Ron Chernow on Ulysses S. Grant with General (Ret.) David H. Petraeus

well thank thank you all very much thanks Susan for a very kind introduction Ron it is wonderful to be with you in front of what is it says you well know the greatest intellectual critical mass that assembles in New York at any given time I'm a little worried that it's so big tonight that they may actually reach critical mass and set off a chain reaction up and down Fifth Avenue or something like that but really wonderful to be with you this is an extraordinary book I offer congratulations to you on that on top of all the others that you have done I want to assure you that it is needless to say exhaustively researched it is panoramic it is vast as you can see but I want to assure you that most of all it is exceptionally readable very lively and truly enjoyable already emerging I think is the classic work on a truly great American whose reputation is largely now I think completely restored as a result of this and a couple of the others that have been published in recent years again I emphasize readable lively and enjoyable as some might be intimidated by its size you do get credit for arm curls if you lift it several times but Ron is a brilliant storyteller and I think you'll see that tonight as we we go through this you've heard how Ron wrote about john d rockefeller Alexander Hamilton the Warburg's house of Morgan George Washington how did you happen to write this biography how did you choose well first let me say general I'm just so touched and honored to share the stage with you this evening you Michael always graced the stage of the 92nd Street wide the way that I came to write this was that I had always had a fantasy about doing a big epic saga about the Civil War and reconstruction and the life of ulysses s grant is the perfect prism through which to view those two periods and really the Civil War and reconstruction form two acts of the same drama and I like to say to people but if you know everything about the Civil War and little or nothing about construction you've walked out in the middle of the play and you really don't know how it how it ends sure and he was central to all of that yeah grant is really the figure that unites those two periods had Lincoln lived he would have been yes that figure but Grant is really the the person who is at the center of the stage from 1861 the start of the Civil War to 1877 when the curtain is rundown on reconstruction so let's perhaps go all the way back to the beginning talk a bit about his origins as parents and so forth a fairly modest upbringing yeah he's born in 1822 he's born Hiram Ulysses Grant which saddled him with the unfortunate initials hug huj the boys teased him mercilessly so he dropped the higher men he became just plain Ulysses he was born in the southwestern corner of Ohio about an hour outside of Cincinnati this turns out to her in a very interesting place for him to have been born because he's born on this very bucolic stretch over the Ohio River in the Ohio River at that time divides the slave-owning state of Kentucky from this free state of Ohio in fact on winter evenings when the river would freeze over fugitive slaves would sprint to freedom across the ice and so I think that in terms of you know looking ahead to the grant of Appomattox and someone who could actually understand the viewpoint of both the slaveholding south and the free North grant it's kind of born in this strategic spot that straddles the border between those two worlds and as when we go forward of course later he marries into a family that really represents the opposite yeah and he marries Julia Dent whose family owns 30 slaves on the plantation outside of st. Louis so long before the Civil War grant is really involved in his own private civil war in fact the grand family they were strong abolitionists and then grant marries into slaveholding family and the grants were so horrified by Ulysses marrying into the slave-owning clan that they all boycotted is 1848 wedding in st. Louis and so poor grant is really caught for many years between his overbearing abolitionist father and his no less overbearing slave-owning father-in-law in fact when the war breaks out his father-in-law Colonel Frederick Dent was heard to say that if his son-in-law Ulysses who of course had joined the Union side if Ulysses ever came on his property he would shoot him like a rabbit and you think you have been difficult in law before he gets to all that of course somehow his father pursues Massa Nations and he ends up going to West Point yeah I mean his father pretty much announces that his son is going to West Point not because he wants Ulysses to be a famous warrior but he was a real skinflint and West Point for Jessie root Grant represented a free form of vocational education it's at my parents to buy and and grant us it's very funny by his own admission while he was at at West Point there was a debate going on in Congress as to whether or not to abolish West Point and grant is avidly following it praying the Congress will abolish West Point so that he could be sent not one of the more avid student of his time but he wasn't awful you know no he was got my class but the thing that really struck me particularly in comparison to the people that I'd written about before is with Grant there's no fire in the belly whatsoever by the time that he graduates from the Academy his highest ambition in life is to be an assistant math professor of the Academy not a full math professor but an assistant math professor is the extent of his ambition so no one least of all Ulysses Grant could have foreseen that he would become general and chief of the US Army as a two-term president he of course he picks up a middle initial during this time as well again significant when the local congressman nominates him for the he sends it in as the name is ulysses s grant who is forever after stuck with this bureaucratic era in fact there's an amusing letter where he's actually explaining to his wife I don't know why she hadn't asked earlier Grady's explaining to Julia that the S stood for nothing and I read that and said she weren't be curious about that you know a few years ago and you're married so he graduates from West Point enters the army some sort of not particularly fascinating assignments early on in fact he even ends up in upstate New York fights his way back to the assignment that I guess he had wanted but doesn't go to fight in the Mexican and then goes think distinguishes himself things that struck me about his time in Mexico he was a quartermaster which meant that he was you know mastering the art of logistics it means that grant is going to understand the operation the army from top to bottom in this kind of nuts-and-bolts fashion and remember in the civil wars can be fought in the south which means that grant is can be defending these very very long you know of supply lines stretching hundreds of miles so I think that quartermaster experience was very important I think that most impressed me when he was in Mexico as quartermaster he was under no obligation whatsoever to fight and yet again yeah he joins combat purely voluntarily anyone else would have you know use the quartermaster job as a legitimate reason to shirk battle but he sees an enormous amount of battle so by the time the Mexican War is over he really is a kind of battle-hardened veteran at very much so you know he goes to the front constantly revetted promotion during that time yeah and then you know what at night we'll sneak out on to the the battlefield to provide kind of aid to wounded soldiers and we begin to see this sensitivity that he will later on show to his soldiers yes in the in the Civil War and sensitivity that whole not only show to Union soldiers noble show T and shelters as well of course his future opponent Li quite distinguished during the Mexican War yeah and Leia's Li is older I mean