particularly the cochair mr. david rubenstein. you can become a donor or sponsor for the festival. the instructions for donations or in your program. also, on your phone app and online. before we begin, just a few announcements. if you have your cell phone, turn them off and at the conclusion of the program, we will be taking questions from the audience at one of the microphones. this afternoon, it is a distinct pleasure of mine to be joined onstage by doctor ronald whyte, the author of american ulysses. previously, he's written many books on abraham lincoln, on lincoln's leadership and also on the rhetoric. but today, we are going to talk about ulysses s. grant. if you have not read the book yet, i can commend it to you. it is 827 pages. i was telling him before hand, i read through all 827 pages, and you do not hear about very often. that very often. given the recent conversations about the legacy of the civil war, i can't think of a better person to hear from this afternoon at the national book festival. so, as i said in your biography, you spent years working on abraham lincoln was most recently, you spent seven years working on grant. so, can you tell us why the switch from lincoln to grant? >> i give my editor of the credit. the credit. we were approaching the 150th commemoration of the civil war. he said you've written on lincoln, don't you think that grant is due for an upgrade. [laughter] >> there you go. we are going to talk about grants today. who would have thought in his early life, for example, how and why did he come to west played? >> i wanted to emphasize the earlier life as important, but publishers are pushing to publish the biographies of many of skip quickly over the years. i like that grant says. the reason i do not read biographies a is they do not tel the story of the boyda becomes the man, what he calls the formative period of life. 16, 18, 22 years of age. with how important that was. so, the traditional biography skipped over west point too quickly. so i spent a week at west point. a week ago tuesday i gave a conversation, because i think that is so important in his life. 115 pounds, 17-years-old, he arrives at west point and it is formative in shaping who he becomes. >> host: >> one of the contributions in your biography is that you focus on his relationship with his wife, julia. you quote a love o in one of hes back and forth to each other. what does that bring to your treatment of grant and other biographers? >> i came to believe julia had been marginalized too often. that's the story of the women in these biographies. she kept all the grand letters. what i wrote in southern california and the friend that is in a movie industry approached me and said this would make a great television miniseries. he said tell me some of the most important things you can about grants. i said i want to tell you about the marriage between ulysses and juliet. what a wonderful marriage. then i noticed a frown on his face and he said that will never do. what do you mean? it's all based on internal tension. so i sent him the first few chapters and he said don't you see the internal tension, they were strongly anti-slavery. her father owned 30 slaves. krantz family wouldn't come to the wedding because he was marrying into a slaveholding family. julia's father gave them slaves as a gift. so people think it is only the two of them, but grant had to figure out how he was going to navigate a marriage with a a father and both have such different views than his own. but at the end of their life in the white house people would come upon them now holding hands like bashful lovers. they did have one of the great american marriages. >> grant served as a quartermaster in the mexican war. do we see any signs in this period? >> in this perspective, they took them out of active duty and sometimes broke through that and didn't participate officially in the daring episode in the war with mexico and water a. i think that he had qualities of leadership and general taylor picked him to be a quartermaster because he sold the ability to organize and think about the fact you have to supply an army and a very difficult terrain. this would come to the floor later on. on. krantz didn't see it at the time that he had to supply the army often marching where there's no supply linthere is nosupply line battle of vicksburg. >> he had a problem with alcohol. he was an alcoholic. and you do treat and discuss this in the book about how he departs the army in the first departure and the arm in the are first instance. but then in the remainder of the book, but simply goes away. there is not an emphasis on grant being an alcoholic or having a problem with alcohol. do you think that is a popular misconception of grant and can you comment on that? i think grant did drink. i do not think that he was an alcoholic. when he was in the pacific coast away from julia and the second child that he had never seen come he fell into drinking. i am convinced he did. but there was mixed. people give different reports. when julia was with him he did not drink. as he moved forward into his adult life, the drinking fell by the wayside. but it was a way that his comrades would try to put him down. he had this rise and they kept the story that he was a drunkard. >> one of the most surprising element of the book i could not believe it and i almost dropped the book. with for a brief moment in time, grant was a slave owner. can you tell us how that came to pass and how he swears this with his abolitionist father. >> it was given to him by his father-in-law and if one is fortunate enough to visit fee park service site near st. louis the film begins with the story grand characteristic we never talks about it. he had almost no money and they could have brought him a thousand dollars which was a lot of money in those days. they couldn't spare any longer to be a slave holder. >> when the civil war breaks out, grant is working for his father's store in illinois. why does he decide to rejoin the military in the union? >> he's the only west point graduate into the first letter he writes is for rhetoric. he says i am a patron and there is no question this becomes a more difficult part of the story. >> held a grand key goal for change in the civil war and put characteristic or characteristics do we see in grand that demonstrates why he is so successful? he has but i've called weeken lt qualities. they begin to come to the surface when he meets people across the panama. he steps forward