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I intend to buy Chernow’s bio. To date the best I’ve read is the one by Jean Edward Smith. There’s a major reassessment of Grant going on and deservedly so. That includes his presidential years as well.

Smith agrees with David Herbert Donald, who called Grant the most underrated American in history.

Grant was a master strategist. Before him the Union forces were like a balky mule team, no two pulling together. After he became General of the armies that changed. From that time all armies were to move in concert toward a common center - Lee’s army of Northern Virginia. Grant to Meade: “Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.” In effect, Sherman’s march was attacking Lee’s rear. And never forget that there was a crucial election in 1864. Had Grant failed it was likely that the Democrat candidate McClellan would have won and there would have been a negotiated peace. Sherman’s taking of Atlanta was also crucial.

Being a Southerner I was taught to denigrate Grant. But after extensive reading I reached the inescapable conclusion that Grant is one of the greatest captains in history. Don’t get me wrong, I revere Lee and my ancestors but they were wrong.

And don’t buy into that old canard about Grant being a mere butcher who won because of overwhelming numbers alone. That’s nonsense. Previous Union generals had the same advantage as Grant yet they lost and turned tail. One of the most portentous days in American history was the day Grant turned south after that epic battle in the Wilderness. There was to be no turning back.

Sure he sustained heavy casualties. But that’s to be expected when you’re on offense and attacking entrenched positions. Same for Lee. He suffered tremendous casualties at Malvern Hill, Antietam, and Gettysburg. James M. McPherson:

Even in the fighting from the Wilderness to Petersburg during the Spring of 1863...Grant’s casualties were proportionately no higher than Lee’s even though Grant was fighting on the offensive and Lee’s soldiers stood mainly on the defensive behind elaborate entrenchments. Lee had lost as many men in Pickett’s assault at Gettysburg (and proportionately four times as many) as Grant did in the equally ill-fated June 3 assault at Cold Harbor.”

Again, don’t get me wrong. I honor the memory of Lee and Grant, and I’m not for removing all those statues either. It smacks of generational chauvinism in the words of William Manchester. Peter Capstick was right - “History is the often unpleasant record of the way things actually were, not the way they should have been.” Just so.

Another reason, among so many others, why I revere the memory of U. S. Grant:

“In War: Resolution,
In Defeat: Defiance,
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will.”

Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War

I wonder if Churchill had Lee’s surrender to Grant in mind when he wrote the lines above. For no one could have been more magnanimous to a fallen foe than Grant was to Lee at Appomattox.

Grant wrote the following into the terms of surrender: “This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws where they reside.”

Now strictly speaking, Lee and the rebels were guilty of treason. But Grant’s final sentence quoted above, in the words of biographer Jean Edward Smith, “written on his own initiative, effectively pardoned all who surrendered. It was a general amnesty, which, he hoped would free the country from reprisals and vengeance.” Just so. Smith: “With those words Grant pardoned the Army of Northern Virginia and undercut the vengeance festering in Union circles to hang the Confederate leaders for treason. In the bitter days of reprisal following Lincoln’s assassination it was Grant’s word alone that stood between Lee and the gallows. And if General Lee could not be hanged, no one could be.”

Interesting to note that in May of 1865 a federal grand jury in Norfolk indicted Lee for treason. Concerned, Lee contacted Grant. Grant immediately took the case to President Johnson who insisted that Lee be tried. Grant would have none of it and threatened to resign. Johnson: “When can these men be tried?” Grant: “Never, unless they violate their paroles.” Johnson relented knowing his administration would be helpless without Grant’s support. According to Jean Edward Smith, “On June 20, Attorney General James Speed instructed the United States attorney in Norfolk to drop the proceedings. Grant thereupon wrote Lee, assuring him there would be no prosecution.” *

* Grant to Lee, June 20, 1865, 15 The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant 210-211, John Y. Simon, ed. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967).

This was Grant at his magnanimous best. The man didn’t have a vindictive bone in his body. In this he was precisely like Lincoln. Smith: “Grant hated vindictiveness. He had known humiliation before the war and would not inflict it upon others.” And after Lee left the McLean house following the surrender Grant halted the firing of victory salutes by his army. He simply couldn’t abide what he viewed as a wanton humiliation of Lee and his army.

When Grant died his funeral was a testament to national reconciliation. Smith: “Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, accompanied by former Confederate generals John B. Gordon and Fitzhugh Lee [nephew of Robert E. Lee], led a parade of 60,000 mourners up Broadway to Riverside Park. The New York Times reported a record one and a half million spectators lined the route as veterans of the Stonewall Brigade marched in somber unison with the Grand Army of the Republic. At Grant’s request, the pallbearers included an equal number of Southern and Union generals. Sherman and Sheridan marched alongside Joseph E. Johnston and Simon Bolivar Buckner in a final tribute to their fallen comrade.”