Lee's early life is so different from gran because we graduate second in his class from West Point zero Daenerys never is greatest claim to febri Qin they still have a demerits oh yes I I wouldn't ask you how many year ago I actually went I think two years with none there were also two years in which I had you you were you you were a store too and then Chris robert e lee becomes you know superintendence of west point so robert e lee you know from an early age looks like someone who's cut out for military stardom ulysses s grant does not even though he's highly competent you know he's very brave he serves with distinction you know it was brevet and etc he goes back and of course now he finally can marry julia this long-range courtship he came head he married Julia but you know Colonel dent has been scheming the entire time to revenge Julia from marrying Ulysses he's convinced that grand on meager army pain it was me government I could not support Julia in the southern belle style to which she's attached him and on this one thing the colonel turns out to be right because that grant is posted to a couple of very lonely bleak Garrison's in Oregon and Northern California where he cannot afford to bring his wife and at that time one son and so it sets up a situation they're always three situations that lead to Grant's drinking you know loneliness inactivity and desperately desperately missing his family and all three of those things apply in Oregon in Northern California let's just talk about the drinking and put down out of the way yeah because in all I see I'm a huge student of brand a huge admirer of your aunt one who feels very strongly that you know what the southern historians did to him in the previous century was just abyss terrible and we can talk about that a bit as well but this I think biography one of the ding machine features is you really deal with this in a very clear-eyed manner and I think describe it quite clearly and perhaps you like yeah actually you know when I started working on the book I thought that I would follow in the footsteps of you know recent biographies that have tend to say oh the drinking issue was overblown and all these stories were invented by his enemies but you know there are now 32 thick volumes of grants papers and it has all of the wartime letters written to President Lincoln written to Secretary of War Stanton Secretary of Treasury chase some of these letters about grants drinking were signed some of them were anonymous and the explanation I was was oh these were stories invented by malicious you know rivals who read to hurt him and that I thought would be my conclusion but you know I started reading the letters closely these were letters written by different people at different times in different places in other words people who could not have coordinated what they were saying they all described almost verbatim the same character drunk they would say grant was silly drunk idiotically drunk foolish drunk there was not one of these letters for instance that said grant was violently drunk you know or angrily drunken of course we know that there are many people when they're drunk get angry or violent there wasn't one I said well you know maybe they maybe these letters were being used by malicious rivals for their own end but maybe there was some truth to it and so turned out he was an alcoholic I was safety backstage you have 130-page references to the to his alcoholism I began to feel that the problem was that for 150 years the question was always posed was grant a drunkard now that's a loaded word as drunkard implies someone who's dissolute dissipated who sort of gleefully indulging this vice rather than I like to think we have a much more mature of medical approach that this is a chronic disorder and Grant had really the two distinguishing features of an alcoholic one by his own admission he could not have just one glass that would lead to a second a third and and you know no less important again by his own admission as soon as he started drinking it triggered off a massive personality change he went from this rather tightly buttoned up character to someone who was a certain jovial even silly he would slur his words he would stumble around and then really the clincher during the the war his adjutant and then chief of staff John Rowland yes joins Grandstaff on one condition that Grant promised never to touch a drop of liquor grant had many lapses but down at the grant Presidential Library Mississippi stayed I found all of Rollins his correspondence and Rollins became so obsessed with keeping Grande sober which for the most part he did that he's sending to his fiancee and then wife almost a daily letter reporting on grants drinking say you know had this kind of front-row see for the whole things so suddenly there was sort of no doubt what was going on I think that we owe a tremendous debt to John Rollins cuz Rollins had initially tell grant that if he drank Wong's would acquit his staff that didn't happen the reason being John Rollins who became Brigadier General was fiercely patriotic yes came to feel the fate of the Union rested on keeping grant as the general said that he stays privately chastising grant about the drinking publicly defending him from all of those charges now of course when Lincoln heard that grant drank or someone reported that to him as you know he famously said please find out what he drinks at least he fights give it to give it to the other journalist right he said but that brand of whiskey and he wanted to send a barrel to his other generals so the drinking does though out on the west coast to go back to grant now a captain it leads him to have to leave the army yeah he shows up at a paid table drunk this is 1854 he then leaves and this sets up a very very depressing period in his life he goes back to st. Louis yep and he tries his hand at farming he fails he's in such desperate circumstances that he's reduced to selling firewood on street corners in st. Louis and one day one of his old army buddies runnin runs into him in the shocked to find grant selling firewood on street corners and he says my god grant what are you doing in Grand said to him I'm trying to settle the problem of poverty grant have a sort of delightful wit even at that dark moment and then finally by 1860 so now we're one year away from yes in what must have been the ultimate humiliation for him he goes to his possibly overbearing father and asked if he can work as a clerk and his father's leather goods store in Galena Illinois his father graze and grant moves there with his family and grant is almost 40 years old at this point and he's working as a clerk junior to his two younger brothers and he's bored and restless and this looks like it is going to be the most obscure and forgettable life imaginable then one year later boom Fort Sumter two months after Fort Sumter ease the colonel four months later Brigadier General ten months later Major Generals may have been even quicker than I did and then by the end of the war he's general-in-chief yes with a million soldiers I own this command far away the largest military machine we had ever assembled just extraordinary and you know as we were talking before and here he is sees again a clerk as you say junior to you know two younger brothers and you know having had to come back on bended knee to even do that you know how humiliating that must have been and all of a sudden now there's the call for four come to arms but he demonstrates a certain degree of quiet self-confidence than that whole process yeah it's quite amazing you know cuz here was someone who had kind of failed it one thing after another you would think that this really would have dented his self-confidence but the war breaks out you still had all of that West Point lore stored yeah his mind he still had he's conscious of it and he knows and he has all of the combat and logistical experience