Speaker 1: He's chasing down this Confederate group of soldiers and he
Speaker 1: knows where they're camped. They're camped over this hill, and
Speaker 1: this is his first time he's going to face battle
Speaker 1: during the Civil War. And he says, man, I said,
Speaker 1: we're going up over this hill. I starts to get
Speaker 1: so nervous. It feels like my heart is in my throat.
Speaker 1: He's freaking out. And they get up over the crest
Speaker 1: of the hill and they look down and the camp's gone,
Speaker 1: and he, you know, his heart and went back to
Speaker 1: his place, he says, and he goes. But I learned
Speaker 1: a valuable lesson in this. I learned that the enemy
Speaker 1: is just as afraid of me as I am afraid
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 2: This episode, Part five of our American Civil War series,
Speaker 2: is about Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the
Speaker 2: Union Army. I'd say he's the most underrated player in
Speaker 2: the Civil War. But was he actually or was his
Speaker 2: reputation besmirched in strategic effort to renarrate the Southern cause. Regardless,
Speaker 2: we're gonna hear about Grant's meteoric rise from selling firewood
Speaker 2: in the streets to becoming the leading general of the
Speaker 2: American Army in the span of five years, and within
Speaker 2: two more years he was the war hero President of
Speaker 2: the United States, Considered one of the most famous men
Speaker 2: on planet Earth. This story is one of the most
Speaker 2: fascinating in American history, and I really doubt that you're
Speaker 2: gonna want to miss this one. My name is Klay
Speaker 2: Nukeomb and this is the Beargrease Podcast, where we'll explore
Speaker 2: things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places,
Speaker 2: and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived
Speaker 2: their lives close to the land.
Speaker 3: Brought to you by to COV's Boots.
Speaker 2: I'm a cowboy boot man and I've been wearing to
Speaker 2: Covis for years. They're the most comfortable boot I've ever
Speaker 2: put on. Good boots for good times, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 2: When I started this series on the American Civil War,
Speaker 2: the leader of the Union Army, General Ulysses As Grant,
Speaker 2: was the person I was least interested in. I couldn't
Speaker 2: quite put my finger on why, but I'd rarely heard
Speaker 2: anything about him. His brilliance was never bragged on, like
Speaker 2: his Confederate counterpart Robert E. Lee, and Grant never had
Speaker 2: an orange dodge charger named after him, that could ramp
Speaker 2: buildings while evading the government's corrupt officers.
Speaker 3: This is gonna make more sense later, But.
Speaker 2: As I learned the history, Grant quickly became a focal
Speaker 2: point of intrigue, partly because of his character, his dogged tenacity,
Speaker 2: his addictions, his history was slaves, but mainly because he
Speaker 2: was like a shadow to me.
Speaker 3: My interest in this man took me on a road trip.
Speaker 2: So I'm in Starkville, Mississippi, at Mississippi State University, and
Speaker 2: I am going to the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library,
Speaker 2: and I cannot wait to understand and learn why.
Speaker 3: That it's here. Because Ulysses S.
Speaker 2: Grant was the champion general of the Union Army, probably
Speaker 2: the most underrated underrecognized player inside the Civil War. And
Speaker 2: his presidential library is deep in the South. Most presidential
Speaker 2: libraries are in cities that meant something to the president.
Speaker 3: Grant never lived in Mississippi. This is odd.
Speaker 2: But I've come here with an assumption that have already
Speaker 2: stated twice that Grant is underrated. But was he or
Speaker 2: is he just underrated in the South? This is all
Speaker 2: a bit fishy. I walk up a long set of
Speaker 2: stairs to the fourth floor of this big, beautiful brick
Speaker 2: building to meet Louis Gallo. He's a tall, stout built
Speaker 2: man with dark framed glasses, genuine eyes, wearing a collared
Speaker 2: shirt and slacks, and he's standing by a cannon.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hey, Louie.
Speaker 2: Hey Louis clay nukelem Clayton. Yes, this's my wife missed it.
Speaker 2: Louis is an expert on Ulysses S. Grant, having edited
Speaker 2: and annotated Grant's personal memoir in twenty seventeen in a
Speaker 2: well received Harvard University press book. This library has every
Speaker 2: written correspondence of Grant's that's in existence, that has uncountable
Speaker 2: personal items, including a pistol, furniture, some clothing, an original
Speaker 2: portrait of Grant, life sized mannequins of Grant at different
Speaker 2: stages in his life. And when I stand up next
Speaker 2: to him, turns out he's about five foot eight and
Speaker 2: weighs about one hundred and forty five pounds during wartime.
Speaker 2: This is a top shelf museum, is what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to say. And I've come here with an assumption that
Speaker 2: my thoughts on Grant, or even lack of thoughts on Grant,
Speaker 2: are across the board in America. Now, I may have
Speaker 2: started off on the wrong foot with Louis, but I
Speaker 2: have to be honest with him.
Speaker 3: But he's about to teach me something I didn't know.
Speaker 2: Is it true that Grant is one of the more
Speaker 2: underappreciated players in the Civil War?
Speaker 1: I mean, I would disagree with that. I think he's
Speaker 1: pretty I think he's pretty appreciated. Now, okay, well, let
Speaker 1: me give you a little more complicated answer that question.
Speaker 1: I think over time that reputation has changed. Right after
Speaker 1: the Civil War, you have the Lost Cause movement, and
Speaker 1: the crux of the Lost Cause movement is to lift
Speaker 1: up the Confederate cause and Roberty Lee and to knock
Speaker 1: down Grant. And so that's where all these big stories
Speaker 1: about him and his drinking and his character and he
Speaker 1: was a butcher, like a cold harbor like. That's where
Speaker 1: all this comes from, is this Lost Cause movement. And
Speaker 1: it's effective. Right now. They always say history is written
Speaker 1: by the winners. That it's not always the case, because
Speaker 1: the ex Confederates did a great job at publicity in
Speaker 1: trying to change the narrative after the war. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: so for years, for decades, he is undervalued. He is
Speaker 1: seen as just a drunken butcher who got lucky because
Speaker 1: he had more resources than Lee did and he just
Speaker 1: overwhelmed them.
Speaker 2: Okay, the Lost Cause movement? Have you heard of that?
Speaker 2: I'm embarrassed to say that. I'm a grown dad gum
Speaker 2: man and I'm just learning about it. Could I unknowingly
Speaker 2: be a product of a marketing campaign started in the
Speaker 2: eighteen seventies.
Speaker 3: Maybe could this.
Speaker 2: Be part of the origin of the warm feelings towards
Speaker 2: the Confederacy I spoke of in the first episode. Maybe
Speaker 2: The Lost Cause movement is controversial with some, but a
Speaker 2: widely accepted idea that there was a revisionist ideology that
Speaker 2: emerged in the American South after the war, framing the
Speaker 2: Confederate Cause as morally heroic in their attempt to fight
Speaker 2: an army superior in number for the sole purpose of
Speaker 2: states rights. There's traces of it all over down here.
Speaker 2: In eighteen sixty six, a book titled The Lost Cause
Speaker 2: coined the term and the idea. Influential Confederate organizations started
Speaker 2: forming soon after the war. One of those would be
Speaker 2: the United Daughters of the Confederacy, started in eighteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: Confederate monuments started popping up, peaking around eighteen ninety through
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: Many other books were published.
Speaker 2: About this, including the nineteen thirty six Pulitzer Prize book
Speaker 2: Gone with the Wind and the movie in nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 2: which I watched as a kid, the most recent evidence
Speaker 2: being the mainstream interest in the Civil War in the
Speaker 2: last half of the twentieth century.
Speaker 3: The Dukes of Hazzard TV.
Speaker 2: Show came out the year of my birth, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: and for the next twenty years, every kid in America
Speaker 2: had a General Lee General Lee Toy Carr with a
Speaker 2: rebel flag on the roof. Bo and Luke Duke were
Speaker 2: just good old boys fighting a corrupt government. Sound familiar,
Speaker 2: never meaning no harm, beats all. You never saw been
Speaker 2: in trouble with the law since the day they was born.
Speaker 2: Even Steve Ranella, growing up in Michigan, had a General
Speaker 2: Lee Carr. I'm telling you, we all did, and it
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with race relations in our mind.
Speaker 2: The nostalgic opening lines of Don Williams nineteen eighty song
Speaker 2: Good Old Boys Like Me is a crumb of the campaign.
