American History Hit - President Ulysses S. Grant: The Myth of the Butcher

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

How does a heroic general of the Civil War become one of the lowest rated Presidents (at least until recently)?To discuss Grant's commitment to reconstruction, civil rights, and the crushing of the Ku Klux Klan, Don is joined by Professor Anne Marshall. Anne is a historian of the Nineteenth century U.S. South and the Civil War in historical memory at Mississippi State University.Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. In July 1885, in full knowledge, he was dying of throat cancer. Ulysses S. Grant made his final stand, sitting on a porch on a rural mountaintop in upstate New York,

finalizing his memoirs, reflecting on a life like no other. He wrote of military exploits in the Mexican-American War and detailed battle strategies against forces in the Confederate South. Grant had been victorious as a Civil War general, but as president, he struggled. to make the victory count and heal the fractured spirit of his nation. As he worked doggedly through these last days of his life, editing his manuscript, Lost Cause mythology was well on its way to reframing the nature and purpose of the war, portraying Grant as a brute, a butcher of men in a relentless campaign of union conquest. It was for this, and for his family's health and good fortunes,

that Grant now soldiered on with pencil and paper. I would not have the anniversaries of our victories celebrated, he wrote, nor those of our defeats made fast days and spent in humiliation and prayer. But I would like to see truthful history written. Such history will do full credit to the courage, endurance, and soldierly ability of the American citizen, no matter what section of the country he hailed from, or in what ranks he fought. A truthful history was Grant's dying wish. It is a truth we still seek today.

Hello, we're glad you're with us. I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit. And today we move ever onward in our presidential series, which means number 18, Ulysses S. Grant. Grant follows Andrew Johnson's impeached one-term presidency and will be succeeded by Rutherford B. Hayes, whereupon America's Gilded Age is underway. For now, during Grant's two-term presidency,

1869 to 1877, we are deep in the midst. of the Reconstruction era. Grant was elected president, of course, based on his heroic service as a victorious general in the Civil War, which we cover in another episode, find it on the slate. Today's episode is President Grant, an eight-year journey from day to night, apples to oranges, first term glowing in its profound and historic progress, constitutional amendments 14 and 15, a pitched battle against the forces of racism and injustice across the south, the founding of the Department of Justice. But his second term, well, that's a different tale of misplaced trust and lackluster leadership.

A good man dragged down into the morass of the corruption and greed of others around him. The last few years, there's been a more upbeat look at Grant, a general reassessment, if you will. And we'll do our part today in the company of Anne Marshall of Mississippi State University's Department of History, no less than the executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association and the U.S. Grant Association. Presidential Library. Welcome to the pod, Professor Ann Marshall. Thank you for having me. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant in the Deep South, times are changing. Yes, that's true. We were lucky enough to have the papers of grants moved down here in 2009 from where they'd been in Southern Illinois University, and they were collected there as part of the Papers of Ulysses S. Grant

Project. And then in 2012, we became the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library. And it is a little strange, given that, as I say, Grant fought two wars in Mississippi. He fought the Civil War, and then he fought the war against the Klan and the White League and other white supremacist organizations and reconstruction. But it is a great place we are finding to tell Grant's story. Yeah. And even more fitting as such, I would think, yeah. That's very interesting. Before we get into his presidency, some context. And how bad and violent were things in those Southern States before Grant becomes president? Sure. Well, the short answer is very bad and very violent. You had Southern states that had implemented what were known as Black Codes, which

essentially stripped away a right of laboring for whom you wanted to, the right to own arms, really tried to control people's movements and their ability to work and ability to live. And then you had the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which basically was a paramilitary organization, all of these things combining to threaten newly emancipated African Americans. And so, yeah, the conditions were really terrible. Yeah. I mean, there's the Ku Klux Klan, but then there's also the police. There's the lynchings, of course. All of this is kind of a free for all. Yes. Empowered by the Black codes that Grant actually witnesses on the tour himself through the South. Yes. You have these white Southerners.

who are resisting at every turn any kind of financial independence, any kind of political action that African Americans are initiating. And they're pushing back with just a violent force that oftentimes leads to bloodshed in various places and places like New Orleans and places like Memphis. There are massacres that are occurring. Yes. And this is a hotbed of violent retribution that has happened. as a result of this surrender, essentially. The southern states are basically saying, fine, we lost the war, but this is still our territory and we're going to do what we want to do.

