The History Book Club discussion

Hello Everyone,

This begins the eleventh week's reading in our new Presidential Series group discussion.

The complete table of contents is as follows:

Table of Contents

Preface p.13

ONE: The Early Years p.21
TWO: Mexico p.34
THREE: Resignation p.70
FOUR: War p.98
FIVE: "Unconditional Surrender" p.133
SIX: Shiloh p.167
SEVEN: Vicksburg p.206
EIGHT: Chattanooga p. 258
NINE: General in Chief p. 284
TEN: The Wilderness p. 313
ELEVEN: Grant and Lee p. 340
TWELVE: Appomattox p. 369
THIRTEEN: Reconstruction p. 408
FOURTEEN: Let Us Have Peace p. 431
FIFTEEN: Grant in the White House p. 458
SIXTEEN: Diplomacy p. 491
SEVENTEEN: Great White Father p. 516
EIGHTEEN: Reconstruction Revisited p. 542
NINETEEN: The Gilded Age p. 573
TWENTY: Taps p. 606

Notes p. 629
Bibliography p. 707
Acknowledgments p. 747
Index p. 427

Syllabus

Week One - October 4th - October 10th -> Preface, Chapter ONE, and Chapter TWO p. 13 - 69
PREFACE, ONE - The Early Years, and TWO - Mexico

Week Two - October 11th - October 17th -> Chapter THREE and FOUR. p. 70 -132
THREE - Resignation and FOUR - War

Week Three - October 18th - October 24th -> Chapter FIVE and SIX p. 133 - 205
FIVE - "Unconditional Surrender" and SIX - Shiloh

Week Four - October 25th - October 31st -> Chapter SEVEN p. 206 - 257
Chapter SEVEN - Vicksburg

Week Five - November 1st - November 7th -> Chapters EIGHT and NINE p. 258 - 312
EIGHT - Chattanooga and NINE - General in Chief

Week Six - November 8th - November 14th -> Chapters TEN and ELEVEN p. 313 - 368
TEN - The Wilderness and ELEVEN - Grant and Lee

Week Seven - November 15th - November 21st -> Chapter TWELVE p. 369 - 407
TWELVE - Appomattox

Week Eight - November 22nd - November 28th ->
Chapter THIRTEEN and FOURTEEN p. 408 - 457
THIRTEEN - Reconstruction and FOURTEEN - Les Us Have Peace

Week Nine - November 29th - December 5th ->
FIFTEEN - Grant in the White House and SIXTEEN - Diplomacy p. 458 - 515

Week Ten - December 6th - December 12th - > Chapter SEVENTEEN and EIGHTEEN p. 516 - 572
SEVENTEEN - Great White Father and EIGHTEEN - Reconstruction Revisited

Week Eleven - December 13th - December 19th - > Chapter NINETEEN and TWENTY p. 573 - 628
NINETEEN -The Gilded Age and TWENTY - Taps

The assignment for this week includes the following segments/pages:

Week eleven - December 13th - December 19th ->
Chapter NINETEEN and TWENTY p. 573 - 628
NINETEEN - The Gilded Age and TWENTY - Taps

We look forward to your participation; but remember this is a non spoiler thread.

We will open up threads for each week's reading. Please make sure to post in the particular thread dedicated to those specific chapters and page numbers to avoid spoilers.

This book was kicked off on October 4th. This will be the eleventh week's assignment for this book.

We look forward to your participation. Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other noted on line booksellers do have copies of the book and shipment can be expedited. The book can also be obtained easily at your local library, or on your Kindle.

A special welcome to those who will be newcomers to this discussion and thank you to those who have actively contributed on the previous Presidential Series selection. We are glad to have you all.

~Bryan

TO ALWAYS SEE ALL WEEKS' THREADS SELECT VIEW ALL
Jean Edward Smith

Chapter 19 begins with a wedding and ends in a crisis. Grant's daughter is married in 1874 amidst a economic depression (Panic of 1873). With the cornerstone of Wall Street, Jay Cooke & Co., going under, Grant has an inexperienced treasury secretary named William Richardson. Grant himself does not know much about finance as well. Richardson signs a contract for a friend of Congressman Benjamin Butler (John Sanborn) to collect taxes and pocketing half the money (plus expenses). Once this scandal hits, Richardson ends up resigning. The big financial fight is over greenbacks (paper money). Grant is a "hard currency" man (gold specie). He used his veto power to veto the inflation bill that would have pumped more greenbacks into the system to help in the depression. Grant wants gold, more stable currency than the greenbacks, and signs the Resumption Act (1874), which places the Republican party in the hard currency camp.

Grant brings Benjamin Bristow in as the new treasury secretary. Bristow is effective in getting indictments in the "Whiskey Ring," a group of men involved in circumventing taxation in the liquor industry. One of those indictments is Babcock, Grant's aide. Grant makes history by giving a deposition in support of his friend and Babcock is acquitted.

However, Grant's administration is riddled with corruption. Grant has to fire Williams, his attorney general, because his wife receives $30,000 from a company in exchange for dropping litigation against them. The Interior Department is also riddled with corruption as Secretary Delano looks the other way as his employees involve themselves in land fraud, while Delano's son tries to get paid by the department for no services rendered. Grant does not fire Delano at first, although he ends up firing both men because of overwhelming evidence. Secretary of War Belknap resigns near the end of Grant's second term when it is found that Belknap's wife secures for a friend a lucrative contract at a military outpost. Her friend sends some of the profits back to her and Belknap. Congress wants to impeach Belknap, but he is out of office and cannot be impeached.

