John f. Marszalek discusses his process for writing in his relationship with Abraham Lincoln and what he mainly focused on with civil war and not his presidency. Held at the lincoln form symposium, this is one hour. So, let us begin with our last session for the 23rd form. I am Frank Williams your coach. We are delighted to have with us once again, every other year, we have the john and craig show. applause and that is much deserved, because they get high grades, high marks from you. Deservedly so. Im not even sure what it is there going to talk about this morning. But we will be entertained. I can tell you that. What can we say about two of our very loyal members who have served for a long time. A long time on our board of advisers. John john f. Marszalek is our dear friend from Mississippi State, university. Executive director of the Ulysses Grant association and president ial library where i served as president. He is recently the editor along with david mullin and louis gallows of the annotated memers of Ulysses Grant. The first time this is really been done. I highly recommend it. It is in the bookstore. Get one. Get to. Craig simons, who is really a naval historian but turned to lincoln and wrote a great book. A great book that when the lincoln prize here at gettysburg on lincoln and his admirals. I have to say, this book that just came out, world war ii at sea, a global history, absolutely superb, published by oxford. Please get a copy. Some of us are interested in World War Ii History as much as we are in a civil war. Please welcome john f. Marszalek and craig simons. applause thank you frank. Thank all of you for that warm welcome. Very much appreciated. Some of you know, some of you may not, that mary lou and i, my wife, we recently moved back to rhode island, newport, rhode island. Therefore, our neighbors, more or less, anybody in rhode island is neighbors with everybody else in rhode island. I want to acknowledge franks help in being my instantaneous translator as i learned the rhode island dialect and translated it into some sort of common american english. I recently learned where the lure of what was. It is the law of war. That was an insight to me. What john and i are going to do today is talk about the book that frank mentioned. This is the personal memoirs of ulysses as grant. It is a fully annotated version that came out recently. John was the principal creator of this document. All of you know that john and i have been Close Friends for a long time. Mike task however is to interview him. I will pull no punches. I will be as tough as nails in this. My first question john is how great is this book . I heard that it is almost as good as a certain book on world war ii. There we go. It has already started. I did actually have some questions here to ask john. I have answers as well. John always has answers. Grants memories are pretty universally considered to be the greatest president ial memoir ever penned under very trying circumstances. They are both literary and clear without being cluttered. They are not apologetic, they are not self serving. It is in effect an American Icon and so my first question is how did you and your team, but you in particular, think about attacking this . I mean it is almost like we writing to kill a mockingbird or something taking this on. That is an excellent question and fortunately i have an answer for that one. I do not have answers for most of craigs questions but that is another story. But no seriously, what happened was interesting leonov we look back at the first volume of the papers of ulysses as grant going back to 1967. In that particular first volume there is a statement to the effect that once the Grant Association completed the full number of volumes of papers of ulysses s. Grant, what was going to happen next is we were going to take on these memories. So that is listed. It took a little bit of time as you might guess. The great john why simon, ive come to admire even more when i see what he accomplished and his wife harriott still working with us on this memoir. You see if you read it that we mentioned her name, but we decided we wanted to do this and fulfill with the Grant Association had promised we. The president of the association pushes the same point in his comments. We want to take the memoirs of ulysses s. Grant and not change what he said but to fully annotated. Basically if you consider the fact that the grant memoirs had been imprint ever since 1885. All sorts of famous historians have done it and we ask ourselves that question. How dare we do anything like this to even attempt anything like this . So what we have attempted to do is to make the memoirs written after all of 1885, when people knew who grant was talking about and living in mississippi particularly, talking about places along the Mississippi River that do not even exist any longer. But grant mentions them and everyone knows who they are and where these people are and etc. So what we attempted to do is think of a modern audience. A modern audience is sitting and looking at the memories. They come across something, the name of a person or place, and they say i have no idea who that is. So what we tried to do is have you then put your eyes at the foot of the page and actually read footnotes. As you know, most books no longer use footnotes, the use and notes. And it takes you a lot of flipping back and forth so it took a lot of discussion, shall we say, with our publisher which fortunately, Harvard University