Friends at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site near St.

Louis tell me
most visitors arrive with little knowledge of Grantbut leave with deep
appreciation. In my biography of Lincoln, I wrote of Grant the decorated Civil
War general, but I now confess: I did not fully know the man. Grants rise to
fame has always remained something of a mystery. As I dug deeper, I
discovered his intellectual journey was filled with surprises, detours, questions,
and insights. His personality is a palette not unlike the rich colors he learned to
paint with at West Point.
After growing up on the Ohio frontier, young Ulysses was accepted at West
Point, from which he graduated in 1843. He subsequently served with honors in
the Mexican War and then returned to marry Julia Dent, who accompanied him
to his assignments in New York and Michigan over the next several years. Forced
to leave her behind when he was posted to the Oregon Territory and California
between 1852 and 1854, he grew so heartsick that he resigned his commission.
And for the next seven years he struggled to make a living for himself, his wife,
and his four children, mostly on his pro-slavery father-in-laws property outside
St. Louis.
Then came the Civil War, and everything changed. In a story of transformation, Grant moved in the next seven years from clerk at his fathers leather
goods store in Galena, Illinois, to commander of all the Union armies and
president of the United States. His remarkable rise constitutes one of the
greatest stories of American leadership.
Although he was renowned at the time of his death in 1885, it was not long
before Grant began to fall from favor. Historians writing under the influence of
the Southern Lost Cause lifted up Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy in the
War of Northern Aggression. In their retelling, Grant became the butcher who
supposedly countenanced the merciless slaughter of his soldiers to overwhelm
by sheer numbers the courageous Southern army.
When Grant is remembered, he is too often described as a simple man of
action, not of ideas. Pulitzer Prizewinning Grant biographer William S. McFeely
declared, I am convinced that Ulysses Grant had no organic, artistic, or
intellectual specialness. Describing Grants midlife crisis: The only problem
was that until he was nearly forty, no job he liked had come his wayand so he
became a general and president because he could find nothing better to do.
No. I believe Grant was an exceptional person and leader. A popular 1870s
medallion depicted George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant
as the three great leaders of the nation. Lionized as the general who saved the
Union, he was celebrated in his lifetime as the hero of Appomattox, the warrior
who offered magnanimous peace terms to General Robert E. Lee. Elected
president twice, he would be the only such leader of the United States to serve
two consecutive terms between Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson. Even with the
scandals that tainted his second term, he retained enormous popularity with the

American people and probably would have been elected to a third term in 1876
if he had chosen to run. But lets not get ahead of our story.
The nature of Grants greatness is a puzzle with many pieces. Like his
namesake, the Greek hero Ulysses, his contemporaries came to know him as a
tragic hero who had failed again and again before he succeeded. The frontier
boy who did not like to hunt became the great soldier. His friendship with
William Tecumseh Sherman seemed to outsiders like a pairing of opposites. In
his transformation through the Civil War, he combined modesty and
magnanimity. His quiet strength energized the soldiers who served with him. He
could tell a story that often ended with self-deprecating humor. He could be
decisive yet understated, strong but gentle. He possessed the trait he most
admired, what he regularly called moral courage. Although a good judge of
character in the military, he sometimes failed in politics to appreciate the
motives and morals of those he invited into his administration. His capacity for
self-improvement and willingness to confront his mistakes won over leaders
such as Hamilton Fish, his eminent secretary of state. At the end of his life,
Grant wrote one of the finest memoirs in American letters, which modern
presidents invariably refer to when they write their own. In this last piece of the
puzzle, one question must be asked: Accomplishing such a literary feat required
extraordinary gifts; did we miss something along the way?
Grant loved his wife, Julia, his four children, horses, the theater, his Missouri
farm, painting, travel, Mexico, and novels. A maxim declares: Good writers are
invariably good readers. What did Grant read? The breadth of his reading,
beginning with the long list of novelists he read at West Point, hints at a story of
his imaginative depth yet to be told. He was not an eloquent speaker like Lincoln
or a fiery personality like Theodore Roosevelt; his leadership was of a different
kind.
In this biography, I bring into conversation elements of Grant overlooked or
undervalued. Early on I became convinced I could not understand Ulyssess
story without understanding Julias story. Too often discounted or marginalized,
she occupies a larger place in this biography. Others might describe her as plain,
but to Ulysses she was beautiful in ways that countedin her gentleness,
warmth, and joy. Their young love, more than they initially understood, would be
tested by families who vigorously defended opposite sides of the slavery
question. All Ulyssess friends observed his devotion to the woman he called
my dear Julia. She became his anchor in the furor of many storms.