August 19, 2025 • 12 mins
Discover the remarkable life of Ulysses S. Grant, the celebrated Union hero of the Civil War and the 18th President of the United States. This engaging biography, presented in a concise 145-page pamphlet, offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of a man who shaped American history. Though the author is renowned for his captivating tales of the Old West, he also crafted a significant body of nonfiction that reveals much about Grants legacy. (Summary by David Wales)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section nine of Ulysses s. Grant by Owen Wister. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter six. Not
even if space were left, should his after days be told.
It is not for them that we remember and bless him.
(00:21):
The further we recede from him, the more they sink
away and leave him shining in his greatness at apromatics,
a hero in a soldier's dress, with sword not drawn
but sheathed. There his figure stands immortal, and there his
real life ends for living his action up to the
(00:42):
soul's highest excellence. And many who eat their three meals
a day are dead as door mails. Grant rose to
his full height again. Only when he came to die
as president, he was no more himself than he had
been when tanning leather. Men far less worthy have sat
(01:02):
more worthily in the White House. It was foretold silently Sherman.
His dear friend was set against it, and would not
say a word for it. Did he not know the
world's great soldiers, and what babies they became? As statesman
Wellington latest of all more still he knew his friend.
(01:25):
But we Americans, the most consistently inconsistent people on earth,
have passed a century in abusing our army, and in
electing every military hero we could get for President Washington, Jackson, Harrison,
Taylor Grant. When Lincoln was taken from us, no man
(01:47):
was so loved as Grant, And therefore, without asking or
caring to know how he could have learned statesmanship, in
our gratitude, we twice gave him the greatest gift we have.
Before this happened, his straightforward goodness and the power that
he had did much to heal the scars of war.
(02:10):
Andrew Johnson wanted Lee tried for treason, and Grant stopped
it by threatening to resign his commission. In those days,
the Southern general Taylor writes of him, he came frequently
to see me, was full of kindness and anxious to
promote my wishes. His action had endeared him to all
(02:31):
Southern men. His bearing and conduct at this time were admirable, modest,
and generous. He declared his ignorance of and distrust for
politics and politicians with which and whom he intended to
have nothing to do. Certainly, Johnson did not better Grant's
(02:52):
opinion of politicians, nor did those men who now led
the South far and wide astray from the noble spear
of Lee at Apromatics. Their continued malignity lost them a
great chance and cost the South deer. Following their manifesto
at Richmond already quoted, they now met each step of
(03:14):
clemency with a temper which is completely heralded in the
words of Henry A. Wise when he surrendered, we won't
be forgiven. We hate you, and that is the whole
of it. They now, with an arrogance which our language
has no word to express, demanded to return to Congress
on the old slave ratio. This gave white owners the
(03:38):
benefit of their slaves by adding three fifths of the
number of the black non voting population to the sum
of the white voting population. Slaves were free now. But
this was the arrangement which the South proposed to continue.
Let the reader pause and take it in. Johnson, for
(04:00):
personal reasons, encouraged it and alarmed Congress. Naturally, the North
lost patience, and Grant lost his patients too. This swept
away the Fourteenth Amendment, an admirable device by which any
state could deny a vote to a part of its
male population on condition that its representation in Congress was
(04:23):
proportionately reduced. This elastic remedy, which held hope, was destroyed
by the precipitate, deplorable blunder of the Fifteenth Amendment, the
evils of which have stained our soil with increasing blood
each year, and developed that barbarism of which the South
(04:44):
has had too great a share from the beginning. But
when leaders came to Grant offering him the presidency, either
he forgot his opinion of politics, or and signs point
to this, he thought, as another hero has had thought since,
that being president was an easy matter. None of us
(05:05):
can measure such a temptation without having it. As General
Taylor writes, perhaps none but a divine being can resist
such a temptation. Strange, very strange, is Grant's conduct. After
his election. He left the world. He went into a
sort of retreat at Galena. He would see no party leaders.
