Shiloh there were 24,000 casualties in two days had never been anything remotely like that in American history and Grant said that after Shiloh he suddenly realized this was gonna be a very very long war with many more of these colossal battles what do you feel after the war what was his judgement of what that war wrought all the casualties that he was certainly a part of producing you know he feel coming out of it know would grant felt I guess he almost had to feel that the war had been worth it he said he after his presidency did an around world tour and he met Bismarck in Germany and it's very interesting conversation that he has and he said to Bismarck you know that the United States could no longer deal with the stain of slavery said we could no longer deal with the idea of people being bought and sold like cattle and he felt that the country had been strengthened in all sorts of ways most notably in terms of the freeing of the four million slaves and that finally that staying you know had been removed but he also felt that the country had developed an enormous amount you know there's an argument that we kind of emerged from the Civil War as a quasi world power already because of the expansion of the federal government the expansion of the army there's a tremendous development of manufacturing power you know creating transcontinental railroads we kind of come out the other end of that you know a much much more developed country but I think that you know for grant it was kind of you know in terms of American character and but he also was very afraid that the south through the violent backlash against reconstruction had already reversed much of the verdict of the war that the north had won the civil war militarily but the South won that he's hardly gotten into his presidency and that's a big part of this book and his life and our understanding but you do say that well first of all let's talk quickly then quickly about his legacy I have a few and some of the funeral books one of the big funeral books that came out after the war with photograph after photograph after photograph of the people coming out for his funeral and feel it certainly the presidency and the corruption and all of that maybe didn't stick as much to them because they still felt very much on his side but you say that his reputation today really you went rests on how we view reconstruction yeah and briefly talk to us about that well you know after the Civil War there was kind of a school of writers in the south of lost cause you know writers who began to sort of romanticize the Civil War and to romanticize robert e lee rewrote a lot of the history by saying that the the real cause of the Civil War was not slavery but was states rights and James Longstreet who was robert e lee's chief commander you know when presented with that idea that the cause of the world of states rights Longstreet said gee that's funny during the four years that were I never heard anyone mentioned anything but slavery as the reason for the cause and you know historians go back to the secession you know manifest does there's no question that it was slavery that was the the reason for unify the country the AP class is asking that yeah were they able to really you know for how long grant ends up representing kind of two contradictory things at the time of Appomattox we all know the story from school that ulysses s grant was extremely magnanimous in the surrender agreement with Lee the Confederate soldiers are famished he immediately gives them twenty five thousand rations he allows the Confederate soldiers to retain their horses and mules he allows the federal the Confederate officers to retain their sytem and he does he does not allow any gloating or celebration of Appomattox on the Union side so every migrant becomes the chief symbol of north-south reconciliation on the other hand what happens you know after the war has thousands upon thousands of blacks are murdered in the south without any prosecutions he then becomes as it were the scourge of the white South because he's trying to protect the black community in the south the four million freed slaves now fully fledged American citizens with the right to vote he's trying to protect them from the white violence of the Ku Klux Klan and sends in federal marshals and Sons and federal troops to to crush the Klan and suddenly the the South calls him you know Caesar grant and they complain about you know bayonet rule so they're these two very very different images depending upon the historical moment and grant always up until his dying day held out the hope of you know north-south reconciliation but he made the statement he said I will allow the people in the south to do anything except murder blacks and white Republicans you know two questions one that we're kind of kind of go out on before I ask my last question one historian Adam Gopnik called grants last year's as quote first famously pathetic and then famously heroic mm-hmm do you think that's a fair assessment yeah pathetic you know I'm not sure that's exact word I would use but I understand what adam is saying there because the year before he dies he turns out to be the victim of the Bernie Madoff of his day grant imagines in his business in a sense that he was worth several million dollars and he wakes up one morning and discovers that he's worth exactly $80 and then he's diagnosed with cancer of the throat and tongues I guess I qualifies as pathetic but then what happens grant kind of rallies and despite the excruciating pain of the cancer he wills himself to not only stay alive but in one year he writes a memoir of 335,000 words this a man who not only experiencing agonizing pain but who every time for the pain takes opiates takes painkillers it fogs his mind it makes it that much more difficult to to write you know and the memoirs are just so beautifully written and so lucid and so as I say in the book it was probably as Titanic of victory as any that he won during the world where he managed to do during the last year of his life and grant continues to grow and continues to surprise us at every phase of his life I once had a letter of grant writing to Charles Webster the nephew and also about battles of leaders because he had to write something from battles and leaders he finished it in the last two weeks of his life than the chapter on Shiloh and was very proud of that but he said he's finishing it up right now he said to Webster I think he had to continue that in order to even