Ulysses S. Grant Lover, fighter, writer

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This transcript was run through an automated transcription service and then lightly edited for clarity. There may be typos or small discrepancies from the podcast audio.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Hi, everyone. This week for the Ulysses S. Grant episode, we're going to shake things up a bit, and we're going to do the bulk of the episode as a book discussion of Grant's memoirs. I'm in the studio today with two great Washington Post colleagues.

You can both just introduce yourselves.

CARLOS LOZADA: Hi, this is Carlos Lozada. I'm the nonfiction book critic here at The Post.

DAVID MARANISS: Hello, I'm David Maraniss. I'm an associate editor at The Post, and I've written biographies of two presidents -- Clinton and Obama.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Carlos also just recently won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

DAVID MARANISS: Which was well-deserved.

CARLOS LOZADA: And David has won a Pulitzer, which more people have heard of.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Wonderful people to have discussing Grant's memoirs here today. So, Carlos, this was actually your idea. Why did you think we should read this book for the Grant episode?

CARLOS LOZADA: Well, when you talk to presidential historians and biographers, this is supposed to be the gold standard, right? Everyone says this is the best presidential memoir. And I figured this would be a good excuse to go back and actually read it, which I'd never done before.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, David, Carlos -- you both ended up reading the memoirs for this discussion. What was the most interesting question or theme, David, that you were struck by while reading it that you think we should talk about?

DAVID MARANISS: Well, the first, most obvious thing is actually what's not in the book. It's not a book about his presidency at all, really. I mean, it just barely glanced at it.

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 1

So, it's a wonderfully written book, but it's a study of sort of the evolution of a leader and how he moved from someone who had no ambitions to one who was one of the great leaders of American history.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: What about you, Carlos? What struck you?

CARLOS LOZADA: What struck me is how it really captured the dilemma of the country in that, you know, this was a war -- the Civil War -- that was brother-against-brother, a country against itself.

And Grant fought and commanded against a lot of people that he knew very well. He had gone to West Point with a lot of the men who became Southern officers and generals and he'd fought alongside them in the Mexican-American War.

So, that was fascinating. The other thing that I thought was unexpected for me is just: Grant is funny. I did not expect that there would be so much humor enmeshed here in between the various battles and troop movements.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Great. Well, we're going to dive into the discussion in a bit, but the story of how Grant came to write the book is actually a pretty incredible story as well. So, we're going to spend a little time on that first to set the stage. I'm Lillian Cunningham with The Washington Post, and -- you can do the honors this week, David.

DAVID MARANISS: For starting the --

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: For just saying this is the 18th episode of “Presidential.”

DAVID MARANISS: Oh, sorry!

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: No problem.

DAVID MARANISS: This is the 18th episode of “Presidential.”

PRESIDENTIAL THEME MUSIC

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Ulysses S. Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio in 1822. He's, of course, best known for being appointed by Abraham Lincoln to serve as commanding general of the U.S. Army and for then leading the Union to victory in the Civil War. He became the most famous man in America because of that. And, as a consequence, he was elected president, and he served for two terms -- from 1869 until 1877.

In an early version of the preface that Grant wrote to his memoirs, he apologized to readers that his autobiography only goes through the Civil War. He wrote these memoirs on his deathbed, and he decided that he just didn't have enough time to write about things in his life that happened after the war -- like being president for eight years.

Well, similarly, I am going to apologize right now to all of you listeners that the focus for this episode is also not going to be too much on his time in the White House, itself. But hopefully, by the end of this, you will at least sort of indirectly have a richer understanding of President Grant by

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 2 understanding these other aspects of his life.

Now, Michelle Krowl at the Library of Congress is going to flesh out our portrait of Grant. They have all the original manuscripts for his memoirs there. So, I said to Michelle, 'You know, we all know that Grant was a fighter, but how about you walk us through Grant as a writer -- Grant as the writer of these memoirs.’ And she said, 'Yeah, I can do that. But I also have all the love letters that Grant wrote. So, how about we discuss how he is a lover and a fighter and a writer?' And how could I say no to that? So, here is our dive into understanding the many other sides of Ulysses S. Grant.