(05:28):
He ordered no letter sent to him, he would make
no speeches. He disclosed his plans to no one. We
can only guess his thoughts during this time by his
acts following it. They were honest and helpless. Evidently, he
wished to govern without politics, as he had made war
(05:49):
without politics. He wished to choose men as he had
chosen generals for their fitness as he judged them. He
did not perceive the vast defeatarance that war at once
lays bare a soldier's fitness to the bone, while peace
may hide incompetence and dishonesty for many years. As an
(06:11):
illustration of Grant's total blindness to the proprieties of civil government,
his choosing mister Stuart, Secretary of the Treasury will serve
he very naturally thought so great a merchant would fill
the place well, he appointed him without consulting him. The
Senate confirmed the appointment. Then a law was discovered forbidding
(06:34):
men in foreign trade to hold this position. Grant asked
to have the law changed. But we will not dwell
upon his many improprieties of administration, favoritism, too constant, acceptance
of presence, too great obstinacy, enforcing his notions, invincible misunderstanding
(06:56):
of the difference between a lieutenant general and a president.
It may be said that when he happened upon good guides,
such as Hamilton Fish, his acts were wise, as in
the Alabama case, where he was as right as Sumner
was wrong, or as in his courageous veto of the
inflation bill in eighteen seventy four, when he listened to
(07:20):
thieves and impostors, as in the Sandamingo Matter, his acts
were mistaken and dangerous, and alas unchanged from his childhood
innocence revealed in the Horse Story. He remained such a
mark for thieves and impostors that he came to sit
in a sort of center of corruption, credulous to the
(07:42):
bitter end, For the end was the bitterest of all.
After his second term, when he had gone round the
world and met most of the great people in it,
and returned man enough of the world to remark humorously
that at Windsor, Queen Victoria had been too anxious to
put him at his ease, and after his unwilling candidacy
(08:05):
for a third term, had been frustrated. After all his experience,
he fell a dupe to a Wall Street gambler. He
became a special partner. His name was used to further
a brazen scheme of thievery into the business. He put
a hundred thousand dollars and drew two and three thousand
(08:26):
a month income, without wondering how such returns could be.
When the crash came on May sixth, eighteen eighty four.
It was inconceivable to the world at first that he
was not guilty presently by his conduct and statements, by
his making over to his creditor, mister Vanderbilt, all the
(08:49):
property that he owned, and refusing mister Vanderbilt's generous attempts
to give it back to him, the world recognized his innocence.
Help was offered this ex president, who had not now
enough money to pay the milkman. Most touchingly, a stranger,
mister Wood sent him instantly five hundred dollars, and soon
(09:13):
five hundred more as his share of the nation's debt
to him. More elaborate attempts to assist him were begun,
but he rejected them, and under the whole shock his
body gave way, but his spirit rose. He was asked
to write war articles, and presently was able to pay
(09:33):
mister Wood with the first fruits of his pen. Then
for weeks, sometimes in such torture from the cancer in
his throat that drinking water was like swallowing Molton led
to him. He fought death away while he wrote his memoirs.
The tribute of the country in making him general once more.
(09:54):
On March fourth, eighteen eighty five deeply pleased him, but
he was shaken by it and grew worse reviving. However,
his vast will pushed on with the book in order
to leave something for his wife's support. He had no
voice any more, but whispered his dictation and wrote on
(10:15):
days when he was strong enough. He held death away
until the book was finished, and then gave death leave
to come. In June, he had been taken up the
Hudson River to Mount mac gregor, near Saratoga from his
New York house. His eyes followed West Point as the
(10:36):
train passed by it. On July three, his old friend
Buckner of Donaldson came affectionately to bid him farewell, and
he spoke of his happiness in the growing harmony between
North and South. On July nine, in a trembling pencil,
he wrote to mister Wood, I am glad to say
(10:58):
that while there is much much unblushing wickedness in this world,
yet there is a compensating generosity and grandeur of soul.
In my case, I have not found that republics are ungrateful,
nor are the people. On July twenty three, he died
(11:19):
to pay his debts. He had so utterly stripped himself
of all his trophies and possessions, that there was not
left a uniform to clothe his body, or a sword
to lay upon his coffin. To day he rests in
his tomb at Riverside. But his greatest visible monument is
(11:40):
the book. Quite apart from its history, which here and
there needs amendment, and quite independent of its masterly prose,
it is a picture of a noble, modest, great heart.
As Lincoln asked Grant after Corinth, how does it all
(12:01):
sum up let poetry, which is the summing of all substance? Reply?
