Grant No true biography of Grant has ever been written.

wausaubob

Colonel
Member of the Month
Joined
Apr 4, 2017
Location
Denver, CO
The center of his life was neither the army nor his presidency. It was the thing he kept private, his intense love affair with his wife.
Nothing caused him greater unhappiness than being away from his fiance and his wife.
Nothing gave him happiness as much as being with his wife and his children. And despite some tough times economically, they stayed together.
The woman waited for him once when he went to Mexico and once when he was assigned to California.
Unlike the fictional Natasha Rostov in Tolstoy's War and Peace Julia waited for her fiance and married her prince.
They had four children. All of whom lived to adulthood. Julia herself lived to old age. And then, their daughter married young and had more children. So the daughter perceived marriage and family as a source of bliss, though her own marriage did not end successfully.
Julia Grant nee Dent, not only demonstrated her father was wrong about her capacity to be an army wife, she became the best of army wives. Julia was greeted wherever she went, and the army wives tended to gather around her. (Of course her husband controlled promotions, which didn't hurt her popularity at all.)
Julia Dent had one huge advantage. She wasn't the prettiest girl, and she wasn't the prettiest girl in her family. She had to be the best person, and she seems to have been successful at that.
 
Last edited:
The center of his life was neither the army nor his presidency.
This is so true, and makes me wonder what his life would have been like without her. She really was the backbone to their relationship and marriage, where admiring and supporting her husband came top of her list. Grant returned her loyalty in spades. There's no doubt they had 'cross' moments with eachother, like all couples do, but they had an enduring vision of one another which helped them to oversee any bad to focus on the good. They really were eachother's best friends and greatest companions, and Grant's love of Julia was as strong as her love for him. They were equally matched in that sense and never let anything divide them. The first hurdles could have come very early on, both from her father's impression of Julia not being cut out to be an army wife and the Grant family's subsequent refusal to attend the wedding. In that sense, parental interference could have been a huge roadblock to their relationship and lifelong happiness. Their backgrounds were very different also - part of the reason for Grant's family to refuse to attend the wedding. They would not support the institution of slavery and therefore made their feelings known by their actions. If one has to wonder where Grant developed his independent thinking, this is no doubt in part due to his family's influence. They made a decision and stood their ground, even to the detriment of their son's happiness. Their son learned to stand his ground, too, as he followed his own heart. In what seems like a strange twist of fate, Grant was a major cog in the wheel which helped to bring an end to slavery after marrying into a slave owning family. Ulysses and Julia's relationship goes to show the complexity of the times and how difficult it can be to make straight a crooked path. Less judgement and more understanding is likely the only way to do so.
 
Last edited:
This is so true, and makes me wonder what his life would have been like without her. She really was the backbone to their relationship and marriage, where admiring and supporting her husband came top of her list. Grant returned her loyalty in spades. There's no doubt they had 'cross' moments with eachother, like all couples do, but they had an enduring vision of one another which helped them to oversee any bad to focus on the good. They really were eachother's best friends and greatest companions, and Grant's love of Julia was as strong as her love for him. They were equally matched in that sense and never let anything divide them. The first hurdles could have come very early on, both from her father's impression of Julia not being cut out to be an army wife and the Grant family's subsequent refusal to attend the wedding. In that sense, parental interference could have been a huge roadblock to their relationship and lifelong happiness. Their backgrounds were very different also - part of the reason for Grant's family to refuse to attend the wedding. They would not support the institution of slavery and therefore made their feelings known by their actions. If one has to wonder where Grant developed his independent thinking, this is no doubt in part due to his family's influence. They made a decision and stood their ground, even to the detriment of their son's happiness. Their son learned to stand his ground, too as he followed his own heart. In what seems like a strange twist of fate, Grant was a major cog in the wheel which helped to bring an end to slavery after marrying into a slave owning family. Ulysses and Julia's relationship goes to show the complexity of the times and how difficult it can be to make straight a crooked path. Less judgement and more understanding is likely the only way to do so.
Yupp, the Montagues and Capulets, and have the young lovers experience that physical thing that young people have, and then have the lovers marry anyway and the families each recognize their error, and you have a comedy, not a tragedy. And the US was a primary beneficiary.
 
My Dearest Julia: The Wartime Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Wife, by Ulysses S. Grant. Introduction by Ron Chernow is, perhaps what fills in the gaps. It begins with their engagement in 1844 & concludes with the Union victory in 1865. There over 80 letters that represent Grant's candid reaction to coming under fire for the first time in Mexico, his aching loneliness in California & his Civil War experiences. I don't know of any source that has this level of unfiltered information about Grant & Julia.
 