press. At first they wanted to do the end notes and we said no that would defeat the whole purpose. So what you can do now, and they agreed we would have it at the foot of the page, what you do now is you are reading along and you come across say Craig Symonds. Grant says something about him and no one knows who Craig Symonds is. So what we try to do is research to find out where Craig Symonds is mentioned and do a little fifth note saying he is such and such and this is why grant is talking about him at this particular time. So what you will notice is up to our time, maybe they were at the most, jim mick fierce and in addition, but about 100 annotations and notes. We have over 2000 so you can see as you are reading along just what we are attempting to talk about. We look at this whole grant memoirs from his perspective. The idea is he wrote it, people are interested in what he has to say and not what we have to say and so keep in mind, i will shut up after this, the interesting thing is when grant wrote his first article about shiloh and sent it to century magazine, they were appalled and how bad it was. It read like a battle report etc. So what they told him to do is just talk. Top like you do when you are sitting around with your friends and telling them about what happened at shiloh. Do that. So grant does that. Our job is not to correct grant or interfere with his conversation with his friends. We are just basically sitting there and grant says something and people may look over and not say anything. We think what he is saying is accurate. If there is something that he messes up, then we say by the way general, what you probably really meant was such and such and this and that. So that is really what we are tempting, attempting to do. To bring this ancient and one of the greatest pieces of American Literature, up to par four modern readers in the 21st century. One of the Great Stories about the grant memoirs is, and i will let john add flush to this, but the short version is that he had financial troubles late in life. He trusted people he ought not to have trusted. The bernie meadows of his day and some of his much of his family fortune went away. Almost simultaneously with that he discovered that he had a life threatening health circumstance. What was going to rescue his family from destitution was the offer to published his memoirs. And so this photograph that we have on the screen here is one of the famous photographs that shows him supposedly, and that is why im asking john about how much truth there is to this, writing his memoirs. Seeing his own mortality at the end of the story. He is in a race kind of with death to do this. So not only does he write this iconic, brilliant narrative of the war, but he is racing against time as he does it. How much truth is there to all of that . I think you hit it pretty much on the head. As you know, and what i might just add, after the civil war was over a lot of generals on both sides were thinking of writing their memoirs. Why . Because people were interested and would buy their books and they would make money etc. And they would get a chance to put their story out, here is what i really did. So on the union side, in 1875, William Sherman wrote his memoirs. He was very blunt. He said exactly what he thought and who was no good and who did do what they should have done and etc. That is 1875. Grant has been asked to do this as well and what happens before this is century magazine puts out the battles and leaders series. And a lot of people are writing in and of course they want to get grant. Because if you get grant you get everybody but grant says im not interested. He says besides i worked with my aid and if you want to know anything about what i think about the civil war, it is all there. And besides, who is going to care what i think about what happened in the civil war . No one will care, no one will read the book. So what does happened, several things indeed happen, one of the big problems that grant indeed has as you see in that picture, he catches cancer. The worst kind of cancer, throat cancer, at a time when there was no solution to it. All the doctors could do was to numb that area. The way he even realized he had it was he was at his summer home in new jersey and he is sitting and eating lunch with his wife. One of the kids, i cannot remember each one which one. He absentmindedly grabbed a peach and bites it and suddenly gets a terrible jolt in his throat. He thinks, and his wife thinks, that would probably happened was that maybe there was some sort of a b or something on it and its done him. As a good wife, she said you better go see a doctor. No i dont need to do that. Dont bother me. About a week later, a fellow visits, a doctor visits a friend in the cottage next door. So they call him over, julia i believe calls him over, he looks at grants mouth and says you better go to your doctor. His doctor is in europe so it takes three to four months before he gets back to manhattan and before he sees his doctor and he already has this cancer. As craig was pointing out as well, the problem that grant has is he has decided to go in with his son buck, to go in with him and work with a man that is universally called the wizard of wall street. Ferdinand ward. Well Ferdinand Ward is no wizard, he is a charlatan. What hes doing, and some people call it yeah. And that may be true, some people say that is not exactly but who cares. All we do know is that the guy is taking money from