What would it be like to go on a blind date with Ulysses S. Grant?

MICHELLE KROWL: With Ulysses S. Grant, if he was asking you out as a young man, you wouldn't probably think he was a good prospect. I personally think he's pretty handsome, but as a first impression, he didn't think much of dressing up. He tended to be pretty rumpled. And that actually does play into his leadership during the Civil War because he's, you know, approachable.

He's not ‘Fuss and Feathers’ like Winfield Scott's nickname was. Other than the bars of stars on his shoulder straps, you wouldn't know that he was a general. And as a young man, you wouldn't think he had very great prospects, either. He came from a family that was comfortable, was well- off enough -- his father was a tanner. But Grant never wanted to go into that profession if he could help it.

He had gone to West Point, but if you had looked at him up until his pre-war career, for example, it was just a series of failures. He had done okay at West Point, but not spectacularly. He then went into the military -- or continued to be in the military and had done well in the Mexican War. He had a couple of fairly heroic exploits.

But then he's eventually posted to the West Coast, and he tries to make a little bit extra money. So, he has the scheme to bring ice down from the Northwest somewhere, and the ice melts. Then he's going to try to do some farming on the side, so he's planting potatoes and he's really industrious -- and then there's a flood and all the potatoes wash away. So, on the eve of the Civil War, he's had to go work for his father in the tannery.

And so, when you look at Grant's early life, even though he's very industrious -- he's trying hard at all of these various exploits -- it just seems like failure after failure after failure.

The one thing he is really good with from the very beginning is horses. He's very loyal, and that's something that is both an admirable characteristic of him but it also gets him into trouble. Because sometimes he will put his loyalty in the wrong person or the wrong people. And even though he is personally very honest, he doesn't always recognise the dishonesty around him. And so that gets him into a lot of trouble, both as president and after his presidency.

There's of course the question of his drinking, which, I'm sure, you know people are always asking about Grant and his drinking. Some people will say he's a borderline alcoholic. Other people will say that he was actually just a lightweight. But it seems to have marred his career when he was in the West. And throughout the rest of his career, there's always the rumour of -- is he drinking? Is he drinking? Was he drunk?

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 3 Often it may have been when his wife was not around. Usually when Julia was around, then no -- because he was a very devoted family man to his own nuclear family. I think he had a difficult relationship with his father and his mother, but with his own family he's just absolutely adoring.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Grant met his wife Julia because she was the sister of his West Point friend, Frederick Dent. Grant first met Julia when he was paying a visit to Frederick's family home in St. Louis, and he just fell absolutely madly in love with her.

MICHELLE KROWL: Something that people really don't realize about Grant -- because his historical reputation is that cigar-smoking, steely-eyed determined general -- they don't realize how completely adoring he was of his wife, and how he wrote her love letters when they were courting. You just you listen to him and you go, 'Awe. He's so cute.' And the love letters also are an indication of Grant as a patient man.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Grant and Julia got engaged on May 22, 1844, but then he had to go off to the Mexican War, so their engagement lasted four years, during which time he was away. The first letter that Michelle pulled out to show me is this letter he writes to her the next summer from New Orleans.

MICHELLE KROWL: And he says, “In going away now, I feel as if I had someone else than myself to live and to strive to do well for. You can have but little idea of the influence you have over me, Julia, even while so far away. If I feel tempted to do anything that I think is not right, I am sure to think, 'Well, now if Julia saw me, would I do so? And thus, it is absent or present, that I am more or less governed by what I think is your will.”

So, now he's got somebody to live for. Another cute one is May 24, 1846. So, he's writing from Matamoros, Mexico. And what is very sweet about this one is that she sent him flowers.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Pressed in the letter?

MICHELLE KROWL: Yeah. And so, he has this little P.S. in his letter for her. He says, “The two flowers you sent me come safe, but when I opened your letter, the wind blew them away and I could not find them.”