Speaker 3: Over a century later, when I was a kid of
Speaker 3: Kareem a supper.
Speaker 2: To bed.
Speaker 4: With a picture of Stonewall Jackson above my head.
Speaker 3: I grew up listening to that song. It's a great song.
Speaker 2: I read children's books about Stonewall Jackson when I was
Speaker 2: in the second grade. I was taught that he's our
Speaker 2: direct ken on my grandmother's side. Will definitely be back
Speaker 2: to this idea of the Lost Cause. I'm endlessly fascinated
Speaker 2: by things in our culture that impact us, but that
Speaker 2: were completely unaware of their origins. But directly after the
Speaker 2: war and soon after Grant's presidency, without a doubt, the
Speaker 2: focus of the Lost Cause campaign was to dethrone Ulysses S. Grant,
Speaker 2: and it looks like it worked. Here is doctor Brooke
Speaker 2: Blevins on Grant.
Speaker 4: I think he I think still he gets he gets
Speaker 4: minimized too much in Civil War history because it you know,
Speaker 4: for for so many years the Lost Cause created this
Speaker 4: marble character of Robert E. Lee as the great and
Speaker 4: he was a great general, but as a as a general,
Speaker 4: I mean he he was Lincoln's guy, and Lincoln recognized
Speaker 4: that this is the guy that can can win me
Speaker 4: this war.
Speaker 2: If Brooks says it, I believe it. The Lost Cause
Speaker 2: is a real thing, but it wasn't just the Lost Cause.
Speaker 2: Grant's got to take some personal responsibility for this. He's
Speaker 2: a complicated man with some stuff going against him, and
Speaker 2: some of it may revolve around our perception of ourselves.
Speaker 4: He was underestimated for so much of the war because
Speaker 4: he didn't look the part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a short.
Speaker 4: Dumpy, kind of dishevel guy. You know, his uniforms always
Speaker 4: messed up, and probably his boots weren't shined up and
Speaker 4: things like that. He's just just kind of a messy, sloppy.
Speaker 3: Interested in having the accolades of being a general.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wanted to be called sir, and he he
Speaker 2: was just.
Speaker 3: Just all business.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he was, you know, his subordinates talked about
Speaker 4: him drinking and stuff like that. He just he had
Speaker 4: a lot of things, a lot of strikes against him
Speaker 4: in terms of rising through the ranks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of the military hierarchy.
Speaker 2: You know, as you say that, it also makes me
Speaker 2: think that a person's perception of themselves is often the
Speaker 2: way that people view them, good and bad. It's really
Speaker 2: kind of a not a pleasant truth if it is
Speaker 2: in fact a truth that Grant always had this kind
Speaker 2: of like I'm not.
Speaker 3: Here for the glory.
Speaker 2: I'm not here to be famous, I'm not here to
Speaker 2: be well known. I'm just here to get the job done.
Speaker 2: And he absolutely does, and then history's kind of just
Speaker 2: like dismissive of him, kind of like this Scottie Pippen.
Speaker 2: My wife always talks about Scottie Pippen being statistically one
Speaker 2: of the best players in the NBA. He got paid
Speaker 2: less than all these other guys and it was Misty
Speaker 2: Nukeom the Great Sports Analysis says that it was was
Speaker 2: because he perceived himself as small. I think there's something
Speaker 2: maybe to be learned there from Grant. He kind of
Speaker 2: prophesied almost he got what he asked for. But then
Speaker 2: you don't want to walk around life like asking for
Speaker 2: recognition or something.
Speaker 3: When you don't deserve it.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've all been taught to be humble, or
Speaker 2: hopefully we have, and not think too highly of yourself
Speaker 2: and just kind of be who you are, and we
Speaker 2: see that in Grant. But then you see kind of
Speaker 2: history treat him a little bit like he asked to
Speaker 2: be treated.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. But one
Speaker 4: thing he was he was persistent, and he was relentless,
Speaker 4: and he was a fighter.
Speaker 1: And that's what.
Speaker 4: Lincoln needed with someone who would who would just take
Speaker 4: it to the enemy and you get punched in the
Speaker 4: face and you get back and you just go right
Speaker 4: back at him. And Grant did that.
Speaker 2: If Scotty, a fellow Arkansan ever listens to this, I
Speaker 2: hope you feel the love coming from Bear Grease. And
Speaker 2: like Scotty on the court Us, Grant was a war
Speaker 2: horse general on the battlefield. But before Grant was forty
Speaker 2: years old, he'd experience almost uncountable business failures. He'd be
Speaker 2: swindled by almost every business partner he ever had, and
Speaker 2: was basically forced to resign from the army because of
Speaker 2: a drinking problem. These failures seemed to temper him, and
Speaker 2: when he would rise to the top, his lack of
Speaker 2: ego and ambition in contrast to his peers was notable.
Speaker 2: But now that we've addressed that, we've got to address
Speaker 2: the elephant in the room, which I talked about at
Speaker 2: the beginning of this episode, and that question is why
Speaker 2: is his library in the Deep South?
Speaker 1: Now, on the surface, you know it does seem weird.
Speaker 1: I thought it was weird.
Speaker 2: You usually think of Presidential library as being in a
Speaker 2: place that meant something to the president.
Speaker 1: Yes, and one hundred percent, but there is a historical
Speaker 1: connection at least between Grant and the state. Now he's
Speaker 1: not from here.
Speaker 3: He fought here.
Speaker 1: He fought here. He was here for well over a
Speaker 1: year and a half. Yeah, fighting here, yea. And what's
Speaker 1: even more important in that is that that's really what
Speaker 1: catapults him to the national stage as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, his work hit, what he did, what.
Speaker 1: He does in Mississippi, and so really without Mississippi, we
Speaker 1: don't know who Grant was. Right, It's been really good.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't an attempt for the South to control
Speaker 2: the narrative on you.
Speaker 3: This is Asta Grant. It was not a conspiracy theory
Speaker 3: that I heard about this.
Speaker 1: Oh really, you heard this.
Speaker 2: It came from my wife. We were joking by the
Speaker 2: way here and then.
Speaker 3: You say that or was that that's what I thought
Speaker 3: I thought it was.
Speaker 2: You know, this sounds like a great conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: It does. But you know, it's funny that you say
Speaker 1: that because the president of the university, doctor Mark Keenan,
Speaker 1: he's really the one who championed having this here. But
Speaker 1: he talks about this or he says, you know, the
Speaker 1: idea is in the quote that he has is we
Speaker 1: want to we want to show things not from a
Speaker 1: Southern perspective or in a northern perspective, but an American perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right, it appears that it's not a conspiracy, but
Speaker 2: the functional reason the library is here is logistical. The
Speaker 2: Grant Library moved from Southern Illinois University to Mississippi State
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight because they needed more space
Speaker 2: and Mississippi had the funds and champion the cause. And
Speaker 2: Louis and his colleagues are passionate about it, and they're
Speaker 2: proud that it's here, and this place is worth a
Speaker 2: But it's time to get down to the details. I
Speaker 2: ask Louis to tell us about ulysses As Grant's early life,
Speaker 2: what formed him. This is going to help us see
Speaker 2: who this man is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is great because I honestly think that's one
Speaker 1: of the most compelling parts of his stories, his early life.
Speaker 1: It's kind of overshadowed, right, Obviously, we always think about
Speaker 1: the general, we always think about the president, But where
Speaker 1: did he come from? Kind of right, So yeah, I
Speaker 1: can definitely do that to answer your question. He was
Speaker 1: born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, April twenty seventh, eighteen twenty two.
Speaker 1: It's a small little Ohio River valley town. At a
Speaker 1: young age, the family up and moves to Georgetown, Ohio,
Speaker 1: which is not too far right outside of Cincinnati, and
Speaker 1: that's where he grows up. A good, interesting little story
Speaker 1: that most people don't know. His father grew up in
Speaker 1: Ohio to his father as a young man, lived with
Speaker 1: John Brown, d John Brown, the John Brown John Brown. Really, yes,
Speaker 1: that's a lot. It's a fact that most people don't realize.
Speaker 1: He worked as a tanner for John Brown's father. I
Speaker 1: think his father's name was Owen Brown. And so he
Speaker 1: lived and he lived with the abolitionist, Yes, the abolitionists
Speaker 1: who kind of either started this.
Speaker 3: Got skilled civil warriors.
