Grant is an absolute doorstopped of a book that presents an interesting picture of great American, but one which makes the fatal flaw of falling in love with its subject. Grant's life and legacy are a complex subject, and while Chernow is at the foremost ranks of popular historians, and provides a much needed corrective to the conventional wisdom of Grant as drunk, corrupt, and ineffective, his lack of objectivity hinders this book.

Grant was born to middle class parents in Ohio, his father Jesse was a tanner and merchant. He graduate West Point, where he was a average student and notable horseman. He graduate in 1843 and saw action in the Mexican-American war, where he served with distinction as a quartermaster, though he did not have the kind of combat command that would lead to promotion. He also married Julia Dent, the daughter of a prosperous Missouri planter and slaveowner. The 1840s and 50s were a time of darkness and drifting for Grant. He was posted to the Pacific coast, drummed out of the Army for his drinking problem, and failed repeatedly as a farmer and businessman.

Grant's relationship with alcoholism is one of the main themes of the book. It's hard to exaggerate just how sodden American culture was in the mid 19th century. When being able to hold your liquor was one of the marks of a man, Grant was resolutely unable to hold his. It seems small amounts of booze rendered him a slurring, stumbling object of mockery, and lead to multiday benders. While accusations of drinking dogged his public career, Chernow finds that in action Grant was always sober. It was when away from his family and inner circle with time to kill, that Grant lost himself in the bottle.

In 1860, no one would have pegged the shabby and broke Grant as anyone of importance. But as the Confederacy seceded and Lincoln called for volunteers, Grant found his place as an officer and general. In the opening stages of a war fought mostly by amateurs, Grant was both a professional and a visionary, with a keen awareness of his own forces as well as an intuitive ability to understand his enemy's limits. In a series of brilliant campaigns in the west, Grant secured the border states, captured critical Confederate forts, and defeated the armies sent against him.

In 1864, Grant was made supreme commander and also took command of the Army of the Potomac. The Army of the Potomac had been repeatedly defeated by the Army of Northern Virginia, with General Lee assuming a supernatural ability in the minds of soldiers. Grant had fought alongside Lee in Mexico, and knew he was just a man. Grant's strategy was simple in conception. The Union could replace losses, while the Confederacy could not. He would engage Lee until one of their armies was destroyed as a military force. Meanwhile, Sherman and Sheridan would prevent other Confederate armies from coming to Lee's aid, as well as conducting a scorched earth campaign against regions where the Confederacy drew its logistical strength. This strategy lead directly to Lee's surrender in 1865 and the end of the war. While contemporary accounts castigated Grant as a butcher, he understood the essence of war and how to command. No one with as many battles as Grant can entirely escape tactical blunders, and while he did order some futile frontal assault, these occasional missteps were in the service of sound military objectives. There's a world between Grant deliberate strategy to pin Confederate armies and destroy them, and the indifference to mass slaughter to move the general's drinks cabinet six yards closer to Berlin that characterizes a true military butcher.

Postwar, Grant suffered through the erratic and tumultuous administration of Andrew Johnson at general of the army, and then won election to the presidency in 1868. He faced a nation still grappling with the traumas of the Civil War, where the rights of freed slaves were under continual attack. Chernow takes a solidly revisionist account of Grant's presidency, one which I cannot agree with.

Grant's efforts were undermined by two major personal failings. The first was his taciturn and reticent nature. As a general, Grant had pondered the strategic situation and sent out orders, relying on his superior insight to guide victory. Senators could not be ordered around, and Grant crossed swords with Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner (of the Sumner caning) over a plan to incorporate San Domingo into the United States. Hostile relations with the Senate hampered Grant's legislative agenda.

The second problem was one of trust. Once Grant bestowed his loyalty on someone, he almost never withdrew it, a trait reinforced by how much he valued those who stood by him in his hardscrabble years. And Grant trusted too many scoundrels, including members of his own staff and family. In a broader political context, he found that machine politics Stalwart Republicans reliably stayed bought, while reform-minded Liberals opposed him in key votes, especially over San Domingo annexation. Trading loyalty for loyalty, Grant became head of an intrinsically corrupt patronage system. While he accepted gifts, including large funds and houses from wealthy admirers, he did not personally benefit from systematic corruption.

Grant's record on Reconstruction is similarly mixed. While he became a convinced abolitionist during the war, a supporter of freedman's rights, and an opponent of White Terror, the fact remains that Reconstruction ended with Grant's second term. While he used the US military and the new Department of Justice to target Ku Klux Klan terror, by the time he left office, most southern states were back in the hands of former Confederates, leading Black citizens had been assassinated, and White Supremacy firmly entrenched.

In other issues, the Grant administration lacked the financial tools to deal with the Panic of 1873, and his hard money policy likely made the depression worse, though Wall Street benefited immensely. The Alabama settlements, over British support for the Confederacy, were properly resolved. But scandal and a lack of lasting successes were Grant's political legacy.

Out of office, Grant travelled the world for over two years, an immensely successful diplomatic tour, and toyed with running for a third term in 1880, though he was defeated at the Republican convention. Grant invested all of his money with Ferdinand Ward, a confidence man, and was ruined financially and diagnosed with throat cancer in the same year. Out of a desperate need to provide for his family, he wrote his memoirs in a year and died, beloved by his country.

Grant is an interesting book about and important American. It stands against period political slander and the long and corrupt legacy of the Dunning school on Civil War historiography. But it's also very long, and I'm skeptical it's the final word. Chernow argues that Grant did very little wrong, when the record suggests major and systematic errors, especially outside of military affairs. Love is blind; history cannot be.