Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Bookshelf Ron Chernow Grant 2

CSPAN3 History Bookshelf Ron Chernow Grant July 12, 2024

New york times book review. We recorded the program in september of 2018. Good afternoon. Welcome, everybody. Im david moskowitz, head of Government Relations and Public Policy at wells fargo and pleased to be here with you today. We are pleased to serve for the eighth year as a charter sponsor of the book festival and prouder to watch the book festival grow into the incredibly popular and impactful event it has become. I wouldnt be surprised [ applause ] thank you. Wouldnt be surprised to see us move the needle on some bestseller list today. Its even more important to keep the book festival a free event that serves the community. The library of congress and the book festivals purpose here is literacy which leads to learning and opportunity which matches our goal of helping our community succeed, learning to love books and learning are what the book festival is all about. In this session, ron chernow will discuss his biography of Ulysses Grant f were lucky, certain is other popular founding fathers, one thing i learned from the story of president grant was how people can evolve and through persistence and hard work acknowledge and overcome their imperfections. Its an incredible story that reminded me that a person of good wil can learn from their mistakes and reach their potential. I hope you enjoy this session. Its my privilege to introduce the Deputy Director of International Outreach at the library of congress and session moderator colleen shogan. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome to the 18th annual National Book festival. Im pleased to be joined on stage today by ron chernow. Ron is an awardwinning journalist, historian and biographer and won the Pulitzer Prize for biography and the National Book award for nonfiction. In 2015 he won the National Humanities medal. His book on Alexander Hamilton was the inspiration for the Award Winning musical for which ron worked as a historical consultant. The library of congress is honored to have you join us today at the National Book festival. Its worth noting our cochair of the festival mr. David rubenstein was supposed to conduct this interview today, but due to scheduling changes because of senator mccains funeral he was unable to do so. I have davids questions here today and i just happen to be a big admirer of ulysses s. Grant and rons books, so i think were going to have a fantastic time here today at the book festival. Before we talk about grant, we need to ask a question about Alexander Hamilton. Who is he . Who is he . So when Linmanuel Miranda first approached you and said that he wanted to create a hiphop musical based upon your book, what was your reaction and did you ever think it would become a cull furl phenomenon . Very often people say to me, when youre writing the Alexander Hamilton biography did you have any idea it would be turned into a hiphop musical and i think to myself, i think the question answers itself. When i first met Linmanuel Miranda in the fall of 2008, lin was staring in his first musical and he asked me on the spot to be the historical adviser to this as yet nonexistent show, so i laughed and said to him, i mean, you want me to tell you when something is wrong and he said with great fervor, yes, i want the historians to take this seriously, which was music to my ears. I was a little skeptical but i was quite intrigued and i thought that nothing could be more delightful than to watch the evolution of a broadway musical. I was a lifelong theater goer and offered to be on the other side of the lights was absolutely irresistible. It turned out to be a rocket ride far beyond anything that i could have anticipated. We move on to grant which youve written the definitive biography of grant and i have to start with kind of a question, it has a good story to it, who is buried in grants tomb . When i first started working on the book in 2011, i found that approximately half the people whom i told i was working on grant shot back, who is buried in grants tomb so naturally i got very interested in the origin of this joke. Well, i traced it back to marks. And some of you are old enough to remember he had a quiz show and he was dismayed that so many of the contestants could not answer a single one of the questions. He decided that he would ask every contestant the question that every contestant could answer and that question was, who is buried in grants tomb. To his astonishment half the guests got it wrong. But such is the staying power of a great comedian that the line has become part of the popular culture. Lets start at the beginning with grant. Where was he born and what were the conditions of his upbringing and his family like . He was born in Point Pleasant, ohio, grew up in a series of small towns in southwestern ohio near cincinnati, and Point Pleasant was right on the ohio river. The significance of that was that it separated the free state of ohio from the slave owning state of kentucky. On winter evenings the ohio would freeze over and fugitive slaves would sprint to freedom. Very important in terms of thinking about grant later that he grew up really straddling the world both north and south and understood both of their cultures. Fairly well to do families, father was a rich tanner and mayor of one of the three towns and his father was really the bane of his life. The father was a very pushy and domineering character. And then grant went to west point because grant wanted to go to west point. He did not. But his father want himd to go and his father saw west point as a free form of vocational education. How did he do at west point . Actually, fairly well. I would say his performance was lackluster. He was 21st in a