Speaker 1: Yes, And so that might inform you a little bit
Speaker 1: about Grant's parents, right. His father was a very he
Speaker 1: had a very big personality, so I guess we would
Speaker 1: describe it he was an abolitionist. That kind of informs
Speaker 1: Grant's worldview. But Grant himself, though I wouldn't call him
Speaker 1: an abolitionist. Early on in his life. I would kind
Speaker 1: of label him as indifferent towards the institution of slavery.
Speaker 1: Didn't really affect him personally, and so I don't think
Speaker 1: he really thought too much about it.
Speaker 2: This is worth a look because there's more here than
Speaker 2: meets the eye. Grant's father, Jesse Grant, was a narcissist
Speaker 2: and a staunch abolitionist with a huge personality. He loved
Speaker 2: to squabble with people. He loved to tout his own achievements,
Speaker 2: and Grant's personality would be the exact opposite in every way.
Speaker 2: He was a man who let his accomplishments speak for themselves,
Speaker 2: even to a fault. Grant had impeccable character when it
Speaker 2: came to self promotion. He didn't promote himself. He lacked
Speaker 2: any sense of visible vanity. He didn't dress fancy like
Speaker 2: the other generals. Some even said he was sloppy. He
Speaker 2: made a lifelong commitment to view the best in people,
Speaker 2: even his rivals like Bobby Lee, and he had unshakable loyalty,
Speaker 2: which was personified in his relationship to Lincoln and many
Speaker 2: of the other generals. But this went against him in
Speaker 2: business because he always got taken advantage of As a child,
Speaker 2: Grant stood up to bullies, protecting the weak, but was
Speaker 2: also picked on himself. He was quiet and often a loner.
Speaker 2: Later in his military career, he would shut down any
Speaker 2: and all course talk about women. He maintained his faithfulness
Speaker 2: to his wife Julia until the end of his life
Speaker 2: and his his entire life.
Speaker 3: Listen to this.
Speaker 2: He refused to use vulgar language once he said that
Speaker 2: he'd let the words thunder and lightning slip from his mouth,
Speaker 2: as if that were a curse word. But oddly Grant's
Speaker 2: views on slavery evolved over the years. Was it because
Speaker 2: he wanted to be different than his hot headed dad.
Speaker 2: We're going to learn that Grant would marry a girl
Speaker 2: from Missouri whose family owned slaves, and we'll learn that
Speaker 2: Grant even owned one slave in eighteen fifty eight for
Speaker 2: one year a man was given to him. It's complex,
Speaker 2: So back to the issue of him not being a
Speaker 2: complete abolitionist from the beginning.
Speaker 1: But it's surprising though, considering who he was growing up
Speaker 1: around right right, But as a kid he wasn't really
Speaker 1: he was doing what kids do at the time who
Speaker 1: were living kind of what they would consider Western life.
Speaker 1: He's working the fields, he's working with animals. As a
Speaker 1: young boy, Uh, he's obviously really really good with horses,
Speaker 1: which we see later on in his life. He's so
Speaker 1: good with horses in fact, that even as a little kid,
Speaker 1: maybe about eight or nine, maybe ten years old, his
Speaker 1: parents are letting him drive seventy miles away like on
Speaker 1: with horses, you know, to transport good.
Speaker 2: Like letting him take the car today, Yeah, letting him
Speaker 2: take the horse. Yeah, seventy miles away, yes, ten years old.
Speaker 1: He was doing this. Yeah, so he was really really comfortable.
Speaker 3: Was he a horse trainer?
Speaker 1: I mean you could say he was.
Speaker 2: I mean he I guess everybody could ride a horse
Speaker 2: during that time because you had to. Yes, I mean
Speaker 2: pretty much everything. He could hit a team to a wagon,
Speaker 2: one hundred percent. He was known as a horseman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Grant as a horseman and a trainer is an understatement.
Speaker 2: He began riding at age five and was said to
Speaker 2: stand up with one foot on a horse's back while
Speaker 2: riding full speed with only a sheep skin on the animal,
Speaker 2: no saddle. When he was under ten years old, a
Speaker 2: circus came through town and recruited a boy from the
Speaker 2: audience to ride a bronchy pony as it ran around
Speaker 2: the ring to see if the kid could stay on.
Speaker 2: Ulysses was selected and he jumped on the pony and
Speaker 2: it ran fast laps around the ring.
Speaker 3: But the crowd pleaser this whole.
Speaker 2: Thing was when a monkey ran into the ring on
Speaker 2: command and jumped on the rider's back. Almost all the
Speaker 2: riders fell off in the melee, but Grant stuck in
Speaker 2: the saddle like glue, riding until the ring master called
Speaker 2: him off him and that monkey and the crowd was
Speaker 2: shorted their pony wreck. Louis mentioned Grant riding seventy miles
Speaker 2: when he was ten years old, but when he was
Speaker 2: a young teenager he had delivery service where he'd take
Speaker 2: a horse and wagon over two hundred and fifty miles
Speaker 2: to Cincinnati. His relaxed demeanor, fearlessness, and his natural instinct
Speaker 2: made him a natural with horses, and he started training
Speaker 2: horses early in life, in a time when training was.
Speaker 3: Typically harsh and even cruel.
Speaker 2: By the time he was an adult, he was known
Speaker 2: as a virtuoso on horseback, and in the Mexican War,
Speaker 2: he broke wild horses for the Army one soldier reported
Speaker 2: watching Grant blindfold, bridle and saddle and unbroke horse and
Speaker 2: ride it for three hours until it was tame. Grant said,
Speaker 2: if people knew how much more they could get out
Speaker 2: of a horse by gentleness than by harshness, they would
Speaker 2: save a great deal of trouble, both to the horse
Speaker 2: and to the man.
Speaker 3: These words would be.
Speaker 2: Prophetic words that reflected the way that he treated people, too,
Speaker 2: But it's also ironic because he was a masterful and
Speaker 2: relentless war leader. A story that Grant told in his
Speaker 2: memoirs that embarrassed him his whole life and kind of
Speaker 2: built his psyche. Once his dad had him go try
Speaker 2: to buy a horse from a neighbor. The horse was
Speaker 2: for twenty five dollars, and his dad said, hey, offer
Speaker 2: him twenty If you won't take twenty, offer him twenty two.
Speaker 2: If you won't take twenty two, then just pay him
Speaker 2: to twenty five. So this young Grant, he's like ten
Speaker 2: years old, goes to the neighbor and he says, sir,
Speaker 2: my dad says, to offer you twenty, then twenty two,
Speaker 2: and if you want to take that, I'll take the
Speaker 2: horse for twenty five Grant was embarrassed about this the
Speaker 2: rest of his life. He was incredibly self conscious and
Speaker 2: reserved and kind of a loner. Here's more on horses.
Speaker 1: But he was kind of a whisperer of sorts, you know,
Speaker 1: and we see that in the Civil War when he's
Speaker 1: you know, the horses that he rode during the Civil War,
Speaker 1: some of them are impressive thoroughbreds. And I don't know
Speaker 1: what you know about thoroughbred racing, but Thoroughbreds are big,
Speaker 1: fast animals. And his horse, the most famous one, Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: was actually son of Lexington, who was one of the
Speaker 1: most wealth known thoroughbred sires of the nineteenth century. And
Speaker 1: so this, I mean, he's got the.
Speaker 3: This is it's like a Porsche. Oh, it's like driving
Speaker 3: a Porsche like it's nothing.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so really he gets that connection with horses.
Speaker 3: He builds the size of a jockey too.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: It would help little guys can be like really good horsemen.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. So yeah, he just that's basically his
Speaker 1: life as a kid is just work in the fields,
Speaker 1: working with horses. He goes to school, he does have
Speaker 1: like a kind of a basic education, you know.
Speaker 3: Were they an affluent family.
Speaker 1: I would consider them well off in a way. They
Speaker 1: weren't poor, but they weren't extremely wealthy. His father, even
Speaker 1: though he had connections and was a successful tanner, they weren't.
Speaker 2: They weren't the aspirations for his son to maybe go
Speaker 2: further than further than he did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, than being a tanner. But then when he becomes
Speaker 1: of age, his father secures him an appointment to the
Speaker 1: United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.
Speaker 2: You list at age eighteen would outright reject the idea
Speaker 2: of going to West Point. He wanted to farm and
Speaker 2: train horses. He never did great in school, and he
Speaker 2: didn't think he could pass the entrance exam. When his
Speaker 2: father finally made him go, he told his friends he
Speaker 2: hoped he would have some kind of accident on the
Speaker 2: way there to keep him from going, but that wouldn't happen.