from the the Mexican War and so it's amazing that he comes Colonel you know was given a regiment and you instantly see this quiet steady competence that is going to define him I never had any sense of anxiety or insecurity which would have been understandable given how much no failure he had had you know it's almost like and I'd be right curious because you've you've seen so you know so much combat you know for most of us we have a metabolism that in everyday life were very calm if we're suddenly thrown into a situation of you know danger we're alarmed or frightened you know we're insecure grant seemed to be grants metabolism was the app the opposite of the average person he seems to come alive in situations of combat in danger he actually seems to be calmer he functions at a much calmer level he thinks clearly he actually thinks much more rapidly yes then he does let me ask you a question sure how cuz you've seen so many people in that transition from peacetime role to a wartime role how unusual is that in terms of is that something it's very unusual I mean you do find it yeah and what was interesting I remember in the very beginning of the fight to Baghdad yeah to give you an example there's this one lieutenant colonel battalion commander who he was very very good very solid we would have said he's brilliantly solid but not necessarily solidly brilliant yeah and then there was another guy who was just sure brilliant you know he's top of his class at West Point had a high in tight haircut he always looked great he could keep up with me running I mean he was so he was he was he was clearly destined for greatness in fact I had my eye on him to be the the big position for for a lieutenant colonel is the division operations officer base so after battalion command everybody wants that position and he'd really been caught my eye and lo and behold I start watching this other guy he's just sort of laconically we'd link up with him in the middle of a fight one time he's just basically walking down the road with all his radio operators and there's shooting going on over here there's aircraft coming in over here attack helicopters machine guns and he's just calm as can be and that was when I realized how special that particular guy was by the way I'd already chosen to be the division ops officer he came back when I was a 3-star he came back when I was a four-star as a brigade commander was brilliant yeah and actually he was my executive officer at Central Command Ernie went with me to Afghanistan so but we never would have were it not for the war the same with ya know you know this is the issue yeah you know this was a fascinating book for me to write because I felt that all the people had written bad before Washington Hamilton Rockefeller etc I thought they were all built for success you know from the early age even in their adolescence there was a drive and energy and ambition you knew that they were going to succeed it's something whatever they tried to do our grant is a different story his wife Julia saw all of these kind of magical you know hidden talents but other people didn't but grant is a story where he required a quite precise set of circumstances and then these tremendous strengths and virtues would come out which had not been apparent otherwise so if the war had broken had not broken out I have no doubt he would have stayed in the leather good story right his hand at some other thing but would never have been known to the history which you don't feel when you're writing about a George Washington Alexander Hamilton out there like shot out of a cannon absolutely no he just extraordinary in that regard by the way you know quite inspirational when you know some years later I was commanding the surge and as you know yeah you've heard the story if someone gave me grant takes command by love it's a wonderful book I mean I thought you know I'm going to war here and somebody gives me a book I said thanks for that put it in a rucksack and somehow it ends up on this bedside table yeah where I had my bunk and you know so I started need to get through two pages and fall out of your hand as you fell asleep and I just found it breathtakingly inspirational the grant had this just sheer indomitable will quietly and the determination was unbelievable but he also had this feel you've heard me say at the grant monument Association group that he is I believe the only Army General in history army to have demonstrated excellence tactically that is sort of multiple brigades division and below that the Land Between the Lakes Donaldson and so forth operationally now it's multiple divisions but not yet the whole theater that was of course it's Vicksburg one of the great operational battles of all time and then ultimately strategically where he's the first to actually stitch it together and so let's we'll start down this can I just ask you I love this cherry that you yeah that tell about the line from Shiloh that you use if I can let me ask you to tell I would yeah you know and we use this actually somewhat metaphorically on some very bad days in Baghdad I remember you know we had it just a catastrophic day enemies several suicide bombers blew up markets we lost 12 soldiers I think and Iraqis took a bunch of hits and you know people's dog tags are dangling in the dirt as they say their head is hanging down and so I remember going in that night and you know I said you know I think this is the time to remember how Grant reacted after the first day at bloody Shiloh and as you know this is probably his worst battle ever you surprised Sherman and he both are almost driven back into the Tennessee River that night there's no available shelter that is not being used as a makeshift hospital he was always affected by in there hacking limbs off you can hear the cries you can hear that mourn of the battlefield because they're still wounded out there had not been recovered it's raining of course infantry sunshine as we say and he has a slouch hat on and he's sitting under a tree just waiting for daylight the rain is dripping off the Hat he's got the stub of a cigar in his mouth and out of the darkness comes his favorite lieutenant Sherman and Sherman says well grant had the devil's own day today didn't we and grant says yep lick him tomorrow though yeah and I found that so inspirational I mean we had the devil's own day and so lick'em tomorrow became one of the rallying cries actually I mean it really became one of those who sir will look him tomorrow and it really is extraordinary that quality that he had yeah I mean sure Sherman was once asked to kind of define the essence of Grant's greatness as a general and he replied he said grants simple faith and success he said I can liken it to nothing so much as the faith a Christian has in his Savior grant I always knew that he was going to to be victorious and it was interesting cuz Shiloh was was a you know a two-day battle yes made interesting a statement later on in the war that he found that very often the first day of two-day battles went for the Confederacy because it would you would see the kind of plucks you know and - answer of the Confederacy he said that he would always been on the second day because his in the Union sort of you know grim you know relentless you know determination would start weighing in and counting on the the second day and so grant always was convinced that he was going to rend another very interesting statement that he made was that there's always a moment in a battle where both sides are convinced that they've been defeated and he said whoever then decides to take the offensive at that moment is going out to win which is of course what happened and I don't think he ever felt defeated no which is again extraordinary and that night on the Tennessee River I mean their back is literally there they're clean to the riverbank basically tactically yeah getting reinforcements in but never never