So he gets these letters, and he's sort of distraught that he can't find them. But he says, “Before I seal this, I will pick a wildflower off the bank of the Rio Grande to send to you.” And then he asked if she's dreaming about him and all this, but when you look at the original letter, then, there's -- down here by the P.S., there's some stains that probably were the pressed flower that he sent to her. You don't think of Ulysses S. Grant as picking wildflowers to send to his fiancée.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: And there's another great letter that he sends her in June of 1864, while he's fighting the Civil War.

MICHELLE KROWL: This is absolutely my favorite, and you'll see why in a minute. So, this is on the Overland Campaign. You know, it's this bloody slog through Virginia. And he writes to her, and he said, “I wrote to you last night, but having had my haircut today, and remembering that you asked me to send you a lock of it, I now write again to send it.”

And there's the lock of hair. So, she kept the lock of hair. We kept the lock of hair. And it’s this kind

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 4 of lovely chestnut-brown color. But what I love about this particular letter is: He's running the Union Army, but he remembers his wife wants a lock of hair, and so he thinks enough about that to get the barber to give him a lock.

And then the last one I'll share with you is -- and this is actually while he's president -- it's May 22, 1875, which is the anniversary of their engagement. She left a note for him on that day, and on the back you can see that she had folded it up and said, 'The president immediate.'

So, she leaves him a little note that says: “Dear Ulyss,. How many years ago today is it that we were engaged? Just such a day as this, too, was it not? Julia.”

And then he writes right below it, “31 years ago. I was so frightened, however, that I do not remember whether it was warm or snowing.”

So, here's General Grant, who has faced Lee, who's president of the United States -- and he's admitting he was so frightened that he couldn't remember whether it was warm or snowy on the day he proposed.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, how does Grant work his will? What are sort of his key leadership traits?

MICHELLE KROWL: The quality that comes out of him during the Civil War is this determination that he doesn't retreat. There's sort of a stubbornness about him, in a good way. There's a line that he writes in 1864, when he's taken over command of the Union armies, and he's traveling with the Army of Potomac and he says, 'You know, I propose to hold this line if it takes all summer.'

And he does. Because what he's encountering in Virginia in 1864 is just tremendous bloodletting. They have a battle and then Grant tries to flank Lee, and they have another tremendous battle and Grant tries to flank Lee. So it's just -- they continue on. He's holding that line if it takes all summer, even when you're getting tens of thousands of casualties on both sides. And Grant's being called a butcher and worse.

Now, there are a few times during his presidency where it's also that determination to do what he thinks is right. Now on Andrew Johnson's side, sometimes that's a detriment. But for Grant, for example, he does try on behalf of African Americans. When the Klu Klux Klan is organized and is terrorizing African Americans, he will actually send in troops under the Klu Klux Klan Acts as a way of trying to mitigate some of that violence. So, there are times during his presidency that there is that kind of determination to continue through even if the the political or the military obstacles seem to be very great.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: For a long time, the way Grant's presidency went down in history books was as unsuccessful. Some of the common criticisms were that he was too hands-off for most of his presidency, especially at a time when the country needed a strong policy leader for Reconstruction efforts. And then there was also the criticism that there was too much corruption in his administration. It reached its height with scandals like the Whiskey Ring.

In recent years, though, some historians have started to give him more credit for the positive things that did happen on his watch. In particular, his support for Black voting rights. He signed the

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 5 15th Amendment, for example, which is the one that gives citizens the right to vote regardless of their race. Of course, women at the time still couldn't vote, but that's a story for a later podcast. As Michelle mentioned, he also pressed Congress to pass legislation against the Ku Klux Klan.

He seemed compelled to not let the progress of the hard-fought Civil War slip away. But at the same time, he also wanted to bring reconciliation to the country. Those were massive challenges for Grant and for the country -- and, of course, ones that he would leave his presidency not having fully solved.

So perhaps it's not surprising that when Grant sat down to write his memoirs, he decided just to write through the Civil War. That was a story that had a clear end and a victory. His presidency, on the other hand, was very much part of a story still in progress. The Library of Congress has the handwritten manuscript of Grant's memoirs.