Speaker 2: When Ulysses arrived, he was an undersized, scrawnye five foot two.
Speaker 2: This is before he's full grown five foot two, weighing
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventeen pounds, little more than the size
Speaker 2: of a child. But upon entrance into West Point, something
Speaker 2: would change, namely his name.
Speaker 1: He gets into West Point, kind of by luck. One
Speaker 1: of his class fellow classmates in town actually got an
Speaker 1: appointment to West Point, but couldn't pass the examination, the
Speaker 1: entrance exam, so he had to withdraw. And so the
Speaker 1: congressman was looking for another person to a point, Ulysses
Speaker 1: As Grant. Fun fact, his name was not Ulysses S. Grant,
Speaker 1: it was Hiram Ulysses Grant. But Thomas Hamer, the congressman
Speaker 1: who who appointed him the West Point, put it down
Speaker 1: as Ulysses S. Grant, and their theories on it. We
Speaker 1: think maybe he would have went by Ulysses, so that's
Speaker 1: what Hamer knew, so he put Ulysses. We think because
Speaker 1: he didn't know his middle name. Maybe he put s
Speaker 1: just because Grant's mother's maiden name was Simpson. But as
Speaker 1: Grant says, the S stands for nothing. It was just
Speaker 1: the typo.
Speaker 2: It was typo by congressman that yes, is getting him
Speaker 2: an appointment to west Point.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when he shows up at West Point, he goes
Speaker 2: Hiram Ulysses Grant here and they go, who's that.
Speaker 3: Ulysses S.
Speaker 1: Grant? Right, And it's either you can take this or
Speaker 1: go home, And he accepted it.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: As a child, kids made fun of him for his
Speaker 2: initials h u g hiram ulysses Grant. But this typo
Speaker 2: made his initials almost prophetically us Grant. At west Point,
Speaker 2: his classmates would start calling the little man Sam Grant.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so he gets to West Point eighteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: He passes his entrance exams, even though he didn't. He
Speaker 1: didn't think he was going to He was nervous about it,
Speaker 1: but he did it with flying colors. I guess gets
Speaker 1: through West Point. You know. There are so many myths
Speaker 1: about his time at west Point, and specifically his performance
Speaker 1: as a cadet. They always talk about how he was
Speaker 1: bad as a cadet, but really he actually graduates about
Speaker 1: middle of his class. He's not terrible, but he admits
Speaker 1: himself that he didn't take his studies very seriously. He
Speaker 1: would spend a lot of his time reading novels. He
Speaker 1: read like James Fenimore Cooper novels, Washington, Irving and stuff.
Speaker 1: He is not charmed by military life. He's kind of
Speaker 1: has He actually doesn't really want to go to West
Speaker 1: Point at first, but his father makes him, you know,
Speaker 1: and while he's there, he kind of There's one point
Speaker 1: where he hopes there was some talk about Congress passing
Speaker 1: a bill that would have like hurt the funding for
Speaker 1: west and he was hoping that that would happen so
Speaker 1: he could just go home, you know, but it didn't.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, even after he graduates, he
Speaker 1: doesn't want to stay in the military. He wants to
Speaker 1: become an assistant math professor. H Yeah, he asked one
Speaker 1: of his former professors if he can get Hi an
Speaker 1: appointment as not a math professor, an assistant math professor.
Speaker 1: That's what he wanted to do. He didn't even really
Speaker 1: want to get into military life, but you know, circumstances
Speaker 1: dictate things, and in his case, it was the Mexican
Speaker 1: American War that kind of sealed his faith.
Speaker 2: Grant will go and fight in the Mexican American War
Speaker 2: and get his teeth sunk into the battlefield. But his
Speaker 2: attitude at West Point is interesting, contrasted by the environment
Speaker 2: of ambition around him. At that time, military involvement was
Speaker 2: a pathway to a career in politics and even business,
Speaker 2: and West Point was the pinnacle. He was the odd
Speaker 2: duck without ambition. However, later we'll learn that he gained
Speaker 2: respect of almost that knew him.
Speaker 3: Though Grant wasn't a top.
Speaker 2: Cadet, he was a study of people, and many of
Speaker 2: these cadets would become generals in the Confederate Army, and
Speaker 2: he'd use his personal knowledge of them to make judgment
Speaker 2: calls in battle. He seemed to know what they would
Speaker 2: do before they did us. Grant would become a master
Speaker 2: at the psychology of war. Apparently that doesn't show up
Speaker 2: on aptitude tests. He could detect weakness and fear like
Speaker 2: a predator, prioritizing timing and speed even when outnumbered and
Speaker 2: out supplied. Grant was obscure but brilliant, all but slipping
Speaker 2: through the cracks of America's top military training academy. When
Speaker 2: Grant rose to the top as the American General, his
Speaker 2: classmates were shocked, but oddly not surprised his greatness. It
Speaker 2: feels like just almost had a chance to have never arisen.
Speaker 2: If a very unique set of circumstances had and come about.
Speaker 2: After West Point, something significant happens that really muddies the water.
Speaker 2: As Brent says, you'll have this kind of stuff on
Speaker 2: the big jobs.
Speaker 1: So after he graduates from West Point, he's stationed in
Speaker 1: Saint Louis with Frederick Dent, this guy that he knows
Speaker 1: at Jefferson Barracks, and while he's stationed there, this is
Speaker 1: in the mind you, this is in the mid eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: he travels to his buddy's family home in Saint Louis
Speaker 1: white Haven, where he meets his future wife, Julia Dent. Now,
Speaker 1: this is where the story gets really interesting for Grant
Speaker 1: is because the Dent family is a slave owning family,
Speaker 1: the enslaved people at white Haven, and it's a pretty
Speaker 1: substantial plantation. So you have Grant, a man who you know,
Speaker 1: comes from sort of like an abolitionist family now marrying
Speaker 1: into a slave owning family. And so that's where it
Speaker 1: kind of implicates his story a little bit, right, because well,
Speaker 1: how do you deal how do you deal with this? Right?
Speaker 1: How do you deal with somebody who's who's accepting this
Speaker 1: lifestyle as being okay? You know? But that comes later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a climactic point in Grant's life and
Speaker 2: this interview and this podcast, because he ends up marrying
Speaker 2: the slave owning Julia Dent. However, in this interview, my
Speaker 2: phone beings and a message comes through that there are
Speaker 2: mules out running the streets of my town, and it's
Speaker 2: assumed that they're mine. I'm seven hours away in Startville, Mississippi,
Speaker 2: and stress begins.
Speaker 3: To pour over me like a drug.
Speaker 2: We found ourselves completely sidetracked, but it gets better.
Speaker 3: We try to call somebody.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, goodness, there's a no, you're fine.
Speaker 5: Sim mule mules, but it may not be mine, but
Speaker 5: it probably is that we can't keep going here.
Speaker 1: Well, you know you mentioned mules. That's a funny little anecdote.
Speaker 1: When we were working on the Grand Memoirs, I'm a
Speaker 1: real young editor, so I'm really I'm a go getter
Speaker 1: at this point, and I want to annotate everything, right,
Speaker 1: and so I'm making annotation on army mules during the
Speaker 1: Mexican American War because to me, this is interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'm like, oh wow.
Speaker 1: Because I didn't you know who studies army mules during
Speaker 1: this during the Mexican American War, right, Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: mean I was kind of going a little crazy writing
Speaker 1: these annotations, to the point where my colleague was like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: like we don't need this, right, like page long annotations
Speaker 1: on army mules, and we cut most of them, but
Speaker 1: I did convince him to at least index it like
Speaker 1: the army mule mentions, and so it's mentioned in the
Speaker 1: index of his memory.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's a great addition.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: You get a hold of him.
Speaker 2: No, nothing, just he texted me what needs to happen,
Speaker 2: and somebody needs to drive in my house and see
Speaker 2: if my mules are there. The escape The mules are
Speaker 2: hovering in my mind like a storm cloud.
Speaker 3: But the show must go on. We press forward.
Speaker 2: Grant has married into a slave owning family and ends
Speaker 2: up in the Mexican American War, fighting under the General
Speaker 2: Zachary Taylor, the future President Zachary Taylor. His influence on
Speaker 2: the young Grant is notable. I have no idea what
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do about these escape mules. It's all I
Speaker 2: can think about.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting about Taylor is that he's really he's
Speaker 1: a very unique style, both superficially and as a general.
