Victor Davis Hanson Ping !
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Posted on 11/06/2004 10:47:30 PM PST by quidnunc
A review of Ulysses S. Grant, by Josiah Bunting III (Times Books, 2004)
What are we to make of Ulysses S. Grant? At thirty-nine he was seen as a wash-out — no job, no money, forced resignation from the U.S. military after occasional drinking binges, nearly destitute with a dependent wife and four children, ex-junior officer, ex-farmer, ex-woodcutter, ex-real-estate agent, and at last, in 1860, a rumpled leather store clerk in Galena, Illinois. Historians would be hard pressed to ascertain whether Grant or Sherman was the greater prewar failure, both meeting nothing but setbacks almost in direct proportion to the degree that they continued to exhibit talent, honesty, and hard work. Yet a little less than three years later by Congressional decree Grant was appointed Lieutenant-General in command of all Union forces. A mere seven years after he left Galena, at age forty-six, Grant became the youngest elected President in the young nation’s history.
If contemporaries were mystified by the sudden ascendancy of this nondescript Midwesterner without either a distinguished academic record or friends in high places, 140 years later historians are still confused in their assessments of how he pulled it off. Drunk, corrupt, butcher, slob — Grant was slurred with these epithets and still more, both now and then.
Charitable critics rejoin that Grant alone defeated Lee and so won the Civil War, tried to help Blacks and Indians, did not really profit from the rampant graft in his midst, and wrote memoirs that impressed the literati by their style and candor. Recent academic biographers are amused by Grant’s clumsy ascendance into the nouveau-riche world of the Gilded Age, and how out of place this lucky bumpkin was amid sophisticated society here and abroad. …
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
"Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do." - General U.S. Grant
Sherman once said that Grant was a better general than he was simply because Sherman always worried about what the enemy was doing while Grant never concerned himself about it.
gotta love VDH. bumping for later, and if there is an official Victor Davis Hanson ping list, I would like to be on it. ;)
By the way, I found out this weekend that VDH is a distant cousin of mine. He was always one of my favorite historians anyway...
Duck. The article says nice things about Sherman. The Southern Calvary will not permit that :)
Contact Tolik (see my reply #1), he maintains the VDH ping list.
Thanx quidie. ;)
Good stuff! Thanks.
I'd recommend Grant's Memoirs as well to any who have not yet read them. They were, as Hanson points out, published by Mark Twain. Upon reading the manuscript Twain quipped - "My only regret is that I did not write them myself." :)
I stopped reading when he compared Grant to Wes Clark.
Excellent post, and as always from VDH, a good read.
Ha! Good genes in your family!
ping
Not quite the proper response, and he referred to him as a "proto-Wesley Clark". I think you're missing the point, and VDH is obviously no friend of Wesley Clark.
I always thought that Grant was the greatest field commander the US Army ever produced and that his campaign to take Vicksburg was the most brillant ever waged by a US general.
Thanks again.
VDH is my favorite history writer, and his book "Carnage and Culture" is a must read on the triumph of democratic nations in warfare.
Ping.
Let me know if you want in or out
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