class of 39, but there was already considerable attrition before that. He became famous for two things at the academy. One, he was probably the best horseman of his generation, if not century at the academy. He established a high jumping record on the horse net york, they set the bar at more than five feet and grant managed to clear it, it was a record not equallied. He was very good at drawing and may seem strange and insignificant, but it was thought important for generals to be able to draw maps during battles and grant was very good at drawing and during the civil war, he had the uncanny ability to visualize the battlefield and it always comes from this visual sense that he had and first reflected in his capacity to draw. After west point he has a number of assignments and ends up as a Quarter Master in the mexican war. Why is his service as a Quarter Master, why does that turn out to be important . Extremely important. Being Quarter Master in mexico gave grant a nuts and bolts knowledge of the logistics of an army and looking ahead to the civil war, grant would be in charge of four or five different armies stretched across 1300 mile front. Grants mastery of logistics and the railroad and the telegraph enabled him to supervise the vast armies and goes back to being Quarter Master in mexico and very importantly, as Quarter Master grant was not obligated to actually fight. He could have stayed behind the lines but he made a point of volunteering to fight in every single combat that his troops were involved in. Thats kind of real courage and patriotism. After the mexican war he marries julia dent and what was she look and her family like . Okay. So grant comes from this abolitionist family in ohio and marry into a slave owning family in missouri. His father colonel frederick dent, becomes the bane of his life, very hard on grant. Julia was very outgoing and vivacious and julia always had a vision of grants future he sometimes did not have himself. During the 1850s hes trying and failing to establish himself as a farmer in st. Louis and he fails at a real estate venture. During this very bleak period in grants life julia has a dream one night. She dreams ta her husband is going to be president of the United States and when she tells her friends and family about this dream, everyone laughs. Nothing can seem more preposterous. This man is struggling just to support a wife and four children. Julia knew. You spent a fair amount of time in the book talking about grants struggle with alcohol. What did you conclude . Did he have a problem with drinking and what sort of evidence did you use to draw those conclusions . Historically the debate about grant has been was he a drunk or not. I found the term drunkard a loaded moralistic term because it implies a person who was dissipated and irresponsible and kind of glefully indulging this vice, i felt that i tried to approach it through what i hope is our more enlightnd attitude, he was an alcoholic, i say that because he could never have just one drink, i say that because even one glass of alcohol changed his personality. This was something he struggled against his entire life. He was already a member of a temperance in his 20s. The reason theres been difficulty that previous writers had with grants drinking he was a binge drinker, he was an episodic drinker. He could go two or three months without touching a glass of alcohol. He would then have two or three day binges that even people closely with him would not see him during those. Its a problem that he struggles with and by the time he becomes president , hes largely conquered it. Its a problem that bedevils him throughout the civil war. And that causes him to leave the military, precipitates an exit from the military. In 1854 he was assigned to a couple lonely, bleak garrisons in North Carolina where he could not afford to bring his wife and children. He was lonely and depressed and starts drinking and then in 1854 he shows up one day drunk and is really drummed out of the service. It was very significant because the Peace Time Army was really very small and so there was a very active rumor mill so all of the stories of grants history of drinking will follow him into the civil war and will very much kind of color how people see him. I think probably were it not for that history and all of these stories about grants drinking Abraham Lincoln might have brought grant east much sooner in the war to act as general in chief. Grant is a civilian and you have a very poignant description of him. He ends up on the streets of st. Louis selling firewood to support his family. How does that happen . Yeah. Okay. Try making it as a farmer, julia as a wedding gift from her father received 60 acres which grant worked. He was very industrious but he could not make a go of it. He ends up taking firewood, ten miles into st. Louis and he actually walks beside the wagon. People who saw him in those days selling firewood on street corners in st. Louis said that he was bearded, disheveled, unkept looking. One of his Old Army Buddies ran into him on the street and was shocked by grants unkept appearance and he said, grant, what are you doing . Grants response was poignant, he said im solving the problem of poverty. He was so poor at that he was so poor at that point that one christmas he had to pawn his watch to buy christmas presents for his family. This was circa 1857, civil war breaks out 1861. Then something happens. Fort sumter and you write in your book grant eventually joins the volunteer infantry in illinois and gets a position in the union army and you write in your book that a change overcomes grant. What was that change . You know, when the civil war broke out, there was a desperate shortage of officers. You have to remember about a third of the Army Officers were from the