It's going to take the emergence of a federal government that steps in for the first time in American history to sort of straighten things out for the states and Grant's going to be at the front of that charge. Yes, especially, you know, during Johnson's administration, as he is the general and chief of the army, he is the person that oversees the military construction that begins. in 1867, which establishes five military districts across the former Confederacy and puts the federal military in those states. And he's really in charge of all of that and in charge of this response, which is quite an un-American thing, actually, if we think about the use of federal force during

peacetime in the military is something that early Americans would have seen as something completely un-Republican, you know, something to be avoided. So everything that's going to which is the amendments, 14th and 15, all kinds of these manipulations of the federal government are all in response to the fact that, you know, Grant has been in charge so far on enforcing all of this stuff. It's kind of like the second act of his generalship, isn't it? Yes, that's exactly right. He wins the war, but he has to win the peace as well. You know, he wants there to be peace, but when there isn't, he finds himself having to go to war again, so to speak. At this point, is he thinking of becoming the president? I mean, is he being

courted as the solution to the problem? Well, yes. I mean, I think he is because he is, of course, the sort of hero of this union victory. And given the sort of internal dissent in the United States and, you know, of course, Andrew Johnson as being, well, it was never really a Republican. And of course, that's why, yeah, why he becomes Lincoln's vice president. And, you know, he turns out to just be sort of the antithesis of everything that congressional Republicans want. And so I think they see Grant as this kind of unifying figure because the Republicans, of course, are composed of different multiple factions who don't agree amongst themselves. And so Grant is this kind of man that is sort of a middle of the road kind of guy. Grant is not particularly ambitious to be president, however. And so it's

kind of interesting that this duty, you know, is sort of, he's increasingly realizing he's probably going to have to sort of fulfill this role and become a presidential candidate because as he's going through Johnson's presidency and he's serving as the general and chief, he's seeing firsthand the way that Johnson is really kind of betraying all of the war aims of the union. So I think he becomes convinced that he's going to have to step into this role. It's really, a very interesting parallel between Dwight Eisenhower, isn't it? Because Eisenhower is the same situation in terms of America's relationship to the world, to Europe. Grant has this same situation with the South. He's a military man brought in to fix the problem that is political, really.

Yes, yes. I think that's very true. And, you know, I guess this will figure out as we're going along here, it becomes clear, you know, in the following years, how difficult and perhaps impossible that that's going to be. Yeah. He faces two major challenges in this regard. are southern hatred towards the north and racism, of course, towards black Americans, both in the north and the south. Let's always remember that. And Americans are exhausted, as much by the aftermath of the war as they were about fighting it. Grant is seen as the answer. You won the war now win the peace. He spent the Johnson years as a supporter at first. It's important to remember. He's even a member of Johnson's cabinet ever so briefly, the replacement for the fired Secretary of War,

Edwin Stanton, what gets Johnson impeached. Grant quickly evacuates that situation for whatever reason. He just a very uncomfortable circumstance. He was put in there. What is Grant's general outlook on reconstruction? Is he a radical Republican? That's a great question. No, he's not a radical Republican in the sense of if we were going to just make a list of radical Republican, but he does agree with radical Republicans on certain standards by which he is going to, you know, require these southern states to adhere. And essentially, those just kind of follow and step with the reconstruction amendments, 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which, of course, takes support beyond the radical Republicans to pass those anyway. And so he's kind of this middle of the road guy,

But he is very dedicated to African-American rights, which I think is actually fascinating because when Grant begins the Civil War, you know, he is like most people who don a blue uniform and fight for the Union. He's really dedicated to saving the Union, not really to ending slavery. In fact, he'd been a slave owner. And so he really kind of transforms and evolves across the Civil War so that by the time he's the general and chief under Johnson and he sees Johnson just frittering away this sort of fruits of union victory. His resolve sort of builds so that by the time he becomes president, he's just really committed to doing whatever he needs to do to, you know, pass these amendments and then also later to enforce them. But he really isn't concerned with social equality. He's not

one of these people that he absolutely believes that African Americans can become educated and become productive citizens, and he wants to encourage that. But, you know, he's not particularly radical in his outlook. Yeah, but as you say, that changes a lot. I mean, it's really important to understand a brief review here. Johnson's changes or his stance was really about the presidential reconstruction period. He wanted to get everything done before the Congress came back in the later part of 1865. Then the Congress comes into session and we get into congressional reconstruction.