I agree with what you all have written; but for me the great failure has been the complete inability of any biographers to appreciate what Grant did as President for the nation's political economy. Without Grant our national system of banking and international financial exchange would not exist.
 
I was able to visit both Grant homes in Galena, Illinois, a few years ago. There is a nicely maintained statue of Julia outside the larger of their homes, surrounded by pretty lawns and gardens. I identify with Julia because of her "lazy eye" and find Grant's devotion to her so endearing. After my visit I posted a photo of her statue, and someone here made fun of it, calling it Aunt Jemima or Mrs. Butterworth, or some such dismissive caricature of her stature. That was truly offensive. As @wausaubob noted, she wasn't the most beautiful of women but she was a good person who owned Grant's heart and tended it well.
 
I agree with what you all have written; but for me the great failure has been the complete inability of any biographers to appreciate what Grant did as President for the nation's political economy. Without Grant our national system of banking and international financial exchange would not exist.


Really? Please elaborate...

I'm no expert, but some of the critiques of the Grant Administration that I have seen seem to indicate otherwise.
 
The center of his life was neither the army nor his presidency. It was the thing he kept private, his intense love affair with his wife.
Nothing caused him greater unhappiness than being away from his fiance and his wife.
Nothing gave him happiness as much as being with his wife and his children. And despite some tough times economically, they stayed together.
The woman waited for him once when he went to Mexico and once when he was assigned to California.
Unlike the fictional Natasha Rostov in Tolstoy's War and Peace Julia waited for her fiance and married her prince.
They had four children. All of whom lived to adulthood. Julia herself lived to old age. And then, their daughter married young and had more children. So the daughter perceived marriage and family as a source of bliss, though her own marriage did not end successfully.
Julia Grant nee Dent, not only demonstrated her father was wrong about her capacity to be an army wife, she became the best of army wives. Julia was greeted wherever she went, and the army wives tended to gather around her. (Of course her husband controlled promotions, which didn't hurt her popularity at all.)
Julia Dent had one huge advantage. She wasn't the prettiest girl, and she wasn't the prettiest girl in her family. She had to be the best person, and she seems to have been successful at that.

With all due respect, this is rather silly.

Grant is interesting to us and relevant to us today because of his public life, not his private life. If he was happy in his married life, then good for him and good for Julia. But I don't really care one way or another.
 
I was able to visit both Grant homes in Galena, Illinois, a few years ago. There is a nicely maintained statue of Julia outside the larger of their homes, surrounded by pretty lawns and gardens. I identify with Julia because of her "lazy eye" and find Grant's devotion to her so endearing. After my visit I posted a photo of her statue, and someone here made fun of it, calling it Aunt Jemima or Mrs. Butterworth, or some such dismissive caricature of her stature. That was truly offensive. As @wausaubob noted, she wasn't the most beautiful of women but she was a good person who owned Grant's heart and tended it well.
Those of us fortunate enough to have had long loving marriages understand how Julia made Grant’s career possible. As to the statue… public art brings out the snark in some people. The sad thing is that they are under the delusion that snark is something profound.

I posted about the new USCT statue in Franklin TN a few days ago. It isn’t the GI Joe action figure common to many modern monuments. It is, like the Julia figure, public art that doesn’t follow the idealized figure tradition. Public means public comment, good, bad & ridiculous is par for the course. In my experience, it says more about themselves than the art.
 
With all due respect, this is rather silly.

Grant is interesting to us and relevant to us today because of his public life, not his private life. If he was happy in his married life, then good for him and good for Julia. But I don't really care one way or another.
I disagree. Grant's life is unique, because the things he did for the country, he also did for his family, including not getting killed on a battlefield. I think it was a unique thing, for him to see the Lt. Generalship and then the Presidency become available to him, and his decision to proceed being so heavily influenced by his wife's love and patience. And Julia brought out Grant's dry wit, too.
 
Further, because his own life was a comedy and not a tragedy, a true biography would include a lot more humor. For instance during the Petersburg siege Rufus Ingalls had a dalmation. Grant asked if Ingalls if he intended to take the dog into Richmond. Ingalls replied that he was hopeful, it was reportedly a long lived breed.
 
In a true biography there might have to a fictionalized account of Julia's Methodist mother telling her daughter to go ahead and defy her father and marry for love. The Mother-in-Law saw something in Ulysses that others did not see.
 
Those of us fortunate enough to have had long loving marriages understand how Julia made Grant’s career possible. As to the statue… public art brings out the snark in some people. The sad thing is that they are under the delusion that snark is something profound.

