Bear Grease - Ep. 479: Civil War - Part 5: The Most Underrated Man in the Civil War?

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

Continuing on with Bear Grease's Civil War Summer series, Clay Newcomb travels to the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library in Starkville, Mississippi, to uncover the story of the Union general who may be the most misunderstood figure of the war. Alongside Grant historian Dr. Louis Gallo, Clay traces Grant's unlikely journey from a quiet Ohio farm boy and gifted horseman to a failed farmer, struggling businessman, and former army officer battling personal struggles. The conversation explores Grant's complicated relationship with slavery, his marriage into a slaveholding Missouri family, his years of financial hardship, and the character traits that would eventually make him Lincoln's indispensable commander. Along the way, Clay discusses the Lost Cause ideology, the myths that shaped Grant's reputation, and the remarkable transformation of a man who went from selling firewood on the streets to leading the Union Army and becoming President of the United States. Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Did you hear Phelps has teamed up with a bunch of other high-end brands to do the Ultimate Elk giveaway? Anyone who is 18 or older can sign up to win an amazing gear package that includes a new rifle or bow along with great supporting gear. The winner will pick their rifle package or archery package. For every $25 spent, you get 10 additional entries. The signups end, July 26 at Phelpsgaincalls.com. He's chasing down this Confederate group of soldiers, and he knows where they're camped.

They're camped over this hill. And this is his first time he's going to face battle during the Civil War. And he says, man, as we're going up over this hill, I start to get so nervous. It feels like my heart is in my throat. He's freaking out. And they get up over the crest of the hill, and they look down. and the camp's gone. And he, his heart went back to his place, he said.

And he goes, but I learned a valuable lesson in this. I learned that the enemy is just as afraid of me as I am afraid of them. This episode, part five of our American Civil War series, is about Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the Union Army. I'd say he's the most underrated player in the Civil War. But was he actually? Or was his reputation besmirched in a strategic effort to re-narrate the southern cause? Regardless, we're going to hear about Grant's meteoric rise from selling firewood in the streets

to becoming the leading general of the American Army in a span of five years. And within two more years, he was the war hero president of the United States, considered one of the most famous men on planet Earth. This story is one of the most fascinating in America. American history, and I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.

Brought to you by Tukovas Boots. I'm a cowboy boot man, and I've been wearing Tocovas for years. They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. If I'm being honest, when I started this series on the American Civil War, the leader of the Union Army, General Ulysses S. Grant, was the person I was least interested in. I couldn't quite put my finger on why, but I'd rarely heard anything about him. His brilliance was never bragged on like his Confederate counterpart Robert E. Lee. And Grant never had an orange Dodge Charger named after him that could ramp buildings while evading the government's corrupt officers. This is going to make more sense later. But as I learned the history, Grant quickly became a focal point of intrigue, partly because of his character, his dogged tenacity, his addictions, his history was slaves,

but mainly because he was like a shadow to me. My interest in this man took me on a road trip. So I'm in Starkville, Mississippi at Mississippi State University, and I'm going to the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library. And I cannot wait to understand and learn why that it's here. Because Ulysses S. Grant was the champion general of the Union Army, probably the most underrated, under-recognized player inside the Civil War. And his presidential library is deep in the South.

Most presidential libraries are in cities that meant something to the president. Grant never lived in Mississippi. This is odd. But I've come here with an assumption that I've already stated twice that Grant is underrated. But was he? Or is he just underrated in the south? This is all a bit fishy. I walk up a long set of stairs to the fourth floor of this big, beautiful brick building to meet Louis Gallo. He's a tall, stout-built man with dark-framed glasses, genuine eyes, wearing a collared shirt and slacks, and he's standing by a cannon. Hello. Hi, Louis. Hey, Louis.

Hey, Louis. Clay Newcomb. Clay? Yes. Nice to meet you, Clay. This is my wife, Misty. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Misty. Louis is an expert on Ulysses S. Grant, having edited and annotated Grant's personal memoir in 2017 in a well-received Harvard University Press book.

This library has every written correspondence of grants that's in existence. It has uncountable personal items including a pistol, furniture, some clothing, an original portrait of Grant, life-sized mannequins of Grant at different stages in his life. And when I stand up next to him, turns out he's about 5 foot 8 and weighs about 145 pounds during wartime. This is a top-shelf museum is what I'm trying to say, and I've come here with an assumption that my thoughts on Grant, or even lack of thoughts on Grant are across the board in America. Now, I may have started off on the wrong foot with Louis, but I have to be honest with him,

but he's about to teach me something I didn't know. Is it true that Grant is one of the more underappreciated players than the Civil War? I mean, I would disagree with that. I think he's pretty appreciated. Now, okay, well, let me give you a little more. complicated answer to that question. I think over time that reputation has changed. Right? After the Civil War, you have the lost cause movement. And the crux of the lost cause movement is to lift up the Confederate cause and Robert E. Lee and to knock down Grant. And so that's

where all these big stories about him and his drinking and his character and he was a butcher, like a Cold Harbor, you know, like that's where all this comes from. Is this, lost cause movement. And it's effective, right? They always say history is written by the winners. That is not always the case. Because the ex-Confederates did a great job at publicity and trying to change the narrative after the war.

Yeah. And so, yeah. So for years, for decades, he is undervalued. He is seen as just a drunken butcher who got lucky because he had more resources than Lee did, and he just overwhelmed him. Okay. The Lost Cause Movement. Have you heard of that? I'm embarrassed to say that I'm a grown, dadgum man, and I'm just learning about it.

Could I unknowingly be a product of a marketing campaign started in the 1870s? Maybe. Could this be part of the origin of the warm feelings towards the Confederacy I spoke of in the first episode? Maybe. The Lost Cause Movement is controversial with some, but a widely accepted outcome. idea that there was a revisionist ideology that emerged in the American South after the war, framing the Confederate cause as morally heroic in their attempt to fight an army, superior in number for the sole purpose of states' rights. There's traces of it all over down here.