me, allegedly giving me investments, giving me money, royalties it sandra. But they are just coming from what craig is just investing so its just a rolling scheme until one day, ward comes up to grant and says we are working with this bank and we need about 150,000 dollars. We are kind of short, but just for a short time. So grant goes to see the head of the York Central Railway company, one of the vanderbilts. One thing leads to another and pretty sure, in a very short period of time, everything collapses. Grant has what he has in his pockets and what his wife has in her purse. Thats about 81 dollars. That is all he has and remember, there is no president ial memoirs at this time. Not president ial memoirs, there is no president ial pension. So as craig said so eloquently, what grant decides to do, he does not want to write a memoir or do anything like that but he decides he has to do something to create some money for his wife and for his family. So he decides to do those four articles and century magazine at 500 dollars a pop which is a lot of money in those days. But it will not take care of his problems so he decides that he may be better. He knows he has cancer, he knows he is dying, he better write these memories and have something to do and it works. We will get into that later. Here he is on the porch riding in long hand of course these memories in a race against death. And his health is declining obviously, could you as editor or any member of your team perceive in any way in the riding of that that there is a deterioration that takes place from the beginning of the book to the end of the book . Can you tell there is a man that is beginning to falter . Is there any sense of that . Oh yes. You can see that because one of the things, that is important to note, he is sitting someplace. Most of it he writes in new york city on east 66th street. The building is no longer there but there is a plaque there. That is where he does most of his writing and what you can see, as it goes further and further, remember this is less than a year that hes doing all of this, you can see the writing to thierry rate. His hand is pretty firm but then it gets worse and worse. Then he stops me being as total and full and just says things. This is what happened, this is what happened, this is what happened. He ends up of course as you know in grants cottage up near saratoga. The reason he went there was because it was cooler there. As you know, it gets very humid in manhattan in the summer so they moved him up there. That is where he finished and the only thing that kept him alive during all this time was this writing. He would write for five hours a day and these memoirs, when he finally put his pencil down, he said, ive said everything i had to say. Three or four days later he died, and that is the end of it. I have one story. Ron wrote a wonderful biography of grant. So has brought on white and a lot of other people. But what is particularly interesting is ron chair no said, ive got to thinking, im perfectly healthy. I could not get as many words out and one day as grant could despite the fact that he had this cancer. An amazing story. He interesting about that of course, a brilliant piece of American Literature comes with the pen of a dying man in a remarkably short period of time. Yet, for many, grants post war reputation came across as not being clever. That lee is supposedly the clever one who can figure out how to turn the corner and outflank his foe. Grant was a full bat strapped on the helmet, went straight up the middle. That is unfair. Everybody in this room knows that. But that legacy has stayed with him. One of the things i used to tell my students about this was, you need to go look, of course none of them ever would. You need to go look at the original draft of this thing. Here is a guy with a mind that could not only right this but right it with very few corrections, margin alien notes, drawing an arrow from here to there. John and i do this all the time. Isnt that true john . The amazing thing is when you look at the original manuscript in pencil, there are very few changes. One of the big changes that he does make which is interesting is, he mentions in passing that his father had lived with the father jon brown. They said what youve got to talk about this grant. Say something. So he adds a paragraph and does that. Generally speaking, its amazing. The existence of that manuscript of course tends to put the lie, i believe, to the old myth that it really wasnt grant. Grant was incapable of work like this. It must have been somebody else. And the culprit that most people sight, culprit is not the right word. The candidate for this role is mark twain. Mark twain did have a role. John, how did that work out . Some of it is true and some of it is not true. Twain had a way of the he did not write anything. What he did, he did and some isolated instances. He did provide some editing, but very little because he was traveling. Remember, this is the time that hook thin is being written. The story is told that grant is just about ready because of all the things weve talked about. It is just about ready to actually sign a contract with century and company, to do the memoirs. He kind of had promised all that and mark twain says that he is entering a building in new york city and he key here is a couple of editors from century magazine thing i think weve got grant. I think he will sign, etc. Who knows . Anyway, he reaches over to grounds house and says, i heard that youre going to go with century. What are they offering you . Grant says, 10 . Twain says, we wouldnt give a beginning author that little. I am willing to give you much more and besides, i find it a company. Charles are webster and company. Charles happens to be directly related to mark twain. The whole idea is that the company is originally founded so that mark twain can find a publisher for his big book. Huckleberry finn. Long story, twain offers grant 70 of the profit. 