Ulysses S. Grant - Michael Korda [62]
Grant would have approved. He would have approved of the fact too that as president Ike was notably unwilling to fight another war. He had seen one, and that was enough for him.
Grant had seen two, and had no nostalgia for the experience. His memoirs are factual, precise, and about as objective as it is possible to be, but there is in them no attempt to portray war as glamorous, or glorious. Glory did not interest Grant. He would have hated Douglas MacArthur’s memoirs, and admired Ike’s for their modesty and calm tone. Grant would not have loved, like the Air Cav colonel played by Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, the smell of napalm in the morning (or at any other time). He hated war; the sight of a battlefield gave him no pleasure, and if he fought hard it was to bring the war to an end as quickly as possible. “Next to a battle lost, there is no spectacle more melancholy than a battle won,” Wellington said, and Grant would have been the first to agree with him.
I imagine that Grant would have agreed with the “Powell Doctrine” too, which is (or was) that the American armed forces ought to be used only when there is strong civilian support in favor of their use, and then used in overwhelming numbers, bringing America’s vast industrial resources and strength to bear on the enemy for a quick, crushing, and complete victory, and then bringing the troops home again as soon as possible. The difficulties of Reconstruction in the South taught Grant—not that he needed teaching—that armies of occupation are no substitute for political thought, and that generals are not necessarily the right people to institute basic political reforms or to reconstruct societies.
Whenever we think about the uses of American power, we would do well to remember Ulysses S. Grant—and to reread his memoirs, which, along with the victory that he won, are his greatest and most lasting legacy to us.
Above all, any politician contemplating the use of force should read Grant before doing so.
Notes
A Note on Sources
The list is too long to include in full, but two books I have relied upon, though they are very different in their point of view, have been Grant by William S. McFeely (Newtown, Conn.: American Political Biography Press, 1997), and Meet General Grant by W. E. Woodward (1928; reprint, New York: Norton, 1965). Indispensable are The West Point Atlas of American Wars: Volume I, 1689–1900, edited by Brig. Gen. Vincent J. Esposito (West Point, N.Y., 1995) and The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, edited by John Y. Simon (Southern Illinois University Press, 1967–). Reference must also be made to The Civil War Battlefield Guide, 2nd ed., edited by Frances H. Kennedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), Grant: A Military Commander, by Sir James Marshall-Cornwall (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1996), and, of course, Grant’s Memoirs and Selected Letters in the Library of America edition (New York, 1990).
Chapter One
1. New York Daily News, July 9, 2003; Associated Press, July 12, 2003.
2. Information on Grant’s tomb is taken mostly from “Grant’s Tomb: An Overview” (available at http://www.grantstomb.org/oview1.html), “The Grant Monument Association Update on Grant’s Tomb,” March 19, 2003 (http://www.morningside-heights.net); and CNN Interactive U.S. News, April 27, 1997.
3. “Men Grant Disliked,” Ulysses S. Grant home page, http://www.mscomm.com/~ulysses/page140.html
Chapter Two
1. William S. McFeely, Grant.
2. W. E. Woodward, Meet General Grant. I am indebted to Woodward for much of the information about Grant’s childhood. Writing in 1928, Woodward was closer to Grant’s time and had an affinity for his subject’s early years, and also for those of his future wife.
Chapter Three
1. For much of this I have relied on McFeely, who is excellent on the subject of the Dent family.
2. Again, McFeely’s is the best account of Grant’s military career in the Mexican War.
Chapter Four
1. Woodward is an excellent source