Ulysses S. Grant was the first four-star general in the history of the United States Army and the only president between Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson to serve eight consecutive years in the White House. As general in chief, Grant revolutionized modern warfare. Rather than capture enemy territory or march on Southern cities, he concentrated on engaging and defeating the Confederate armies in the field, and he pursued that strategy relentlessly. As president, he brought stability to the country after years of war and upheaval. He tried to carry out the policies of Abraham Lincoln, the man he admired above all others, and to a considerable degree he succeeded. Yet today, Grant is remembered as a brilliant general but a failed president.

In this comprehensive biography, Jean Edward Smith reconciles these conflicting assessments of Grant's life. He argues convincingly that Grant is greatly underrated as a president. Following the turmoil of Andrew Johnson's administration, Grant guided the nation through the post- Civil War era, overseeing Reconstruction of the South and enforcing the freedoms of new African-American citizens. His presidential accomplishments were as considerable as his military victories, says Smith, for the same strength of character that made him successful on the battlefield also characterized his years in the White House.

Grant was the most unlikely of military heroes: a great soldier who disliked the army and longed for a civilian career. After graduating from West Point, he served with distinction in the Mexican War. Following the war he grew stale on frontier garrison postings, despaired for his absent wife and children, and began drinking heavily. He resigned from the army in 1854, failed at farming and other business endeavors, and was working as a clerk in the family leathergoods store when the Civil War began. Denied a place in the regular army, he was commissioned a colonel of volunteers and, as victory followed victory, moved steadily up the Union chain of command. Lincoln saw in Grant the general he had been looking for, and in the spring of 1864 the president brought him east to take command of all the Union armies.

Smith dispels the myth that Grant was a brutal general who willingly sacrificed his soldiers, pointing out that Grant's casualty ratio was consistently lower than Lee's. At the end of the war, Grant's generous terms to the Confederates at Appomattox foreshadowed his generosity to the South as president. But, as Smith notes, Grant also had his weaknesses. He was too trusting of his friends, some of whom schemed to profit through their association with him. Though Grant himself always acted honorably, his presidential administration was rocked by scandals.

"He was the steadfast center about and on which everything else turned," Philip Sheridan wrote, and others who served under Grant felt the same way. It was this aura of stability and integrity that allowed Grant as president to override a growing sectionalism and to navigate such national crises as the Panic of 1873 and the disputed Hayes-Tilden election of 1876

At the end of his life, dying of cancer, Grant composed his memoirs, which are still regarded by historians as perhaps the finest military memoirs ever written. They sold phenomenally well, and Grant the failed businessman left his widow a fortune in royalties from sales of the book. His funeral procession through the streets of Manhattan closed the city, and behind his pallbearers, who included both Confederate and Union generals, marched thousands of veterans from both sides of the war.

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General George Henry Thomas

by Benson Bobrick

 

Editor's Comments

George Henry Thomas was an enigma for most of his life. Born to a slave-holding family in Virginia, he and his family experienced the threat of Nat Turner;s Rebellion in southeast Virginia.  Some historians believe that incident contributed to his empathy toward blacks exhibited during later life. Whether that is true or not, he owned slaves when he reached adulthood.  What made Thomas unique was, despite his southern upbringing, he remained loyal to the Union and to his liberal values.  When Virginia seceded in 1861, the West Point graduate remained with the Union cause, the only member of his family to do so. It is said that his family turned his picture to the wall and never spoke to him afterwards. Thomas went on to become one of the three best generals on the Union side.  Though he was treated with detachment by his superiors because of his southern roots, his generalship was never questioned and he never lost a battle. Conversely, he won several key battles that contributed to significant Union victories, earning the title, "The Rock Of Chicamaugua" along the way.  Thomas had United States Colored Troops under his command and used them without hesitation under any circumstance. After the war, he opposed the spread of the Ku Klux Klan.   In the end, I choose to include Thomas here because his story is one of a long line of unsung, liberal heroes that will make a difference in diminishing the paradigms that too many Americans have embraced out of sheer ignorance. 

Book Review by Robin Friedman

Some time ago, a friend and I were driving home from an event and went through Thomas Circle, in downtown Washington D.C. Thomas Circle is dominated by a large equestrian statue of General George Thomas constructed in 1879 by the Society of the Army of the Cumberland and cast from captured Confederate guns. My friend has lived in Washington, D.C. for many years, is well-educated and has an excellent knowledge of political United States history. "Who was General Thomas?", he asked as we drove through the Circle. I explainted that General George Thomas was a Union Civil war hero who fought mostly in the western theatre and was best-known as the "Rock of Chickamauga" for his grand defense during the course of a Union retreat.

Many people with only a cursory knowledge of the Civil War or of American history, will not know anything about General George Thomas (1816 -- 1870). This is a pity. Thomas was a remarkable person and General whose accomplishments and character deserve recognition. Thomas was born in Virginia to a slaveholding family. In his youth, he and his family narrowly escaped murder in Nat Turner's slave rebellion. Thomas attended West Point where he was a solid if not outstanding student and served in the U.S. Military all his life. He earned a reputation for military skill and judgmment in the Mexican War, Indian wars, and in participating on courts-martial panels.