My good blade carves the casks of men. My tough
lance thrusteth sure. My strength is as the strength of ten,
because my heart is pure. End of Chapter six. End
(12:26):
of Ulysses S. Grant by Owen Wister,
Section nine of Ulysses s. Grant by Owen Wister. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter six. Not
even if space were left, should his after days be told.
It is not for them that we remember and bless him.
(00:21):
The further we recede from him, the more they sink
away and leave him shining in his greatness at apromatics,
a hero in a soldier's dress, with sword not drawn
but sheathed. There his figure stands immortal, and there his
real life ends for living his action up to the
(00:42):
soul's highest excellence. And many who eat their three meals
a day are dead as door mails. Grant rose to
his full height again. Only when he came to die
as president, he was no more himself than he had
been when tanning leather. Men far less worthy have sat
(01:02):
more worthily in the White House. It was foretold silently Sherman.
His dear friend was set against it, and would not
say a word for it. Did he not know the
world's great soldiers, and what babies they became? As statesman
Wellington latest of all more still he knew his friend.
(01:25):
But we Americans, the most consistently inconsistent people on earth,
have passed a century in abusing our army, and in
electing every military hero we could get for President Washington, Jackson, Harrison,
Taylor Grant. When Lincoln was taken from us, no man
(01:47):
was so loved as Grant, And therefore, without asking or
caring to know how he could have learned statesmanship, in
our gratitude, we twice gave him the greatest gift we have.
Before this happened, his straightforward goodness and the power that
he had did much to heal the scars of war.
(02:10):
Andrew Johnson wanted Lee tried for treason, and Grant stopped
it by threatening to resign his commission. In those days,
the Southern general Taylor writes of him, he came frequently
to see me, was full of kindness and anxious to
promote my wishes. His action had endeared him to all
(02:31):
Southern men. His bearing and conduct at this time were admirable, modest,
and generous. He declared his ignorance of and distrust for
politics and politicians with which and whom he intended to
have nothing to do. Certainly, Johnson did not better Grant's
(02:52):
opinion of politicians, nor did those men who now led
the South far and wide astray from the noble spear
of Lee at Apromatics. Their continued malignity lost them a
great chance and cost the South deer. Following their manifesto
at Richmond already quoted, they now met each step of
(03:14):
clemency with a temper which is completely heralded in the
words of Henry A. Wise when he surrendered, we won't
be forgiven. We hate you, and that is the whole
of it. They now, with an arrogance which our language
has no word to express, demanded to return to Congress
on the old slave ratio. This gave white owners the
(03:38):
benefit of their slaves by adding three fifths of the
number of the black non voting population to the sum
of the white voting population. Slaves were free now. But
this was the arrangement which the South proposed to continue.
Let the reader pause and take it in. Johnson, for
(04:00):
personal reasons, encouraged it and alarmed Congress. Naturally, the North
lost patience, and Grant lost his patients too. This swept
away the Fourteenth Amendment, an admirable device by which any
state could deny a vote to a part of its
male population on condition that its representation in Congress was
(04:23):
proportionately reduced. This elastic remedy, which held hope, was destroyed
by the precipitate, deplorable blunder of the Fifteenth Amendment, the
evils of which have stained our soil with increasing blood
each year, and developed that barbarism of which the South
(04:44):
has had too great a share from the beginning. But
when leaders came to Grant offering him the presidency, either
he forgot his opinion of politics, or and signs point
to this, he thought, as another hero has had thought since,
that being president was an easy matter. None of us
(05:05):
can measure such a temptation without having it. As General
Taylor writes, perhaps none but a divine being can resist
such a temptation. Strange, very strange, is Grant's conduct. After
his election. He left the world. He went into a
sort of retreat at Galena. He would see no party leaders.