survive the last two weeks yeah I think that it gave him a reason to live you know he was afraid if he died wife would be left destitute and he loved Julia and in fact it was the it was possibly the great bestseller of the 19th century I think maybe rivaled only by Uncle Tom's Cabin but Twain was the publisher he was not the ghostwriter Thoreau busy the editor I would train did Twain got 10,000 salesmen a lot of them were veterans they sold the book it was it was sold into volume boxed set and you had to subscribe to it and Twain had all these veterans you know going door to door you know saying help out the old general you know and buy his memoir and they managed to sell 300,000 box sets in other words 600,000 books which is amazing because I think the population of the time was maybe about 40 million people and that would be a very very impressive number today and today the population United States is about 330 million so if you kind of extrapolate that into modern you know terms it would be like selling millions of books and so after Grant died Twain hand and Julia check I think it was for 400 or 450 thousand dollars we should probably be looking about 10 million dollars today so that Grant truly did a heroic deed for his wife and not only left her comfortable but left her rather rich for us I said I'm not sure I'm aware of there was a boxed set I've not seen the Box ever have you I don't remember ever seeing that box it's a very question maybe I maybe I miss speaking actually it would be a better judge of this than it was a tuba it was a two-volume said yeah I don't know Arendt says Sandburg the Warriors when I came out famously never had any dust jackets yet there was one set of just jackets that I found and it's the only one I've ever seen and that may ever see you again so III may just have invested on the spot so I apologize to the ask what's next because Alan gonzo was asked why he wrote about Gettysburg with over 6,000 books already on Gettysburg and he answered by saying that George Mallory why why did George Mallory climb first because it was there yeah so with over 16,000 books they say on Lincoln would you consider writing about him he's still relevant he has his grand certainly you know I have considered that I've been wondering of late whether I have the energy to do another one of these cradle to grave biographies they're so extraordinary they're so extraordinary difficult to do to kind of master the facts of one large life and then to not only master the existing information but then to add to it and then to fashion that into an interesting and insightful narrative it's gigantic task so sometimes I've been thinking of later possibly taking a piece of a life and taking a little bit of the pressure but also maybe trying to you know explore a moment or a period in someone's life rather than having to you know from cradle to grave which is extraordinary because we can use spotlights on various aspects of Lincoln or I think it would be interesting for me to see whether kind of been taking you know a moment of someone's life whether I could use that to sort of disclose the whole life or some kind of deeper truth about the the person obviously I'm I'm riveted one of the great great joys of writing this book was that I got to write about Abraham Lincoln at length and in fact I had two of my readers who have added the manuscript one was how those whom I mentioned earlier one of the greatest living authorities on Lincoln and the other was our mutual friend Frank Williams who put together one of the great collections of Lincoln books artifacts artifacts etc and when they talk about tell me that they thought that I had captured Lincoln very well number one I was relieved because I was a little bit nervous about having them read it and then - I just felt immense pride that these two most discriminating readers felt that it was not only accurate about Lincoln but that I had really captured him well we're so happy to have you here this how we started I had so many more questions frankly that I would have liked to continue on but there are other things that you have to go I'll come back warm for you these processes we're talking about so I want to tell you all of you and web land that coming up on house divided on author's voice connecting authors to the world first of all immediately following this give us a few moments to reset up the cset here and and change out and Gordon ray is going to be here with his on to Petersburg which completes the Overland campaign series so he's going to be on just in about 10 15 minutes go get a sandwich and come on back upcoming shows on author's voice stranger than fiction November 4th Adam goose all with beyond the crossroads the devil and the blues tradition lit with love on November 8th at 2 p.m. Molly Cox Brian with macrame murder and stranger than fiction unknown on November 9th we have many shows coming up and I hope you can get to them November 9th is 5 p.m. and Gordon is coming with divided on d-day a fascinating book world war 2 book that you're going to be interested in listening to and we have the son of Admiral Ramsey signing these books as well Ramsey as you know of course was one of the heroes of Dunkirk and then a non house divided again November 11th at 12 noon next week Graham Peck with making an anti-slavery nation so if you're watching this on YouTube after this broadcast you can certainly still order sign books and I hope you'll sign up at author's voice net and leave your emails with us so you will not miss upcoming shows we're so happy that we had Grant I'm telling you this is one that I say this a lot you have to have it you have to have it and you're gonna want to read this as well no matter what you've read on Grant before this is another aspect you've got to do so Ron thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us I appreciate all of you who were here in the audience who have come out to be with us and I want to thank the staff at Abraham Lincoln bookshop for all that they do without them we would not be here so thanks again hold on don't go very far Gordon Ray's going to be right up and we thank you again [Music] you

Channel: Author's Voice

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Keywords: Author's Voice, Ron Chernow, Grant, Ulysses S. Grant, History, Books, A House Divded, Daniel R. Weinberg, Civil War

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Length: 66min 47sec (4007 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 09 2018