70 of the profit. That is the deal you have. Thats right. Thats exactly it. He is my mark twain. He has actually done the writing. No. No. Actually, grant wrote everything. He wrote all of it. Why is he so active . That is another myth i can jump in with that. There is a myth that it is just full of errors. That is not true. It is quite accurate. We are grant misses up sometimes this, he will say, in such and such a battle, we had 20,342. Well, actually at 24,000. We do make that as an addition, or annotation, but it is not a big deal. What we found was, most of our work with identifying people that were not mentioned so that modern readers could understand. There we are at the lincoln form talking about grant. We will talk a little bit about grant and lincoln together. They do not meet. Until relatively late in the war. We will talk about that in just one minute. I do want to change imagery here. I want to ask you, if you have any sense of when lincoln began to perceive that grant was the guy, is it after shiloh or after vicksburg, chicken margot . When does he kind of see, this is it. This is the one. I think as you know, that is a debatable point. I think it was vicksburg. I think when ground to complicit what he accomplished in vicksburg, and then he is ordered to go to chat a new guy to rescue an army there and he does. Lincoln says i think i found my guy. What is maybe even more significant is that grant and lincoln agreed on the way the war should be fought. They agreed that you should not just be following the old tactic about maneuvering the other army, etc. What you should do is attacked, because youve got more people than the confederates have attack on every front. Simultaneously, exactly. So when he comes to washington and he meets lincoln for the first time, they talk and they find out, we agree. We pretty much agree on the way this should be done. Finally, another thing, a thing that strikes me is that grant had the right personality, had the absolutely right personality to do what he did. The very fact that he understood and lincoln understood that it would not be a good idea, because it had not worked with john pope to bring somebody from the west and take over and eastern army and then say hey, i did it. I am responsible for this. Those eastern ours could not do it. Grant understood. He kept george meat on. He kept him as the commander of the army and then worked that way. And the other thing is i think grant understood henry. Grant took henry w. Alex place as commanding general. He may or may not know this but the guy who had the commanding general ship of either army the longest time, was henry w. Heimlich. Who wrote i dont i dont know. Its out there i just want to say, this idea of attacking simultaneously across a broad front. Our friend with whom we spend a lot of time on stages together calls us concentration in time. At the time, a lot of generals would have concentration is the key to success. We concentrate our army. We defeat the enemy. What most battlefield generals try to do was put them the concentration in place. But grant and lincoln saw that concentration at the time spread out over a broad front, so not physically concentrated, but concentrated at the same moment, puts the enemy in a position where they have to choose where they respond, and both men saw that. Both men saw it in the other. Very interesting. This is what i think is so great. Lincoln, basically, he says to grant, look, they talk and they know they generally agree. He says i know you will do the right thing. I do not really care to know the specifics. Just do it. And basically he says, win this war for me. This is what grant basically does. He pressures, pressures, pressures. Look for example, virginia campaign. What had normally happened with lincolns other generals, is they would attack into virginia and then they would fight somebody, usually robert e. Lee and get defeated and then they would turn tail and go back to washington. Granted does not do that. He just keeps moving forward. Moving forward. Some people say, he is nothing but a butcher. But consider the number of people who died under grant and the number of people who died under le. Look at the proportion of both. You will see that grant is hardly a butcher. He is using his facilities, what he has and he is a great man when it comes to supplies, finding supplies for his army, which is something we do not talk about. They did not always agree, however. I will put up another picture here of the character. This is our friend john. He was a democratic, a politician, but a war democrat. Lake lincoln needed war democrats and his coalition to keep the country together. He needed john. So jon comes to washington and asks lincoln, i would like permission to raise an army, which i will do on my own, separate from the armies that already exist, and i will take that army down to the Mississippi River and catcher capture vicksburg. He was from illinois, like lincoln. This would open markets to new