Speaker 1: He is not well dressed. He doesn't really care about
Speaker 1: uniform per se. He's when he's in battle, he kind
Speaker 1: of sits side saddle on his horse and kind of nonchalant.
Speaker 1: He's very unassuming figure. There's a story about Zachary Taylor
Speaker 1: where he's you know, he's in his camp and he's
Speaker 1: like eating an apple or something, and someone walks up
Speaker 1: and they go, we're looking for General Taylor, not knowing
Speaker 1: it's him, and he says, I think he's over there somewhere, right,
Speaker 1: So he's very just kind of a nonchalant, informal guy,
Speaker 1: which you know, looking at Grant later on during his
Speaker 1: time as a general, you start to see some similarities
Speaker 1: in their appearances, right, Like, Grant isn't about pomp and circumstance, right, Like,
Speaker 1: he's he's a very kind of casual guy himself. So
Speaker 1: you see that influence from Taylor.
Speaker 2: Grant would later say that he was heavily influenced by
Speaker 2: Zachary Taylor's leadership. Also, of the generals who would fight
Speaker 2: in the Civil War, many of them also fought in
Speaker 2: the Mexican American War. It was here that the young
Speaker 2: Grant would meet the fifteen year older Robert E. Lee
Speaker 2: for the first time, and we know they're going to
Speaker 2: meet again. Grant also fights under Winfield Scott, who would
Speaker 2: be the guy to create the Anaconda Plan designed to
Speaker 2: choke out the South via water in the Civil War.
Speaker 2: But goodness, gracious Misty walks through the door and says
Speaker 2: that our mules are safely in their pasture. They were,
Speaker 2: in fact, never out. This was a false alarm, fake news.
Speaker 2: Clays mules are in the pen, and I'm relieved. The
Speaker 2: interruptions are killing the Grant vibe. But as an equine man,
Speaker 2: I bet he'd understand.
Speaker 3: Oh, let me, let me.
Speaker 2: Text this guy a sorry man, You're doing a wonderful
Speaker 2: this is perfect good, good good. This will relieve me
Speaker 2: greatly to tell this guy they're not mules.
Speaker 1: That's hysterical. It's usually you know, it's usually not not
Speaker 1: my circus, not my problem. This time it's not my mule.
Speaker 1: It's not my problem. That's funny.
Speaker 2: Okay, Now I can be relaxed and talk about good good.
Speaker 1: The mules are safe them, We're good, We're good. Okay.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so Grant is with Scott when he takes
Speaker 1: Mexico City. So this is really Grant.
Speaker 2: You know, is he is he a general in the
Speaker 2: military at that time, right?
Speaker 1: No? Yeah, he's just a quartermaster essentially at this point.
Speaker 1: But he's worked his way up through the ranks. He
Speaker 1: gets a promotion a couple of times just through his actions.
Speaker 3: So he sees battle and the Mexican American War.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he talks about the first time he you
Speaker 1: know that he's a part of it. It's when they
Speaker 1: crossed the Rio Grand in the north under Taylor and
Speaker 1: he's they're walking in formation towards towards the Mexican forces,
Speaker 1: and he says, at one point, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: shell comes basically bounces off the ground and takes off
Speaker 1: the head of the guy next to him, and so
Speaker 1: he saw the guy's job bone got blown off too
Speaker 1: from it and everything like he saw. So he was
Speaker 1: seeing yea, he was, he was in it. He was
Speaker 1: in the fight. Yeah. Now, what's interesting during the when
Speaker 1: they get to Mexico City, when they get close to it,
Speaker 1: at one point Grant this is really an important moment
Speaker 1: in his military career. He disassembles a howitzer and orders
Speaker 1: it to be sent up this church belfry so and
Speaker 1: then reassembles it and then uses it to basically, you know,
Speaker 1: to lay fire on the enemy from this elevated position
Speaker 1: like a cannon. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so's it's a yeah,
Speaker 1: like artillery piece kind of thing, right, So.
Speaker 2: He disassembled it, send it up a church, yeah, bettle tower.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and then used it to as that elevated
Speaker 1: position to fire on me.
Speaker 2: He had a lot of just instinct about war. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not everybody would have had, Yeah, and I think.
Speaker 1: A willingness to try something that might not have been
Speaker 1: traditional at times, you know. And again you see that
Speaker 1: later on during the Civil War.
Speaker 2: As well, in a time of Napoleonic warfare tactics. Grant's
Speaker 2: military strategy and innovation would be influential in modern war.
Speaker 2: He would become the guy you didn't want to fight.
Speaker 2: In later years, some would call him a butcher because
Speaker 2: when the enemy was down, he would do what it
Speaker 2: would take to win during a time when chivalry sometimes
Speaker 2: prolonged wars. After the end of the Mexican American War
Speaker 2: in eighteen forty eight, he and Julia have their first
Speaker 2: child in Missouri, but Grant gets stationed away from them
Speaker 2: in California. This is the beginning of a terrible decade
Speaker 2: for Grant.
Speaker 1: The bad thing is he is now stationed out in
Speaker 1: California by himself. Yes he's in the military, but he's
Speaker 1: try to a make a living for himself, so he
Speaker 1: tries farming. I think he was tries selling ice at
Speaker 1: one point and everything kind of fails. The crops don't
Speaker 1: grow really well, and he's in a bad spot. You know,
Speaker 1: he's got a kid in Saint Louis that he's never seen,
Speaker 1: his namesake, Ulysses Grant Junior, and so he's kind of down.
Speaker 1: This a low moment for great.
Speaker 3: He's working side jobs while he's in the military.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's real low point in his life.
Speaker 3: How old would he be at this point.
Speaker 1: So if it's eighteen fifty two, thirty thirty years old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but because he's missing his family and he's isolated, he starts.
Speaker 1: The rumor is he starts. That's when he starts to
Speaker 1: really drink, right, And this is pretty consistent with him
Speaker 1: throughout his life. Later on, Yeah, anytime there's a low
Speaker 1: moment for him, or even not just a low moment,
Speaker 1: but like a quiet moment for him, that's when he
Speaker 1: seemed to maybe take to the bottle a little bit.
Speaker 2: Being's drinking or alcoholism would follow Grant his entire career,
Speaker 2: staining his reputation. The accounts are consistent enough over his
Speaker 2: life that it was real, but some of the stories
Speaker 2: are potentially exaggerated by political enemies and even the Lost
Speaker 2: Cause movement. He would go long stretches without any alcohol
Speaker 2: at all, But I think by today's standards he would
Speaker 2: be considered an alcoholic. As a matter of fact, he
Speaker 2: resigned from the Army in eighteen fifty four because of
Speaker 2: his drinking in California during that rough decade, and it
Speaker 2: would seem this would end his military career, This resignation
Speaker 2: would continue you to plague him. And might I add
Speaker 2: that Grant is separated from Julia and their son, who
Speaker 2: he's never met for over two years. So it's the
Speaker 2: early eighteen fifties, he's thirty years old, he's in California,
Speaker 2: stationed in California, he's working side jobs, trying to make
Speaker 2: make things work. His family and his son is back
Speaker 2: in Saint Louis and his Yeah, what I know about him?
Speaker 2: You know, it's almost like he's he just really struggles
Speaker 2: during this period from then until the Civil War.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it starts off west the We'll call it
Speaker 1: a rumor because there's not like solid evidence, but it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear that he was. He basically he was
Speaker 1: relieved of his command or resigned because of his drinking. Okay, again,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not written on paper anywhere. But it's
Speaker 1: kind of the assumption is that that's what happened, and
Speaker 1: it was it was time right. He needed to get
Speaker 1: back to his family anyway, and so he does. He
Speaker 1: goes back to Saint Louis with his family, finally meets
Speaker 1: his son, and yes, you're nailed it perfectly. This in
Speaker 1: the fifties were rough for him. He's trying to figure
Speaker 1: out his own life, his you know, his path, while
Speaker 1: also trying to take care of his family, this growing family.
Speaker 1: The military now, yes, yes he would have been no
Speaker 1: out the military.
Speaker 3: That so when he left California.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's back to public regular life.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's he's done, He's done.
Speaker 1: He tries to getting the farming obviously again going back
Speaker 1: to his wife and her family. They have a bunch
Speaker 1: of enslaved people. His father in law actually gives him
Speaker 1: an enslaved man named William Jones who's about the same
Speaker 1: age as him, to help him farm. And so he's struggling.