In 1866, a book titled The Lost Cause coined the term and the idea. Influential Confederate organizations started forming soon after the war. One of those would be the United Daughters of the Confederacy started in 1894. Confederate Monuments started popping up peaking around 1890 through the 1930s. Many other books were published about this, including the 1936 Pulitzer Prize book Gone with the Wind and the movie in 1939, which I watched as a kid. The most recent evidence being the mainstream interest in the civil war in the last half of the 20th century. The Duke's a Hazard TV show came out the year of my birth, 1979, and for the next 20 years, every kid in America had a General Lee, General Lee, toy car with a rebel flag on the roof.

Bo and Luke Duke were just good old boys fighting a corrupt government. Sound familiar? Never meaning no harm. Beats all you never saw been in trouble with the law since the day they was born. Even Steve Ronella growing up in Michigan had a General Lee Carr. I'm telling you, we all did, and it had nothing to do with race relations in our mind. The nostalgic opening lines of Don Williams' 1980 song, Good Old Boys Like Me, is a crumb the campaign over a century later.

With a picture of Stonewall Jackson above my head. I grew up listening to that song. It's a great song. I read children's books about Stonewall Jackson when I was in the second grade. I was taught that he's our direct kin on my grandmother's side. We'll definitely be back to this idea of the lost cause. I'm endlessly fascinated by things in our culture that impact us, but that we're completely unaware of their origins.

But directly after the war and soon after Grant's presidency, without a doubt, a focus of the lost cause campaign was to dethrone Ulysses S. Grant. And it looks like it worked. Here is Dr. Brooks Blevins on Grant. I think he, I think still he gets, he gets minimized too much in civil war history. Because for so many years, the Lost Cause created this marble character of Robert E. Lee as the great, and he was a great general. But as a general, I mean, he was Lincoln's guy. And Lincoln recognized that this is the guy that can win me this war. If Brooks says it, I believe it. The Lost Cause is a real thing. But it wasn't just the lost cause. Grant's got to take some personal responsibility for this.

He's a complicated man with some stuff going against him. And some of it may revolve around our perception of ourselves. He was underestimated for so much of the war because he didn't look the part. He's a short, dumpy, kind of disheveled guy. His uniforms always messed up and probably his boots weren't shined up and things like that. He's just kind of a messy, sloppy. He wasn't interested in having the accolades of being a general. Yeah, he didn't want to be called sir, and he was just all business.

Yeah, and he was, you know, his subordinates talked about him drinking and stuff like that. He just, he had a lot of things, a lot of strikes against him in terms of rising through the ranks of the military hierarchy. You know, as you say that, it also makes me think that a person's perception of themselves is often the, way that people view them good and bad. It's really kind of a not a pleasant truth, if it is in fact a truth, that Grant always had this kind of like, I'm not here for the glory. I'm not here to be famous. I'm not here to be well known. I'm just here to get the job done. And he absolutely does. And then history's kind of just like dismissive of him. Kind of like the Scotty Pippin. My wife always talks about Scotty Pippin being statistically one of the best

players in the NBA. He got paid less than all these other guys, and it was Misty Newcomb, the great sports analysis, says that it was because he perceived himself as small. I think there's something maybe to be learned there from Grant. He kind of prophesied almost, or he got what he asked for. But then you don't want to walk around life, like asking for recognition or something when you don't deserve it. I mean, we've all been taught to be humble or hopefully we have and not think too highly of yourself and just kind of be who you are. And we see that in Grant. But then you see kind of history treat him a little bit like he asked to be treated. Yeah, yeah.

It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. But one thing he was, he was persistent and he was relentless. and he was a fighter, and that's what Lincoln needed was someone who would just take it to the enemy, and you get punched in the face, and you get back, and you just go right back at him. And Grant did that. If Scotty, a fellow Arkanzan, ever listens to this, I hope you feel the love coming from Bear Greece. And like Scotty on the court, U.S. Grant was a warhorse general on the battlefield.

But before Grant was 40 years old, he'd experienced. almost uncountable business failures. He'd be swindled by almost every business partner he ever had and was basically forced to resign from the army because of a drinking problem. These failures seemed to temper him. And when he would rise to the top, his lack of ego and ambition in contrast to his peers was notable.

But now that we've addressed that, we've got to address the elephant in the room, which I talked about at the beginning of this episode, and that question is why is his library in the deep south? Now, on the surface, you know, it does seem weird. I thought it was weird. You usually think of presidential libraries being in a place that meant something to the president. Yes, and yeah, 100%.

But there is a historical connection, at least, between Grant and the state. Now, he's not from here. He fought here. He fought here. He was here for well over a year and a half fighting here. And what's even more important, in that is that that's really what catapults him to the national stage as well. Okay, his work, what he did in Mississippi. And so really without Mississippi, we don't know who

Grant was, right? It's been a really good thing. So it wasn't an attempt for the South to control the narrative on you, this is Grant? It was not. It was a conspiracy theory that I heard about about this. Oh, really? You heard this now. It came from my wife. We were joking on the way here. Didn't you say that? Or was that? That's what I thought. I thought it was you. That's like a great conspiracy theory. It does.

But you know, it's funny that you say that because the president of the university, Dr. Mark Keenum, he's really the one who championed having this here. But he talks about this where he says, you know, the idea is, the quote that he has is, we want to show things not from a southern perspective or in a northern perspective, but an American perspective. Yeah. Right? It appears that it's not. a conspiracy. But the functional reason the library is here is logistical. The grant library

moved from Southern Illinois University to Mississippi State in 2008 because they needed more space and Mississippi had the funds and champion the cause. And Louis and his colleagues are passionate about it and they're proud that it's here and this place is worth a visit. But it's time to get down to the details. I ask Louis to tell us about Ulysses S. Grant's early life. What formed him? This is going to help us see who this man is. Yeah, this is great, because I honestly think that's one of the most compelling parts of his stories, his early life. It's kind of overshadowed, right? Obviously, we always think about the general. We always think about the president, but where did he come from? Kind of thing, right? So yeah, I can definitely

do that. To answer your question, he was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, April 27th, 1822. It's a small little Ohio River Valley town. At a young age, the family up and moved. He was born, to Georgetown, Ohio, which is not too far, right outside of Cincinnati. And that's where he grows up. The one, a good, interesting little story that most people don't know, his father grew up in Ohio, too. His father, as a young man, lived with John Brown, the John Brown. The John Brown. The John Brown. Really? Yes. That's a fact that most people don't realize. He worked as a tanner for John Brown's father. I think his father's name was Owen Brown. And so he lived and he lived with the abolitionist.