(05:28):
He ordered no letter sent to him, he would make
no speeches. He disclosed his plans to no one. We
can only guess his thoughts during this time by his
acts following it. They were honest and helpless. Evidently, he
wished to govern without politics, as he had made war
(05:49):
without politics. He wished to choose men as he had
chosen generals for their fitness as he judged them. He
did not perceive the vast defeatarance that war at once
lays bare a soldier's fitness to the bone, while peace
may hide incompetence and dishonesty for many years. As an
(06:11):
illustration of Grant's total blindness to the proprieties of civil government,
his choosing mister Stuart, Secretary of the Treasury will serve
he very naturally thought so great a merchant would fill
the place well, he appointed him without consulting him. The
Senate confirmed the appointment. Then a law was discovered forbidding
(06:34):
men in foreign trade to hold this position. Grant asked
to have the law changed. But we will not dwell
upon his many improprieties of administration, favoritism, too constant, acceptance
of presence, too great obstinacy, enforcing his notions, invincible misunderstanding
(06:56):
of the difference between a lieutenant general and a president.
It may be said that when he happened upon good guides,
such as Hamilton Fish, his acts were wise, as in
the Alabama case, where he was as right as Sumner
was wrong, or as in his courageous veto of the
inflation bill in eighteen seventy four, when he listened to
(07:20):
thieves and impostors, as in the Sandamingo Matter, his acts
were mistaken and dangerous, and alas unchanged from his childhood
innocence revealed in the Horse Story. He remained such a
mark for thieves and impostors that he came to sit
in a sort of center of corruption, credulous to the
(07:42):
bitter end, For the end was the bitterest of all.
After his second term, when he had gone round the
world and met most of the great people in it,
and returned man enough of the world to remark humorously
that at Windsor, Queen Victoria had been too anxious to
put him at his ease, and after his unwilling candidacy
(08:05):
for a third term, had been frustrated. After all his experience,
he fell a dupe to a Wall Street gambler. He
became a special partner. His name was used to further
a brazen scheme of thievery into the business. He put
a hundred thousand dollars and drew two and three thousand
(08:26):
a month income, without wondering how such returns could be.
When the crash came on May sixth, eighteen eighty four.
It was inconceivable to the world at first that he
was not guilty presently by his conduct and statements, by
his making over to his creditor, mister Vanderbilt, all the
(08:49):
property that he owned, and refusing mister Vanderbilt's generous attempts
to give it back to him, the world recognized his innocence.
Help was offered this ex president, who had not now
enough money to pay the milkman. Most touchingly, a stranger,
mister Wood sent him instantly five hundred dollars, and soon
(09:13):
five hundred more as his share of the nation's debt
to him. More elaborate attempts to assist him were begun,
but he rejected them, and under the whole shock his
body gave way, but his spirit rose. He was asked
to write war articles, and presently was able to pay
(09:33):
mister Wood with the first fruits of his pen. Then
for weeks, sometimes in such torture from the cancer in
his throat that drinking water was like swallowing Molton led
to him. He fought death away while he wrote his memoirs.
The tribute of the country in making him general once more.
(09:54):
On March fourth, eighteen eighty five deeply pleased him, but
he was shaken by it and grew worse reviving. However,
his vast will pushed on with the book in order
to leave something for his wife's support. He had no
voice any more, but whispered his dictation and wrote on
(10:15):
days when he was strong enough. He held death away
until the book was finished, and then gave death leave
to come. In June, he had been taken up the
Hudson River to Mount mac gregor, near Saratoga from his
New York house. His eyes followed West Point as the
(10:36):
train passed by it. On July three, his old friend
Buckner of Donaldson came affectionately to bid him farewell, and
he spoke of his happiness in the growing harmony between
North and South. On July nine, in a trembling pencil,
he wrote to mister Wood, I am glad to say
(10:58):
that while there is much much unblushing wickedness in this world,
yet there is a compensating generosity and grandeur of soul.
In my case, I have not found that republics are ungrateful,
nor are the people. On July twenty three, he died
(11:19):
to pay his debts. He had so utterly stripped himself
of all his trophies and possessions, that there was not
left a uniform to clothe his body, or a sword
to lay upon his coffin. To day he rests in
his tomb at Riverside. But his greatest visible monument is
(11:40):
the book. Quite apart from its history, which here and
there needs amendment, and quite independent of its masterly prose,
it is a picture of a noble, modest, great heart.
As Lincoln asked Grant after Corinth, how does it all
(12:01):
sum up let poetry, which is the summing of all substance? Reply?
My good blade carves the casks of men. My tough
lance thrusteth sure. My strength is as the strength of ten,
because my heart is pure. End of Chapter six. End
(12:26):
of Ulysses S. Grant by Owen Wister,
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