Grant does not seek a third term. He is hoping that Secretary of State Fish would get the nomination, but it goes to Rutherford B. Hayes, who campaigns against Democrat Samuel Tilden. However, there are problems in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. When the electors meet in the capitols, Democrats votes for Tilden, setting up two conflicting electoral counts. Congress sets up a Electoral Commission, and the commission puts all three states in the Republican column and Hayes wins by 185 to 184. Grant is not a part of the commission, and keeps the nation calm while all this is going on. The Democrats accept the defeat, and they get an informal agreement that Hayes would remove all federal troops out of the South, thus ending Reconstruction.

Chapter 20 covers Grant's post-presidency. Once Grant leaves office, he goes to Europe for 2 years and he is treated as a great war hero. He meets heads of state and kings and queens, including Queen Victoria and Chancellor Bismarck of Germany. Once he arrives home, there is a huge upswing of popularity and Grant allows Senator Conkling to handle his 1880 presidential nomination. However, Conkling manages to antagonize the delegates and the anti-Grant men win with Congressman James Garfield getting the nomination.

Grant invests in his son's firm Grant & Ward, but Ward scams them out of the firm's money and the firm folds. Left penniless, Grant gets loans from friends and finally gets a book deal to write his memoirs, so his family would not be destitute. As he starts his book, Grant is diagnosed with throat cancer. With great determination, he finishes his memoirs and dies on July 23, 1885.

We really see the scandals hitting Grant hard. It seems most were done by cabinet members without Grant's knowledge. Would you still blame him and hold him responsible?

Wikipedia has a helpful article on the corruption:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_...

It is so bad, the author needed to set up a summary table!

Here is an interesting article by Frank Scaturro, Head of the Grant Monument Association. We know where his loyalties lie, but he raises a point that his political enemies used the corruption to vilify Grant and get him out of office and keep him out:

http://faculty.css.edu/mkelsey/usgran...

It still does not answer the question if Grant should be responsible, but it adds a layer of context. The anti-Grant forces won in 1876 and in 1880, so you have to have a good campaign hook to do it, so why not corruption. Still used today.

I also wanted to include Grant's side of things. Here is a little bit from his last Annual Message in December 1876:

It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training. From the age of 17 I had never even witnessed the excitement attending a Presidential campaign but twice antecedent to my own candidacy, and at but one of them was I eligible as a voter.

Under such circumstances it is but reasonable to suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred. Even had they not, differences of opinion between the Executive, bound by an oath to the strict performance of his duties, and writers and debaters must have arisen. It is not necessarily evidence of blunder on the part of the Executive because there are these differences of views. Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various duties of administering the Government--in nearly every case selected without a personal acquaintance with the appointee, but upon recommendations of the representatives chosen directly by the people. It is impossible, where so many trusts are to be allotted, that the right parties should be chosen in every instance. History shows that no Administration from the time of Washington to the present has been free from these mistakes. But I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the law, and for the very best interests of the whole people. Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.
(source: http://millercenter.org/scripps/archi...)

I have tried to understand Grant's success (West Point - early military career)- non-success (private business efforts)- success (fighting in civil war)- success (post civil war & most of presidency) - unsuccess (part of end of presidency) - unsuccess (the Grand & Ward business failure)
So in the beginning he had an enviroment inhabited by succeeding cadets and then in the military - the people around him were qualified officers - who were mostly patriots and honest. - leaving the military into civilian life the trust that he natually had (maybe reinforced by the honesty and integrity of his military colleagues) made him more/too vunerable to the less scrupuless members of society. Then back to the Civil war - back to his officer colleagues and surrounded by men mostly patriotic and all with the same mission/goal - this continued thru his post war and presidential time but it seems the further, in time, he moved away from that military enfviroment/integrity the more troubles he had - he found too few Fish like men.
It is just that I have been constantly wondering why he was so successful in some aspects of his life and so much less so in others.
Otherwise it is a great book - I have already started giving it to some people (as I sometimes do if I discuss a book with someone who seems interested)

i am going to try to squeeze in his memoirs if I can next year - anyone interested in a private - chapter a month or something HBC type joint venture?

I hear you, Vince, it is very interesting to read about his ups and downs. I like how you brought up the environment. In the military where he thrived, he had good, qualified people around him. The military environment suits him best, I think. He can tell the results about competency right away in war, and put his trust in someone moving forward.

In politics, it is much more murkier. You start on the wrong foot with loyal, but incompetent people. It is hard to supervise their work in a bureaucracy and you get disasters.

One thing that still is a mystery is why he picked these people in the first place. He really seemed to struggle with finding qualified people. He acted alone in his appointments, and it is a bit different picking a line officer vs. a government post. Then you have Congress pushing unqualified people, and you get disasters.

About Grant's memoirs, you can chat with Bentley about it and see if it can be done. We sometimes do special spotlight books. Thanks!

Ulysses S. Grant

Vince and Bryan, we do have buddy reads although nobody has taken me up on it.

Vince, I can set up a thread in the buddy reads area and if there is someone who wants to join you; just let us know here.

We also see Grant as the calm leader of the nation, especially during the disputed 1876 election. Numerous times he told people he would not install Hayes by force. Can you image if he did so?

Blacks did pay a price: end of troops in the South and re-emergence of white power.

Bentley wrote: "Vince and Bryan, we do have buddy reads although nobody has taken me up on it.

Vince, I can set up a thread in the buddy reads area and if there is someone who wants to join you; just let us know..."

Buddy Reads.............. ok when I get closer to ready I will let you know and thanks

The end of his life, I think, is a bittersweet story. He has cancer, a horrible disease, but is able to produce his memoirs so he can keep his family solvent. He couldn't provide for his family very well in life, but did it in death.

Ulysses S. Grant

It was a sad ending; it is almost at every turn even though he had been president - he was still the guy with the hard luck story.

Bentley wrote: "It was a sad ending; it is almost at every turn even though he had been president - he was still the guy with the hard luck story."

No doubt, Bentley.