Hamilton superstar Ron Chernow has been working on a biography of Grant. Chernow says he'll deal with aspects of Grant that haven't been covered in as much detail/depth by other biographers, such as Grant's family of origin and his childhood. I'm hoping that one of the previously neglected aspects that Chernow will cover will be Grant's amusia. Don't you think such a condition could affect your life in significant ways? For example, I was just reading in Allen Guelzo's
Redeemer President, a biography of Lincoln, that antebellum America was a very literary and musical culture. This particularly caught my eye:
In 1855, Musical World editor Richard Willis boasted that his magazine was read by the president, vice president, members of the cabinet, and seventy members of Congress.
Of course, some of those "readers" may have just been people who subscribed because it was the "in" thing to do. And certainly, in the 1850s, Ulysses Grant was nowhere near the political and cultural centers of Washington, New York, Philadelphia and Boston. But from 1865 to 1877, Grant
did live in Washington, at the very summit of political power, first as general-in-chief, then as president, and my point is that virtually everyone
around him -- the pond that he swam in, so to speak --
was hugely interested in music. Music was just one of the sinews of the culture. As President, Grant often ran into trouble for not being a "team" player, for making his own decisions (which sometimes turned out badly) and going his own way. I don't believe his amusia had anything to do with that -- but isn't music one more of those little bits of "social glue" that bond people together but was missing in Grant? Lincoln, by way of contrast, was a huge fan of the theatre, and his bond with the people certainly wasn't hurt by the fact that theatregoers often saw their President up there in the box, enjoying the same show that they were.