Yes, the abolitionist who kind of started this got killed. The Civil War. Yes. And so that might inform you a little bit about Grant's parents, right? His father was a very, he had a very big personality. I guess we would describe it. He was an abolitionist. That kind of informs Grant's worldview.

But Grant himself, though, I wouldn't call him an abolitionist early on in his life. I would kind of label him as. indifferent towards the institution of slavery, didn't really affect him personally. Right. And so I don't think he really thought too much about it. This is worth the look because there's more here than meets the eye. Grant's father, Jesse Root Grant, was a narcissist and a staunch abolitionist with a huge personality.

He loved to squabble with people. He loved to tout his own achievements. And Grant's personality would be the exact opposite in every way. He was a man who let his accomplishments speak for themselves, even to a fault. Grant had impeccable character when it came to self-promotion. He didn't promote himself. He lacked any sense of visible vanity. He didn't dress fancy like the other generals.

Some even said he was sloppy. He made a lifelong commitment to view the best in people, even his rivals like Bobby Lee. And he had unshakable loyalty, which was personified in his relationship to Lincoln and many of the other generals. But this went against him in business because he always got taken advantage of. As a child, Grant stood up to bullies protecting the weak, but was also picked on himself. He was quiet and often a loner. Later in his military career, he would shut down any and all course talk about women. He maintained his faithfulness to his wife, Julia, until the end of his life.

And his entire life, listen to this. He refused to use vulgar language. Once he said that he'd let the words thunder and lightning slip from his mouth, as if that were a curse word. But oddly, Grant's views on slavery evolved over the years. Was it because he wanted to be different than his hot-headed dad? Heard the chaos. Now you can see it.

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get your hands on some meat eater history, and become a meaningful part of our next public land access campaign. We're going to learn that Grant would marry a girl from Missouri, whose family owned slaves, and we'll learn that Grant even owned one slave in 1858 for one year. The man was given to him. It's complex. So back to the issue of him not being a complete abolitionist from the beginning. But it's surprising, considering who he was growing up around.

But as a kid, he wasn't really, he was doing what kids do at the time, who were living kind of what they would consider Western life. He's working the fields. He's working with animals. as a young boy, he's obviously really, really good with horses, which we see later on in his life. He's so good with horses, in fact, that even as a little kid, maybe about eight or nine, maybe 10 years old,

his parents are letting him drive 70 miles away with horses, to transport goods. Be like letting him take the car today. Yeah. They were letting him take the horse 70 miles away. Yeah, at 10 years old, he was doing this. Yeah. So he was really, really comfortable.

Was he a horse trainer? I mean, you could say he was. I guess everybody could ride a horse during that time because you had to. I mean, pretty much everybody could hit your team to a wagon. 100%. But he was known as a horseman. Yeah, 100%. Grant as a horseman and a trainer is an understatement.

He began riding at age five and was said to stand up with one foot on a horse's back while riding full speed with only a sheepskin on the animal, no saddle. When he was under 10 years old, a circus came through town and recruited a boy from the audience to ride a bronchi pony as it ran around the ring to see if the kid could stay on. Ulysses was selected and he jumped on the pony and it ran fast laps around the ring. But the crowd pleaser of this whole thing was when a monkey ran into the ring on command and jumped on the rider's back. Almost all the riders fell off in the melee. but Grant stuck in the saddle like glue, riding until the ringmaster called him off, him and that monkey, and the crowd was shorted their pony wreck.

Louis mentioned Grant riding 70 miles when he was 10 years old, but when he was a young teenager, he had a delivery service where he'd take a horse and wagon over 250 miles to Cincinnati. His relaxed demeanor, fearlessness, and his natural instinct made him a natural with horses, and he started training horses early in life in a time when training was typically harsh and even cruel. By the time he was an adult, he was known as a virtuoso on horseback, and in the Mexican war, he broke wild horses for the army. One soldier reported watching Grant blindfold, bridle, and saddle,

an unbroke horse and ride it for three hours until it was tame. Grant said, If people knew how much more they could get out of a horse by a chance, gentleness, then by harshness they would save a great deal of trouble both to the horse and to the man. These words would be prophetic words that reflected the way that he treated people too, but it's also ironic because he was a masterful and relentless war leader. A story that Grant told in his memoirs that embarrassed him his whole life and kind of built his psyche. Once his dad had him go try to buy a horse from a neighbor, the horse was for $25, and his dad said,

hey, offer him 20. If you won't take 20, offer him 22. If you won't take 22, then just pay him 25. So this young Grant, he's like 10 years old, goes to the neighbor and he says, sir, my dad says to offer you 20, then 22, and if you won't take that, I'll take the horse for 25. Grant was embarrassed about this the rest of his life. He was incredibly self-conscious and reserved and kind of a loner. Here's more on horses. He was kind of a whisperer of sorts, you know? And we see that in the Civil War when he's, you know,

the horses that he rode during the Civil War, some of them are impressive thoroughbreds. And I don't know what you know about thoroughbred racing, but thoroughbreds are big, fast animals. Yeah. And his horse, the most famous one, Cincinnati, was actually son of Lexington, who was one of the most well-known thoroughbred sires of the 19th century. And so this, I mean, he's got the... It's like a Porsche.

Oh, yeah, it's like driving a Porsche. Like it's nothing, you know? So, yeah, so really he gets his, that connection with horses. He's about the size of a jockey, too. Yep. It would have helped. A lot of these little guys can be, like, really good horsemen. Yeah, for sure.

So, yeah, he just, that's basically his life as a kid. It's just working the fields, working with horses. He goes to school. He does have kind of a basic education, you know. Were they an affluent family? I would consider them well off in a way. They weren't poor, but they weren't extremely wealthy. His father, even though he had connections and was a successful Tanner, they weren't.

He had aspirations for his son to maybe go further than he did. Yeah, than being a Tanner. Yeah. But then when he becomes of age, his father secures him an appointment to the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. Ulysses at age 18 would outright reject the idea of going to West Point. He wanted to farm and train horses. He never did great in school, and he didn't think he could pass the entrance exam.