orleans. There are economic reasons as strategic regions. Mostly, there are political reasons why lincoln cant really say no. Or feels that he cannot say no to john. He said sure. He says you go ahead and do that. Of course, that is grants theater of command. Grant gets oh by the way, there is this guy john mclendon, and hes got his own army and not really sort of deal with this. How does grant deal with that . Just one little detail that might add to what greg said mclendon also gets married about the same time and hes bringing his new bride down the Mississippi River down on the honeymoon. Has. Mine is on several things. Actually, what grant does is grant basically takes a look at what is going on. He calls the commanding general in washington, gets sherman who is there, because they are already fighting in north mississippi, and the idea is, they are going to move and attack vicksburg before jon mclernand can get there. Guess who is waiting for them . William tea sherman. Come on boys. We are going to go down and attack vicksburg. So when mclernand shows up, he looks around. Where my soldiers . Were all these people they are not around. There are with sherman. Then what happens of course, the real problem, as grant sees it, is that mclernand actually outranks sherman. So he can take over that army. What does grant do . Grant becomes the person who controls that army in the mississippi completely, because grant outranks mclernand. You have the situation. And alec who cannot stand mclernand because he is not a west pointer, whatever that means. Im not going to miss a straight line. The whole idea being that grant will command, and he gets halep to agree and make mclernand one of the core commanders and grants army. Grant just outmaneuvers all of these people. It does not have to outmaneuver does he resent the fact that lincoln put him in this position at all . It does not seem to. That is the part i find amazing as well. It just seems that he understands what is going on. I think he understands the issue and the politics of it. Later on, he does relieve mclernand. Do you know if he checked with lincoln before he did that . He did not in fact. That is one of the most amazing things. Later on, when they are fighting in the vicksburg area and mclendon, takes credit for one of the first attacks on the vicksburg encampment, encircled encirclement would be a better way of putting it. He takes credit for it and grant had said nobody has said to any thing to any newspapers unless i give the okay. Mclernand does it anyway. Out he goes. Thats it. Again, lincoln says, hey granted doing great. Whatever you want to do, grant, that is fine. Now we know that we talked about how lincoln came to admire grant. What about grants opinion of lincoln . He says in his memoir, page for 73, you might want to check it out, john. He says that he was by no means a lincoln man. When does he become one . I think and its right. He is not interested. You should pardon the expression, but actually, grant voted for buchanan in that first election and he was a douglas guy more than he was anything else coming from illinois, etc etc. I think that he does not really recognize the greatness of lincoln until he gets to washington. I really do. I think when he visits lincoln in the white house and lincoln says some of the things that he says to him, they agree on how they are going to fight the war, he just finds that lincoln later on he says lincoln is the greatest man i ever met. He had to meet him to know that. He had to meet him. They had never seen each other until that famous episode. Speaking of that meeting, i put a picture of the hotel here on the screen. This is a famous scene in march of 1864 when grant arrives in the national capital. He comes east from the west where he has been the hero of many battles but he is unknown in the east. There is that famous story told by many historians that he walked up to the clerk and asked if they had a room. He said we are pretty crowded, we have a lot of things going on in washington but we might be able to find you a room at the back. Heres a register. Hes science u. S. Grant and son. Oh sir we have the president ial suite available. Then once he is checked in, he immediately so the story goes, immediately goes to the white house. This is the first time the two men actually see each other at this reception in the white house. That is the reception going on, exactly. In fact it is in even better story because what happens is when the clerk says oh my gosh general grant, you can have this wonderful room and it may i help you with your suitcases . So he helped some with that and all the rest. Grant comes back down and goes into the restaurant. These people are starting to whisper whos that guy . Oh my gosh that is general grant and they start cheering and yelling. Grant is a shy person. If he walked in this room, what he would do, i would guarantee you, he would walk through the doors look around and find the place with the fewest people. And he would kind of hide himself so he would not have to talk to people. Conversely, someone like sherman would come in and Say Something like hey charlie how are you doing etc. We have that sort of thing, once he gets to the white house and picks up some pennsylvania congressman and the former secretary of war cameron, they escort him. They were originally supposed to meet him but they dont and its a mess. They get there and there is a big reception going on and lincoln says awe general grant