"Grant" by Ron Chernow

 

At 3 ½ pounds and 1100 pages of smallish print, this is a substantial book. Reading it in whole will build your core body strength, increase your knowledge, and improve your mind.

I was drawn to this book, even though I had vowed, thirty years ago, to “…study war no more”—having learned to be a Pacifist while walking the battle fields at Antietam and Gettysburg. I was drawn to the book partly by the favorable reception that it received, but also because I wanted to better understand the campaigns in the west (Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga) which set the stage for the destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia and the surrender at Appomattox Court House.

This book is an important part of our national story. The years of Grant’s lifespan are central to the span of that story, a story dominated and designed by the original sin of slavery. A story told from different sides—ideologic and geographic—of that issue. The story of schism that ruptured, divided, and has not healed.

Slavery was what caused the southern States to secede from the Union. The cause of the War, however, was considered at the start to be the desire among unionists to restore and preserve the Union. This national sentiment is documented by Chernow’s research of the national conversation, and the conversation in Grant’s circle. And so…, the war was fought. Not until late 1862 was the destruction of slavery as an institution discussed widely as the goal of the war.

Some say that the military success at Shiloh and at Antietam, that year, emboldened Lincoln to issue the emancipation proclamation at the end of 1862.

But I believe also, that the horror of the carnage at Shiloh and Antietam made this revisionist idealism politically desirable. The news of the numbers of casualties in these battles, accompanied by Alexander Gardner’s photographs of the unburied dead at Antietam, would cause any reasonable person to question “Why?” A noble cause would better help to justify “Why?” and, so then, “destruction of the institution of slavery” became the more politically acceptable justification for the carnage.

This belief of mine is not offered as a moral justification of slavery. But I am on record as believing that the schism should have been addressed without war. All entities, particularly the slaves, would have been more victorious today if the schism had been dealt with peacefully, and resolved with the abolition of slavery brought on through sanctions instead of war. And, this, no matter whether the Union was eventually restored.

Chernow’s research is meticulous, and there is a substantial quantity of available material. So…, the tale told by Chernow is detailed documented history, not conjecture or opinion. If you read it through, you will arrive at the end of the book knowing a Ulysses S. Grant different from the one you thought you knew. This real U. S. Grant deserves our sympathy and our gratitude.

Neither Chernow’s style or his design of this project are lean and artful, but he kept me coming back for more. In fact, the book lends itself to interrupted reading. I appreciate the years of Chernow’s work that went into the project.