H. W. Brands

An excellent biography of one of America's most consistently-underrated historical figures. Brands does an excellent job of illuminating Grant's early life and struggles, not only with the bottle but with his failings as a provider--despite his best efforts. As he does so, Brands shows the character that enabled Grant to overcome these failures and rise to become the most beloved general since Washington, and the most popular President of the 19th Century (at least in terms of electoral show more success).

The outlining of Grant's military tenure during the Civil War is very solid, demonstrating that he was the best strategic thinker on either side, and no slouch as a tactician (Brands notes that Grant's casualty rates were lower as a proportion of men in combat than Lee's despite being on the offensive much more often).

But the eye-opener for me was Brands' revisionist (and I use that term advisedly) assessment of Grant's two terms as President. Far from the failure "everyone knows" it to be, Grant's Presidency had a remarkable number of achievements: the Fifteenth Amendment, the squelching of the attempt to corner the gold market, the settling of claims against England stemming from the giving of commerce raiders to the Confederacy and, most crucially, Grant's dedication to civil rights for freedmen. In enforcing the Ku Klux Klan Act and related civil rights legislation and appointing determined attorneys general like Amos Akerman, Grant was the President most devoted to civil rights and racial equality until the arrival of Lyndon Johnson.

Where this reassessment (slightly) fails is in providing a thorough explanation of *why* Grant's reputation as President went to and remains mostly in the dustbin at this late date. To be sure, Brands' treatment of 1872-1880 is not all praise--Grant is rapped for his too-restrictive handling of the Panic of 1873, America's first industrial depression, which cast a shadow over much of his tenure. Though, interestingly, it didn't damage his personal popularity much (as opposed to damaging the GOP)--he came close to winning a nomination for a third term in 1880, and almost certainly would have won that election, too.

Still, it's an eye-opener that should prove a welcome tonic to the Good General/Bad President canard that unjustly haunts him.

Finally, Brands deftly handles Grant's last battle--a race against time to finish his memoirs as he was dying of throat cancer. As he did through his military career, Grant won this battle through dogged determination, dying a few days after he finished them, ensuring that his wife and family would be well-provided for.

All in all, an exceptional read even if you aren't interested in the era--but absolutely essential if you are. Four stars. show less

Reason read: Benjamin Franklin was born in January. Read in his honor.

Any book you pick up by H.W. Brands is going to be entertaining. Never dry or boring, in First American, Brands not only brings his subject of Benjamin Franklin to living and breathing life, but also the era in which Franklin lived. Society, religion, politics, and the arts are vividly presented to the reader as the backdrop to Franklin's life. For example, details like explaining how apprentices were not allowed to visit show more taverns, inns, or alehouses served to give insight into Franklin's future beliefs. As a young man, he could not play cards, dice, or even enter into marriage. Franklin was essentially slaves with pay.
Brands also brings to light what an interesting man Benjamin Franklin became in his older years. His range of interests, his need for self-improvement, his contradictory beliefs, and his ambitions were nothing short of astounding. His goals and resolutions surrounding virtue and the way he went about trying to master his them were admirable for all mankind. Everyone knows the story of the silk kite and key, but who remembers Franklin deciding that Philadelphia needed more academia to teach the subjects that were useful to the youth? His quest for vegetarianism? His ability to change his mind about slavery?
With Franklin's use of aliases (Silence Dogood, Martha Careful, Caelia Shortface, and Polly Baker to name a few), I wonder what Franklin would have thought about our ability to hide behind user names and criticize our fellow man for everything from the color of her skin to the way our neighbor mows the lawn. show less

This is much more than factual history. Telling Brown’s and Lincoln’s stories side-by-side presents a striking moral and political contrast. Brown, for whom the abolition of the slaves could not be compromised for any supposedly competing considerations. And Lincoln the skillful politician, convinced of the ultimate validity of the abolitionist cause but placing the preservation of the Union above it.