When his father finally made him go, he told his friends he hoped he would have some kind of accident on the way there to keep him from going. But that wouldn't happen. When Ulysses arrived, he was an undersized scrawny 5'2. This is before he's full grown. Five foot two, weighing 117 pounds, little more than the size of a child. But upon entrance into West Point, something would change, namely his name. He gets into West Point kind of by luck. One of his fellow classmates in town actually got an appointment to West Point,

but couldn't pass the examination, the entrance exam. So he had to withdraw. And so the congressman was looking for another person to appoint Ulysses S. Grant. Fun fact, his name was not Ulysses S. Grant. It was Hiram Ulysses Grant. But Thomas Hamer, the congressman who appointed him the West Point, put it down as Ulysses S. Grant. And there are theories on it.

We think maybe he would have went by Ulysses, so that's what Hamer knew. So he put Ulysses. We think because he didn't know his middle name, maybe he put S just because Grant's mother's maiden name was Simpson. Okay. But as Grant says, the S stands for nothing. It was just a typo. It was a typo by a congressman that was getting him an appointment to West Point.

Yeah. So when he shows up at West Point, he goes, hire him, Ulysses Grant here, and they go, who's that? Who's that? And he goes, you know, Ulysses S. Grant. Yeah, right. And it's either you can take this or go. home and he accepted it. Okay. Yeah. As a child, kids made fun of him for his initials, H-U-G, Hiram Ulysses Grant. But this typo made his initials almost prophetically U.S.

Grant. At West Point, his classmates would start calling the little man Sam Grant. Yeah, so he gets to West Point, 1839. He passes his entrance exams, even though he didn't think he was going to. He was nervous about it, but he did it with flying colors, I guess. gets through West Point. You know, there are so many myths about his time at West Point, specifically his performance as a cadet. They always talk about how he was bad as a cadet. But really, he actually graduates about middle of his class. Okay. He's not terrible. But he admits himself that he didn't take his studies very seriously. He would spend a lot of his time reading novels. He read like James Fedimore Cooper novels, Washington Irving and stuff.

He is not charmed by military life. He actually doesn't really want to go to West Point at first, but his father makes him, you know. And while he's there, he kind of, there's one point where he hopes there was some talk about Congress passing a bill that would have like hurt the funding for West Point. And he was hoping that that would happen so he could just go home, you know. But it didn't. As a matter of fact, even after he graduates, he doesn't want to stay in the military. He wants to become an assistant math professor.

Yeah. He asked one of his former professors if he can get an appointment as an assistant. Not a math professor, an assistant math professor. That's what he wanted to do. He didn't even really want to get into military life. But circumstances dictate things. And in his case, it was the Mexican-American War that kind of sealed his fate. Grant will go and fight in the Mexican-American War and get his teeth sunk into the battlefield.

But his attitude at West Point is interesting, contrasted by the environment of ambition around him. At that time, military involvement was. a pathway to a career in politics and even business and West Point was the pinnacle. He was the odd duck without ambition. However, later we'll learn that he gained respect of almost everyone that knew him. Though Grant wasn't a top cadet, he was the study of people. And many of these cadets would become generals in the Confederate Army, and he'd use his personal knowledge of them to make judgment calls in battle. He seemed to know what they would do before they did. U.S. Grant would become a master at the psychology of war.

Apparently that doesn't show up on aptitude tests. He could detect weakness and fear like a predator, prioritizing timing and speed even when outnumbered and out-supplied. Grant was obscure but brilliant, all but slipping through the cracks of America's top military training academy. When Grant rose to the top as the American General, His classmates were shocked, but oddly not surprised. His greatness, it feels like, just almost had a chance to have never arisen if a very unique set of circumstances hadn't come about.

After West Point, something significant happens that really muddies the water. As Brent says, you'll have this kind of stuff on the big jobs. So after he graduates from West Point, he's stationed in St. Louis with, Frederick Dent, this guy that he knows, Jefferson Barracks. And while he's stationed there, this is in the, mind you, this is in the mid-1840s, he travels to his buddy's family home in St. Louis, Whitehaven, where he meets his future wife, Julia Dent. Now, this is where the story gets really interesting for Grant is because the Dent family is a slave-owning family. They enslaved people at Whitehaven. It's a pretty substantial plantation.

So you have Grant, a man who comes from sort of like an abolitionist family, now marrying into a slave-owning family. And so that's where it kind of complicates his story a little bit, right? Because, well, how do you deal with this, right? How do you deal with somebody who's accepting this lifestyle as being okay? But that comes later. Hold on just a second, I'm sorry. Yeah.

This is a climactic point in Grant's life and this interview and this podcast because he ends up marrying the slave-owning Julia Dent. However, in this interview, my phone dings and a message comes through that there are mules out running the streets of my town, and it's assumed that they're mine. I'm seven hours away in Starkville, Mississippi, and stress begins to pour all. over me like a drug. We've found ourselves completely sidetracked, but it gets better. We try to call somebody. I'm sorry. Goodness. There's a... No, you're fine. Say a mule? You got mules? Yeah. Mules? Well, it may not be mine, but it probably is. Right. We can keep going here. Well, you know, you mentioned mules. That's a funny little anecdote when we were working on the grant memoirs. I'm a real young editor, so I'm really, I'm a go-getter at this point. And I

want to annotate everything, right? And so I'm making an annotation on Army Mules during Mexican-American War, because to me, this is interesting. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, oh, wow, because I didn't, you know, who studies Army Mules during the Mexican-American War, right? Yeah. And I mean, I was kind of going little crazy writing these annotations to the point where my colleague was like, hey, man, like, we don't need this. Chill out on the Mules. I was, like, page-long annotations on Army Mules. And we cut most of them, but I did convince him to at least index it, like the Army mule mentions.

So it's mentioned in the index of his memoir. Oh, wow, that's great. You get a hold of him? You got a location. No, nothing. Just he texted me. What needs to happen is somebody needs to drive to my house and see if my mules are there.