It's the congressional reconstruction that's really the platform or the basis of what Grant steps into or steps on to as president later on. All of that has been going on in the years before that. There's a fascinating episode, Johnson's Swing Around the Circle tour back in 1866. He's trying to get the election of 1866, which is a congressional election on his side. He wants to win the votes that can get all of his enactments made into law. It, in fact, goes terribly wrong for him. it's a bad tour, he loses the election. But also, interestingly, to our discussion, Grant watches Johnson and he sees, you know,

how not to be a president in this country. Yes, and he, you know, Johnson kind of drags him around this on this trip, you know, as to sort of be his, you know, kind of mascot, if you will, because Johnson's so unpopular. And Grant, as a military man, is very into chain of command. And he is very careful as much as he disagree. with Johnson to do it in private. But in our library, we have these letters that Grant has written to Julia that just betrays his disgust privately with the way that Johnson is acting and this kind of charade,

you know, that he's kind of constructed. Yeah. The Chicago Republican Convention 1868 has a theme. Equal, civil, and political rights to all. Strong support for African American enfranchisement. Democrats, of course, are all opposed to this. They want to return to their new normal, which is white power control and suppression of black votes. Grant is nominated and believes if anyone can enact these sweeping measure, it's going to be him.

He feels this calling, doesn't he, by the time he is finally nominated. Yeah, he does, actually. And I think part of this, again, is not out of this innate political ambition or a sense of, you know, megalomania. But it's because he has, you know, as he served as general in chief under Johnson, he has been in charge. of the military reconstruction, which started in 1867. So he's sort of overseen that. So on a very logistical level, he realizes that he kind of is the right man for this particular job.

But it is interesting because he hears of the news that he's, you know, has been elected in Galena, Illinois, and he goes home to his wife and says, well, I guess I'm elected. You know, it's not the sort of, you know, yay, let's move to the White House. But he wins by a landslide. He had 46. He's the youngest U.S. president at the time. He becomes a liberal's dream, really, today's definition of liberal. Supports those amendments, 14 to 50. Let's go over those amendments real quick. And just so people can remember, 13, of course, abolishes slavery. 14th is about, I'll let you go through it. Sure. 14th, confer citizenship, basic citizenship. And then the 15th, which is passed during grand. Grand's presidency, ratified in 1870, of course, is the right to vote for men, not for women. Yeah, no, of course. But women's suffrage actually does come into Grant's presidency as a spice there, you know,

and he is generally supportive of women's suffrage. He's going to oppose religion in schools, separation, church, and state, 1875, that comes later. He writes his own wrong on restrictions against Jewish people, which I was surprised came up in my reading, which was a big deal in the 19th century right into the 20th. I would define him as a radical Republican. I don't know if he officially became that way, but he's civil rights all the way. And the 15th Amendment becomes the ticket back into the union for Southern States. That's the leverage that he uses. Mississippi, Virginia, Texas, Georgia, all have to comply and are eventually welcomed back into the union by 187071. The union is completely restored under U.S. Grant with, for the first time in history, big headline, black American males serving in the U.S. Congress. all from southern states. It is an amazing transformation in this first term, isn't it? Yes, it really is.

It's amazing. I think it's the election of 1870 where you have like six African Americans elected to Congress. Four of them had previously been enslaved. And so, yeah, it is a sea change. And I'm not very, I mean, people 10 years ago could not have imagined that. And so, you know, which of course is what brings about those, you know, terrible backlash. Not to get ahead of the story, but, you know, it's, yeah, these amazing progress. And I do think we oftentimes forget about that because we know reconstruction comes to an end.

It turns out badly. But it's these people elected to Congress. But I think even more importantly, for the everyday lives of African American citizens in the South, it's people elected to lower offices, county clerks, sheriffs. These are the people that are going to be ensuring that you are safe to walk in the streets, you're safe to cast your vote, to make sure that you actually. actually, your everyday life is, you know, is you're really, you're feeling the freedom that you've been granted in emancipation. Yeah. The reassessment that I mentioned earlier, that is what's going on, is this sort of deliberate kind of parsing of the two terms.

And more broadly, discussing reconstruction as a success that then failed. That's kind of how, you know, however things have gone over the last century and more, there's been a general wash on reconstruct. as just a complete failure. But in fact, there was a period when it really was working out pretty well and the nation was rebuilding in a new and creative fashion. And Grant was at the helm of that. And it went on for a long time. Yes. And I think it's safe to say that if there had been anyone else in that, you know, executive mansion other than Grant, it probably wouldn't have gone on too long. And historians would try to be very careful to make sure that we both acknowledge Grant's shortcomings and also, attribute the success to the bravery and the work of the people who are actually on the ground in those southern states risking their lives to do this. But I do think that because the federal

government had to play such an outsized role in the reconstruction, that if there'd been anyone else at the helm other than Grant, it wouldn't have lasted as long as it did. Sure. And this is indeed a preview of what happens in the 50s, 1950s, you know, how the federal government suddenly has to move forward and enforce these things, you know, in this case, almost 100 years later, it's really amazing how this resonates through. Yes, yes. There's the Enforcement Acts of 1870. Let's discuss the creation of the Department of Justice and the then crushing of the Ku Klux

Klan. How does this work in his first term? Very decisive action. Yes. So they create a Department of Justice, which of course we hear about on a daily basis in our own world today. In 1870, Congress creates this for several reasons. But the biggest reason is really ensuring compliance with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.