Speaker 1: You know, there are stories about him trying to sell
Speaker 1: firewood on the streets. At one point during around Christmas time,
Speaker 1: he pawns one of his Watt gold watches. He's just
Speaker 1: he's not doing well, he doesn't have much money, and
Speaker 1: so eventually he has to move and work for his
Speaker 1: family in their leather goods store, eventually in Galeen, Illinois,
Speaker 1: where he ends up. But the enslaved man that he
Speaker 1: was given in I will say eighteen fifty nine.
Speaker 3: And where they add at this point they're in miss
Speaker 3: I want to say, they're in Missouri when that happens,
Speaker 3: they're in a slave state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and he owns owns a man, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: But in eighteen fifty nine, and we have the manumission document,
Speaker 1: he gives William Jones his freedom. He doesn't sell him, right,
Speaker 1: he lets him free at a time where he is
Speaker 1: pawning watches and has no money. He's letting go the
Speaker 1: one thing of value at the time that he has. Now,
Speaker 1: mind you, I don't know the exact numbers, but in
Speaker 1: today's terms, like that's like tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: that he's just letting go.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And this is really interesting to me too, right, because
Speaker 1: you see this man who has in eighteen fifties, right,
Speaker 1: he's married into a slave owning family. Right, So in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine he has a slave. In eighteen fifty nine, right,
Speaker 1: but by eighteen seventy, not to jill forward again, by
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy he is already advocated for the thirteenth, fourteenth,
Speaker 1: and fifteenth Amendments, which ends slavery, makes them citizens, and
Speaker 1: gives them the right to vote in an eleven year timeframe.
Speaker 1: He evolved that much on this subject. To me, that
Speaker 1: just again it shows you, like the complicated nature of
Speaker 1: this man, right, and it shows you too how like
Speaker 1: people's views can evolve, Right, you can change, you can
Speaker 1: you can grow in ways. Yeah, not to excuse well
Speaker 1: he did, but.
Speaker 2: The fact that he that he gave the guy his freedom,
Speaker 2: I mean, just speaks so much. Do we know anything
Speaker 2: about the details of that. Do we know anything about
Speaker 2: their personal relationship or did he speak about it in
Speaker 2: his memoir?
Speaker 1: So they would have been about the same age, which
Speaker 1: I think is interesting.
Speaker 2: It's tellings you seem to connect with people that are
Speaker 2: your own age and a lot of times maybe more
Speaker 2: than somebody else. I mean, just because you're like, this
Speaker 2: person has had some of the experiences I've had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why you connected with that portrait in the gallery, Right,
Speaker 1: I told you of Grant when he was forty six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't talk much about He doesn't talk about him
Speaker 1: at all. Really, there's evidence that he would. He may
Speaker 1: have even worked alongside him in the fields. Maybe he
Speaker 1: got to know him then, right, that's what I think.
Speaker 1: I think he just got to know this person and
Speaker 1: then probably felt some sort of guilt about it.
Speaker 2: I would say, you know, an interesting thought is to
Speaker 2: think about conversations that he would have had with his wife,
Speaker 2: who would have had a very different upbringing. I guess
Speaker 2: the nature of a husband wife relationship during that time
Speaker 2: might be different than today. Maybe they never had a
Speaker 2: conversation about it, but maybe they did, and he's like, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna make a tough decision today. I'm gonna we're
Speaker 2: gonna give this guy's freedom. It's gonna you know, we're
Speaker 2: foregoing thousands of dollars that could help our well equivalent
Speaker 2: to thousands of dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she wrote her own memoir, was not published. During
Speaker 1: her lifetime, she basically peddled the typical happy slave narrative, Right, Paul,
Speaker 1: they were like family to us. We fed them, we
Speaker 1: took care of them. Oh, I had one little jewels.
Speaker 1: She had a she had an enslaved girl when she
Speaker 1: was a girl named after her Julia. This is the
Speaker 1: slave's name who did everything for her, obviously, but fun fact,
Speaker 1: when the emancipation proclamation is issued, Jewels, the enslaved woman leaves, runs,
Speaker 1: runs away from Julia, and she did not understand. She
Speaker 1: could understand, m M, I was with you my whole life,
Speaker 1: and we took care of her.
Speaker 3: Could you just leave me?
Speaker 2: She writes about this in her memoir, Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: She's hurt that this the enslaved person after her left
Speaker 2: her after the emancipation proclamation.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And she she writes about her early life
Speaker 1: as a kid with these enslaved children and how they
Speaker 1: would like. She talked about how one time her little
Speaker 1: schoolhouse was just down the road. She would sit in
Speaker 1: a chair and the enslaved children would pick her up
Speaker 1: and take her to the school and she thought that
Speaker 1: was just like so cute and funny, and I would
Speaker 1: go fishing with them and all like so yeah, for her,
Speaker 1: she has this rosary relationship. Why would they be upset
Speaker 1: about this? She can't understand that maybe a person doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be.
Speaker 2: Enslaved, So in eighteen ninety she still said that yes,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, so she probably didn't move that far. Is
Speaker 2: that what you're saying? Okay, so you do have an
Speaker 2: answer to my question. I would say this this mock conversation.
Speaker 2: She probably was like, what.
Speaker 1: Are you doing? Probably yeah, Now I'm assuming I don't
Speaker 1: have any evidence for that, but yeah, I'm sure there
Speaker 1: would be a talk, a conversation about this choice. And
Speaker 1: now think about when the war breaks out, the conversations
Speaker 1: he would have had with his father in law, who
Speaker 1: he he didn't just own a couple slaves, right, he
Speaker 1: owned he enslaved multiple people right in Missouri, in Missouri,
Speaker 1: right outside of Saint Louis. It's well known in the
Speaker 1: in the Grand field that like around that time, he
Speaker 1: would have had conversations with his father in law in
Speaker 1: that dining room in that house in Saint Louis, talking
Speaker 1: about these these issues that are arising, right, and they
Speaker 1: obviously did not share the same opinions.
Speaker 3: Did he have a good relationship with his wife?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, yes he did. Oh yes, they were they
Speaker 1: That was That's one of the more famous love stories
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century. I would say, yeah, yeah. In
Speaker 1: his memoirs he tells the courtship, the story of it beautifully,
Speaker 1: like He sets it up, talks about meeting her, talks
Speaker 1: about before going to the Mexican American War, he wants
Speaker 1: to go see her one last time, to give her
Speaker 1: a little engagement ring essentially, and this is this is
Speaker 1: a good interesting anecdote. So he gets close to the
Speaker 1: house and there's a creek Grabois Creek I think is
Speaker 1: the name of it, and it's flooded. It's really high,
Speaker 1: and he's on a horse and he's like, well, I
Speaker 1: got to go see her. So he just goes through
Speaker 1: this creek the horse. He almost dies, He almost drowns
Speaker 1: trying to cross this creek with his horse.
Speaker 3: He had a mule.
Speaker 1: He should have had a mule. He would have been, well, I'm.
Speaker 3: Not going to die. A whole story, bro.
Speaker 1: But but he tells this story and his memoirs because
Speaker 1: it's an example of his philosophy. He says, I decided,
Speaker 1: when I set out to do something, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do it and I'm not going to turn back. And
Speaker 1: you can see if you think of that line, you
Speaker 1: can see how that might inform his actions later on
Speaker 1: in his.
Speaker 3: Life would encompass his life and legacy.
Speaker 1: Especially as a general right, like think about the overland
Speaker 1: campaign in the East during the end of the war,
Speaker 1: when he's just constantly flanking Lee, trying to get you know,
Speaker 1: around him. Most generals up to that point they would
Speaker 1: get try to attack him. Then you think of mc clellan, right,
Speaker 1: they would back out. Grant just kept going right once
Speaker 1: he set out, he did not he did it. He
Speaker 1: was a pretty pretty accurate statement, I would say from him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Grant and Julia adored each other.
Speaker 2: But Grant's father in law despised him, and once the
Speaker 2: war started he told Grant that he'd shoot him like
Speaker 2: a rabbit if he and his men came on the
Speaker 2: Dent farm in Missouri. And another thing that I haven't
Speaker 2: told yet is that Julia was cross eyed. She often
Speaker 2: insisted that pictures be taken of her from the side,
Speaker 2: not from the front, and this would hide her crossed eyes.
