Summary
Ron Chernow's biography of Ulysses S. Grant is a comprehensive rehabilitation of a man whose reputation has been shaped for a century by Lost Cause mythology — the Southern-generated narrative that dismissed Grant as a butcher whose only military advantage was a willingness to sacrifice lives, and whose presidency was a corrupt failure. Chernow's documented argument is more complicated and considerably more sympathetic: Grant was a military genius, a man of genuine moral courage on the question of race and Reconstruction, and a president whose administration was damaged by subordinates he trusted too freely but whose commitment to Black Americans' civil rights was the most serious of any nineteenth-century president except Lincoln.
The early biography is the story of a failure. Grant was a decorated Mexican War officer who, after being stationed at a miserable post in California far from his wife, developed a serious drinking problem, resigned his commission under pressure, and spent the 1850s failing at farming, firewood selling, and real estate. He was thirty-eight years old, broke, and working as a clerk in his brothers' leather goods store in Galena, Illinois when the Civil War began and offered him a second chance.
The war sections are the biographical core. Chernow traces Grant's transformation from a captain commanding a volunteer regiment in Missouri to the general who forced the first major Union victories (Forts Henry and Donelson), who won Shiloh despite near-disaster, who conducted the brilliant Vicksburg campaign that split the Confederacy, and who managed the final grinding campaigns in Virginia that ended the war. Chernow is detailed on the military strategy and consistently places Grant's choices in the context of the political pressures, the available forces, and the alternative decisions that other generals were making simultaneously.
The presidential chapters are the biography's most revisionary. Grant presided over Reconstruction with genuine commitment to Black civil rights — his administration prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan, created the Justice Department specifically to enforce civil rights laws, and stood against the Democratic Party's violent suppression of Black political participation. His failures were real: the corruption scandals of the second term, the Whiskey Ring, the Credit Mobilier, the appointments of men who proved dishonest. But Chernow argues these failures have been used to delegitimize an administration whose most important achievement — the partial enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments — was deliberately dismantled after his departure.
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Key takeaways
- 1.
Grant's military reputation was deliberately degraded by Lost Cause writers who needed to explain the Confederacy's defeat without crediting Union superiority. Chernow documents this campaign of revisionism.
- 2.
Alcoholism in the nineteenth century was not understood as a disease. Grant's drinking was episodic rather than continuous — he drank heavily during certain periods, not during campaigns — and its actual effect on his military performance is more ambiguous than the mythology suggests.
- 3.
The Vicksburg campaign, which Grant designed and executed independently, is one of the most brilliant in American military history. Its success depended on a strategic improvisation that broke the conventional rules of campaigning.
- 4.
Reconstruction's failure was not inevitable. Grant's aggressive prosecution of the Klan, funded by federal resources and backed by genuine political will, temporarily suppressed Klan violence. The abandonment of that program was a political choice, not a necessity.
- 5.
Grant's Personal Memoirs, written in the final months of his life while he was dying of throat cancer, are considered one of the finest military memoirs in any language. Writing them was itself an act of will and love — he completed them days before his death to provide for his family.
- 6.
Trust in subordinates is both a virtue and a vulnerability. Grant's loyalty to people who proved dishonest was the source of his presidential scandals; the same quality had made him an effective general who delegated well.
- 7.
The Civil War's meaning was contested from the moment it ended. Grant understood that Reconstruction was the war's continuation — that the rights won at Appomattox could be lost in the courthouses and statehouses of the South.
- 8.
Second acts in American life are real. Grant's pre-war failures — the drinking, the resignation, the business failures — are the most dramatic reversal in the lives of any American public figure.
Discussion questions
Use these on your own, with a book club, or as chat starters in Superbook.
- 1.
Chernow argues that Grant's reputation was deliberately damaged by Lost Cause writers. Does the evidence he marshals convince you?
- 2.
Grant's drinking is one of the most discussed facts about him. How does Chernow's account of it differ from the standard narrative?
- 3.
The Vicksburg campaign is described as a work of military genius. What specifically made it brilliant?
- 4.
Grant's Reconstruction policy was more aggressively pro-civil-rights than any president until Eisenhower. Why has that aspect of his presidency been obscured?
- 5.
The corruption scandals of Grant's second term are real, not invented by his enemies. How does Chernow weigh them against his achievements?
- 6.
Grant's Personal Memoirs were written as he was dying of cancer. What does that context add to the reading experience?
- 7.
His relationship with Sherman, who conducted the Atlanta campaign and the March to the Sea, was one of the most important military partnerships in American history. How does Chernow render it?
- 8.
Grant's treatment of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox — allowing Confederate officers to keep their sidearms, allowing soldiers to keep their horses for spring plowing — is famous for its generosity. Was it the right call?
- 9.
What does Grant's pre-war decade of failure suggest about the relationship between character and circumstance in individual lives?
- 10.
The biography is nearly 1,000 pages. Does Chernow's comprehensive approach produce a different understanding of Grant than a shorter, more selective biography would?
- 11.
How should Grant's legacy be evaluated given both his achievements on race and his failures on Native American policy?
Themes
Frequently asked questions
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Does Grant require prior knowledge of the Civil War?
No. Chernow contextualizes all necessary military and political history. Readers who know the Civil War well will find the military chapters more richly layered, but the book is fully accessible to general readers.
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Is this biography favorable to Grant?
Yes, significantly more so than most twentieth-century accounts. Chernow explicitly sets out to revise the Lost Cause reputation and does so with documentation. Some reviewers felt he was too sympathetic; most historians found the rehabilitation convincing.
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How long does Grant take to read?
About twenty-five to thirty hours. At nearly 1,000 pages it is Chernow's longest single biography. The Civil War sections are the most propulsive; the presidential chapters require more patience.
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What happened to Grant's reputation after his death?
His Personal Memoirs were enormously successful, providing financial security for his family. His presidential reputation then declined steadily through the early twentieth century under the influence of Southern historians and the Lost Cause narrative. The rehabilitation began in the 1990s with new scholarship and accelerated with Chernow's biography.
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What is Grant's relationship to Lincoln's legacy?
Grant saw himself as the executor of Lincoln's Reconstruction vision. His commitment to Black civil rights during his presidency was explicitly framed by his understanding of what the war had been fought for. The abandonment of Reconstruction after his departure was, in his view, a betrayal of Lincoln's purpose.