Oh, no. The escaped mules are hovering in my mind like a storm cloud, but the show must go on. We press forward. Grant has married into a slave-owned and family and ends up in the Mexican-American War, fighting under the general Zachary Taylor, the future president, Zachary Taylor. His influence on the young grant is notable. I have no idea what I'm going to do about these escape mules. It's all I can

think about. But what's interesting about Taylor is that he's really, he's a very unique style, both superficially and as a general. He is not well-dressed. He doesn't really care about uniform. per se. When he's in battle, he kind of sits side saddle on his horse and kind of nonchalant. He's very unassuming figure. There's a story about Zachary Taylor where he's, you know, he's in his camp and he's like eating an apple or something and someone walks up and they go, we're looking for General Taylor, not knowing it's him. And he goes, I think he's over there somewhere. Right. So he's very just kind of a nonchalant, informal guy, which, you know, looking at Grant later on during his time as a general, you start to see some sense.

similarities in their appearances, right? Like, Grant isn't about pomp and circumstance, right? Like, he's a very kind of casual guy himself. So you see that influence from Taylor. Grant would later say that he was heavily influenced by Zachary Taylor's leadership. Also, of the generals who would fight in the civil war, many of them also fought in the Mexican-American War. It was here that the young Grant would meet the 15-year-older Robert E. Lee for the first time. And we know they're going to meet again. Grant also fights under Winfield Scott, who would be the guy to create the anaconda plan designed to choke out the South via water in the Civil War.

But goodness gracious, Misty walks through the door and says that our mules are safely in their pasture. They were in fact never out. This was a false alarm, fake news. Clay's mules are in the pen and I'm relieved. the interruptions are killing the grant vibe but as an equine man I bet he'd understand oh let me let me text this guy

the mules are saying sorry man you're doing wonderful oh thanks this is perfect good good good this will relieve me greatly to tell this guy there not mules that's hysterical it's usually not my circus not my problem this time it's not my mules not my problem that's funny

okay now I can be relaxed and talk about it. Good, good. The mules are safe. The mules are safe. We're good, we're good. Okay. So yeah, so Grant is with Scott when he takes Mexico City. So this is really, Grant, you know, is he a general in the military at that time? Grant? No. Yeah. No, he's just a quartermaster essentially at this point, but he's working his way up through the ranks. He gets a promotion a couple times just through his actions. So he sees battle in the Mexican-American War. Oh, yeah. He talks about the first time he, you know, that he's a part of it. It's when they cross the Rio Grande in the north under Taylor.

And they're walking in formation towards the Mexican forces. And he says at one point, you know, a shell comes, basically bounces off the ground and takes off the head of the guy next to him. And so he saw the guy's jaw, bone, got blown off from it and everything. So he was seeing, he was in it. He was in the fight. Yeah. Now, what's interesting during the, when they get to Mexico City, when they get close to it, at one point, Grant, this is really an important moment in his military career. He disassembles a howitzer and orders it to be sent up this church belfry.

So, and then reassembles it and then uses it to basically, you know, to lay fire on the enemy. from this elevated position. Like a cannon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's not like, it's a, yeah, like artillery piece kind of thing, right? So he disassembled it, sent it up a church bell tower? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then used it to, as that elevated position to fire on the other.

So he had a lot of just instinct about war. Yeah. Not everybody would have had. Yeah, and I think a willingness to try something that might have not have been traditional at times, you know. And again, you see that later on during the Civil War as well. In a time of Napoleonic warfare tactics, Grant's military strategy and innovation would be influential in modern war. He would become the guy you didn't want to fight.

In later years, some would call him a butcher because when the enemy was down, he would do what it would take to win during a time when chivalry sometimes prolonged wars. After the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, he and Julia have their first child in Missouri, but Grant gets stationed away from them in California. This is the beginning of a terrible decade for Grant. The bad thing is he's now stationed out in California by himself. Yes, he's in the military, but he still has to try to make a living for himself, so he tries farming.

I think he tries to sell ice at one point, and everything kind of fails. The crops don't grow really well, and he's in a bad spot. You know, he's got a kid in St. Louis that he's never seen. His namesake, Ulysses Grant Jr. And so he's kind of down, it's a low moment for Grant. He's working side jobs while he's in the military? Yeah.

So he's a real low point in his life. And how old would he be at this point? So if it's 1852. 30. He's 30 years old. About 30 years old. Yeah. But because he's, you know, he's missing his family and he's isolated, he starts,

the rumor is he starts to, that's when he starts to really drink. Right. And this is pretty consistent with him throughout his life later on. Yeah. Anytime there's a low moment for him, or even not just a low moment, but like a quiet moment for him, that's when he seemed to maybe take to the bottle a little bit. Ben's drinking or alcoholism would follow Grant his entire career, staining his reputation. The accounts are consistent enough over his life that it was real.

But some of the stories are potentially exaggerated by political enemies and even the lost cause movement. He would go long stretches without any alcohol at all, but I think by today's standards, he would be considered an alcoholic. As a matter of fact, he resigned from the Army in 1854 because of his drinking in California during that rough decade, and it would seem this would end his military career. This resignation would continue to plague him. And might I add that Grant is separated from Julia and their son, who he's never met for over two years? So it's the early 1850s.

He's 30 years old. He's in California, stationed in California. He's working side jobs trying to make things work. His family and his son is back in St. Louis. And his, yeah, what I know about, him, you know, it's almost like he's, he just really struggles during this period from then until the Civil War. 100%, yes.

And it starts out west. We'll call it a rumor because there's not like solid evidence, but it's pretty clear that he was, he basically, he was relieved of his command or resigned because of his drinking. Okay. Again, it's not, it's not written on paper anywhere, but it's kind of the assumption is that. That's what happened. And it was time, right? He needed to get back to his family anyway, and so he does.

He goes back to St. Louis with his family. Finally, he meets his son. And, yes, you nailed it perfectly. In the 50s were rough for him. He's trying to figure out his own life, his path, while also trying to take care of this family, this growing family that he has. Is he out of the military now? Yes, yes.

He would have been out of the military. So when he left California. Yes, he's back to public, regular life. So he's done. He's done. Okay. Tries getting the farming. Obviously, again, going back to his wife and her family,

they have a bunch of enslaved people. His father-in-law actually gives him an enslaved man named William Jones, who's about the same age as him to help him farm. So he's struggling. There are stories about him trying to sell firewood on the streets. At one point during around Christmas time, he ponds one of his gold watches. is he's not doing well.

He doesn't have much money. And so eventually he has to move and work for his family in their leather goods store. Eventually in Galeen, Illinois is where he ends up. But the enslaved man that he was given in, I would say 1859. Where are they at at this point? I want to say they're in Missouri when that happens. They're in a slave state. Yeah, yeah.

And he owns a slave. He owns a man, yes. Yes. But in 1859, and we have the manumission document, he gives William Jones his freedom. He doesn't sell him, right? He lets him free. At a time where he is pawning watches and has no money, he's letting go the one thing of value at the time that he has. Now, mind you, I don't know the exact numbers, but in today's terms, that's like tens of thousands of dollars that he's just letting go. Wow. And this is really interesting to me too, right? Because you see this man who has, in the 1850s, right, he's married into a slave-owning family.

Right? So in 1859, he has a slave in 1859, right? But by 1870, not to jump forward again, by 1870, he is already advocated for the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which ends slavery, makes them citizens, and gives them the right to vote. in an 11 year time frame he evolved that much on this subject to me that just

again it shows you like the complicated nature of this man right and it shows you too how like people's views can evolve right

you can change you can grow in ways and not to excuse what he did but the fact that he that he gave the guy his freedom I mean just speak so much

do we know anything about the details of that Like, do we know anything about their personal relationship, or did he speak about it in his memoir? So they would have been about the same age, which I think is interesting. It's telling. You seem to connect with people that are your own age. You can, yeah, get empathize. A lot of times, maybe more than somebody else.

I mean, just because you're like, this person has had some of the experiences I've had. Yeah, that's why you connected with that portrait in the gallery, right? Yeah, I told you, look you the same age as him. Of Grant when he was 46. Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't talk much about, he doesn't talk about him at all, really. There's evidence that he would, he may have even worked alongside him in the fields. Maybe he got to know him then, right?

That's what I think. I think he just got to know this person. And then probably felt some sort of guilt about it, I would say. You know, an interesting thought is to think about conversations that he would have had with his wife, who would have had a very different upbringing. I guess the nature of a husband-wife relationship during that, time might be different than today. Maybe they never had a conversation about it, but maybe they did. And he's like, hey, I'm going to make a tough decision today. We're going to give this guy's freedom.

It's going to, you know, we're foregoing thousands of dollars that could help our, or well, equivalent to thousands of dollars. Yeah. So she wrote her own memoir. It was not published during her lifetime. She basically peddled the typical happy slave narrative, right? Oh, they were like family to us. We fed. them. We took care of them. Right, right. Oh, I had one little, she had an enslaved girl, when she was a girl named after her, Julia, this is the slave's name, who did everything for her, obviously. But fun fact, when the Emancipation Proclamation is issued, Jules, the enslaved woman,

leaves, runs away from Julia. And she did not understand. She couldn't understand. I was with you my whole life, and we took care of me. How could you just leave me? How? She writes about this in her memoirs. Yeah, oh, yeah.

She's hurt that this, the enslaved person named after her left her after the emancipation proclamation. Yeah. Yeah. And she writes about her early life as a kid with these enslaved children and how they would like, she talked about how one time her little schoolhouse was just down the road. She would sit in a chair and the enslaved children would pick her up and take her to the school. And she thought that was just like so cute and funny.

And I would go fishing with them and all the. So yeah, for her, she has this rosy. It's a great relationship. Yeah. Why would they be upset about this? Yeah. She can't understand that maybe a person doesn't want to be enslaved. So in 1890, she still said that?

Yes. Oh, yeah. So she probably didn't move that far. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's 100%. Okay. So you do have an answer to my question. I would say.

This mock conversation. She probably was like, what are you doing probably? Yeah. Now, I'm assuming I don't have any evidence for that. But, yeah, I'm sure there would be a talk, a conversation about this. this choice. And now think about when the war breaks out, the conversations he would have had with his father-in-law, who he didn't just own a couple slaves, right? He owned, he enslaved multiple people, right? In Missouri. In Missouri, right outside of St. Louis. It's well known in the,

in the grant field that, like, around that time, he would have had conversations with his father-in-law in that dining room, in that house in St. Louis, talking about these issues that are arising, right um and they obviously did not share the same opinions did he have a good relationship with his wife oh gosh yes he did oh yes they were they that was that's one of the more famous love stories in the 19th century i would say um yeah yeah in his memoirs he tells the courtship the story of it beautifully like he sets up talks about meeting her talks about before going to the mexican american war he wants to go see her one last time to give her a little engagement ring essentially And this is a good, interesting anecdote.

So he gets close to the house and there's a creek, Grabois Creek, I think is the name of it. And it's flooded. It's really high. And he's on a horse and he's like, well, I've got to go see her. So he just goes through this creek. The horse, he almost dies. He almost drowns trying to cross this creek with this horse.

He should have had a mule. He should have had a mule. He would have, well. Mule's not going to die on a raging river. That's the whole other story, brother. But he tells this story. in his memoirs because it's an example of his philosophy.

He says, I decided when I set out to do something, I'm going to do it and I'm not going to turn back. And if you think of that line, you can see how that might inform his actions later on in his life. That kind of would encompass his life and legacy. Especially as a general, right? Like think about the Overland campaign

in the East during the end of the war when he's just constantly flanking Lee trying to get around him. most generals up to that point they would try to attack them and think of the mcclellan right they would back out grant just kept going right once he set out he did not he did it he was a pretty pretty accurate statement i would say from him yeah grant and julia adored each other but grant's father-in-law despised him and once the war started he told grant that he'd shoot him like a rabbit if he and his men came on the dent farm in Missouri. And another thing that I haven't told you is that Julia

was cross-eyed. She often insisted that pictures be taken of her from the side, not from the front, and this would hide her crossed eyes. During Grant's presidency, when she knew that she'd be in the public spotlight more and more, she consulted the doctor about a surgery to fix her eyes, and she recorded in her memoirs what her husband told her. He says, Did I not see you and fall in love with you with these same eyes? I like them just as they are. And now remember, you are not to interfere with them. They are mine.

And let me tell you, Miss Grant, you had better not make any experiments, as I might not like you half so well with any other eyes. I'd say that's really special. It was a data point to Grant's character. How a man treats his wife is a huge indication of his character. Julia would be the first one to believe in Grant and see his potential for greatness when everything else just showed failure. In the late 1850s, during this very tough decade full of failures, an older slave woman recalled Julia telling her that she, Julia, had had a dream that Ulysses became the president of the United States and she knew that it would be true. Talk about prophetic.

No one saw this coming, but Julia somehow did. That's interesting. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Hello. My gosh. Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish, right inside the free I-Hare radio app. Gets the blood going up. Catch every laugh and eye-roll on shows like the Tom Green Farmcast and park the bus.

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This year's auction features eyebrow raising outdoor gear donated by the Meat Eater crew, employees, and friends of the brand, including Steve's dad's shitty old truck full of badass hunting gear. the Honda Outboard Motor from Doss Boat Season 3, Clay Newcomb's Alaskan Wetuit Bearhide, fly fishing memorabilia from the personal collection of Lefty Cray and more. The auction house kicks off July 8th and runs for two weeks with 100% of proceeds going to our Land Access Initiative, which to date has helped fund new public land acquisitions,

such as the recent 200-acre Tuckertown acquisition in North Carolina, the 328-acre wildcat bend acquisition in Montana and the 215-acre Shilohpon project in Maine. Visit the meat eater.com slash auction to place your bids now, get your hands on some meat eater history, and become a meaningful part of our next public land access campaign. We've got to talk more about grants involvement with slavery. Before the war, he would have, again, he was kind of obviously indifferent.

He probably was formulating his, his, real opinions. I mean, he was okay enough with accepting William Jones, right? Think of that, right? So, so he wasn't, he was not, and he would say this himself, I think he says that in the memoirs, he was not an abolitionist at the time, obviously. But as the war progresses, as he gets older, as he gets more experience, he starts to change, his views start to change on this, especially during the war. Well, it probably informed him in a really powerful way. Yeah. Because if you, if, if, if, if you actually had engaged in this thing and seen it for yourself and knew what it felt like to own another human and make them do work for you and not pay them and control their life,

and he was like, hey, this isn't right. And then he made a decision that hurt him financially and maybe put him in some jeopardy. I mean, that's pretty powerful. Powerful. And certainly would have informed the rest of his life more than if that wasn't in the story. Like to me, that's not even a fly in the ointment. You know? I mean, it's like that's what made him.

It feels like even more than someone that was like, no, I've never been a part of this. This is this peculiar institution that have nothing to do with. I don't know. You just, like, this guy was there, saw it. I mean, there's a lot of redemption in that idea. Yes. You know. Yes.

And empathy in all this, too, right? Like, I think that's the key part of it. I think it's the empathy part. In April 1861, the Civil War begins, and Grant has been out of the military for seven years, farming, selling firewood and working at his father's tannery business. He built a log cabin that he called hardscrabble. He's struggling in life. He's a letdown to his own father and his father-in-law who believed his daughter had married a deadbeat Yankee. Grant becomes enlivened when he sees the southern states secede, and he can't believe that many of his children.

fellow West Point graduates are leading the treasonous rebellion. As a matter of fact, one of Robert Lee's favorite generals, James Longstreet, was one of Grant's best men in he and Julia's wedding. And Longstreet and Grant remained friends before and after the war. At this point, Grant leading the entire army would be as likely as me entering the NBA. This was on nobody's mind. This is his chance now to get back into the military. You know, the way he looks at it, he's got great experience. He's a West Point graduate. He fought the Mexican-American War.

Why not? Right? This is a great opportunity for. Okay, so he's been out of the military for about a decade. Yeah, close to. He's like, well, I'll go back in. Yep. Would he go back in as a, not as a general?

So he tried to get a, he couldn't get a commission at first. He had to raise a regiment of volunteers, which he did. He did a really good job at it. He had to recruit troops to come in? Yeah, a volunteer regiment, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so he's leading this regiment.

This is actually really, this is another really good anecdote that kind of, yeah, his leadership style during the war, right? So this is, this is in, oh gosh, I want to say it's in Missouri. He's chasing down this Confederate group of soldiers, and he knows where they're camped. They're camped over this hill, right? And he talks about this in his memoir. And this is his first time he's going to face battle during the Civil War. And he says, man, as we're going up over this hill, I'm starting to get, I'm starting to get so nervous. It feels like my heart is in my throat.

He's freaking out. And they get up over the crest of the hill and they look down and the camp's gone. And he, oh, you know, his heart resumed, went back to his place. He said, and he goes, but I learned a valuable lesson in this. He said, I learned. that the enemy is just as afraid of me as I am afraid of them. And from that point on, he said, I never felt any sort of like fear or anxiety going into a battle.

Really? Yeah. So just the fact that they were gone. They were gone. They fled when they recognized. So he equated his fear with they must have had equal. Equal fear. Yeah.

And it vanquished his fear. Yeah. That's unique. Yeah. I think a lot of people deal with anxiety and all. all kinds of different things, ways, or we know that. Oh, goodness. And so when you hear how somebody overcomes something,

especially when you think about the consequences of war, that is interesting. I like that. Yeah. Overcoming anxiety can often just simply be mentally reframing a situation. The mind is powerful. The Bible talks about the renewal of the mind. And I've got a question about how important leadership is.

This seems like a good time to ask as Grant is about to climb his way to the top of the U.S. military. Prepare for a sports analogy. Inside a basketball, NBA team, sometimes the talent is so great that you wonder how much the coach influences what's going on on the court. And you see these coaches that win year after year. And you kind of start to understand the dynamics of leadership. how powerful it is. Because, I mean, sometimes you see this NBA team and you're just like, man, I could coach those guys to an NBA title.

That's what it feels like. Yeah, yeah. Because you got this young coach over there, and sometimes they mic up them in the huddle, and they're saying stuff like I said to my son's pee-wee league. You got to want it. Yeah, come on, guys. You've got to stick together. Yeah, right.

And but then, you know, as you dive into it, you realize the power of leadership, the power of what these guys are actually doing. same thing in military battle with a general. Sometimes it's like, well, whoever has the most guys and the most horses and the most gunpowder is going to win. But there's like an incredible amount of strategy, an incredible amount of leadership that these guys, especially during the Civil War, you know, they're talking to people. Who they are is really coming through inside of the battles and stuff. Yeah. And here's my question to you.