And it basically sets up a legal system whereby the federal government can essentially offer aid to state governments and local governments in these southern states to make sure that justice is carried out. Because, of course, this is on the local level, you know, where these kinds of lawsuits are being where you're trying to punish people who are. in violation of these amendments, if you have local juries or the jurors are being, you know, intimidated and witnesses will not come forth because they're being intimidated. It's just not a place where justice will be carried out. And so the Department of Justice is in part created to oversee this and to make sure these amendments are not violated. Right. Is this an outgrowth of those acts that created the militaries, the martial law that was ongoing? Was that, are we still in that phase? Well, yes. So there's still military reconstruction to a point, but the martial law has been,

it's going to sort of go on a more as needed basis after the states are readmitted because, you know, the hope is that this won't be needed. But troops are not really ever completely removed. They're just diminished in number. And the idea is that they're not going to be the element that is going to be sort of overseeing the implementation of laws. But of course, that's, unfortunately, they have to bring the U.S. military back into force. Sure. But the Ku Klux-Klan, which was never a terribly well-organized organization, it was a whole bunch of franchises, basically, is pretty well crushed by this action. However, it's important to realize that all of that goes elsewhere. There's all kinds of other organizations, the red shirts and White League and all these groups. It kind of,

And it's just they sort of run to other affiliations. Yes, yes. And I think, and that, again, is a grant, you know, passing these enforcement acts. He and Congress pass a series of three enforcement acts in 1870 and 1871 that are basically to do these things to basically make sure that people can vote, that federal judges can appoint local election officials to watch over elections to make sure that they're fair. And then the last act is actually the most important, I think, to crushing the clan, which created criminal penalties for individuals who interrupted the right to vote, which is huge because now all of a sudden the federal government can punish individual crimes, which is, you know, this is big. And it also suspends the writ of habeas corpus, which is very controversial.

But, of course, they had to because they couldn't get people to testify. They knew they'd be killed, you know, if they were. and then also this right to declare martial law. So it, yeah. It's really such the beginning of everything we hear about later on as why, you know, eventually civil rights movement happens in the 20th century because, as we'll discuss in later episodes, what takes place after Grant's presidency begins this undoing of everything that's happening under his presidency. It's all very, very deliberate and very clear. There was even, I didn't realize the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as a opposed to the one in 1866.

You know, under Grant's presidency, this is returned to. He's not the author of this, but it's definitely part of the culture of his administration, that they really, I mean, this actually said people can eat together. There is not going to be segregation. It was really in the language. Yes. That's how directly they were responding to this kind of violence and this injustice. Yes.

And, you know, and by that time, I mean, the act of 1875 is kind of this last-ditch effort because is reconstruction, you know, while it will still technically go on for another couple of years, there's peak resistance and not just amongst southern whites, but amongst northern whites by 1875. And so it's just kind of this last, you know, ditch effort to propose major legislation. It's sort of amazing, I think, for scholars of reconstruction. And one of the reasons an exciting time to study, but also really complicated, is because there are so much legislation in such a different period of time. The story on the ground we can make generalizations about,

but it's different in each state. And so, you know, thinking about the kinds of legislation that's passed and, you know, in a sort of compressed amount of time. But, you know, even within another couple of years, the mood in which that legislation has passed can be wildly different. Yeah. But I have to tell you, prepping for this interview, and we sort of did a two-part thing,

so it gave me a few more days on this. It was very exciting. And I really want to try to transmit this excitement to the audience because I am one of those who sat back on my heels for a lifetime and thought of, oh, poor General Grant, you know, ended up in the, no, it's an incredibly energized, really important, very definite, extremely led. What's unusual about his presidency is he works so closely with Congress. Of course, he has Congress on his side, which is always nice. but he is really guided by these congressional Republicans, and it's a very unified approach to how to handle this new time in America, how we're going to come out of this period.

