Ulysses S. Grant - Blog Posts

Theodore Roosevelt listed Ulysses S Grant as one of the greatest Americans in history (alongside Washington and Lincoln). This was said in 1900.

Only fifty-so years later, President Dwight Eisenhower would state that Robert E Lee was one of the greatest Americans of all time. 

This post is not an assassination of Lee or his character-- that’s not the point of this. What I am curious about is how this reverence of Grant, who played a key point in keeping our country together and helping African Americans get the right the vote during his Presidency, could then turn so sharply to a reverence of Robert E Lee (a man who, despite his personal disapproval of secession, still fought on behalf of the Confederacy). This strange twisting of reverence is a clear example of the Lost Cause narrative taking root.

We weren’t taught much about Grant’s Presidency during Social Studies/History class. We barely touched on him as a General in the Civil War, except as the man who was called The Butcher and who drank a lot. 

So my question is just how much has this Lost Cause infiltrated our own History books?

Throughout all of my recent research into Ulysses S Grant and William T Sherman, I realized that we were never really taught in school about the Western Theatre of the Civil War; i.e., Grant’s mostly-successful campaigning around the States of Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Missouri. It’s his and others’ victories there that later helped win the Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in two.

But what do we learn about in Social Studies/History? Gettysburg. Fort Sumter. Bull Run/Manassas. Antietam. In other words, the Eastern Theatre of the War. And those battles were dominated by incompetent Union commanders for a large majority of them: McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, McClellan again-- men who were more likely to retreat at the very cusp of victory than jump forward and seize the day. It’s bad enough learning about the Eastern Theatre that I remember saying to my parents that with such incompetent commanders the Union deserved to lose the Civil War.

I understand that History class has only so much time to teach students, and I understand that the Civil War is too big to teach in-depth, but why do we focus so much on McClellan and Lee, Hooker and Lee, Burnside and Lee, Meade and Lee, and brush over such an important part of the War as the Western Theatre? We effectively forget about Grant and Sherman until they’ve entered the Eastern campaign, let alone all of their fellow commanders and soldiers, and their years of fighting to take back and then keep the Mississippi in Union hands.

Just heard a local radio station talking about the president's who came from Ohio. When they got to the part where they talked about Ulysses S Grant, they played the Imperial March from Star Wars.

???

If they were trying to compare Grant with Darth Vader and the Empire, I don't get it.

Edit: now they're playing Stay by Maurice William's after talking about James Garfield's assassination.

Honestly, one of the only things I have to complain about about Spielberg’s Lincoln is minuscule and people will probably roll their eyes but I’m a Civil War nerd, and it BUGS ME:

Ulysses S Grant’s uniform is entirely TOO CLEAN. 

Just look at him. This is a commander who literally came from the battlefield, and all accounts remember him to be wearing a private’s borrowed jacket and splattered with mud. Does anything about that uniform/costume look remotely dirty?

(I mean, kudos to Lee’s clean crisp uniform. Historically he showed up looking like the commander he was, thinking he may become Grant’s prisoner.

Spoiler alert: he wasn’t.)

It’s a small detail, I know, but the more I learn about Grant, the more little missed details like this bothers me. Grant’s untidy, messy appearance showed just what sort of a soldier he truly was, and why he was, ultimately, the general who won the war: he didn’t care about personal appearances or advancements, he was there to get the job done.

That little detail aside, I truly loved Lincoln a lot, Daniel Day-Lewis is absolute PERFECTION playing our titular President, Sally Fields is fantastic as Mary Lincoln, Tommy Lee Jones was brilliant as always, and Jared Harris is my favorite Ulysses S Grant so far depicted in either television or film.

“What General Lee’s feelings were I do not know. As he was a man of much dignity, with an impassible face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result, and was too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, they were entirely concealed from my observation; but my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us.”

– Ulysses S. Grant, As Quoted in Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant