Ulysses S. Grant: Hardscrabble, William Jones and the Butcher Myth Undone

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

You know, if you were walking the streets of St. Louis in the late 1850s, you might have bumped into a man selling firewood on a street corner.

SPEAKER_2 (0:07)

And he would have looked incredibly rough, too.

SPEAKER_1 (0:10)

Yeah, exactly. I mean, he was freezing, he had recently failed at farming, and he was living in a log cabin that was literally named Hardscrabble.

SPEAKER_2 (0:20)

Which really tells you everything you need to know about his situation.

SPEAKER_1 (0:23)

Right. And things were so incredibly tight for his family that he had just pond his gold watch simply to buy his kids' Christmas presents.

SPEAKER_2 (0:31)

That's just a brutal image.

SPEAKER_1 (0:33)

It really is. But it is crazy to think that the guy shivering on that corner is the same guy who, just a decade later, would be the most famous person in America.

SPEAKER_2 (0:43)

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_1 (0:44)

He would go on to command these enormous armies to victory, save the United States, and sit in the White House for two terms as president.

SPEAKER_2 (0:52)

Yeah. It's an unbelievable turnaround.

SPEAKER_1 (0:54)

So today in this Deep Dive, we are looking at a huge stack of sources on Ulysses S. Grant. And what really stands out across all these biographies and historical accounts is how entirely wrong our modern stereotype of him actually is.

SPEAKER_2 (1:10)

It's so far off the mark. People just picture this cigar-chomping brute who kind of stumbled into military glory by brute force.

SPEAKER_1 (1:18)

Right. But the reality of how he pulled off one of the most stunning turnarounds in American history is just, well, it's so much more complex than that.

SPEAKER_2 (1:28)

It really is a phenomenal trajectory.

SPEAKER_1 (1:30)

And it's largely because he possessed this very specific set of skills that seemed entirely useless in peacetime, you know, but they became absolutely critical when the country collapsed into civil war.

SPEAKER_2 (1:42)

So to understand those skills, I guess we really have to look at his beginnings.

SPEAKER_1 (1:45)

Yeah, because he was definitely not your typical aspiring general. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant in Ohio in 1822, and he was a remarkably quiet kid.

SPEAKER_2 (1:57)

And he really hated his dad's business, right? It was a tannery.

SPEAKER_1 (2:00)

Yes, he actively despised it.

SPEAKER_2 (2:02)

I mean, a tannery involves boiling animal hides. It's bloody, it smells horrific, and Grant just couldn't stomach it.

SPEAKER_1 (2:10)

Why was that? Was he just squeamish?

SPEAKER_2 (2:13)

Well, no, he actually had this deep, almost preternatural empathy for animals. So instead of working in the tannery, he became known locally as a sort of horse whisperer.

SPEAKER_1 (2:24)

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_2 (2:24)

Yeah, he had this incredible gift for calming and riding horses from a very young age.

SPEAKER_1 (2:29)

Which, I mean, that seems like a pretty great skill for the 19th century.

SPEAKER_2 (2:33)

You'd think so, but his father essentially forces him to go get a proper education at the Military Academy at West Point.

SPEAKER_1 (2:40)

And the way he gets his famous name there is, it's practically a sitcom plot.

SPEAKER_2 (2:45)

It really is.

SPEAKER_1 (2:46)

Because the congressman who nominated him accidentally wrote down US. Grant on the application instead of Hiram Ulysses.

SPEAKER_2 (2:52)

Right, a total bureaucratic mix up.

SPEAKER_1 (2:55)

And I read that rather than fight the federal bureaucracy to get his paperwork fixed, he just accepted the new name. He just rolled with it.

SPEAKER_2 (3:01)

Yeah, he just let it happen. And so his classmates saw the initials US and they started calling him Sam, you know, as an Uncle Sam.

SPEAKER_1 (3:09)

The irony of the name Uncle Sam attaching himself to him that early on is just wild.

SPEAKER_2 (3:14)

It's great foreshadowing. But his time at West Point was fairly average academically. He didn't really love the rigid military discipline.

SPEAKER_1 (3:22)

But he did well with the horses, right?

SPEAKER_2 (3:24)

Oh, absolutely.

He set equestrian highjump records that actually stood for decades. But the funny thing is, despite being this unmatched horseman, when he graduated, the army didn't put him in the cavalry.

SPEAKER_1 (3:35)

Which makes zero sense.

SPEAKER_2 (3:37)

Right. They assigned him to the infantry instead, specifically working as a quartermaster.

SPEAKER_1 (3:42)

Okay. So I was trying to wrap my head around this quartermaster role.

SPEAKER_2 (3:45)

It's not glamorous.

SPEAKER_1 (3:47)

No, not at all. From what I gather, being a quartermaster is essentially like being the backstage production manager of a massive stadium concert.

SPEAKER_2 (3:56)

That is a great way to put it.

SPEAKER_1 (3:58)

Like, you aren't the flashy lead singer out front getting all the applause. You're the person figuring out the logistics.