MICHELLE KROWL: He gave those to his son, and his son gave them to his son, and his son gave them to us. So, these are what he was writing as he was dying. Most of the memoir is on it almost looks like lined legal paper. And you can see it's very much in what you know is Grant's style of handwriting.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So finally, without further ado, here's the story of why Grant decided to write these memoirs.

MICHELLE KROWL: It's a sad story of why he's writing his memoirs, but it's a dramatic story as well. Again, one of one of Grant's qualities is that he's very loyal and trusting. So, what ends up happening is, in the 1880s, his son got involved with a financier named Ferdinand Ward in New York, and they started basically an investment firm called Grant & Ward.

And Ulysses S. Grant sort of signed on as a silent partner. He invested in it but didn't really have a lot to do with the day-to-day operations. Unfortunately, Ferdinand Ward turned out to be the Bernie Madoff of the 1880s, and essentially Ferdinand Ward was taking in the money that was being invested into this firm. Meanwhile, he was spending it on things.

And in May of 1884, he tells Grant, 'Well, you know, Grant & Ward is fine, but the Marine Bank that we're involved with -- that looks like it's failing, and we just need $150,000 to get us through the end of the week.'

And so Grant goes to his friend William Vanderbilt and explains the situation and Vanderbilt writes him a check for a $150,000. Grant gives the $150,000 to Ferdinand Ward and: Poof! The Marine bank fails, Grant & Ward fails and he finds out he's lost everything. His family has lost everything. He personally has. Some of his old soldiers had invested in this firm because Grant is the face of it. And, of course, he feels horrible about all of this.

And the other thing to mention, too, is that when he ran for president, he resigned from the Army. So, he is no longer military, and he's forfeited his military pension. Presidents also don't get pensions at this time.

So, he's reduced to having to sell some of his things. He's selling his military uniforms, real estate he has, whatever, just to try to make up these losses. You know, it's sort of his hardscrabble farm failure all over again. He's having to think of ways to try to make money, and he starts to write. He

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 6 starts to write articles for Century Magazine. He finds out that he's pretty good at it. People had always been asking him about his memoirs and he had put off doing that, but now he determines that he really needs to write his memoirs.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So, he's going to sign a contract with the Century Company for his memoirs, but then Mark Twain reaches out and he convinces Grant to let him be the publisher instead.

MICHELLE KROWL: And what I think is also endearing about Grant is that he really has to be convinced to to make more money with Mark Twain's company -- with Webster Company -- than the Century because he felt loyal to the Century.

So, he's decided he's going to write his memoirs. But what also is going on at the same time is -- it's not just that he's in financial straits, it's that he's been diagnosed with cancer. It's probably from those years of smoking cigars that he develops cancer on his tongue, and it eventually starts spreading to his throat. So, now not only is he faced with destitution, he's now faced with death. It's not really operable by the medical procedures at the time. So, now it's sort of a race against, 'Can he actually finish his memoirs in time before he dies so that he can get them published so that his family can cannot be impoverished?'

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Grant is in more and more pain as the cancer progresses. At a certain point, he stops being able to speak at all. He's not sleeping. He's taking morphine and cocaine to try to lessen the pain. And every so often, he takes a break from feverishly writing his memoirs to write little notes to his doctor about how much pain he's in.

MICHELLE KROWL: He writes to his doctor and he says, “The fact is, I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be, to do, or to suffer. I signify all three.”

Suffering has become part of his daily life. He also mentions -- so, this is just a month before he dies-- he says, “I said I had been adding to my book and to my coffin. I presume every strain of the mind or body is one more nail in the coffin.”

What's amazing about it is, particularly towards the end, as the cancer is progressing and he starts to get more into Volume II, the later volumes -- that's the period where he's fighting Lee, too. And so he has, like, this kind of battle to the death against Lee, and he's also battling his own body and his own ability to write these memoirs. And he basically finishes the revisions that he's going to do on Volume II -- I think it's about July 19, 1885 -- and he dies on July 23, 1885.