shaken at all and of course the relationship he had with Sherman was quite extraordinary and you remember the comment that Sherman said that you know he stood by Grant while he was drunk and Grant stood by him while he was crazy and now we stand stand by each other always yeah so let's go back so he starts out now he here he is a colonel and regular general and and and all of a sudden the day of battle arrives the first really momentous one with Fort Henry and Fort Donelson yeah they're these twin forts you know grant has the insight that the way really to invade and dismember is that Confederacy is to use the rivers but yes there were these two rivers the Tennessee in the Cumberland that ran north-south and so they kind of provided a gateway you know down into the heart of the Confederacy and there were these two forts Fort Henry guarding you know the Tennessee River and then Fort Donelson on the on the Cumberland you know and it was at the Fort Donelson that the fort by the end is in charge of his friend Simon Simon Buckner you know who wants to appoint commissioners to negotiate his surrender and grant issues the famous in a statement that nothing less than that you know immediate and no unconditional surrender will suffice and so he became known as unconditional surrender grant and there's such a funny moment because there had been three Confederate generals before Donaldson there was John Floyd who've been the Secretary of War under Bragan and there was getting pillow and then there was Buckner and Floyd and pillar were convinced that if they were captured they would be tried and executed for treason so they flee leaving Buckner alone and so when Buckner surrenders to grant Buckner says to him you know if I had been in charge you would never have been able to approach the fort in this way and Grande says to him and if you had been in charge I would never have approached the fourth and this way of course history yeah number what he meets him in New York I mean yeah I mean he had bailed out when Grant was down and out and in New York in 1854 Buckner had had bailed him out yes so they were kind of old friends from from West Point today so there's always that feeling even during the the Civil War Grant has a lot of friends on the other side so he never kind of loses that feeling Longstreet I mean Longstreet was is he's really my favorite Confederate general because you know this was after the war there was a whole controversy in terms of what had caused the war and they'd been the so-called Lost Cause school in the South had said the cause of the war the states rights and Longstreet of course was Lee's main lieutenant Longstreet when asked to comment and that on that said gee that's funny during the four years of the war I never heard anything but slavery mentioned is the reason for the the war so he was not only great general Longstreet he was unusually honest man he was of course there's no monument to him in monument right now in fact it's interesting it just says only there's only a single monument to Longstreet in the south and it's in his hometown of Gainesville Georgia he was then you know very much demonized in the sense of the loss of Gettysburg I think quite well he was a proponent of reconciliation as well yeah and he was also that rare Confederate General who was a supporter of of reconstruction yes yeah really great story well so you have the victories that Donaldson and Henry this now starts to build the name of grant he's sort of hamstrung by his supervisors for a while and he works around that at one point they remove him a lot of drama but let's fast-forward to to Vicksburg because this is what establishes Grant as a truly great general that battle alone would have I thinking yeah there were all sorts of extraordinary features you know Vicksburg was you know there this this great citadel on gateway to the south you know the Gateway to the south and it falls the same at the same time that Gettysburg does and it's about two or three hundred feet on this bluff above the Mississippi River it has extensive fortifications that run for almost seven miles grant very ingeniously he tries actually to reorient the course of the Mississippi River in order to get by quick so you figured how how do you get you know troops you know downriver the problem with Vicksburg was this he had to get on a dry land to attack vicksburg and the only dry land was south and he was north so finally what happens and this was a great example of the way that grant would coordinate the Army and Navy yes very unusual in the Civil War he runs all of these gunboats you know I'm past the you know the big guns at Vicksburg marches the you know army down the west coast and then he crosses over he said he was never so relieved as when he got to the east bank of the Mississippi because he suddenly is on high dry land and one thing I found that has not been sufficiently emphasized about grant he was a master of deception yes you know there was a sort of wonderful bag of tricks that he used so he's he's kind of on the you know the east bank and I think most of the generals would have gone straight up the east bank for a right to Vicksburg and but what grant does in order to create a diversion he has Sherman make an attack on Vicksburg from the north a place called Haines's Bluff he then sends his cavalry officer Benjamin Grierson on this long I things like six hundred you know mild cavalry raid in eastern Mississippi and the reason that he's doing this is Pemberton who was the Confederate commander inside Vicksburg Pemberton is trying to figure out what the hell is going on there's grand south of the city then Sherman's attacking him north of the city and then there's Grierson with seventeen hundred you know his horse soldiers you know tearing down Eastern Mississippi so he kind of has no idea what grant is doing and then grant does something very daring and unexpected instead of just sort of going straight up the Mississippi which would be the easy directory again him veers northeast pretty much cuts the supply lines not entirely but he's kind of living off the land and what he's doing because he knows that Joseph Johnston Confederate Army from the east you know might come to relieve Vicksburg he's kind of zooming up not only because he's going to attack you know Vicksburg from the east but he's throwing his army in between Vicksburg in any Confederate Army that could possibly come to reinforce it and then he has this dazzling series you know of five battles schwartz greatest campaign it extraordinary it's one for the history books yeah i mean would that be is that your home absolutely extraordinary well let's remember that sherman writes a letter in advance of this campaign and insisted to be put in the official file saying that it's too risky this is his most trusted lieutenant yeah yeah it was that daring yes it was that unorthodox I was kind of breaking every rule that that you know at that time a commander was supposed to stay you know closely in touch with his communications as I called it you know with the supply line and so he's doing everything that the textbook said best point told him he shouldn't do was again and he divides his forces he he meets these others that are trying to reinforce defeats each of them yeah and then of course invests Vicksburg in a siege and ultimately it has to capitulate yeah and it was argue now the full of Vicksburg was arguably more important than the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg really was quite extraordinary and it establishes him as the premier general so now he's brought east but by Avaya chattin knew right another interesting how do you all so few know fascinated by the time he gets to Chattanooga the Union Army there was really under siege dits trapped because I have been to Chattanooga the south side of the town is just kind of towering Lookout Mountain then kind of on the east side