World of Ulysses S. Grant – serie

How Grant secured a Tennessee victory and a promotionUnion soldiers in the Army of the Cumberland, who were trapped and facing starvation or surrender in the fall of 1863, saw the arrival of Major General Ulysses S. Grant in Tennessee as an impetus to reverse the tides of war. David A. Powell’s sophisticated strategic and operational analysis of Grant’s command decisions and actions shows how his determined leadership relieved the siege and shattered the enemy, resulting in the creation of a new strategic base of Union operations and Grant’s elevation to commander of all the Federal armies the following year. Powell’s detailed exploration of the Union Army of the Cumberland’s six-week-long campaign for Chattanooga is complemented by his careful attention to the personal issues Grant faced at the time and his relationships with his superiors and subordinates. Though unfamiliar with the tactical situation, the army, and its officers, Grant delivered another resounding victory. His success, explains Powell, was due to his tactical flexibility, communication with his superiors, perseverance despite setbacks, and dogged determination to win the campaign. Through attention to postwar accounts, Powell reconciles the differences between what happened and the participants’ memories of the events. He focuses throughout on Grant’s controversial decisions, showing how they were made and their impact on the campaign. As Powell shows, Grant’s choices demonstrate how he managed to be a thoughtful, deliberate commander despite the fog of war.

How Grant’s humble beginnings shaped his unique military geniusRenowned for his military skill, courage, and indomitability during the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant is considered the savior of the Union and a model for American generalship. However, unlike most of his fellow officers, Grant came from humble beginnings and experienced a number of professional failures before rising to military prominence.Grant grew up on a farm on the Ohio frontier and reluctantly attended West Point, where he finished in the middle of his class. In his early career, he was often underestimated by his peers despite valiant service. Between the Mexican War and the Civil War, Grant’s “Hardscrabble” farm failed, and when he decided to rejoin the U. S. army, he was given the unenviable command of a rowdy regiment, the 21st Illinois.How did Grant—an average student, failed farmer, and common man—become such a successful general? In America's Hardscrabble General, historian Jack Hurst argues that Grant’s military genius stemmed not from his West Point education but rather from his roots in America’s middle class and its commonsense values. Hurst’s revolutionary approach follows Grant’s early life and career, from boyhood through the Battle of Shiloh, examining how his modest upbringing and first years in combat shaped his military brilliance.Hurst shows how Grant’s background ultimately led him to abandon the traditional military practice of his time, which relied upon military maneuver, and instead focus on fighting. His strategy to always move forward, win or lose, turned even his losses into essential elements of victory and characterized his aggressive, relentless approach. Grant’s experiences in the Mexican War prefigured his greatest military triumphs, from Vicksburg to the dogged fight against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.Going beyond mere strategy, Hurst reveals how Grant’s upbringing undergirded his military skill. Hurst argues that Grant’s prewar underdog status helped him develop an innate humility, sense of justice, and ability to focus, leading him to form a close relationship with his men and eventually become the first president to actively oppose white supremacist groups. This new window into the early life and military mindset of Ulysses S. Grant provides fascinating insights for anyone hoping to understand this American hero.

In this first book devoted to the genesis, failure, and lasting legacy of Ulysses S. Grant’s comprehensive American Indian policy, Mary Stockwell shows Grant as an essential bridge between Andrew Jackson’s pushing Indians out of the American experience and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s welcoming them back in. Situating Grant at the center of Indian policy development after the Civil War, Interrupted Odyssey: Ulysses S. Grant and the American Indians reveals the bravery and foresight of the eighteenth president in saying that Indians must be saved and woven into the fabric of American life.In the late 1860s, before becoming president, Grant collaborated with Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian who became his first commissioner of Indian affairs, on a plan to rescue the tribes from certain destruction. Grant hoped to save the Indians from extermination by moving them to reservations, where they would be guarded by the U.S. Army, and welcoming them into the nation as American citizens. By so doing, he would restore the executive branch’s traditional authority over Indian policy that had been upended by Jackson.In Interrupted Odyssey, Stockwell rejects the common claim in previous Grant scholarship that he handed the reservations over to Christian missionaries as part of his original policy. In part because Grant’s plan ended political patronage, Congress overturned his policy by disallowing Army officers from serving in civil posts, abandoning the treaty system, and making the new Board of Indian Commissioners the supervisors of the Indian service. Only after Congress banned Army officers from the Indian service did Grant place missionaries in charge of the reservations, and only after the board falsely accused Parker of fraud before Congress did Grant lose faith in his original policy.Stockwell explores in depth the ousting of Parker, revealing the deep-seated prejudices that fueled opposition to him, and details Grant’s stunned disappointment when the Modoc murdered his peace commissioners and several tribes—the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Sioux—rose up against his plans for them.Though his dreams were interrupted through the opposition of Congress, reformers, and the tribes themselves, Grant set his country firmly toward making Indians full participants in the national experience. In setting Grant’s contributions against the wider story of the American Indians, Stockwell’s bold, thoughtful reappraisal reverses the general dismissal of Grant’s approach to the Indians as a complete failure and highlights the courage of his policies during a time of great prejudice.