So, he finished the memoir just days before he passed away, and the first royalty check that his wife Julia gets is for $200,000. And it was the biggest royalty check written up to that time. And ultimately, she received about $400,000/$450,000 in royalties. So, the the book saved his family, and the memoirs have never been out of print since.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: David, Carlos -- let's talk about these memoirs. And I'm just going to tee it up, and then I'll actually let you two take over the discussion. But, what did you think of the book? Did it live up to your expectations?

DAVID MARANISS: It exceeded any of my expectations.

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 7 LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Really?

DAVID MARANISS: Partly because it had been so hyped. I mean, I hadn't read it before. I'd looked at it, but I hadn't really read the whole book before. And it's always been called the best presidential memoir. And, you know, that's not a particularly high standard you have to exceed. But it's an excellent book by any standard.

I found it fresh. I found the writing incredibly clear and not bogged down in what I feared would be sort of 19th century prose. There's almost none of that, and that sort of reflects the man himself as well. There are often times when there's a vast difference between how someone presents themselves to others and how they write. And I think in Grant's case, you just feel like you know the person by reading the book because of the way it's written, as well as what he says.

CARLOS LOZADA: I was really impressed as well. When you're told over and over again that a book is really, really good, you come in with sort of extra built-in skepticism. You know, you want to find reasons why it might not be.

And it's just very honest. You never get a sense of duplicity. You know, he talks about how he was not a great student -- his only ambition was to be a math professor, not to run Union armies and become president. It sort of reminds me of how Jefferson's gravestone says three things, right? That he wrote the Declaration of Independence, that he wrote the statute of religious freedom for the state of Virginia, and that he founded U-Va. Not that he was president, right?

And this memoir seems similar to me in that it tells you what Grant thought was truly significant. He's not a big fan of politicians, either. So, maybe that's another reason he doesn't dwell on that experience.

DAVID MARANISS: There's an interesting -- as with most lives, there's an interesting intersection between pure chance and yet this determination, both of which led him in different ways.

And, you know, it's basically chance that he got into West Point in the first place. Someone else sort of bailed out and there was an opening. He didn't want to go. But, on the other hand, his determination to see the country is what led him to West Point basically, and to take that chance. But he had no ambitions to be a military man.

So, from the very beginning of his incredible career, there's that sort of intersection between chance and determination.

CARLOS LOZADA: He has a great anecdote when he came back home from West Point where he was wearing his fancy uniform, and he was very excited about it.

DAVID MARANISS: Sky-blue pants.

CARLOS LOZADA: And he was riding, and then some kid on the street starts mocking his uniform as being, like, too fancy or something, and he says that, “I developed a distaste for military uniform that I never recovered from.”

And that's early on in the book, and I'd completely forgotten about it until Appomattox. And suddenly, he talks about how Lee shows up to discuss the terms of surrender in very formal

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 8 military attire -- with the really fancy sword that he would never use in the field of battle -- and that Grant himself was wearing this kind of just drab overcoat and felt underdressed for the occasion.

It just reminded me of that moment from his youth. And the book just kind of has these moments where things tie together like that.

DAVID MARANISS: You know, you're absolutely right. And as well as being honest, which you said first of all, he also -- though in a very subtle way -- sort of settles scores.

CARLOS LOZADA: Yes.

DAVID MARANISS: With everybody, including everybody who he thinks is overrated in some fashion or another.

And so, with Lee, you see that throughout.

CARLOS LOZADA: He thinks Lee got really good press. Undeservedly so. And that's great. I love that, because that feels very 2016, complaining about the press coverage.

And one great moment is that he says -- because he knew Lee from the Mexican-American War -- he says, “My experience in the Mexican War was of great advantage to me afterward. The natural disposition of most people is to clothe the commander of a large army whom they do not know with almost superhuman abilities. A large part of the national army and most of the press of the country clothed General Lee with just such qualities. But I had known him personally. I knew he was mortal. And it was just as well that I felt this.”

It's this great moment where he's telling -- for posterity -- he's telling everyone, “Look, Lee wasn't all that.”

DAVID MARANISS: Right.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Well, what did you feel like you learned about his leadership style from the book? Did it give you insights into that?