south, so many of them, most of them defektsds to the confederacy. Grant still had all of that west point stored in his mind and fought with great distinction in the mexican war, had been assigned to four different frontier garrisons before the civil war and so his efficiency and military knowledge come to the floor and grants rise gives new meaning to the term mediocre. Two months after the outbreak of the civil war hes a colonel, four months after a Brigadier General 12 months hes a Major General and by the end of the civil war, this man who had been working as a clerk in his fathers Leather Goods store in illinois back in 1860, that man who had seemed like a certifiable failure in life, general in chief of the union army with 1 million soldiers under his command far and away the Largest Military establishment in the country up until that time. Now he has some early victories that catches the eye of lincoln, that is right . Absolutely. Very often the history of the civil war theres a disproportionate focus on virginia and if you look at virginia it seems like the confederacy is winning battle after battle. In the western theater of war grant was winning one victory after another. In early 1862 he has twin battles against twin forts in the northwest corner of tennessee. Forts henry and donaldson. There was significance for the following reason, fort henry was on the tennessee river, Fort Cumberland on the sorry fort donaldson on the Cumberland River and those two river penetrated deep into the confederacy, particularly grants victory at fort donaldson was the first of three times he captured an entire Confederate Army, more than 13,000 people, and also led to a new nickname for grant because the confederate general inside the fort was Simon Buckner who wanted to send a message to grant, he wanted commissioners appointed to negotiate a truce and grant wrote back, no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender will be accepted, i propose to move upon your works immediately. That Unconditional Surrender line, it became instead of u. S. Grant, it became Unconditional Surrender. It was the first largescale victory of the war for the north. In late 1862 he issues general order number 11 which expels t expels from the south because he believes theyre engaged in a black market cotton ring. Was grant antisemitic or did he regret that decision . He regretted it almost as soon as he issued it, as soon as lincoln and secretary of war stanton saw it, they immediately overrode it. Grant said he did regret it almost instantly. It was au stro metro shus and inexcusable thing to do. People know that piece of the story. What they dont know is grant spent the rest of his life atoning for that action. As president he appointed more jews to Public Office than all the other 19th century president s combined. He became the first president to speak out on human rights abuses abroad and in both cases because of persecution of the jews, one time in russia, one time in poland, and then most remarkable of all since were sitting here in washington, d. C. , during the last year of his second term, he was invited to the dedication of the synagogue, a very tiny synagogue. Grant went with his son and with a u. S. Senator. It was a threehour ceremony. Hes president of the United States, this was a confwregation that probably had 40 or 50 people. One hour into the dedication of this synagogue, the elders of the synagogue went over to grant and said, mr. President , were very touched you would come to this humble function, you can leave now in good conscience. Grant insisted on staying the full three hours, reached into his pocket, gave a donation to the synagogue. He was not it was kind of one of the pleasurable Things Writing about him, he was not a prejudiced man. He was not a man full of hatred. You could read, i dont know, statements on black or native americans kind of hair raising ferocious things, you dont see that in grants papers at all. This was something that was really very out of character for him and he apologized and atoned the rest of his life. He has a number of other successes, he has more manpower and resources and then he has the victory at vicksburg. Why is vicksburg so impressive and why it was a daring capture. What happened, new orleans, baton rouge and memphis had fallen to union forces. It meant the one great citadel and bastion on the Mississippi River left to the confederacy was vicksburg. Vicksburg was located, there was a bend in the mississippi there that forced boats to slow down, there was seven miles of elaborate, so it seemed like this for tress. Grant had really very daring strategy to take vicksburg under cover of night. He had ironclads and transports come down the river despite heavy shelling from the confederates and marched some troops down the western bank of the mississippi. They then crossed over south of vicksburg to the only high dry land in that area and grant has this campaign, he wins five major victories in a threeweek period, surrounds vicksburg, lays siege to it and vicksburg surrenders. It was the same time as the victory at gettysburg and for a second time grant has captured an entire Confederate Army of more than 30,000 soldiers. At that point, the union not only controlled the mississippi, but it bisected the confederacy. Because a lot of supplies came from west of the mississippi so the Confederate Army was cut off from this major source of supplies west of the mississippi. That was grant. When did president lincoln bring grant east to lead the union army . What happens in february of 1864, Congress Passes a bill reinstatesing the title of lieutenant general. The only one that ever held that was george washington. Winfield scott. Grant becomes the lieutenant general.

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