to supervise men, women and children. i think if i were to give it a word it would be the word determination. when he finally assumes command of all of the union forces that enter into virginia and it's stuck in this terrible place called wilderness, he said he would have been back on the other side back towards washington, d.c.. it is grants capacity that wins the determination. >> a another special relationship that you talk about is the relationship between lincoln and grant. how and why did you think that he was able to recognize this tenacity when others did not see it? >> he made a habit of visiting his generals and he couldn't do that with grant because grant was in the west. but he saw from a distance a western man not presumptuous, not asking for too much, not complaining. the funny story is they heard he was drinking and they said let's find out what he was drinking and they did that to all the other generals. [laughter] so they sound kind of a relationship of mutual admiration. in fact it's kind of funny he says to grant dot toning your plan. i can't keep secrets. i trust your plan. carry them out and i will support you. >> you do a terrific job in the book talking about the military campaign into someone like myself not a military historian, to understand the campaign as you enclosed in the book. you can't talk about all the battles but i wonder if you can talk about the story after the battle of the bulge or miss. so this is in may of 1864. grant comes through a very momentous decision, a crosswords even. can you tell us about that and how that affects the continued prosecution of the war. >> he had come to lead the eastern army and they were suspicious of grant. he'd been successful but never faced bobby lee. so she assumes command and they are not so sure that he's up to the task. he enters into the wilderness that is a force about four or 5 feet tall where suddenly he realizes that his cavalry of forces isn't in effect. he didn't use the term friendly fire began to take place and they lose their position and shoot at each other and the forest catches fire and then they begin t their burned to deh and they shoot themselves before the fire suffocates. so they suffered a team thousand casualties and the general arrives at the camp and since i know robert e. lee. if he's going to do this, that and the other, he is a quiet man and he rises up and says i'm tired of hearing what robert e. lee is going to do. some of you think he's going to do a double double somersault. he's going to march the next evening but do not get the word out. grant comes down this remarkable road 8:30 at night riding a horse and the troops are gathered around. he comes to a junction and turns north to retrieve back towards washington oracle turns out. we have an artist there that evening and he describes what happened. and grant gets to the junction and turns south. they throw their heads in the air and begin to sing aren't we glad to get out of the wilderness. that's the moment grant one the command and th into the respecte disunion army. >> it is a terrific story and great place in the book to sta start. fast forwarding to grant's political career, in some ways it is in a negative light. you talk about the scandals in the presidential administration. you don't shy away from death. but you have a different treatment of it because we've included a chapter about his views on the indian policies and also on the ku klux klan. i wonder, you include those chapters in the book to try to give a more holistic view of the political career perhaps than some of the preconceptions of the scandal ridden in the presidency. >> many of the biographies were treated as a civil general and in some ways moved over the presidency. the scandals took place in the second term and my conviction became that the second term unfortunately began to define those terms. so, what about terms. inaugural address in the 1869 for the first time an american president says we must address this question. we treated the indians a morally. granted out campaign, but he went west all the way to denver and came back with a record mission the real problem is not the indians commits the settlers. now it is both against sheridan and sherman. against his own army colleagues. he calls a meeting of all of the leaders of the christian church. churches to say we must put in place a new policy for the treatment of him. i was surprised by what he did with the ku klux klan. into his own hands this labor be positioned as the republican party was retrieving the reconstruction, grant steps forward to defend the rights of the african-americans. voter suppression was alive then and now. the voter suppression was perpetrated by the ku klux klan in the lives of democratic party. they want to african-americans not to vote. we think about obama is the first president elected with a nonwhite majority. not so. he won the electoral vote but not the popular vote because 400,000 african-americans voted for him. so they wanted to stop them because they knew they would vote overwhelmingly for republicans. so one of the most exciting stories as i think that grant was the last president to stand up for african-americans until john f. kennedy and lyndon baines johnson. african-americans knew this and they rallied to him. frederick douglass was a tremendous campaigner for ulysses s. grant and believed in him. >> the last question. after i finished the book, and it is as i said before terrifically well-written and researched. i finished the book and i felt as though grant was a little bit elusive. i couldn't figure out what made him tick. but i read your book at you spent yearand youspent years red thinking about grant so i want to ask is grant still elusive to you or do you feel like you do understand. >> i think the focus on what a person data. the person did. i thought i knew about grant. when i started the biography after about a year i came to my own conclusion i don't really know the man. and bend words the end of the book i come to this conclusion. there wasn't that terminology in this century susan kane wrote this wonderful book in which she argues extroverts when our society. so he wasn't a good public speaker or expert. if i had one phrase to call upon i would call it the moral courage. most people do not know very much about ulysses s. grant. the man of middle height accompanied by a young boy arrived at the crowded ohio railroad station in washington on a cold crisp morning marc march 81864 he asked