Grant

[Wild Bill]

Hey Christine,

Congratulations in reading and enjoying Chernow's Grant. Reading it is truly a formidable task. It has been an year, maybe a year and a half, since I did the same.

The one thing that sprang into my mind on seeing your question was that of all the materials on Grant I have read, this was the biggest book on Grant, yet most ignoring of Grant's actual Civil War battles. I think you hit the nail on the head referring to the Grant-Lincoln friendship. I do not know that they were really "friends" because of the dislike of Mrs Grant of Mrs Lincoln, but L and G did have a great deal of respect for each other.

They also allowed each to be the master of his realm without interfering one with the other. Grant had a keen sense of Lincoln's political necessities, for example, allowing Ben Butler to command an army incompetently, because L needed his political support. But G fired him after L cleared the 1864 reelection, and L let him do it. Unlike Joe Hooker, G never threatened L with a military dictatorship. In exchange, L allowed G to fight the war without interfering, despite all the rumors of drinking, excessive casualties, and lost battles to RE Lee in the overland Campaign of 1864. Actually, overall, Lee lost more men to death and wounds than G during the war.

Chernow's book is easily read in spite of its length. You might be interested in David W. Bright's review of it in the New York Review of Books, May 24, 2018, entitled "The Silent Type." G is a Taurus, as is my wife, and he says little, as does she, but when you see him or her pawing the ground, run for cover as fast as humanly possible! They are stubborn and will charge. G having to fight Lee needed that quality. I think the North won the Civil War when Grant refused to retreat after his defeat the Battle of the Wilderness as had all other Norther generals had before him. L liked that! G was much the same way during Reconstruction, only he did not have a L to back him politically.

L knew that G saw the war as L did--a fight to the end, no quarter allowed.