is Missionary Ridge and so the Confederates you know were commanding the heights and the Union Army is is bottled up down below grant gets there and I think very characteristically the first thing he concentrates his logistics you know he's gonna be famous throughout the world that his soldiers are always well fed you know and well shod you know and well clothed and he opens up what was called the cracker lines David you know he's these hard biscuits and so once he opens that up then he begins this series of maneuvers and he has Joe hooker Queens the Confederates awful look at Matt man and then maybe the most amazing David a civil war what happens at Missionary Ridge because Grant was very fond I grant had more confidence in Sherman than any of his other commanders so he wants Sherman to take the northern end Missionary Ridge but what happens it's a very good Confederate General Claiborne who's fighting Sherman so Sherman is really kind of blocked at the northern and and so he has General Thomas you know attack in the center and the expectations are fairly modest they were supposed to take these rifle pits you know at the base of the mountain and then something happens and this is unlike anything I've ever read in military history because the Confederates kind of firing straight downs rather steep mountain and the soldiers just instead of you know fleeing away they started fleeing up the mountain so say in the book it was a mass outbreak of carriage or maybe it wasn't courage maybe they were just trying to you know escape the this kind of slanting fire coming down and grant is watching this and grant is not ordered this grant is gonna be the great beneficiary of this but even the other generals are just kind of staring mystified and then granted says well let him go you know he says let's ride with with this he sees that something extraordinary is happening and it's a very interesting case in military idols I think the tail wagging the dog well well you know the privates its momentum that just continued just continue to stop it yeah and the officers were kind of following the lead it just goes going and all of a sudden they've won Missionary Ridge yeah that's over that one's done and yes again another extraordinary victory yeah so now he's clearly the man how many general says Lincoln been through now is it seven or eight at this point McCloud boys yeah but you know by the time Grant s over in Virginia you know spring of 1864 he's been preceded by six six generals and I just want to emphasize this because so many people you know then and now would say that's grant successes in generals based on the fact that he had the advantage of northern population and northern manufacturing but if you look at the history of the war in Virginia they've been Irvin McDowell George McClellan John Pope Ambrose Burnside Joe hooker George Gordon Meade six generals who had the same info again yeah Macomb god I'm sorry you know so here were all these generals who had the same advantage of northern manpower and material who had not been able yes who definitely so clearly something is was going on than just the advantages and grant was always very quick to point out how many disadvantages he labored under in the South he had to protect these yes enormously long supply lines he was fighting in a place that Lee knew intimately he didn't know at all Lee had well the the local population would function as spies for him and then there was tremendous advantage at the time to fighting on the defensive you know yes if you had well entrenched fortifications you could hold off an army even two or three times the size of the one that you were defendant which actually begs you know he might jump quickly just to leave no because it's about this time that Lee goes to Gettysburg and you know you try to compare Lee in effect I showed you that Washington Post article I thought was so good the truth about general robert e lee he wasn't very good at his job was the title because his his objective should have been to keep the South in the war keep the draft riots going keep turmoil and the north is they're getting dissatisfied with the length of the war and get him McClellan to win against of course Lincoln and he would have sued for peace so the war again this is another often overlooked the war could have actually been lost it was not inevitable victory yeah no absolutely and and respectively but also said a number of occasions that he thought that Lee was overrated anything the the final year well you know it's interesting because the after the war Lee was asked who was the greatest Union general and he says George McClellan just kind of news to news to historians and then grant is asked who was the greatest Confederate General and he said Joseph Johnston and last year I asked Craig Simons who's John's you know Jesse Johnson's biographer I said on what basis was that even he don't know I think that it was was that so many people through Lee yes into grants face it just became a sore point and he was damned if he was gonna say that Lee was the greatest channel but he felt that during the last year of the war that Lee had made a major strategic blunder granted felt throughout the war that the objective was not to destroy places not to destroy and right hands but to destroy enemy armies and he felt that Lee had a personal and political attachment to Richmond and Petersburg he said that if at the time that Sherman invaded Georgia if Lee had broken away going further south or going west he said the world would've been prolonged for another year but Lee allows himself again this is an emotional attachment where he even says the Confederate cabinet that he's never you know and never surrendering the Richmond and kind of allows grant to sort of pin him you know down in Richmond and and Petersburg and interestingly enough right before that happens during the Overland campaign Lee himself tells his officers because grant keeps kind of moving sideling to the left and moved him further and finally hasn't pinned down in Richmond and Petersburg and Lee himself said reserves if that's if that happens it'll be a siege and then we're lost and yet he does walk right into that map it turns out to be quite a long period yet until Grant finally breaks right remember Grant says I intend in in the late summer of 1864 I intend to fight it out on all summer if that's what it takes and it took a lot longer than that 1865 but before this grant does something that no other of his predecessors have done which is a true strategy for the war he treats the entire war as one Theater any actually gives a very coherent direction yeah in terms of grand strategy he was just brilliant it seems like a simple thing but when grant is made general in chief in March 1864 the various Union armies operating the different theatres of war we're fighting separately I think that seems strange to say but remember the only thing that makes this possible of coordinating these armies over 1500 mile area what makes it possible is the railroad of the Telegraph the railroad had really only come in in the 1830s and 1840s the telegraph comes in the 1840s and 1850s is a relatively new technology so it did not really been incorporated I think into strategic lore in terms of how to coordinate it so grant takes over and he has like this five you know prong strategy I'm nobody and meter can try it frontal assault Seagal and then later Sheridan will clean out the Shenandoah Valley but there will be coming up to Richmond Unified for the southeast Sherman will be invading Georgia and then he'd wanted banks to Nathaniel banks to invade Mobile Alabama that didn't happen for various reasons but he already is thinking in coordinated terms and I think you know there's always so much focus on the very high rate of casualties during the Overland campaign I think most people don't realize that well Sheridan's successes in the Shenandoah Valley