And that's what's so unusual. Things, of course, change because of elections, and we end up in the second term, which is another part of this discussion. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. I mentioned earlier his two terms are night and day, I described it. Really, that begins halfway through the first. It comes down to his list. limited skills at this level of governance. He's never really worked this way before. The first part,

he's really led by everybody. But once those are settled matters, the attention turns to the economy, of course, you know. Always about the economy in this country. Always is, yes. And it doesn't go well. Let's just touch on this. It's complicated stuff about gold and, you know, all kinds of economic matters. But he mishandles this. Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting. He comes into office at a really complicated time, not just because of reconstruction, but because during the Civil War, the government has just expanded, I mean, incredibly. I mean, and now the federal government is involved in all kinds of things. You know, they passed the Homestead Act in giving away Western Land. They passed the Moral Land Grant Act. So now all of a sudden, they're created colleges for the

first time, you know, railroads, right, the Transcontinental Railroads. So with the government becoming involved in the economy booming, it looks much more like, you know, the kind of relationship we see with our government and the economy today, then, you know, people in early America would not have recognized that, and they probably would have been really ambivalent about it. But because of that, you get all kinds of opportunity for, of course, your typical boom and bus cycles of the economy are amplified. You also get lots of opportunity for corruption because this becomes the gilded age. And so, you know, I think Grant's presidency is marked by all of this, right? There's the recession of 1873 because of all of this speculation and overspending on railroads. And Grant is

considered a hard money man. One of the hallmarks of his presidency is repaying all these loans that the government has taken out during the Civil War. He wants to do it in gold, which makes, you know, some financial conservatives happy. But if you're, you know, a farmer out in the Western or Midwest, and you're trying to borrow many, it makes it harder. So, and then, of course, you know, with the, you know, there's all kinds of scandals that happen in Grant's presidency that really, I think until recently, have actually characterized his presidency, mischaracterized. I would say, you know, it's not that they didn't happen. But Grant really wasn't part of the wrongdoing, but he was perhaps a little naive there. Yes.

There's two forces, as I can tell, going on at the same time. Number one, you're right. He is kind of new at this business. And he's a military leader. Therefore, he trusts the officers below him by nature. And so the officers in this case are congressional leaders and cabinet members. And then business leaders as well. Business booming, as you say, these are becoming very important people in the society, the Jay Goulds, the big Andrew Carter.

All these people have become major stars on the American landscape. So he's kind of guilty, I guess, would be the thing of giving too much power over to those who around him. But that's mostly a condition of his own lack of political education himself, right? That's kind of the story. Yes. And some people kind of, you know, armchair psychologists and say that he, because he had not been a professionally successful before the Civil War, he was always pretty bad with money,

that he somehow looked up to people who, were good with money and kind of instilled more trust in them than he he should have. So, you know, that's one writing of it. But then I also do think, you know, in certain cases, you know, there is this, like you said, it's this loyalty that he builds up with the people. And he does tend to surround himself. And this is one of the criticisms people at the time made. He tends to surround himself with people that he knows that are not, it's not that they're completely unqualified, but he'd rather rely on someone he knows is going to be loyal. So, for example, Orville Babcock, who was his aid during the Civil War, serves as his secretary during the presidency, and he becomes embroiled in the so-called

whiskey ring. And I think this is the greatest example of Grant. Really, even when there's this mounting evidence brought to Grant by his solicitor general that, you know, Babcock is implicated in this, Grant just refuses to believe it. But then there's a little part of Grant that thinks also, you know, that these attacks are becoming personal. So a little bit of that Grant stubbornness, you know, the same quality that prevented him from retreating ever in the Civil War, right? Also kind of works against him. It works as a liability sometimes as president. The culture is changing. This is the emergence of a big media. These magazines, everything that's happening in the American media landscape is taking its toll. on all sorts of politicians and everything, for that matter, you're going to end up with yellow journalism a few decades later. This is all starting to happen underground. And they really feed on what you're talking about, the nepotism that he's given a lot of jobs to people he knows and even family members and so forth. Also, the political situation in America is always changing,

as we so well know. Those congressional Republicans who are supporting him suddenly sort of begin to turn against him and vice versa, he's against them, over issues like the annexation annexation of Santa Domingo, which is the Dominican Republican today, Grant wants to grab that as a state. And Charles Sumner of all people is viciously opposed to this. And they go head to head on this stuff. So he loses his, in his second term, he loses his stalwart support of the Congress. And everyone sort of begins to turn against him. Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, some of that is happening before. I mean, so when he runs in 1872, the party he's running against. against us a Republican is the liberal Republican Party. So it's not even, you know, the Democratic

Party. It's these breakaway so-called liberal Republicans and, of course, not liberal in our terms today, but they use that term in a sort of, to evoke a sort of classical liberalism. But these are the people who are against Grant for several reasons, some of which is this, this involvement with the government in, and promoting big business. Some of it is the overreach, because the big criticism and a big line of unification for people in the North and the South who are against grants reconstruction actions is that it is federal overreach, right? They want to see states have sovereignty, essentially, right, and be in control of their own. And so people, you know, kind of coalesce around these values of financial issues, anti-reconstruction. And you're right, it's a lot of, it's, you know, people who would identify as Democrats and indeed the Democrats do.

