Joan Waugh - U.S. Grant

We give proper credit to Lincoln for saving the Union.  The more I read about Ulysses S. Grant the more I give almost equal credit to him with Sherman following closely behind.  This is the best biography of Grant of which I am aware.

Sherman was a true hero, celebrated for his strength, his resolve, and his ability to overcome obstacles, banishing the possibility of failure.  P. 1

He grew up in rural Ohio.  P. 10

His career before the war was a complete failure according to T. Harry Williams.  P. 10

Got his "sense" from his mother.  P. 14

Showed early talent handling horses.  P. 15

Grant left home for West Point 5/15/39 at the age of 17.  That must have been scary for him.  P. 20

He was a reader and a water-color artist.  P. 22

"Sam" Grant might have been a college math teacher.  P. 24

Accused of being drunk on the job, Grant resigned from the army 4/11/54.  P. 38

Was Grant a drunk?  P. 40

In the 19th Century a man was judged by the content of his character.  P. 47

As the war ended.  P. 101

Henry Adams said US stood for "uniquely stupid."  P. 104

Historical low opinion ushered in the Gilded Age.  P. 106

Grant's low historical standing as president tied to the Dunning School.  P. 109

Recent revisionist interpretations of Grant.  P. 109-110

It is time for a more balanced understanding of Grant.  P. 111-112

The 1866 elections doomed presidential reconstruction.  P. 115

The estrangement of Grant and President Johnson.  P. 118

He believed in the gold standard.  P. 131

His enlightened Indian policy.  P. 133

Grant came close to being nominated again in 1880. P. 164

His world tour.  P. 165

Grant rightly criticized the generalship of The Marble Man.  P. 179

Grant's memoirs best explain why the North won the way.  P. 213

Reconciliation between North & South after led by the funeral of Grant was an illusion.  The war really never ended.  Republicans waived the "bloody shirt."  If Democrats regained power, all of the gains of the war would be lost.  The South had its lost cause ideology.  Its soldiers and people were heroic and lost only because they were outgunned and outpeopled by the North.  P. 219

Vote as you shot.  P. 220

Reconciliation came at the expense of acknowledging that slavery was the cause of the war in the first place.  P. 238

Part of Grant's resurgence in recent years is the dwindling of the so-called Lost Cause myth.  He became the embodiment of the Civil War in the decades afterwards.   P. 307