DAVID MARANISS: Well, I would say that there's a very strong moral aspect to his leadership. He describes, for instance, General Ewell, the Confederate general, and he says that “he showed both gallantry and skill in fighting two unholy wars” -- both in the Mexican War and for the South. So, clearly part of Grant's leadership has to do with his moral belief in what he's doing. You know, he didn't believe in the Mexican War and that really affected how he handled, I think, his actions in the Civil War.

But I would say, most of all, it's that he had a very strong capacity to see events clearly and not be shrouded by the politics of the moment, whatever the fears were of that moment. And so, you read it, and he eliminates all of that. You can see that's the way he thought. And that's very rare in a human being -- to block out everything else and to see clearly what exactly needs to be done.

CARLOS LOZADA: One of the worst criticisms he could give is he calls General Albert Johnston of the Confederacy “vacillating and undecided.”

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 9

DAVID MARANISS: Yes.

CARLOS LOZADA: Right? And that tells you a lot about Grant. That's a very harsh assessment in his worldview. And he also was a quartermaster during the Mexican War, and so he's really focused on logistics.

DAVID MARANISS: Yes. Supplies and logistics. It's all about supplies and how to engineer to set up the bridge. I mean, you could think of that as being small bore and in the weeds, but it's also essential to what he's trying to accomplish.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: So you had mentioned, David, how obviously one of the first big things that struck you was just the fact that it doesn't go past the Civil War. He doesn't talk at all about his presidency. Did you find, though, that there was anything you pulled from the book that helped inform why he would have made such a great general but was sort of largely an unsuccessful president?

DAVID MARANISS: Well, first of all, I'm not totally ready to accept the idea that he was a largely unsuccessful president. I mean, there are historians who've spent their careers studying them, and some feel he was and some are reassessing that now.

I think that what you see running through his presidency, and you see from the book, is what I talked about earlier -- which was his moral conviction on the evil of slavery and trying to figure out how to handle this problem that was tearing the nation apart.

And his presidency was during some of the most difficult years of our nation's history, the Reconstruction. And I couldn't help reading it today -- the book -- and thinking about that Reconstruction, which is not really in the book, but thinking about the problems that President Obama has had to deal with as the first African-American president a century and a half later. And how Grant's attempts to give African Americans equal rights were met with so much intense opposition that clouded the way he was perceived for generations afterwards.

CARLOS LOZADA: I think if you just read this memoir and you don't know what Grant did later, I would've been surprised to have been told, 'Oh yeah, he went on to become president.' Because he just didn't seem to have that sort of ambition. He seemed skeptical of political leaders. He doesn't seem really enthused at all by what politicians have to do to be successful, whereas he seems very clear on what military officers have to do to be successful. So I think that the memoir shows you a leader; it doesn't, to me, necessarily show a political leader.

DAVID MARANISS: No, and one of the interesting things is, as a military leader, he was able to exert full control to shape the way that his Army worked and was perceived. And as president, he seemed sort of lost in the sense that there were so many so-called friends of his, in the government and out, who were manipulating him and using him and turning and corrupting his presidency in different ways -- that he seemed either not interested in dealing with or unable to deal with.

CARLOS LOZADA: I'm curious: What do you think of just the sheer quality of the writing -- of the prose -- versus what you've seen in other presidential memoirs?

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 10 DAVID MARANISS: It felt to me as though it could be written today, which stunned me. I felt like I was reading about recent history, as opposed to something that happened so long ago. And that freshness and clarity just blew me away. I mean, I thought: This is enjoyable to read. It's not just something that's going to illuminate but bring me joy while I'm reading it, and that really hit me.

CARLOS LOZADA: It's even more impressive, given that so much of the book is devoted to really in the weeds of battles and troop movements. And I could imagine a book editor today – wrongly -- but I can imagine one saying, like, 'Look, you've gotta pare a lot of that back. Give us some more of the sexy stuff.’

DAVID MARANISS: Thank you, Mark Twain, for not doing that. The fact that he was dying when he was writing it and didn't have time to change it.