The Vicksburg Campaign, argues Timothy B. Smith, is the showcase of Ulysses S. Grant’s military genius. From October 1862 to July 1863, Grant tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate river city. His final, daring move allowed him to land an army in Mississippi and fight his way to the gates of Vicksburg. He captured the city and Confederate garrison on July 4, 1863, opening the Mississippi River for the Union.This volume presents a fast-paced reexamination of Grant’s decision-making process during the Vicksburg maneuvers, battles, and siege. Smith details the course of campaigning on military, political, administrative, and personal levels. The successful military campaign required Grant to handle President Lincoln’s impatience, as well as to deal with troublesome general John A. McClernand, all while juggling administrative work. In addition, Grant was more than a military genius—he was also a husband and a father, and Smith shows how Grant’s family played a role in every decision he made.Grant’s nontraditional choices went against the accepted theories of war, supply, and operations, as well as against the chief thinkers of the day, such as Henry Halleck, Grant’s superior. Yet Grant pulled off the victory in compelling fashion. In the first in-depth examination in decades, Smith shows how Grant’s decisions created and won the Civil War’s most brilliant, complex, decisive, and lengthy campaign.

In 1877 former president Ulysses S. Grant, along with his family and friends, embarked on a two-year world tour that took him from Liverpool to Yokohama with stops throughout Europe and Asia. Biographies of Grant deal very briefly, if at all, with this tour and generally treat it as a pleasure trip filled with sightseeing, shopping, wining, and dining. Far from an extended vacation, however, Grant’s travels in fact constituted a diplomatic mission sanctioned by the U.S. government. In this revealing volume, Edwina S. Campbell chronicles Grant’s journey—the first diplomatic mission ever undertaken by a former U.S. president—and demonstrates how it marked a decided turning point in the role of the United States in world affairs. Traveling commercially and on U.S. Navy warships, Grant visited ports of call throughout the British Empire, Europe, and Asia, including Britain, France, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Ireland, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and Japan. Along the way, he met with monarchs, ministers, and average citizens, creating the model for the summitry and public diplomacy practiced by future American presidents and articulating concepts of national self-determination, international organization, and the peaceful settlement of international disputes decades before Elihu Root’s advocacy of binding international arbitration and Woodrow Wilson’s proposal for the League of Nations. Campbell reveals Grant to be a skillful envoy who brought to his travels the deep interest in foreign policy issues he had shown during his administration. Grant confirmed the United States’ commitment to Anglo-American cooperation, demonstrated America’s interest in the territorial integrity of China, affirmed American faith in universal (male) suffrage as the basis for governmental legitimacy, and asserted the importance of an international order based on equality and justice for all states and their citizens. Grant’s efforts shaped not only John Hay’s Open Door policy in 1899–1900 but also the broader American approach to twentieth-century international relations. Throughout the trip, Julia Grant proved essential to the success of her husband’s mission, and Campbell tells how the couple impressed people around the world with an enduring image of an American president and first lady. By illuminating the significance of Grant’s often overlooked postpresidential travels, Citizen of a Wider Commonwealth establishes the eighteenth president as a key diplomat whose work strongly influenced the direction of future U.S. foreign policy and contributes substantially to the study of American international relations.

How Ulysses S. Grant turned disparate commanders into a winning forceThe rise of Ulysses S. Grant to the pinnacle of military command is one of the more improbable stories of American history. To achieve such success, Grant had to work with, manage, encourage, and sometimes berate an eclectic group of military leaders who came under his command during the US Civil War. In this deep analysis of Grant's leadership style, Harry S. Laver reveals how the introverted soldier exercised such exceptional military leadership that he won the war and became a popular figure in the American public mind.Rather than focusing solely on battlefield tactics or campaign narratives, this book examines Grant as a leader of men. Focusing on one relationship at a time, Laver offers a richly textured account of Grant's interactions with his generals, demonstrating how he evaluated each subordinate on individual merits. Grant emphasized strengths while attempting to mitigate shortcomings, tailoring his approach to the personalities and abilities of those he commanded. He preferred to give his generals latitude whenever possible, but when circumstances demanded it, he issued precise and detailed guidance. This flexible, adaptive leadership style, rare among Civil War commanders, proved central to his success.Grant's effectiveness is most evident in the productive partnerships he forged. His collaborations with naval commanders Andrew H. Foote and David D. Porter became models of successful army–navy cooperation. He mentored promising officers such as James B. McPherson, whose career was cut short by his death in battle, and the dynamic Philip H. Sheridan, who emerged as one of Grant's most trusted lieutenants. Grant also developed a functional, if strained, working relationship with George G. Meade, the victor at Gettysburg, whose difficult temperament troubled subordinates but did not impede cooperation at the highest level. Grant shared with the fiery William T. Sherman a deep mutual respect and an unyielding commitment to total victory.Not all relationships were successful. Grant struggled with obstinate and independent-minded commanders such as John A. McClernand, William Rosecrans, and George H. Thomas, removing the first two from command and nearly doing the same with Thomas. His most delicate challenge was Henry W. Halleck, who had sought to undermine Grant's career. When Grant ultimately rose above Halleck in rank, he managed the reversal with professionalism and strategic restraint, transforming a former rival into an effective subordinate.Marked by an innate generosity of spirit, Grant praised his generals for their successes and occasionally shouldered the blame for their failures. Laver reveals how this humane yet disciplined approach enabled Grant to weld a disparate group of commanders into an effective fighting force – and to secure Union victory.