How much does a general matter in a civil war battle? Yeah, I would say they immensely, right? Now, I have to admit, I have never been in the military, so I might be speaking out of turn, right? But my perception is... I've never been in the NBA, by the way. Well, my perception is that it's very important, right? Because you think of somebody, let's look at the opposite side of the coin, Robert E. Lee, right? Again, he doesn't get fresh troops coming in all the time.

He doesn't have the same amount of supplies. But look at the success he has for the first couple years of the war, right? Yeah. Yeah, that shows you the value of a good general, especially a good general who knows tactics, right? Like Robert E. Lee. Another example, going backwards in American history, look at the American Revolution. You know, the story of these poor little farmers, this small group of colonists taking on the largest military navy in the world, and they defeat them. right with way less

now they're fighting a defensive war and it's a different politics and there's stuff happening in Europe all that very complicated but it shows you that yeah no it's not just about yeah it's not just about military resources and power like that like you know

you have to have a good leader not just tactically not just strategically but like as a leader right like so you think of Grant going back to Zachary Taylor the kind of informal style not about pomp and circumstance. Think of how a soldier in the trenches relates to somebody like that

who looks like them, who's with them, right, during the, during the battle, you know. So I think that has a huge influence. Would they, would those guys have known Grant? I mean, would he have been like talking to soldiers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've been fairly exposed to like just a common lieutenant in the military? Yes. Oh, yes. The power of leadership is real and coaching on the battlefield. It's real inside of your business, your career.

It's real inside of your home. Grant would ascend from the bottom rung of the ladder to the top, 100% by merit, in a time of many, many politically appointed generals. He came into the view of Lincoln, who wouldn't have known him from anywhere else, about midway through the war after the 47-day siege of Vicksburg, which displayed his incredible military mind. mind, grit, and determination. Vicksburg put him on the map, and they're still talking about it down there today.

At this time, General McClellan was the top union commander known for his lack of action. Lincoln was pulling out his hair because he couldn't find a general that wasn't afraid of Robert E. Lee. One of the most interesting things about the grant is the way he carried himself as a general, which was in contrast to so many other people, that had these big egos, wanted to look like generals, wanted to be called sir. I mean, common things that would have been accepted, but Grant stood in contrast to that. Can you describe that to me?

Certainly. To me, the main talking point that most people give is that he didn't have political aspirations after the war, right? You think of someone like McClellan. It was clear. I mean, he ran for president, right? He clearly had other ambitions. And most people did.

Most of these generals did. I mean, that's why there was, think of how many political generals there were appointed by Lincoln and how they and how that their interests may conflict with what they're going to do as a general. For Grant, it's the opposite. As a matter of fact, I think he writes a letter to his wife pretty early on in the war where he says, I just want to bring this to an end so I can come back home and start farming and living my life again. You know what I mean? Like he had no aspirations, at least on the surface. Maybe he did privately and he didn't write it down, you know. But I think that's the biggest thing that informs his leadership

style, right? Is that there are so many of these men who are not pulling the trigger because they don't want to risk losing their reputation. You have to understand at this time, like if you do something wrong during the war, your reputation is over. It's ruined. It's really hard to come back from it. Right.

And so if you had aspirations beyond the war in politics and you're a bad general or you get defeated in some war that's broadcast all over the country, your name is. associated with something bad that's happened. So think of a man named Lou Wallace during the battle of Shiloh. So the first day, the Confederates, they launched this attack on the unsuspecting Union troops at Shiloh. Grant responds. He tries to get his lines in order. And he orders one of his generals, Lou Wallace, to kind of make a route around the left flank of the Confederates.

It's hard to tell what exactly happened, but essentially he took the wrong road and was not where he was supposed to be when the battle. was happening. Now, this ruins his reputation. And it was such a stain on his character and his reputation that he spent the rest of his life defending it. This one day, there's one action. So that crippled some of these guys. But it didn't cripple Grant.

In my opinion, yes. I would say that. But Lou Wallace wrote one more thing. He actually, he did redeem himself a little bit. He wrote Ben Hur that the movie's based on. Oh, really? Yeah. So I think that's an interesting little redemption arc there.

Yeah. But yeah, so. So he made it in Hollywood. Yeah. Yeah. Before we existed. He didn't make it as a general. We made it in Hollywood. Okay, got it. Spot on. But yeah, so I think that's kind of the biggest difference between Grant and these other men. I do think personality plays a big part of this as well. Like, you alluded to that, right?

I think there is a willingness on his part that other people don't have. And not just because of their reputation, but just because out of, you know, indecisiveness or, they're just not sure if it's going to work. And so they hesitate a little bit, you know. But I also think what helped him in his generalship, he was very blunt and clear in his orders, right? If you go and look at, say, McClellan, his writings during the war, oh, my gosh, it's like this flowery, poetic prose.

He was trying to be a general. Oh, he was trying to be the most impressive person you ever said. scene as opposed to Grant, who was just like, crossed the bridge, go there and out. Like, he was very plain, but very clear cut. And he talks about, I want to say it was Taylor was the same way, very plain spoken in his orders. And this is important, right? And Grant talks about this in his memoirs where, but he gives this example, there's a general

where his orders are indecisive. For example, once you reach this bridge, if you can take it, take it, right? Grant, on the other hand, would say, once you reach this bridge, take it. See what he was very clear cut in what he wanted his generals to do. Grant would say that indecisiveness in war was the worst thing. A wrong decision was better than a delayed decision because you'd more quickly find the right answer and do it. And Grant's lack of ambition was undoubtedly a huge part of his high level of performance.

What Grant wanted to do was when the war stopped the fighting and restore the union. Some called him a butcher because of how effective he did his job. He'd become the author of Total War. He viewed clear and decisive victory as the quickest way to end the bloodshed. The South had to be destroyed and then rebuilt from the ground up. And though he didn't start here, he'd also come to believe that slavery had to once and for all be stamped out through this war or other wars would be fought in the future. There is more to come on the final episode of our Civil War summer.

I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greece. Please share our podcast with a friend this week. Thanks for listening to Brent's This Country Life and Lakes Backwoods University. And as always, keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. Did you hear Phelps has teamed up with a bunch of other high-end brands to do the Ultimate Elk giveaway? Anyone who is 18 or older can sign up to win an amazing gear package that includes a new rifle or bow along with great supporting gear. The winner will pick their rifle package or archery package. For every $25 spent, you get 10 additional entries.

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