CARLOS LOZADA: So, instead he just plows through. It's chronological. He just goes from battle to battle, but you see the war developing through his eyes and he's very clear in a couple of times he says, 'Look, I'm not going to pretend to give a comprehensive account of the Civil War, I'm just going to tell you what I saw.'

And he is funny. During the Mexican-American War, he's struggling with these pack mules that they just can't get to do anything. And he says: “I'm not aware of ever having used a profane expletive in my life, but I would have the charity to excuse those who may have done so, if they were in charge of a trade of Mexican pack mules at the time.”

And he just gives you little nuggets like that that are scattered throughout that book and you remember that there's this person behind the battles, behind everything that's going on.

DAVID MARANISS: He also has a nice way of using words. I mean, there's a scene early on -- I think the first time he's ever ridden a train is to go to West Point, and it's going like 18 miles an hour. But he makes you feel like you're riding a train for the first time in your life. And he describes how it's “annihilating space.” And for him to capture it with that phrase I thought was really nice.

CARLOS LOZADA: The writing is really -- it's deceptively beautiful at times, because it is so methodical. There's a moment, I can't remember which battle, where he says, “There was some firing back and forth during the night, but nothing rising to the dignity of a battle until daylight.”

Just think of how many ways there are to write that sentence, right? “Nothing rising to the dignity of a battle” -- that tells you so much in such a short sentence. It tells you so much about how he sees war, how he sees his role, how he sees what all sides are trying to accomplish here.

The book has a lot of verbatim exchanges and letters between say, Grant and Lee, and also orders that he delivers and those are really good writing -- worth reading.

DAVID MARANISS: Yes, sometimes you read a book and it comes to a document and you skip over it because, whatever. It just doesn't seem like --

CARLOS LOZADA: This is the opposite.

DAVID MARANISS: Yeah, these are some of the best stuff. And Carlos and I both were struck by the exchange that Grant had with Lee after a battle, when they were trying to work out whether the

Presidential podcast wapo.st/presidential 11 soldiers could go to the battlefield and clear out the dead and wounded. And it was a long exchange -- I mean, many letters back and forth -- and it was really Grant's way of saying without having to say it what a jerk Lee really was.

Because in the end, Lee kept offering reasons why he didn't want to follow the way that Grant would [do it]-- in terms of how much time it would have, what sort of truce it would be, white flags. He raised all these different questions to the point where I think it dragged down for 48 hours or something, and by that time, all of the wounded were dead. So, that exchange of letters, really, it was one of the most memorable parts of the book.

CARLOS LOZADA: And there was nothing subtle about it being there. You could tell, very much, that Grant really wanted to show you that this beloved general had been nickel-and-diming over details of how they were going to recover the wounded from battle.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Was there any other question or observation that it raised for you about legacy, like the way that Grant's legacy has been preserved over time?

DAVID MARANISS: I consider race the American dilemma, from the beginning, all the way through to today. And I think Grant was an underappreciated factor in trying to advance a reconciliation of that horrible scar in American life.

When he was dying…You know, the book ends with sort of his hope that because of the outpouring of love from all quarters, or respect to him from not just Northerners but Confederates, that his death or something at that moment was capturing a reconciliation. Which is really sort of at the heart of the American debate from the beginning -- how to reconcile all these different factions and forces and beliefs into one democracy.

And it was somewhat naive of him to think that, because everybody was expressing this fondness for him as he was dying, that it represented something larger. But it struck me as so powerful, because it made me think about how that's really what we've been trying to do forever in this country.

LILLIAN CUNNINGHAM: Grant's battle with cancer and his race to finish his memoirs marked something of a turning point in journalism. The media camped out near his house in the final months to chronicle any detail that they could about this national figure. His funeral in New York drew more than a million and a half people, which was even more than came out for Lincoln's funeral.

We remember Grant for ending the Civil War, but we can also remember him for beginning the subsequent slow, long march toward Civil Rights. And we remember him for battle, but his words upon accepting the presidential nomination, which ended up being the same words engraved on his tomb's epitaph are: 'Let us have peace.'

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