I posted about the new USCT statue in Franklin TN a few days ago. It isn’t the GI Joe action figure common to many modern monuments. It is, like the Julia figure, public art that doesn’t follow the idealized figure tradition. Public means public comment, good, bad & ridiculous is par for the course. In my experience, it says more about themselves than the art.
As somebody (it may have been Holmes) once said, "The First Amendment guarantees debate. It doesn't guarantee intelligent debate."
 
Really? Please elaborate...

I'm no expert, but some of the critiques of the Grant Administration that I have seen seem to indicate otherwise.
If it was a good thing for the world's opinion of the U.S. dollar went from complete mistrust to absolute confidence in the period from 1873 to 1914, then you share my opinion about Grant's achievement. His critics then and now disagree; they blame Grant for causing a depression. The simple facts would seem to be on my side of the argument - in those 4 decades the country went from being near bankrupt to having the deserved reputation for being the place where the streets were paved with gold. Measured by the growth in individual wealth and incomes, even in the parts of the South most completely ravaged by war, there has not yet been another period in American history that comes close. But, if you accept the modern arguments about the damage done by the return of the dollar to exchange at par with the Coinage standard - deflation and industrial misery, etc., then Grant remains the economic bumbler described in almost all discussions by modern writers. I don't spend much time arguing the question any more because it raises topics - like whether or not the U.S. should have a central bank? - that end up being more inflammatory than the question of whether or not slavery was a primary cause and central issue of the Civil War.
 
If it was a good thing for the world's opinion of the U.S. dollar went from complete mistrust to absolute confidence in the period from 1873 to 1914, then you share my opinion about Grant's achievement. His critics then and now disagree; they blame Grant for causing a depression. The simple facts would seem to be on my side of the argument - in those 4 decades the country went from being near bankrupt to having the deserved reputation for being the place where the streets were paved with gold. Measured by the growth in individual wealth and incomes, even in the parts of the South most completely ravaged by war, there has not yet been another period in American history that comes close. But, if you accept the modern arguments about the damage done by the return of the dollar to exchange at par with the Coinage standard - deflation and industrial misery, etc., then Grant remains the economic bumbler described in almost all discussions by modern writers. I don't spend much time arguing the question any more because it raises topics - like whether or not the U.S. should have a central bank? - that end up being more inflammatory than the question of whether or not slavery was a primary cause and central issue of the Civil War.

Ah, yes, I'm aware the "Gold Bugs" of the modern era tend to admire some of the Grant Administration's economic policies.

I think reasonable people can disagree about 150-year-old economic policies and there certainly isn't any point in us re-hashing those arguments here and now.

Recessions and depressions come and go in American history and few historians will maintain that any president can control that by themselves. What matters is how a president responds to these economic crises and it is my impression that Grant generally receives poor marks in this department.
 
I have a different sense of the term "Gold Bug". My understanding of their position is that they oppose fractional reserve banking and wanted all currency to be coin and "gold" notes fully secured by specie reserves. On those issues, Grant's policies are a major disappointment. Grant established a system of national banks all of which operated on a fractional reserve system and use U.S. Treasury debt, not specie, as the backing for their note issues.
That is, of course, the structure of our present American banking system under the Federal Reserve Act. Grant's ideas are not 150 years old; on the contrary, the Federal Reserve is now conceding the necessity of having a standing repo facility for banks and nonbanks alike. This means breaking the monopoly of the big primary dealer banks, which is what Grant did in effectively destroying the power of the speculators in the Gold Room. I apologize if this historical analogy is guilty of violating the rule against discussions of current events; it was the best way to explain technically what Grant did to restore the international standing of what was then anything but the Almighty Dollar.
 
I have a different sense of the term "Gold Bug". My understanding of their position is that they oppose fractional reserve banking and wanted all currency to be coin and "gold" notes fully secured by specie reserves. On those issues, Grant's policies are a major disappointment. Grant established a system of national banks all of which operated on a fractional reserve system and use U.S. Treasury debt, not specie, as the backing for their note issues.
That is, of course, the structure of our present American banking system under the Federal Reserve Act. Grant's ideas are not 150 years old; on the contrary, the Federal Reserve is now conceding the necessity of having a standing repo facility for banks and nonbanks alike. This means breaking the monopoly of the big primary dealer banks, which is what Grant did in effectively destroying the power of the speculators in the Gold Room. I apologize if this historical analogy is guilty of violating the rule against discussions of current events; it was the best way to explain technically what Grant did to restore the international standing of what was then anything but the Almighty Dollar.
It was a long campaign. But Grant was essentially admitting that he didn't know everything about banking. Those who did know more about it, one of them being John Sherman knew that getting the official gold exchange rate to match the market rate was worth the sacrifice.
 
Back
Top