Brown is someone you can deplore and respect in the same breath. This is someone who show more fully dedicated his life to a virtuous and selfless cause. But it is also someone who went to extremes in doing so, most egregiously the infamous 1856 Pottawatomie killings (in the wake of the pro-slavery forces’ sacking of Lawrence, Kansas).

I found it interesting that, as the author, Brands, notes, Brown never admitted to the Pottawatomie killings. In his own way, Brown was a very honest man, and he was honest and forthright in his admission that those who stood directly in the way of his cause deserved the fate that they got. But Pottawatomie was something else — the men killed at Pottawatomie were taken at night from their homes and families, then killed brutally, with swords, and apparently tortured. It is almost as if, in the rage following the incident at Lawrence (in which pro-slavery forces destroyed property, not lives), Brown did something he could not admit of even to himself.

He was admired, and is admirable I think, for his singlemindedness and his unshakeable conviction that his cause was just. It was just. And the admiration, on the part of many, even among his captors at Harpers Ferry, was genuine. Such dedication is awe inspiring, although not worthy of imitation. Even his ill-conceived occupation of Harpers Ferry seems quixotic in the way we admire the pursuit of the just even when it is unobtainable.

Brown had the singlemindedness that Lincoln, in the eyes of some of his critics, lacked.

Despite his fame as “the great emancipator,” Lincoln placed his priority on the preservation of the Union:

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

Lincoln was certainly opposed to slavery, and if he had had his way, slavery would have been abolished, although he wavered over how and over what period of time. At one point during his presidency, he proposed that slavery continue, by law, until an expiration in 1900, to provide time for the nation to heal and adjust.

And he was no proponent of equality between whites and blacks — in fact, he saw a future state of whites and blacks living together in peace and equality impossible as a practical matter. At times he even favored colonization of freed slaves in Africa or South America as an eventual solution.

Thus the one overriding goal of the war, in Lincoln’s mind, was the preservation of the Union. And, in the course of it, the Emancipation Proclamation became a means to winning that war, a “military necessity” as stated in the proclamation’s text By freeing slaves in the rebellious states, the Union would deprive those states of the slaves’ contributions to the war effort, both directly as potential soldiers and indirectly via their agricultural and other services. And freed slaves would be welcomed, as they were, into the Union army to fight for freedom. All in service of the preservation of the Union.

In that position, Lincoln was subject to pressure to compromise with the south, but he came to the conclusion that compromise was no longer possible. He thought a compromise, e.g., some sort of agreement on the limits of slavery’s extension into new territories, would only postpone the crisis.

And, from the other side, he was subject to pressure for full emancipation, both as a moral matter and as a practical matter. Full emancipation though risked turning the border slave states (Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware, and Maryland) that had not joined the Confederacy, to join it, making winning the war and preserving the Union unlikely, in Lincoln’s eyes. What’s more, full emancipation was not, he thought, enforceable against a south in rebellion.

Could Lincoln have freed the slaves by proclamation even had he wanted? The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves as property Lincoln claimed necessary to carry out a war against the states where the slaves were held, something he claimed justified by the president’s war powers in the Constitution. But an actual emancipation of all slaves, including those in the border states that were not at war against the United States? That wouldn’t come until the 13th Amendment was ratified three years later. The Emancipation Proclamation itself may well have faced legal opposition, especially if considered as providing freedom for the former slaves of the south after the end of the war.

The contrast between Brown and Lincoln is obvious — one a self-righteous, undeterrable force aimed suicidally toward abolition, and the other a cautious, pragmatic politician squarely opposed to slavery but placing a sometimes conflicting goal above abolition, the preservation of the Union.

The moral questions are probably obvious, but no less important for their obviousness. What means are justifiable in pursuit of righting such an deplorable wrong as slavery? To what end might compromising or delaying the achievement of abolition be justifiable? How do you weigh the fate of a population of slaves against the political and economic fate of a nation? Can a just cause become a moral extreme?