well of Sherman's successes injury are going on under grants supervision right and at Grant's direction right and also grant I mean Sherman is succeeding partly because he carries that very brilliant campaign but also because grant is pinning down yes the bulk of the army yeah Lee it's in a way that it can't reinforce us that's right the fourth the confession this wins the election for Lincoln which means that the war is now over into you know obviously you have to follow through and 1860 but with the the re-election of Lincoln of course arguably the greatest accomplishment of Grant Wood because that battlefield victory first in Atlanta argue but that did it but if that didn't then sure it ends victor changes the hope because link even Lincoln as convinced that he's not going to be reelected and then Atlanta falls during the first week in September and it completely turns around the election for for Lincoln and George McClellan the Democratic nominee was very popular in Grant was convinced that if McClellan who was a so-called peace Democrat he was convinced that if McClellan became president that the North would sue peace and that not only would slavery be preserved he but he thought that the South would insist upon the return of any slaves who had been freed that southern plantation owners would demand and Emin efficacious for slaves who were lost and it would really have been a catastrophe yes that happened you know so he wins I mean again he wins the war by winning the election in a sense with the battlefield victories of course now if we buy the way we probably should talk about something that took place while he was general also a bit earlier which is this anti-semitism particularly the walls of the 92nd see why we definitely should talk about that okay this is the story cuz a lot of people know one part of this story but not the other the part that a lot of people know is that in December 1862 grants army is penetrating into Mississippi which means it's in the heart of the cotton Kingdom and what's happening there's a large illicit rate of people selling southern cotton to northern mills grant is trying to stop it there were a lot of Jewish traders who were involved there were many more non-jewish traders but not for the first time in history the Jews were blamed and grant issues in order infamous General Orders number 11 which not only forbids Jewish traders from his military department but bans Jews as a people from his department so this is clearly the most atrocious anti-semitic action in American history grant later said he immediately regretted this order as soon as he sent it to Lincoln and Stanton Lincoln and Stanton see it they're horrified they immediately overrule it so it doesn't doesn't we have an effect but certainly grant is stamped you know with the label of anti-semite what people don't know is the grant spent the rest of his life atoning yes for this action when he became president he appointed more Jewish public all of us than all the other 19th century presidents combined his friend Simon wolf Jewish lawyer said that he alone recommended 50 Jews who were appointed the Jews incidentally really credited grants atonement his conversion because the Jewish community overwhelmingly a support in the 1868 in 1872 elections some really remarkable things that he did at present his present in terms of Jewish community one at the time it was unheard of for American presidents to complain about human rights abuses abroad it's considered meddling in the internal affairs of other countries grant twice protests human rights abuses abroad in one case Jews are being exiled by the Czar to Siberia he protests the other time it is Bagram in in Romania not only these grand protests but he points I think probably first Jewish diplomat over certainly one for us Benjamin Franklin / showed oh I love that name Benjamin Franklin be sure doesn't point to general counsel to Romania Bashar was there for five years well he's doing there is rescuing Jews and he's actually taking persecuted Jews into his home as a general counsel and then the story that touches me most of all during Grant's last year as president he's invited to the dedication of a synagogue in Washington DC called Addis Israel it's an Orthodox synagogue which means that the dedication ceremony is all in Hebrew so grant is sitting there with his hat on Shore lon of course doesn't understand a word after an hour and this is a tiny this is such a tiny synagogue it still exists but it would fit onto this stage so talking about a synagogue might be 4050 people after man sitting there for now when he brought his son he brought the President Pro Tem of the Senate the elders of the congregation go over do granted say mr. president we're so touched that you would come to this synagogue dedication you can leave now without anyone the congregation feeling offended grant said no I'm staying to the end so he stayed three hours for this dedication and at the end he opened his wallet and gave personal donation to the synagogue so when he died in 1885 one of the unread pallbearers was a rabbi Brown and one of the Jewish newspapers in Philadelphia The Daily Record wrote after the funeral that no one has occasion to more and more sincerely the death of General Grant and the Hebrew so he relieved he really changed his his image was more than change of image was real change of heart yeah let's go I guess fairly quickly - of course he does Appomattox famously fairly kind terms you know - Lee into the soldiers the officers could keep their horses and their sidearms and all this quite benevolent in if in effect Lincoln supports that and then tragically Lincoln is assassinated and now you have Johnson and the whole I think one of the most overlooked periods and most overlooked contributions that grant makes is some ways keeping the country together during this ruinous presidency of Johnson yeah well so what happens you know because most people know very little about that four years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of his presidency but during that four year period the South is placed under military rule the Radical Republicans divide the south into five military districts grant is still general-in-chief at one point is act acting Secretary of War so all five of those commanders are reporting to grant and I find it so fascinating to read that correspondence because during that period a civil rights movement took place in the south but I find that people know little or nothing about I'll never forget reading an 1867 letter for Sheridan was a district commander for Louisiana and Texas 1867 Sheridan writes this astonishing letter to Grand where he says dear general we desegregated public streetcars in New Orleans this week and he proceeds to tell the following story he said that they were whites only in blacks only streetcars and he said that the blacks former slaves now full-fledged citizens black citizens began to pile on to the white only streetcars in protest the streetcar companies then turned around and appealed to Sheridan you know what should we do and Sheridan said to them unless you integrate the streetcars you won't be able to operate on the streets of New Orleans and so then Sheridan adds this letter to grant saying well we had a little bit of a ruckus but now blacks and whites are riding cheerfully side-by-side on streetcars in New Orleans now think about this a moment folks Rosa Parks this is 90 years ago Rosa Parks they were black people in protest piling on to white only streetcars in the south and we know nothing about these really unsung heroes and grant is kind of overseeing this whole process and also very very touching commit his commanders are reporting that how blacks are embracing education becoming literate so quickly and initially are voting in very high numbers in some you know black districts as high as 80 90 percent which of course petrifies