Henry
Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, wrote: “That, two thousand years
after Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be
called-- and should actually and truly be-- the highest product of the
most advanced evolution, made evolution ludicrous....The progress of
evolution, from President Washington to President Grant, was alone
evidence enough to upset Darwin....Grant should have lived in a cave and
worn skins.”
This
quote neatly sums up how I used to feel about Grant. I thought of him
as a none-too-intelligent military man in over his head in the White
House. During his tenure as president, numerous scandals rocked the
White House, and Grant seemed powerless to stop them. Grant appeared a
weak-willed and simple man who shouldn’t have been president.
Driving
through Grant country in southern Ohio, I got a completely different
idea of the man. The area even now is extremely rural. Large, beautiful
farms dominate the landscape with small towns peppered here and there.
You could imagine how isolated the young Grant would have been living
there during the 1820s when it was even less populated.
Staying
in Georgetown, home of the Grant Boyhood Home, we stopped by a local
restaurant to get some dinner after a 9 hour drive. We chatted with the
waitress and asked her if they studied Grant in school. She answered
with a resounding yes, and informed us the town has a yearly festival
that involves dressing up in period costumes and having a ball at a huge
barn. When asked what three words she would use to describe Grant, she
said iconic (fitting since he is on the 50 dollar bill), heroic, and
intelligent.
The
last one took me aback, but our tour guide at the boyhood home also
picked it as one of her three. Grant apparently excelled at mathematics,
and was encouraged by his parents to get a better education than they
did. He attended a local school founded by an engineer who inexplicably
stopped in the region to found a school for children, despite the fact
that he had no known connection to the town and had never taught before.
Of the children under his tutelage in the small town of Georgetown,
four went on to become generals and three went on to become admirals
during the Civil War.
Grant’s
parents were not so educated. His mother was virtually illiterate and
his father was a tanner. The cottage where Grant was born consisted of
one room, with the bare minimum of possessions. The future president’s
father Jesse worked hard, and a year after his first son was born, he
had saved up $1500, enough money to buy his own land and start his own
tannery in Georgetown. He built the home where Grant grew up as well as
the tannery building across the street, allowing his family to live in
simple comfort. By the time he died, he had amassed a small fortune.
Grant
never had his father’s business success. He could have taken over the
tannery, except he was a known animal lover who hated the sight of the
animal carcasses outside the tannery that were visible from his bedroom
window. Instead of helping his father at the tannery, he ran a taxi
service for his father which allowed him to work with horses. Grant was
an expert horseman and true horse lover; during the war, he would order
his officers to take care of their horses after a battle before seeing
to their own needs.
Seeing
where Grant grew up, a different picture of him emerges. The inept
president fades, and a sensitive man and brilliant general comes into
focus. Everyone we asked about Grant talked about him warmly and with
surprising feeling, as though he was still a neighborhood fixture. That a
man who has been dead for over 125 year can still inspire that kind of
devotion is remarkable and heartwarming.
So
with all due respect to Mr. Adams, I have to disagree. Grant may not
have been our best president, but he was something better: a decent
human being.
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