MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: This is KPBS Midday Edition and I am Maureen Cavanaugh. But Americans are asked to bring key US presidents, Abraham Lincoln, gets first place. He is credited as the man who guided the country through its greatest crisis, the Civil War. Now a new book brings another president of that time into focus, Ulysses S. Grant. The politician has suffered from a checkered reputation, but this biography shows a troubled man who became a great leader in a very difficult time, and guest host Alison St. John spoke with that author. Here's that interview. ALISON ST. JOHN: You've written twenty-five books including some very well-received biographies including one about Benjamin Franklin. Why did you decide to write about president Grant? H.W. BRANDS: This is a part of a series of biographies I have been writing. They together will comprise a history of the United States. I had written about Benjamin Franklin who allows we to tell the story of the colonial period in American history. Then I read about Andrew Jackson and then I had a From 1845 when Jackson dies until 1881 two next subject of my biographies, Theodore Roosevelt. I needed a figure to carry the story. I thought about various possibilities and Lincoln was on, but there is spend so much already on Abraham Lincoln. I wanted a soldier. For better and for worse soldiers and warriors have played a large role in human history. I wanted to figure out the mind of a soldier and what makes someone good. Ulysses was a fascinating character because he was very modest and had modest talents before the Civil War, once the war began he demonstrated a genius for military. ALISON ST. JOHN: And that is what people remember him for. What did he actually feel about war himself as a person? H.W. BRANDS: His feeling about war was a quite ambivalent feeling, he did not think that war was necessary. His first war was the war between the US and Mexico in the 1840s. There he demonstrated a certain fearlessness and a facility for the art of war. But he never lost his conviction that that war was an unjust war and the US had taken advantage of Mexico to seize large portion of Mexican territory. He thought that was a war that never should have been fought. He did feel that the Civil War was a very necessary war to save the union and keep it from falling apart and to ultimately to free the slaves. He was a hero and a person who was not a warmonger. ALISON ST. JOHN: So he did resign from the military. Was that because he was conflicted about his role as a military leader? H.W. BRANDS: He resigned from the military a first time under threat from a court-martial . The Civil War and he or note no one else knew the Civil War is coming, was difficult being an officer in peace time in the United States in the 1850s and particularly in California because the prices have been driven up. His pay did not keep pace. He was 1000 miles from home and from his wife and children and he is getting lonely, he became very depressed and start drinking and he decided that he pointed out and with his commander turned to quote I show him for drinking, and said okay and that that would've been the end of the story except when the Civil War came along and required him to be in the military, that that point he demonstrated that he really knew how to commend wartime. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: He actually took himself by surprise and discovered how well he functioned under fire. H.W. BRANDS: He must've, really. Something that marked him least of his own mind that he was destined for greatness but I cannot find it, it was striking thing, I think grant six granted his success to As much by surprise late as it took anybody, and he said as much when this life that he had never dreamed that he would come by and the armies of the United States or be a president of the United States. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: We're speaking with H.W. Brands who is the author of a new book The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace, and apparently Ulysses Grant writes in his autobiography that he never had a taste for political life and yet he rose to become president, because of his own desires or do you think it something truly some thrust upon him? H.W. BRANDS: I was on the lookout for someone who tried for himself. I don't think so. Like many soldiers, Grant had a distaste for military life. Military life is what for this straightforward but politics into the supply cutting cutting and low but he was talked into entering politics with an argument that was going to appeal to him, that argument was that people who wanted grant to run to the president said that you on the three victories for the union and for liberty on the battlefield, but those victories are being undone in the field of politics and in less you take the field of politics, then all of the accomplishments and sacrifices that you and your men made will go for naught and this was an argument that Grant could not resist. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Your right of but his civility to visualize the entire battlefield while others can only perceive chaos, that is interesting talent, do you think is able to apply that politics that in politics as well? H.W. BRANDS: And unfortunately not. And the distinction between one piece I tried to make in the book. Simplicity of war, or is the easy part of the story because war is very straightforward, if people do not agree with you you can smash the main course them and the South was not persuaded by northern arguments, it's course by Northern armies and after the war ended, does military instruments are largely taken out of the field, they have to go back to the ordinary incidents of politics and grants story is one that demonstrates this distinction of how the Civil War was easy port, at reconstruction was a hard part and that is one reason that I chose grant because I want to tell I want to tell both sides of the story. At the wanted to tell others tempted this tell the story of Lincoln but he dies at the end of the reconstruction. This is more interesting start of the story and the great it has the partner has greater historical resonance. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Looking back on him as a president, why is he not remember as a great President of the United States? H.W. BRANDS: Grant will never be this considered one of the great presidents, but the ten years after the Civil War were some of the greatest times higher sums to be president. Granted it's good of a job as president has could've been done under the circumstances, he certainly should get credit for having his heart in the right place and he was the last president and the only president between Abraham Lincoln to take civil rights of the American African-Americans to source the and even use the military to suppress the Ku Klux Klan and he was the first president of the last president to take the rights of Native Americans seriously. Grant took a great effort to and stick relations against the Native American tribes. The tide of the public opinion was up against himself. This is a problem of democracy, what to do when the majority of people want to do something that is simply wrong? Democracy has no answer for that. It's a problem that persists today. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: He is looked at as a hero in terms of history, but was he popular in the time? H.W. BRANDS: He was much more popular at the time that he was for about eighty years afterwards, and this demonstrates that the old clichÈ that victors write histories, that is always true, in fact the losers than that Civil War wrote the histories and the end predominate interpretation of the Civil War with the southern interpretation. This claims that the war was not about slavery, and reconstruction was done in effort to empower the free man, it was a carnival of corruption as carpetbaggers came to the south. This version of history that is a villain because he tried to stand up for the rights of African-Americans and for eighty years after he left office, he was cast as this person who is either inapt or dishonest or corrupt or perhaps all three and a drunk besides that, and all of these were greatly exaggerated and the fact he was a better present that he was given president that he was given credit for. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Some people have called him and Americans most Americans most underrated president, what you see in him that others have not given them credit for? H.W. BRANDS: He held the union together. The time for where he it very well could have fallen apart. He held the unit together during Reconstruction because different president had been in office at the time, Southerners might well have acted on the desire to create politics that which they failed to create during the war, the south was a scene of guerrilla warfare against federal law in the Ku Klux Klan that consists of the many cases of Confederate veterans who decided the will is not over and they would continue to resist to federal authority and resist the contact petition, as of grant was able to bring those groups under control without alienating their own responsible elements in the segment. It he was one of the very few people in the country who was able to pull it off. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You are also right that he was a writer and that he wrote one of the best autobiographies of any American president, and this is an amazing mixture of talented military and political talent and literary, what we use a good where some of his weaknesses? H.W. BRANDS: His weakness was a willingness to think well of people that he should not think well of, there is scandals during his administration and the scandals resulted from the fact that he knew himself to be honest man and believe that the people around him might be dishonest. Trouble arose when people who served with people who served him during the war they could not resist the temptations of these, grid was not a good judge of character, he found himself burdened with people who did not deserve his trust, and he also had the inability sometimes to appreciate subtleties of politics, he was a simple person. He had a simple view of life and of the world, and he found himself surrounded by very complex complicated and devious people and he was not always able to deal them as effectively as he could. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: So even though you chose to go for Grant rather than Lincoln, did you discover anything in your research that no one else has yet to discover? H.W. BRANDS: In the case of grant, but one discovers in the story is that there is a gradual accretion of material on grant, the materials that I used that other people had not consisted in many cases of letters to grant from the South during Reconstruction, people the South particularly African-Americans and Republicans wrote to group granted the right house explaining how the rights were being abridged in their lives are being threatened and meeting with grant to rescue them physically and to rescue their rights from Southerners who were trying to resist the outcome of the Civil War, and in terms of information that is what I brought to the table, the previous offers of not enabled still with, there's also the matter of interpretation and some of it is simply stepping further away from things and assessing their difficulties Grant faced as president and the honor that he brought the office and his accomplishments as presidents will never rank high aside from the thing that I mentioned earlier of holding the union together and she should get credit for taking it with a position on that would require the generations later to follow through on, rights for Native American and African-Americans. Grant provided mindsets that presidency is above all moral office where the president has to set a moral tone for what this country stands for this is something that Grant should be remembered for today. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Thank you very much, we've been speaking with H.W. Brands. H.W. BRANDS: Thank you for having me.
When Americans are asked to rank U.S. presidents, Abraham Lincoln typically gets first place. He's credited as the man who guided the country through its greatest crisis: the Civil War.
But a recent book brings another hero of that time into focus: the 18th man to lead America, President Ulysses Grant.
The Civil War general-turned-president has suffered from a checkered reputation. This 2012 biography, "The Man who saved the Union, Ulysses Grant in War and Peace," by biographer H.W. Brands shows us a troubled man who became a great leader in a very difficult time.