When Thomas's home state of Virginia seceeded in 1861, Thomas without hesitation or reserve cast his lot with the Union, for which his family disowned him. Thomas achieved an early and important military success in the Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky, an important predecessor to the Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson. In the early stages of the war, Thomas twice declined promotions because he did not wish to be seen as conspiring against generals under whom he was serving at the time. Serving for the duration of the Civil War, Thomas had many achievements. His most brilliant accomplishments were his defense of the Union Army at Chickamauga, mentioned above, which saved the Army from a total rout, and his victory over General Hood late in the war at the Battle of Nashville. This battle was the only occasion during the Civil War in which a major army suffered total destruction. Among many other things, the battle is important for the large role that Thomas gave to African American troops who performed heroically on Nashville's second day. Thomas was beloved by his troops and fought his battles to avoid wanton loss of life. After the War, Thomas fought to halt the spread of the Ku Klux Klan. An individual of considerable reserve, Thomas had his personal papers, including letters to his family in Virginia and to his wife, destroyed. He wanted to be remembered for his public accomplishments.

Benson Bobrick's new biography, "Master of War: the Life of George H. Thomas (2009)" amply explains why Thomas deserves to be remembered. As such, the book is valuable. Unfortunately, the book is marred by a great deal of polemic and derogation of other leaders. Bobrick writes as if, in order to establish Thomas's stature for the reader, it is necessary to tear down the accomplishments of other persons. Thus, much of the book appears to be at least as much a vendetta against Grant and Sherman as it is a consideration of George Thomas. Bobrick is highly critical of the generalship of Grant and Sherman even when the activities of these commanders had little relationship to any activity of Thomas. He seems to have forgotten the complexity of military engagements and the limitations of a single point of view. Thus, his book appears more as a brief than as a historical study. He tends to find sources that support his preconceived position. These sources he too often accepts uncritically while ignoring differing interpretations. He denigrates Grant and Sherman unduly, with the apparent belief that in so doing he elevates Thomas. I don't think General Thomas would have had much sympathy for such an approach.

Bobrick also argues that Grant and Sherman in their postwar Memoirs tended to downplay Thomas's achievements in favor of each other. Here Bobrick is on firmer ground. Grant and Sherman were closer to each other professionally and personally than either man was to Thomas. And Thomas sometimes was passed-over so that the two could work as a team. Yet both generals acknowledged the importance of Thomas's accomplishments. Bobrick is correct to point out that Grant and Sherman undervalued Thomas. But he does not show either leader deserves the vitriol he pours on them. Bobrick's book is also full of quirky and unsupported judgments about other Civil War leaders. Beyond an effort to be provocative, some of his assessments add little to his account of Thomas.

There is a great deal in the book about the battle of Chattanooga which followed Thomas's great defense at Chickamauga. Grant and Thomas had an uneasy relationship at Chattanooga. The most famous event of this battle was the storming of Missionary Ridge by the troops without direction from either Grant or Thomas. Bobrick seems to accept that neither Grant nor Thomas ordered the charge. He finds the victory at Chattanooga due to Thomas's efforts exclusively and occurred in spite of the efforts of Grant. Students of Chattanooga have long differed about the respective roles of Grant in Thomas in the outcome of the battle. Both leaders contributed. It is not plausible to read out one leader's contribution, as Bobrick does with Grant, to elevate the contributions of the other.

Readers who study the Civil War seriously frequently develop strong opinions early about leadership in the conflict. Grant, Sherman, McClellan for the Union, Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Joe Johnston, Albert Sidney Johnston for the Confederacy all have strong admirers and detractors. Among the benefits of continued study of the conflict is that readers frequently learn to put aside their initial biases, through reading and reflection, and to either form a more balanced view of the conflict or at least to recognize that views other than the reader's own may be plausible and consistent with the evidence. The problem with this book is that Bobrick does not get much beyond the early stage. He wants to show that Thomas was the greatest general of the War, and the greatest general since George Washington. His book is geared to making an overly and unnecessarily strong case to establish Thomas's merit.

Even though Thomas may be unknown to many Americans, students of the Civil War have long recognized his importance. At the outset of his book, Bobrick acknowledges that Thomas is generally ranked as one of the three great Union generals of the Civil War, together with Grant and Sherman. (pp 1-2) This acknowledgement is itself worthy recognition of Thomas. It is unclear about the value of insisting that Thomas should be rated first among these three generals, as Bobrick tries to do. (In the world of classical music, for example, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven have claim to be among the three greatest composers. How much is to be learned to insisting on the superiority of one or the other of these figures at the expense of belittling the two others?) Bobrick has performed a worthy service by bringing Thomas's high military and personal accomplishments to a wide readership. But he has performed a disservice, with questionable historical basis, by trying to elevate Thomas's accomplishments by denigrating those of others.

Robin Friedman