There is a third man in the story. Frederick Douglass knew both Lincoln and Brown well. He was frustrated with Lincoln’s pace, and with his prioritization of the Union over slavery. And, as much as he supported Brown’s zeal for abolition, he was almost incredulous when Brown presented his plan for Harpers Ferry and asked for Douglass’s support. He thought it was a suicide mission, with assured counterproductive consequences.

Brown’s zeal for abolition was greater even than Douglass’s, by Douglass’s own admission. At Harpers Ferry, Douglass seems to have thought that Brown, though, was crossing both a practical and a moral line. The mission would fail, and lives would be needlessly lost. It wasn’t just a counter-productive folly, it was a moral calamity.

In the end Douglass seems to have admired Lincoln’s patience, but he did not retreat from his own impatience to end something that should have ended well before it did.

I should mention that another person in the story serves as a link between Lincoln and Brown. John Wilkes Booth was present for the death of both, having attended Brown’s execution before assassinating Lincoln. In Booth’s eyes, the nation’s fortunes had turned in the wrong direction. What had been Brown’s vice, his all-encompassing zeal for abolition, had become, in the aftermath of emancipation, Lincoln’s virtue, at least in the eyes of the nation. That was something he could not countenance. But really, it was also Brown’s triumph.

I learned a LOT from Brands’ book. I learned facts and connections I hadn’t known before. But the real meat of the book, I think, is the moral contrast that you’ll keep thinking about for a long time after you’ve read the book. show less

Very good one-volume biography of Ulysses S. Grant. Not quite up to the standards of those produced by Brooks Simpson and Jean Edward Smith...but not far behind. Vastly superior to the error riddled work by Geoffrey Perret or the technically competent, but interpretively flawed biography of Grant by William McFeely.

Brands demonstrates again that U.S. Grant is perhaps the most underrated figure in American history. His reputation trashed through the efforts of "lost cause" historians and show more their enablers in academia and the media - an attempt to whitewash their culpability in perpetuating slavery by elevating their rebellion as a noble "lost cause" - Grant's reputation is finally being restored to its proper place.

This book continues the trend.

With the exception of only Lincoln himself, Grant is the man most responsible for saving the Union, and probably the man most responsible for keeping the country together after the Civil War.

Brands takes a positive view of his performance during the Civil War, leaving little doubt he believes Grant to be among the greatest military figures of the war, and perhaps the greatest in our history.

He also takes a sympathetic view of Grant's time as President, putting his two terms into the context of the times and the challenges he faced as he tried to shepherd the restoration of the Union. Grant's efforts on behalf of former African slaves is the high point of his Presidency. It would not be an exaggeration to characterize Grant as the first "civil rights" President. His efforts on behalf of Native Americans and his work preventing unscrupulous men from cornering the gold market are also highlights.

On the other hand, Brands does not shy away from criticizing Grant where it is warranted including his issuance of General Order #11, his naivete in remaining loyal to subordinates that were clearly corrupt, and his lack of imagination during the the depression that marked the final years of his Presidency.

This book is not perfect. It ends very abruptly, with little exploration of the reasons for the decline in Grant's reputation after his death (admittedly there are other books that explore this topic quite well). At the time of his death Grant was far and away the most popular figure in the United States, so some discussion of how he got from there to the caricature of him that gained prevalence later would have provided a more fitting coda. Also, I was disappointed at how little exploration there was of how a man who was selling firewood on the corner of his home town to make ends meet in 1861, rose so quickly to the pinnacle of power. What was it about Grant's personality that made that rise possible? So much of his inter war career is characterized by disappointment and sadness which is described well here. But as soon as Grant's fortunes turn, that aspect of his story is dropped. Sources may be hard to come by, and I usually disdain psycho-history, but in this case an attempt would have been worth it.

Overall...highly recommended! show less