join the liberal Republicans in 1872. But it's a lot of these people who had been anti-slavery before the war and, you know, pro-reconstruction at the beginning. And this all shifts. So, yeah, the landscape really is evolving. And that definitely makes things complicated for Grant. I want to really make the point strongly. You find a lot of the 20th century presidency begins in Grant's term. And that's why it's so important to realize. Had he been more capable of taking it to the American people. Had he had that, you know, mechanism, which we now expect so much of presidents, he could have jumped over the Congress and talked to the people, but instead that doesn't really exist at this point. That comes later on. But he's the shifting sands of federal politics and the

congressional, you know, elections and so forth really works against him and he loses that dependable support. Yes. Yeah, I think that's very true. And really it's, I mean, it's fascinating. And we even look at the way that he retreats from reconstruction. And by that, I mean, not by values, but by basically ceasing to send the federal military in to oversee these elections, you know, when he does that in Mississippi in 1875, which is sort of a nail in the coffin moment. And part of the reason he does that is because a congressional delegation from Ohio says, if you send troops into Mississippi, we're going to lose our election two months from now. And so it's really

interesting the way that all of these, and I mean, tragic, but, you know, the way that all of these kind of political currents are emmeshed with these reconstruction politics. Yeah, yeah. You could really make a study of that, you know, in terms of looking American history through the congressional election lens, the down ballot stuff and everything and how that really affects the big headline stuff. Speaking of headlines, the myth of the lost cause begins to become a real thing under Grant. How does that affect his presidency? Yeah, well, that's a great question. So, you know, the myth of the lost cause, of course, is, you know, this idea about why the South fought the Civil War

and how they fought it on a very basic level that it was an honorable fight. they would have won had they had enough men and enough supplies. They would have managed to beat. Lee would have managed to beat Grant, right? But it's also about the civilization that they're defending, right? That slavery really wasn't all that bad. And then, you know, go through the Civil War and after. But reconstruction was terrible, according to this myth, right?

It was, as one old historian called it 100 years ago, we called it the tragic era, not because, you know, it didn't work, but because, you know, these white Southerners were basically victimized all over again by the federal government. So all of this kind of feeds into this idea about Grant on two fronts. One is the way that he's constantly compared to Lee, according to the lost cause myth and found wanting, you know, that he was this bloody butcher that only managed to win the war because he had so many more troops, which he supposedly threw at Lee indiscriminately. But then after the war, you know, he's this guy that's in charge of reconstruction. And it's kind of interesting because, you know, he was this magnanimous general. I mean, at Appomattox, he offers these very generous terms of surrender to Lee. Southerners are thankful.

But then, you know, after reconstruction, right, and his tenaciousness with overseeing that. So he really becomes this enemy. And so, yeah, this lost cause interpretation because Americans bought into all of this. I mean, we can see this with, of course, birth of a nation. We can see it with gone with the wind. I mean, for decades, you have the entire United States at one level or another kind of buying into this narrative of the lost cause. And so that really informs the way that people see Grant.

It's a convenient form of storytelling. It's a way of moving forward that allows the white majority to sort of get, you know, if they weren't trying to see things, the same. way. They could be lazy in seeing things this way. And it played into the good, let's move on kind of mentality that's always a part of American thinking, really. The culture is always that's way. And is it the tail that wags the dog? You never know. Politics moves on so fast, too, that it sort of plays into that as well. And that's all, you know, informing Grant's presidency in terms of this cause. When does the lost cause really begin? Is that a very definite thing? Or do you look back in

sort of a murky marshland there? Yeah. So, well, it comes from, the phrase itself comes from a book written by a South Carolinian named Edward Pollard. And he writes this book, I think it's in 1866, 1867. So that phrase really originates right after the war. But then it kind of grows, expands, and to, you know, kind of encompass a whole culture, a whole narrative and a culture that grows, especially during the day.

Jim Crow era, which overlaps with, you know, the organizations like United Daughters of the Confederacy that erect all of these Confederate monuments all over the place. But really, we can find it in, you know, literature and in film. And so it is this kind of snowballing effect that really, I'd say, you know, the height of the lost cause is really probably the early 20th century. Sure. But it takes that long. I mean, we're talking about generations of Americans, of course. This is all about people getting older and all that sort of thing. It takes that many generations for this to really stick so that you can have gone with the wind, you know, winning Academy Awards, which is basically the pinnacle of a lost cause as far as, you know, I'm concerned.