Speaker 2: During Grant's presidency, when she knew that she'd be in
Speaker 2: the public spotlight more and more, she consulted a doctor
Speaker 2: about a surgery to fix her eyes, and she recorded
Speaker 2: in her memoirs what her husband told her. He says,
Speaker 2: did I not see you and fall in love with
Speaker 2: you with these same eyes? I like them just as
Speaker 2: they are, and now remember you are not to interfere
Speaker 2: with them.
Speaker 3: They are mine.
Speaker 2: And let me tell you, miss Grant, you had better
Speaker 2: not make any experiments, as I might not like you
Speaker 2: half so well. With any other eyes, I'd say that's
Speaker 2: really special. There was a data point to Grant's character.
Speaker 2: How a man treats his wife as a huge indication
Speaker 2: of his character. Julia would be the first one to
Speaker 2: believe in Grant and see his potential for greatness when
Speaker 2: everything else just showed failure. In the late eighteen fifties,
Speaker 2: during this very tough decade full of failures, an older
Speaker 2: slave woman recalled Julia telling her that she Julia had
Speaker 2: had a dream that Ulysses became the president of the
Speaker 2: United States, and she knew that it would be true.
Speaker 2: Talk about prophetic. No one saw this coming, but Julia
Speaker 2: somehow did. That's interesting. We've got to talk more about
Speaker 2: Grant's involvement with slavery.
Speaker 3: Before the war.
Speaker 1: He would have again, he was kind of obviously indifferent.
Speaker 3: Was formulating his real opinions.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was okay enough with accepting William Jones right,
Speaker 1: think of that, right, So so he wasn't He was
Speaker 1: not and he would say this himself. I think he
Speaker 1: says it in the memoirs. He was not an abolitionist
Speaker 1: at the time, obviously, but as the war progresses, as
Speaker 1: he gets older, as he gets more experienced, he starts
Speaker 1: to change his views start to change on this, especially
Speaker 1: during the war.
Speaker 2: Well, it probably informed him in a really powerful way. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because if you if if you actually had engaged in
Speaker 2: this thing and seen it for yourself and knew what
Speaker 2: it felt like to own another human and make them
Speaker 2: do work for you and not pay them and control
Speaker 2: their life, and he was like, hey, this isn't right,
Speaker 2: and then he made a decision that hurt him financially
Speaker 2: and maybe put him in some jeopardy. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: pretty powerful, powerful and certainly would have informed the rest
Speaker 2: of his life more than if that wasn't in the store. Like,
Speaker 2: to me, that's not even a fly in the ointment,
Speaker 2: you know. I Mean, it's like that's what made him.
Speaker 2: And it feels like even more than someone that was like, no,
Speaker 2: I've never been a part of this. This is this
Speaker 2: peculiar institution. They have nothing to do with. I don't
Speaker 2: know you, just like this guy was there, saw it.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of redemption in that idea.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, yes, an empathy in all this too, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I think that's the key part of it. I think
Speaker 1: it's the empathy part.
Speaker 2: In April eighteen sixty one, the Civil War begins, and
Speaker 2: Grant has been out of the military for seven years, farming,
Speaker 2: selling firewood, and working at his father's tannery business. He
Speaker 2: built a log cabin that he called hard scrabble. He's
Speaker 2: struggling in life. He's a letdown to his own father
Speaker 2: and his father in law, who believed his daughter.
Speaker 3: Had married a deadbeat Yankee.
Speaker 2: Grant becomes enlivened when he sees the Southern States seceed,
Speaker 2: and he can't believe that many of his fellow West
Speaker 2: Point graduates are leading the trees in this rebellion. As
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, one of Robert E. Lee's favorite generals,
Speaker 2: James Longstreet, was one of Grant's best men in he
Speaker 2: and Julia's wedding, and long Street and Grant remained friends
Speaker 2: before and after the war. At this point, Grant leading
Speaker 2: the entire army would be as likely as me entering
Speaker 2: the NBA. This was on nobody's mind.
Speaker 1: This is his chance now to get back into the military.
Speaker 1: You know, the way he looks at it. He's got
Speaker 1: great experience. Gradually, he's a West Point graduate. He fought
Speaker 1: the Mexican American War. Why not, right, this is a
Speaker 1: great opportunity.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So he's been out of the military for about a decade. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the war starts and he's like, well, I'll go back in.
Speaker 2: Would he go back in as a not as a general?
Speaker 1: So he tried to get he couldn't get a commission
Speaker 1: at first. He had to raise a regiment of volunteers,
Speaker 1: which he did. He did a really good job at it.
Speaker 3: He had to recruit troops to come in.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, a volunteer regiment. Yeah, okay, Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: he's he's leading this regiment. This is actually really this
Speaker 1: is another really good anecdote that kind of uh yeah,
Speaker 1: his leadership style during the war. Right, So this is
Speaker 1: this is in oh gosh, I want to say it's
Speaker 1: in Missouri. He's chasing down this Confederate group of soldiers
Speaker 1: and he knows where they're camped. They're camped over this hill, right,
Speaker 1: And he talks about this in his memoirs, and this
Speaker 1: is his first time he's going to face battle during
Speaker 1: the Civil War, and he says, man, I said, we're
Speaker 1: going up over this hill. I'm starting to get starts
Speaker 1: to get so nervous. I feel it feels like my
Speaker 1: heart is in my throat. He's freaking out. And they
Speaker 1: get up over the crest of the hill and they
Speaker 1: look down and the camp's gone, and he, you know,
Speaker 1: his heart resumed, It went back to his place, he said,
Speaker 1: and he goes. But I learned a valuable lesson in this,
Speaker 1: he said. I learned that the enemy is is just
Speaker 1: as afraid of me as I am afraid of them.
Speaker 1: And from that point on, he said, I never felt
Speaker 1: any sort of like fear or anxiety going into a battle. Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he just the fact that they were gone,
Speaker 3: they were gone, they fled. When they fled, recognize.
Speaker 2: So he equated his fear with they must have had
Speaker 2: equal equal fear, and it vanquished his fear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's unique.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he's saying a lot of people deal with
Speaker 2: anxiety in all kinds of different things in ways.
Speaker 3: We know that good.
Speaker 2: And so when you hear how somebody overcomes something, especially
Speaker 2: when you think about the consequences of war, that is interesting.
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, overcoming anxiety can often just simply be mentally reframing
Speaker 2: a situation. The mind is powerful. The Bible talks about
Speaker 2: the renewal of the mind. And I've got a question
Speaker 2: about how important leadership is. This seems like a good
Speaker 2: time to ask. As Grant is about to climb his
Speaker 2: way to the top of the US military, prepare for
Speaker 2: a sports analogy. Inside of basketball NBA team, sometimes the
Speaker 2: talent is so great that you wonder how much the
Speaker 2: coach influences what's going on on the court. And you
Speaker 2: see these coaches that win year after year, and and
Speaker 2: you kind of start to understand the dynamics of leadership
Speaker 2: and how powerful this because I mean, sometimes you see
Speaker 2: this NBA team and you're just like, man.
Speaker 3: I could coach those guys to THEBA title.
Speaker 2: That's what it feels like, because you got this young
Speaker 2: coach over there, and sometimes they mike up them in
Speaker 2: the huddle and they're saying stuff like I said to
Speaker 2: my son's pee wee league.
Speaker 3: Yeah, come on, got to stick together. But then you know,
Speaker 3: as you.
Speaker 2: Dive into it, you realize that the power of leadership,
Speaker 2: the power of what these guys are actually doing. Same
Speaker 2: thing in military battle with a general. Sometimes it's like, well,
Speaker 2: whoever has the most guys and the most worst is
Speaker 2: in the most gunpowder is going to win. But there's
Speaker 2: like an incredible amount of strategy, an incredible amount of
Speaker 2: leadership that these guys, especially during the Civil War.
Speaker 3: You know, they're they're talking to people.
Speaker 2: They're who they are is really coming through inside of
Speaker 2: the battles and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and here's my question to you. How much does
Speaker 3: a general matter in a civil war battle?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I would say they mentally. Right now, I have
Speaker 1: to admit, I'm I have never been in the military,
Speaker 1: so I might be speaking out of turn, right, but my.
Speaker 3: Perception I've never been in the NBA.
