Victor Davis Hanson: A Quintessential General

The New Criterion ^ | November 2004 | Victor Davis Hanson

[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. …

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[CatoRenasci]

Bunting's biographette of Grant should be interesting. I knew Bunting slightly and enjoyed his early novel The Lionheads. He did a pretty good job as Superintendent at VMI, although he had significant detractors towards the end of his tenure.

While I have enjoyed books on Grant before (especially Bruce Catton's Grant Moves South and his Grant Takes Command, nothing compares to Grant's own Personal Memoirs. It is one of the best autobiographical works I've ever read.

[Valin]

"Grant stood my me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other."
William T. Sherman

[bigfootbob]

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[prognostigaator]

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