i am so pleased to meet you. What happens is grant who is about my size, about five six. Hes about right for that period but he is a short guy, lincoln who is six for puts him on top of a sofa so everyone can see him. It is amazing. laughs and he does. It thats right. He has his 14 year old teenage son and imagine with this kid is thinking. Early on in this conversation that they have, there is a meeting of the mines and they each have an understanding about what concentration and time means and the best approach to the war. Theres a moment in his memoirs were grant notes that how like warned him not to tell the president or tell secretary stanton any of his pant plans for the forthcoming campaign. You wrote a haleks biography. What is he thinking . Halek does not like lincoln because he is not a soldier he is a politician. For a lot of army people, they do not like politicians. What halek is telling grant and telling others, whatever you do, make your plans, but do not tell the president because he is a blabbered mouth. He will tell the next person who comes in. It will remind him of a joke. Thats right. Exactly. What about the relationship while grant was commanderinchief while he is in the field with the army . We know for example that lincoln was unhappy with the fact that mcclelland had sent in frequent reports if any. We know that Jefferson Davis on the other side of the river craved daily reports from his commanders. How frequently did grant communicate with lincoln and was he satisfied with the number of messages he . Got interesting late, what seemed to be going on was a lot of grants messages were coming to halek, some to stanton the secretary of war who then talked to the president etc. Lincoln, as i said earlier, basically said look, here is what i want to do. Lincoln says here what i want to do, we agree, so just do it. I dont have to know. The difference that is happening is that grant is moving things forward. He is not pulling back. And most importantly, i think, he says to lincoln in one of those first meetings no matter what happens in my attempt to win in virginia, i will take the credit or i will take the blame. You do not have to worry. And lincoln says i will take care of you, i will give you everything you want. That is really interesting. We like to joke, people like to ask us in mississippi about how is it we have the grand papers in mississippi for example . One of the things we tell them and some people believe it, that what you have happening is you have like the famous letter during the wilderness campaign, lincoln rights to grant. In that letter he says look, hang on with a bulldog grip and chew as much as possible. The mascot of Mississippi State university is the bulldog. No, no, no. We are not going. There i had to get that in. You did. We will be taking questions from the audience about this wonderful work. Grant and his memories at the end of the war. Is that because that is what people are interested in . Is that because he was declining . Is it because he did not want to talk about the presidency . What is that about . The answer is yes. laughs actually, what grant came to realize was that people wanted to read about what he did in that war. They could not care less about his presidency, interesting leonov. But by the same token, grant is the only president in American History from Andrew Jackson to woodrow wilson. No one else serves to terms except for ulysses s. Grant and today historians consider him the first of the modern president s. He did a lot of things, particularly in foreign policy, that was not done until grant came along and did what he was going to do. But he did not like being president. The only reason he said he was president because he was worried if someone else got elected, they would lose the effects of the war and he wanted to make sure that what happened in the war keep in mind for example that he is the only president between Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson to do anything about African American citizenship. This is another major thing. We will take your questions and we have someone already at the microphone and others i hopeful hopeful lineup. Sir . I enjoyed the book. You indicated that grant was fare in his presentation and was not arguing for a particular position or anything. In the footnotes, they help us understand his thinking and what he was saying. My question is, what did grant leave out that is significant . Good question. Good question. One of the major things, i think and we could spend a lot of time obviously, but one of the major questions i think is the whole issue of was grant a drunk . He never talks about this. Maybe the best thing i have seen in trying to explain that is that he is a binge drinker. Sherman says this to, there are moments when he drinks but he never drinks when he has to do something important. During his presidency, we have no indication that he drank. The indication is that he would take his wineglass and turn it over so it would not get filled up. That is in issue we do not really know a lot about julia. He does not say much about julia. And what is fascinating is there are not many letters between them. There were a lot of letters but we do not know where they went. Thats another thing. And i think really what it comes down to is that grant just understands that the average reader is not going to buy his book for anything about the president. They are sick of politics but they like this idea of what went on