Speaker 1: Well, my perception is that it's very important, right because
Speaker 1: you think of somebody. Let's look the opposite side of
Speaker 1: the coin. Robert E. Lee right again, doesn't have his
Speaker 1: he he doesn't get fresh troops coming in all the time,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have the same amount of supplies. But look
Speaker 1: at the success he has for the first couple of
Speaker 1: years of the war, right, Like, Yeah, that showed that
Speaker 1: shows you the value of a good general, especially a
Speaker 1: good general who knows tactics. Right, Like, like Robert E. Lee,
Speaker 1: you could another example going backwards in American history, look
Speaker 1: at the American Revolution. You know the story of these
Speaker 1: poor little farmers, this small group of colonists taking on
Speaker 1: the largest military navy in the world, and they defeat them. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: with way less reason. Now they're fighting a defensive war,
Speaker 1: and it's a different politics, and there's stuff happening in Europe.
Speaker 1: All that very complicated, but it shows you that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just about Yeah, it's not just about military
Speaker 1: resources and power like that. Like you know, you have
Speaker 1: to have a good leader, not just tactically, not just strategically,
Speaker 1: but like as a leader, right, Like, so you think
Speaker 1: of Grant, going back to Zachary Taylor, the kind of
Speaker 1: informal style, not about pomp and circumstance. Think of how
Speaker 1: a soldier in the trenches relates to somebody like that,
Speaker 1: who's who looks like them, Who's who's with them right
Speaker 1: during the during the battle. You know, so I think
Speaker 1: that has a huge influence.
Speaker 2: Would those guys have known Grant, I mean, would he
Speaker 2: have been like talking to soldiers, Yeah, yeah, he'd been
Speaker 2: fairly exposed to, like just a common lieutenant in the military.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh yes.
Speaker 2: The power of leadership is real, and coaching on the battlefield,
Speaker 2: it's real. Inside of your business, your career, it's real
Speaker 2: inside of your home. Grant would ascend from the bottom
Speaker 2: rung of the latter to the top one hundred percent
Speaker 2: by merit in a time of many many politically appointed generals.
Speaker 2: He came into the view of Lincoln, who wouldn't have
Speaker 2: known him from anywhere else about midway through the war,
Speaker 2: after the forty seven day Siege of Vicksburg, which displayed
Speaker 2: as incredible military mind, grit, and determination. Vicksburg put him
Speaker 2: on the map, and they're still talking about it down
Speaker 2: there today. At this time, General McClellan was the top
Speaker 2: Union commander, known for his lack of action. Lincoln was
Speaker 2: pulling out his hair because he couldn't find a general
Speaker 2: that wasn't afraid of Robert E. Lee. One of the
Speaker 2: most interesting things about Grant is the way he carried
Speaker 2: himself as a general, which was in contrast to so
Speaker 2: many other people that had these big egos, wanted to
Speaker 2: look like generals, wanted to be called sir. I mean
Speaker 2: common things that would have been accepted. But Grant stood
Speaker 2: in contrast to that. Can can you describe that to me.
Speaker 1: Certainly, to me, the main talking point that most people
Speaker 1: give is that he didn't have political aspirations after the war,
Speaker 1: Right you think of someone like McClellan, it was clear,
Speaker 1: I mean he ran for president, right, he clearly had
Speaker 1: other ambitions, right, And most people did, most of these
Speaker 1: generals did. I mean, that's why there was think about
Speaker 1: how many political generals there were appointed by Lincoln and
Speaker 1: how they and how that their interests may conflict with
Speaker 1: what they're going to do as a general. For Grant,
Speaker 1: it's the opposite. As a matter of fact, he I
Speaker 1: think he writes a letter to his wife pretty early
Speaker 1: on in the war where he says, I just want
Speaker 1: to bring this to an end so I can come
Speaker 1: back home and start farming and living my life again,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like he had no aspirations,
Speaker 1: at least on the surface. Maybe he did privately and
Speaker 1: he didn't write it down, you know, But I think
Speaker 1: that's the biggest thing that informs his leadership style, right,
Speaker 1: is that there are so many of these men who
Speaker 1: are not pulling the trigger because they don't want to
Speaker 1: risk losing their reputation. You have to understand at this time,
Speaker 1: like if you do something wrong during the war, your
Speaker 1: reputation is over. It's ruined. It's really hard to come
Speaker 1: back from it. Right.
Speaker 2: And so if you had aspirations beyond the war in politics,
Speaker 2: and you're a bad general, or you get defeated in
Speaker 2: some war that's broadcast all over the country, your name
Speaker 2: is associated with something bad.
Speaker 3: That this happened.
Speaker 1: So think of this. A man named lou Wallace during
Speaker 1: the Battle of Shilah. So the first day the Confederates
Speaker 1: they launched this attack on the suspecting Union troops at Shiloh.
Speaker 1: Grant responds, he tries to, you know, get his lines
Speaker 1: in order, and he orders one of his generals, Lou Wallace,
Speaker 1: to kind of make a route around the left flank
Speaker 1: of the Confederates. It's hard to tell what exactly happened,
Speaker 1: but essentially he took the wrong road and was not
Speaker 1: where he was supposed to be when the battle was happening. Now,
Speaker 1: this ruins his reputation, and it was it was such
Speaker 1: a stain on his character and his reputation, and he
Speaker 1: spent the rest of his life defending it. This one day,
Speaker 1: there's one action.
Speaker 3: So that crippled some of these guys, but it didn't
Speaker 3: cripple in.
Speaker 1: My opinion, Yeah, I would say that. Yeah, But Lou
Speaker 1: Wallas wrote one more thing. He actually he did redeem
Speaker 1: himself a little bit. He wrote Ben Hur that the
Speaker 1: movie is based on Oh really, Yeah, so I think
Speaker 1: that's that's an interesting little redemption arc there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so he made it in Hollywood, yeah before
Speaker 2: it exists, to make it as in general and made
Speaker 2: it in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Okay, I got it.
Speaker 1: It's fought on. But yeah, so I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of the biggest difference between Grant and these other men.
Speaker 1: I do think personality plays a big part of this
Speaker 1: as well, Like you alluded to that, right, I think
Speaker 1: there is a willingness on his part that other people
Speaker 1: don't have, and not just because of their reputation, but
Speaker 1: just because out of you know, indecisiveness or yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just not sure if it's going to work, and so
Speaker 1: they hesitate a little bit, you know. But I also
Speaker 1: think what helped him in his generalship. He was very
Speaker 1: blunt and clear in his orders. All right. If you
Speaker 1: go and look at say McClellan his writings during the war,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's like this flowery, poetic prose.
Speaker 3: He was trying to be a gal.
Speaker 1: Oh, he was trying to be the most impressive person
Speaker 1: you've ever seen, as opposed to Grant, who was just
Speaker 1: like cross the bridge, go there now, like he was
Speaker 1: very plains but very clear cut. And he talks about
Speaker 1: I want to say it was Taylor was the same way,
Speaker 1: very plain spoken in his orders and this is important
Speaker 1: right And Grant talks about this in his memoirs where
Speaker 1: but he gives this example, there's a general where his
Speaker 1: orders are indecisive. For example, once you reach this bridge,
Speaker 1: if you can take it, take it right. Grant, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, would say, once you reach this bridge,
Speaker 1: take it. See like he was very clear cut in
Speaker 1: what he wanted his generals to do.
Speaker 2: Grant would say that indecisiveness in war was the worst thing.
Speaker 2: A wrong decision was better than a delayed decision because
Speaker 2: you'd more quickly find the right answer and do it.
Speaker 2: And Grant's lack of ambition was undoubtedly a huge part
Speaker 2: of his high level of performance. What Grant wanted to
Speaker 2: do was when the war stopped the fighting and restore
Speaker 2: the union. Some called him a butcher because of how
Speaker 2: effective he did his job. He'd become the author of
Speaker 2: total war. He viewed clear and decisive victory as the
Speaker 2: quickest way to end the bloodshed. The South had to
Speaker 2: be destroyed and then rebuilt from the ground up. And
Speaker 2: though he didn't start here, he'd also come to believe
Speaker 2: that slavery had to once and for all be stamped out.
Speaker 3: Through this war, or other wars would be fought in
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 2: There is more to come on the final episode of
Speaker 2: our Civil War Summer. I can't thank you enough for
Speaker 2: listening to Bear Grease. Please share a podcast with a
Speaker 2: friend this week. Thanks for listening to Brent's This Country
Speaker 2: Life and Lakes Backwoods University, and as always
Speaker 3: Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.