But prior to that, and it really starts in Grant's era, you can't really have a lost cause mythology without tearing down Ulysses S. Grant, can you? I mean, and that becomes a real cause, doesn't it? That's part of it. Yeah, it really does. order to, you know, make Lee look great, you have to make his antithesis look worse. And he becomes this sort of enemy of the South. A butcher. He's the butcher of men. He's the relentless, you know, feeding these guys to the mill. But I grew up with that. You know, I was a young kid in the 60s. I thought of General Grant that way. So that means that really was effective. And that really

did color the way we look at his presidency, which was a propaganda. I mean, he had his faults. He was a not as skilled a politician as he could have been. But in general, so much of the way we see Grant has a lot more to do with the lost cause mythology, the effectiveness of that campaign. Yeah. I think that's absolutely true. And I mean, you know, this even, you know, mass media, but also textbooks, you know. I mean, kids were reading textbooks that were claiming that slavery wasn't the cause of the Civil War and maybe it not all that bad. And Grant was a okay. general, but a terrible president. And, you know, so it's all kind of wrapped in together. Exactly. You know, becomes very mainstream. It is not a fringe view. Bingo. It's exactly the right word for it. It becomes mainstream. It becomes the accepted narrative. And I, if listeners take one thing away from this podcast, it is when you're tempted to think of the incompetency of Grant as

president, stop yourself. Think of what happened during that course of time. And the deliberate storytelling that was enacted against him. Speaking of storytelling, this man, I mean, honestly, I didn't know about this until later in life as well. And he becomes a true hero in my mind when we get into his memoirs. The way he ends his life, and I'm jumping way forward in time, there's a lot that happens. After his presidency, he tries to find himself in business, which doesn't go well. Let's talk about that first before we get to the memoirs. Yeah, sure. So just very quickly, after his presidency, he goes on this two-year-long world tour, which was kind of an unheard of thing. Presidents didn't actually really travel back then were ex-presidents either. So then he comes back in 79, 1879, and he settles in New York.

And Grant just still never had any money, we should say. He didn't have a retirement. He gave up his military retirement for when he became president. And so he never really got over financially not having any money before the Civil War. And so he moves to New York, lives in a house that a grateful American citizen has purchased for him. And then he and his son got involved with a financier named Ferdinand Ward. Grant became a partner in his investment enterprise and pretty much invested all of his money into it. And he did okay for a few years. But in May of 1844, he found out that the firm had failed and that basically had been what we would think of as a Ponzi scheme today. It was a, you know, sort of a 19th century Ponzi scheme. And so all of his money was gone. He was, you know, was pretty much destitute except for

the house, so much so that William Vanderbilt lent him $150,000. And so Grant basically had that and kept his house. And then he finds out just a few months later that he has throat cancer, which we're pretty sure he probably developed because of that cigar smoking habit that he started back in the Civil War. Yeah. The man smoked 50 cigars a day. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. And so, you know, by the time of his diagnosis, it was quite advanced. And so he began a very rapid, well, relatively rapid decline. And so this is when he'd been intending to write his memoirs for quite some time. but there's this new urgency to do so because he needs the money, not for himself, but because he's terrified to leave his wife, Julia, destitute, and it went, you know, if he should die. And so with the help of Mark Twain, with whom he had forged a friendship in past years, Twain offers him this a lucrative contract with his own publishing company.

And so Grant begins to write these two volumes. of memoirs. And, you know, today they're considered to be the best firsthand military account of a civil war. I want to pause you there and just talk about this for a moment. Mark Twain, the publishing deal was for royalties of 70% of sales. I mean, that's off the charts. You know, that's probably unrepeated in time, I would imagine. It's really a nod to grants historical importance. They want him to do well. He'd been writing for a while. He's been doing magazine articles and scribbner's and places like that. He knows how to use a pen. He's remarkably good. But you'd never see what was coming, would you? No. And I mean, I think it's interesting because he was not an eloquent speaker.

I mean, his presidential addresses are often criticized for being, you know, sometimes they're too long. They're not filled with, you know, the kind of uplifting, inspiring pros of, say, like Lincoln, for example. And so he was kind have known for actually not being a particularly gifted with the words. Just he was this, you know, part of his persona was that he was just this kind of plain spoken man. And so people were quite surprised when he did start writing these accounts that this kind of fulksy, you know, demeanor, this sort of straightforward demeanor did kind of result in this very interesting reading, right?

And that he was a great storyteller. And so, yeah. Well, he's very good with prose, I have to say, you know, I had never read these things until a few years ago. And I was really pleased to sort of, it's very accessible. Military history is so hard to read, you know, all the strategies and how, oh, my God, it's like from the inside out all the time. Actually, Grant does a very good job of describing the movements of armies and so forth. And tellingly, this is a memoir that's all about his generalship. There's nothing about the presidency in this at all.