the white South because blacks were a little bit more than a third of the southern population but in South Carolina and Mississippi they were majority of the population so if blacks were going to exercise the right to vote this was going to mean that they would have to share real power with the black community and this of course sets up it's extraordinary tension in the country oh yeah yeah and of course the generals were doing extraordinary things during that time down there yeah I mean I don't know what you'd call it you know it was going on there but there were running states basically yeah yeah they were running states you know some you know willingly some you know yeah unwillingly but we'll were extremely dutiful about this and well kind of very proud and impressed with the rapid gains being made by the african-american community out in the south gains that would alas then be able back sadly yeah how does he come to run for president Ron well you know what happens you know the story in 1868 Andrew Johnson is impeached although he's acquitted by one vote and you know grant is looking better and better actually you know grant was such a firm believer in the military subordination to the civilian even in 1868 there was he was grant was far and away kind of most popular you know and famous American but no one was quite sure of his political affiliation but he had been increasingly sympathetic with Reconstruction reconstruction was you know very much the creation of the Republican Party so the Republican Party so it's sending out emissaries to figure out grants politics and then they find out that he's a Republican and very very sympathetic with reconstruction he really I mean if ever there was an inevitable candidate to say and you were saying go backstage before you know the grant was ambitious he was but it kind of kind of marvelous way of making it seem as if he was sort of being you know carried along by force majeure in some way but he had a way of kind of making himself you know available at these moments and then really kind of wins by so in terms the electoral vote wins by twice by overwhelming yes margins have been even tries a third time in 1880 how by the way it let me start getting speeding some questions in here from the audience what would grant think of today's political climate well you know he lived through a bitterly polarized you know period himself so that was not surprised let me feed another one in is America more divided now than it was during the Civil War well you know people I mean it's been talking it will there be a political realignment we have very very significant divisions in both parties since I've thought about this a lot I don't think that there is a single of a whelming issue the way that slavery was you never slavery kind of you know breaks up the yes League party you know breaks up the Democratic Party you know publican party really emerges from the ashes of you know northern southern you know Whigs dividing I don't think that the level of feeling about the immigration issue or the trade issue which probably be the two issues most associated with President Trump I don't think however strongly people feel about those that those are kind of powerful enough to completely you know redefine the the parties but we shall we shall see see the nice thing is about historian I get to write about events 150 years ago so I sound very kind of you know wise and intelligent says also what would Hamilton think of today what would happen think well you know it was interesting because if I can just refer to that to the show for a moment I think that one of many reasons that the show you know has been so popular is that the show has kind of a split personality it's it's 2x the first act is very inspirational and uplifting it shows what we could do you know when we are unified and we can win a war against the British we can write a constitution we can forge a federal government but the second act also shows that a lot of the partisan malice that so upsets us now actually traces back to the 1790s and I think is very brilliantly dramatized you know by Lynn in the show and so I think it's important in terms of that the first act of the show in terms of inspiring us and and showing what we have been capable of doing in the past manure United but the second act also kind of cautionary tale how poisonous politics and yeah you know I thought the genius of that candidly really with the book was that it comes at a time when Americans have relatively unformed opinion of Hamilton I mean not a household name not one and I think the book and then obviously the success of the play helps America develop an opinion of him that is fairly informed I think positive but with a recognition that he mean it's Frank cuz when I started writing the book in nineteen eighty yeah one of the reasons I chose it is that Hamilton seemed to be fading into obscurity which seems comic now that his name is up on the marquee on West 46th Street but I had actually when I was doing Grand I had a very similar feeling as when I was yeah by his enemies his record had been trivialized and distorted you know the story of his presidency as I was kind of caricature it is the scandal-ridden administration and there were scandals I talked about them at length in the book but he himself was not personally involved in them he did not condone them he prosecuted them vigorously but I really feel that the central story of his presidency and it was one was tremendously courageous was his question of the Ku Klux Klan yes you know he points a crusading attorney general named Amos Ackerman from Georgia and actually coincidentally the same week that he points acumen the Justice Department was created we'd had an attorney general going back to the days of George Washington the Attorney General didn't have a department so the first great Crusader the Justice Department becomes crushing the Klan and this was at a time when no southern Sheriff would rest a member of the Klan no southern white would testify against member the Klan no southern jury would convict him there were thousands of blacks who were murdered and these blacks these murders went completely on prosecuted grant with Ackerman and then his successor George Williams as Attorney General they bring more than 3,000 indictments getting more than 1000 convictions and the Klan is really crushed the Klan that we know today which alas is still with us the clan arena today was really the resurgence of the Klan from the 19-teens and the 1920s actually crushed it yes at the time you know and for me in terms of you know what he did for the african-american community at that time in terms of the legacy of American history this seems to be much much more important story than these scattered scandals but I think that you know his foes made sure that that scandal-ridden administration label really stuck to it ya know without question you know if you think of grant there's arguably a three-act play there's grant into general you know really accomplished you shouldn't say play with me on the stage no I shouldn't although I want you to know the movie rights the movie rights to grant have already been been sold and so this will not be a musical it'll be the greatest movie in the Civil War and in history really it's there have been no really great once it's gone with the wind obviously elevated the south tad shall we say so but part three is actually grant the writer how does this come about and then how does he then have to have this desperate race against throat care yeah you know it's been last year of his life I mean two things happen number one he's the victim of the Bernie Madoff of his day young financier yes granting his innocence things he's worth a million dollars he wakes up one day and discovers he's worth exactly 80 dollars not only was he completely wiped out his three sons we're completely wiped out with Ferdinand