during the war itself and how he came upon some of these ideas. A quick comment. We also have the slides of grants tumor at the National Museum of health and medicine. Its basically cancer of the tongue. My question for you, as a biography of sherman and i have read his memoirs, i think they are well written. How would you compare shermans been worse to grants as a piece of writing . I like grants a lot more. Sherman tends to overtop. Thats the way he was. What i will tell you you want to do in two years is the annotated version of shermans memoirs because we are working on that as we speak. I really think grant we could talk about this too but people who are literary critics, and im certainly not, have talked about that grants memoirs, next to mow be dick, is the greatest piece of writing in American Literature. That is saying a heck of a lot. You might disagree, you might agree, but these are the people who said it. One of the things i always try to tell my students and i suspect john as well, when we were still teaching, is do not take 25 words to say what you can say clearly in ten or 12. That is what grant does. They are clean, it is lean, it goes places. You dont waste language. Sherman i think is occasionally guilty of that. He is. And he puts a lot of his letters. I was going to say, just to give you an idea of some of the people who really thought grants memories were important. People like matthew arnold, william dean howell, sure would anderson, youre truly stein, a 1920s writer. Sinclair lewis, robert frost and of course the modern. But grants position is one of the great writers in American Literary history. No one would have thought that while he was a cadet at west point. He was a good horsemen. His wife had a dream one night and she dreamed he was president. This was when he was losing his shirt missouri and she told people and they laughed. He will never be president. Well your beginning conversation sort of set this up perfectly. If anyone actually wants to read the handwritten manuscript of grants memoirs, the library of congress has it and we have put the grant papers online. So you can go and for yourself read all we have of grants memoirs in his handwriting and you can see the clear handwriting at the beginning and see when he is having a bad day because the handwriting changes drastically. What is the website to get to . That you can go on www. Loc. Gov you can search deter digital collections and get right to it. In the featured items of the grand papers, i think the one i put to represent grants memoirist is the page where he always regretted the assault at colt harbor. This is the lady that knows. If anyone knows that collection at the library of congress, she is the one. One more comment and then i do have a question. We also have julias memoirs that were not published until the 1970s. They are not in her handwriting but mostly in her clerks or secretaries. We have grant and julias morris there. What i wanted john to talk about is an all kind of, i will get my pinion here, that skunk adam adam badeau. I really got to dislike adam badeau a law because he was working with grant and he had written his own book and he was worried that grants memoirs might take away from him, so here grant is writing, dying, etc. And adam badeau says i want more money to continue helping you. Basically, what he did, he acted as a clerk for a grant, but so did fred grant, and so did his sister sisters and laws. But anyway next. Listen this side. It was halleck who accused lincoln of being a blabbering move . They may both have thought that, but halleck did not really like lincoln. He certainly did not like stanton. So you keep anything away. Do what youre going to do. Talk to me. I will take care of. It you gotta have context here. In a way, grant is replacing halleck. Halleck becomes an effective glorified staff. But he is kind of a secretary. He is a conduit for orders from washington down to the commanders in the field. There is that resentment. But halleck himself had come from the west and saved the union but hadnt done. It then grant comes from the west and will save the union. So halleck its saying, watch out for the snake pit. Dont get in trouble. That is part is what that is part of what is going on. That is exactly right. Although actually, the one thing i would maybe disagree with slightly is, that halleck really does not believe he believes what is being said, but he likes the idea that he no longer has to make decisions. Now he can say hey, general grant told me to tell you to shape up. Yes. On my 7000mile car trip i stopped at stark field, mississippi to see some good friends at the university there. They took me with great pride to your center there. I just have to say how marvelous it was to get this glimpse of grant. I recommend everyone to go and visit the wonderfuls wonderful center. I think having a deep in the heart of mississippi shows kind of the historical restitution and looking north, looking south, we can look anywhere to find our heroes and renovations of them. Please do. The only thing missing of course, was you john. I appreciate that. Unfortunately, but i should also mention, we also have the lincoln papers that frank at Virginia Williams donated to us. It is a marvelous collection. applause if you are doing it, any research, and again we said, any serious student or whatever, we would love to have you come, not only see our material, but to use our material. We have Something Like 17,000 linear feet