Yes. And you wonder, I mean, he did finish. the memoirs only three days before he passed away. Right. So you wonder if he would have gone on if he could have, you know, but maybe this was what he wanted to leave us with, right? Right? I think he wanted to go out on a high and he knew what was going to make the money. Let's describe this scene.

I mean, it's really quite touching what happens. There's a sort of myth about this that he goes to the mountains and writes these things. He'd written a lot of them before. And what happens in the Adirondex or I guess north of Saratoga Springs on Mount McGregor is there's a place that has a sort of hotel and then a cottage. And he's allowed to stay. His family has given this place for about six weeks or something like that, at five or six weeks. And that's where he really does the proof reading of the galleys, I guess you'd call them, of the book that he's going to do. And that's what he finishes three days before he dies.

But the scene is so amazing. And you can see photographs of this dying man on the porch with the blanket around his shoulders and the knit cap. Yes, he's got a, you know, Shaw sort of swathed around his neck and he's in terrible pain. I mean, it's pretty amazing to me as someone who also writes books that, you know, he's able to do all this writing. He was given, his doctors gave him opium and cocaine, right, for the pain. And so he was always kind of trying to balance his level of pain control with his level of lucidity needed to write these memoirs. Well, all great writers depend on great editors. And he had Mark Twain for good the sakes, you know. He did. Yes. And also his son, his daughter-in-law helped. I mean, he had a number of

people who helped. And some of this leads to, you know, has led to people saying, you know, that it's not possible that Grant wrote this. But, you know, it really is, you know, they thought, oh, maybe Mark Twain ghost wrote this. But that's, there's no, you know, veracity to that. And it really is his. Yeah, that's actually argued against it. You know, I was curious about that. And through his letters and so forth, you can see the man is a skilled penman. He's very good at what he does. The book does so well that when it's released, it is a huge bestseller, nets his wife, $450,000 in royalties. Thanks to, thank you, Mark Twain, which in today's money is something like $15 million. It's like he makes her a mega millionaire.

Yes. Out of this one book. It's extraordinary. But that speaks to the residual fondness for Grant, even after the questionable second term of his presidency, after all the humiliating, of what it went on in New York. I mean, he's a big star, of course. But there was a genuine love for the man as proven by these sales, but then also by the tomb that they build for this. The largest presidential mausoleum to this day, I believe? Yes, yeah.

In New York City, you can go. Now, when I moved to New York in the 1980s, it was not in good shape. Graffiti all over it. It was as if I actually assumed that they'd moved him. It was that bad in the 80s. Right. The family actually did threaten to move.

him he and Julia because it had gotten so bad. But it was actually a Columbia undergraduate student named Frank Skitturro who really started this campaign to save Grant's tomb. And now he's the head of the Grant Monument Association and the National Park Service now runs it. So I know. But that's what you're talking about. That's the extraordinary epic that this man, I can't wait for the movie. Who knows, Leo DiCaprio and somebody's going to be playing Grant someday. I know. I think So, and it's really amazing. He's come, you know, had this rise through the presidential polls. I mean, just to give you a sense in 1962 and a poll amongst historians, at the time that Kennedy was serving as the 35th president, Grant was ranked the 31st best.

So he was down at the bottom. But just a couple of years ago in the C-SPAN poll in 2021, he's now 20 out of 46. So not, you know, not the highest, but he's really climbing the ranks. But it's not all about Grant. It's also the defeat of that mythology. Yes. Yeah, I absolutely think that's true. It goes hand in hand with the monuments coming down and the retelling of that story.

It's really a big story within our own generations. And Grant is the sort of there's a balance going on that tips. And Grant is on the upswing as we speak. Quite a lot of history. Quite a man. And there's so much more. We are certain to circle back to you. And when we do, we'll be calling you.

Anne Marshall is the head. of the Ulyss Grant Ulysses S. Grant Association, Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University. Good reason for me to visit there someday. I really like to see that. Please do. I'm going to tell people the addresses of this U.S.grantlibrary.org and also U.S.grantlibrary.org slash usGA. You can actually poke around at everything we've been talking about. And if I may go on, please check out Anne's upcoming book, Cassius Marcellus Clay. Not the one you're thinking of. That's interesting, Cassius Clay. Not the boxer. Yeah, but that's who he was named for.

Yes. He was his namesake, right. Yes. Interesting. That's a really fascinating thing. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really look forward to talking with you again in the future.

I really appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements. Some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend.

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