ward and then by an unfortunate coincidence grant is diagnosed with cancer the throne time right around the same time so he is petrified that his wife julia is going to be left destitute when he dies and so he spends the last year of his life often in extraordinary pain writing these memoirs that are considered the greatest military memoirs in American letters but you know what I discovered as I was doing the the book is that Grant had always taken tremendous pride in his writing yes oh yeah he wrote all of his wartime orders and his you know his military staff said that he could - rough like 30 consecutive orders each one very precisely and all in perspective I'm in in space fire off - also grant took tremendous pride in the fact that he wrote all of his own speeches and papers as president it was wasn't like the modern White House where there's kind of a whole speech writing team it was grant writing got all of this so I think that for people who knew grant it was perhaps somewhat less surprising that this literary talent you know was there all along and you know I when I started telling people I was doing the book everyone had wanted to reactions they had to said to me who's buried in Grant's Tomb which was an old I'll tell it you know where that comes from Groucho Marx remember the nineteen fifties had that quiz show you bet your life in which the contestants would come out and graduated mercilessly ridicule them and he began to feel so sorry for the contestants that they couldn't have answer a single question that he decided he was ask everyone a question that everyone would be able to answer and the question was who's buried in Grant's Tomb and to Gracchus astonishment half the contestants got it wrong you know the other half people said to me did Mark Twain go see the memoirs and actually went down to the Library of Congress I knew that he had not but I figured I better have convincing evidence of this now when time's the Library of Congress and they wheeled out the original manuscript in nine beautiful volumes bound and darkly weather and I went through every page of it and up until the very end where he had to dictate to his son and the stenographer was all his handwriting it was just an amazing achievement this is Grant's life he just keeps rising you seem so ordinary and then kind of one amazing attribute FPS out there yeah I was out now he is helped by Twain of course in the marketing aspect of this oh yeah what happened was that Twain and his nephew Charles Webster had set up a publishing company really to publish Huck Finn and Twain's other books Twain finds out that grant under duress because he's been wiped out is going to write his memoirs Twain is a shrewd businessman he was kind of money crazy in a lot of ways and he realized this was going to be the great bestseller of the 19th century so he goes to grant he doubles the royalty offered you know by the other publisher and what he does the the memoirs were sold in two volumes by subscription trained and this I can understand Twain didn't want to have to deal with reviewers you know so if if people were buying it by subscription you don't have to worry about the you know the reviewers and what he did was that he assembled a large sales force a lot of him Civil War veterans you know who endured into a kind of knocking on doors everyone knew the story about Grant's cancer and being wife died financially and had to all these vets you know going door to door saying can you help out the general and subscribe you know they sold 300,000 sets in other words 600,000 yeah books at a time when I think the population of the United States was about 40 million so it's about 330 million now so these would be extraordinary numbers today to sell 600,000 books but the population is about what eight or nine times as large as then so Twain and he brought these very funny instructions to his salesmen give it the old bull run you know try you know he kept exhorting kept resorting them to go out there as if he was you know general and this was sort of a battle you know campaign but he did I actually after grant died Twain handed Julia a check for I think was $450,000 probably about ten million dollars today so Julia instead of being left destitute is grand feared Julia's left a very rich woman and she lived for another 17 years so she really needed the money and so he retrieves again a very very desperate situation fighting against his final foe which of course she ultimately succumbs to yeah you know one thing that Grant did have in common with all the people that I have written about although he starts out in a much less promising fashion he had the capacity to grow and I think that's why he keeps surprising us and he keeps getting better at everything that he he does and I think that he keeps discovering different talents you know one stories a little back grant I was mentioning that period back in the 1850s grant is selling firewood on street corners in st. Louis and you know he's just desperate people run into him you know his beard is ragged and he just looks Iraq and during that period and he has a wife and four children to support during that period julia grant has a dream that Ulysses is become president the United States and when she tells that dream to her friends and family they will laugh at her I mean she seemed pathetic and ridiculous that her husband is desperately just trying to make ends meet and he's gonna be President of the United States but the women saw grants strengths longer fragment kisses his mother and I had the same reaction to him that there was like this quiet searing let's actually end with this story you've told about Julia and in the affection that Grant had for her and how he answered when she declined to have the wandering eye yeah match people who observe them both said the same thing that you know at a party they would sit in the corner you know holding hands like teenagers they never lost that romantic feeling Giuli was you know was not a raving beauty she had us strabismus like a squint I cross eye she was so self-conscious about it later on his first lady she insists that all photos be taken a parent profile to hide the know the cross-eyed but there's a very very touching moment that happens during the Civil War Julia quietly goes to consult a doctor in terms of whether this eye problem can be surgically corrected and he says for you're too old to have the operation when she next sees Ulysses she tells him that she's consulted a doctor about this what the doctor said and a grant is thunderstruck and he said Julia why ever did you go to see a doctor about that and she says to him she called them ulis you said are you less I'm such a plain little wife and you've become such a great general just during the war and grants reaction is so poignant because he turns to her and says didn't I fall in love with these same eyes and I never want you to change them ever interfere with them again I mean no Hollywood screenwriter could have improved response I grant among his other talents you know had pretty good romantic touch [Laughter] Ron this has been a true delight and ladies and gentlemen I hope you understand now why I was so pleased as a huge admirer of Grant when I learned a couple of years ago that Ron chernow who has won so many awards and profiled so many other great figures had chosen Grant as his subject because as I said earlier I think it really will cement his reputation and I hope you also saw just what a delightful interviewee Ron is because I can assure you that this book is every bit as delightful thank you so much thank you [Applause]

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 153,340

Rating: 4.8024416 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Ron Chernow, Ulysses S. Grant, David H. Petraeus, General Petraeus

Id: _jeNRrNf7Us

Length: 70min 19sec (4219 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 13 2017