of grant material. Grant letters, basically. We have not counted yet all of Frank Williams is contribution, but it is humongous. You cannot believe some of the stuff. Yes maam. You spoke of grants work towards striving for African American rights and that is one of the things that i admire him so much for, but i struggle still with his general orders number 11 and really wishing that he would have explained himself and trying to understand what provoked that, and trying to wrap my mind around that. Trying to forgive him for doing that. I will tell you what. This is a question sometimes it is orders of 11 or 12, i think they screwed up the numbers. In any case, what grant did, he ordered all the jews out of the mississippi valley. It was a horrible thing. You are right. The thing is, if you really want to know about what actually happened, jonathan sarnia who was at brendas university has written several books, but the first book he wrote was particularly interesting and one of the thing he points out that i think would be helpful to you too is that grant understood almost immediately what a blunder he had made. He spends the rest of his life trying to make up for that. He goes to pass over at the temple in washington d. C. And sits through the whole ceremony not understanding anything that is going on. But my favorite one, is that ground is also known for trying to do something for the native americans. The indians and in that particular time, and change the way so what they did, what grant try to do is to get some churches involved. But in order to do that, what he did was, he appointed somebody overall the christian missionaries that were there. Guess what religious denomination that individual belonged to . He was a jewish, an orthodox jew. He was the one who make sure that the christian missionaries were doing the right thing. Get a hold of that Jonathan Sarna book. It is terrific and explains everything much better than i can. How do you reconcile, and again, how do you reconcile the ground that julia owned slaves and that her father gave them slaves . Julia came from a slave holding family. Outside st. Louis. It is a National Park now, basically. It is near grounds farm. The budweiser thing. What actually happened, yes, she throughout her life was very favorable toward slavery. He was not, and the best example about ground himself, is there was a situation where we think it is his father in law who gave him a slave. He worked next to the slave. He hired for African Americans who worked on the property, worked on the land constantly. The neighbors thought, this is terrible. Whites are not supposed to be doing this sort of thing. When julia and elicits grant were to be married, they are married without grants family being there. They could not accept the idea that he was marrying a slave holders daughter. But grant is very much he is not an abolitionist, that he is anti slavery. They are from that period throughout the civil war and as i mentioned, during the time of his presidency, he is doing more for African Americans to make sure that he gets the same rights than anybody has. We talked about lincolns growth. Would you say the same thing is true of grant . That his views had matured and evolved . Yes. The interesting thing is, julia did not. She continued to believe that slaves her father treated her slaves well, etc. I should point out to, we are going to be putting out a new addition of the julia memoirs as well. To southern illinois. You are regular little factory, arent you john . At the beginning of your top you mentioned how a lot of people consider grant to be more of a slugger type of general. He just kind of walked in and try to beat the enemy would brute force. Lee was considered more the clever general. And all reality they were both clever generals. How do you believe that these kind of stereotypes of grand being someone who is not very clever came to be . That is really a good example of the loss cause. I apologize, i keep waving my microphone. It comes down to this, the lost cause. There was a group leaves former general who formed the Southern Historical association, and the very purpose of it was to make sure that lee was considered the great general and the fighting in virginia was considered the most important. If youre going to built somebody up, you have to knock somebody down. A lot of these stories and myths about grant developed, which fortunately historians are putting down. Exactly right. The south simply overwhelmed by numbers and machinery. We were the higher, more brilliant, more intelligent worriers. We were not defeated, we were simply outnumbered and pounded. It was grant with his bulldog tactics. Bulldog grip. I think that is part of the lost cause, but they were both quite clever. You look at the Vicksburg Campaign and the way he orchestrated that whole thing. Given the political constraints as well as the military terrain constraints that he over mastered in those circumstances. We look at lee lees entire strategic map was northern virginia. He did not see the entire mount. When he had a general who did not do well he sent them out to the jay lee out west. Im going to have to call this off. Im getting a big wave from herald. Im so sorry. John will talk to you later. One on one. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. applause next on the civil war. To mark the 198th anniversary of Ulysses Grant birthday, the grand Monument Association hosts a discussion between retired general david