the driver to take them to the hotel and at the northwest corner and pennsylvania avenue and 14th street only two blocks from the white house they stepped from the carriage and walked directly to the front desk. the man 42-years-old and wearing a travel duster asked for a room. he said did not the visitor know in wartime washington, few rooms were available. on the top floor would be fine, the man said softly. u.s. grant &-and-sign in illinois, he turned tail. general grant, why didn't you tell me who you were. looking closely they could see underneath the duster was the blue uniform of the union officer. grants typically almost always wore a uniform, never a general's uniform. he was reassigning them to parlor suites the best in the hotel. now that he knew who was standing in front of him, he grabbed a sealed envelope, the general invited president clinton to the reception that evening at the white house as the guest of honor. because he hadn't served in the eastern theater of the civil war, curiosity about grant punctuated the conversation everywhere. many in the outline of his rising of things but still, they wondered out loud who was he in hell did they succeed over the past years. why had the president of the faded into the position of lieutenant general to first man since george washington to hold a rank why he had lincoln picked him to come from the western theater to lead all of the union armies? humility and modesty are not invoked today. [laughter] this is the story of a man that is humbled, self-effacing guy didn't say a modern celebritiess would say don't you know who i am. grants would never have said that. he simply accepted the room at the top floor of the hotel. i thought this is the best way to introduce it. [applause] >> we will alternate and start over here. >> thank you. very interesting presentation. i would like you to comment on two different tactics if he wi will. number one, the first time in american history where it was the territories under his control. so that is one aspect. second, the personality. he was bankrupt with a tremendous debt yet the obligation where he insisted in paying back all of it rather than the extent of the sword to do so. >> thank you for both questions. order number 11, december 1862 grant is very concerned that people in washington do not understand they are allowing the treaty to take place which is benefiting and many of the traders are jewish. so they are promulgating the order to stop the jewish traders end of thi that this will be red to as the awful order. are they willing and able to admit their mistakes and learn from them and the jewish author suggests grant did recognize the mistakes that he had made and when you continue the story he would have appointed more to the administration by far than anyone else if he became a great friend of the community and if he were present by invitation at the first jewish synagogue in washington to be recognized and make amends for it he felt terrible for what he had done. he changed his whole attitude as a result of that. he told his father to stop this. what am i doing. the next storytime at the end of his life there was a presidential tension he made some money so he invested it in his wall street firm. his son was a partner and the other was involved in a ponzi scheme. a particular day in 1864, he came to wall street to learn he lost every penny. he went home and had $81 to his name. this is why people end up writing his memoirs which he did not want to do because he had to find a way to provide for julia after his death. he was dying of cancer when he started writing his memoirs. >> you stressed the importance of the formative years. would you be able to compare the experience of west point and this is a war for patriotism versus traders and then the issue of mrs. jefferson to give a dissertation. >> thank you for that question. the only graduate they were of a different generation. we graduated almost 20 years before grant. grant didn't do so well at west point. he was 21st out of 39. he said i must apologize. i thought wow why did he apologize. west point was an engineering school. the language was french, all of the literature coming out of the war was french and the grant said i spend my time reading novels. so i looked in the records of the time and there were no novels. they were the sitcoms of the day. and as a strict methodist, that was his christian upbringing and there would have been but i think great writers are great readers and i wanted to find out what the tv. he tells us what he read and that became the key to me that he was the first intellectual curiosity of imagination and his reading was the key to understanding who he became. >> if grant was alive right now, what do you think that he would say. [laughter] [applause] that is a good question. he went down to springfield to see if he might find a position in the union army, and he wrote to his father innocent and is l never participate in the kind of trading and the ambition that these military officers are in. that is not who i am. when he wrote sherman after being president he said i was forced into this in spite of myself. we need more humility and modesty. we need the ability to say i was wrong. i made a mistake. i am willing to change. that is the vision that i think he helps us to see. >> being a career teacher associated in history, we discusdiscussed the president on and grant and warren g. harding in terms of the worst president and like you said in the second term. my question is in terms of the reconstruction policy during the two terms, what kind of success and failure did he have in the context of the whole range of the construction and how he tried to help empower those after the civil war and they were not having that. >> thank you. grant is actually rising. i participated for the first time in the presidential survey. he was the third survey of the century and each of the survey's grant is rising as people recognize this. there's ten different categories by which you drink a president, and the highest category for granted social justice. he is number ten of all of the american presidents. and that is because of the standing up for the rights of african-americans. so, grant comes into the reconstruction with a very deferential position as a military officer. he is observing the officers and then he recognizes i can't take that position. i can't cooperate with johnson said he begins to be more politically astute to participate with republicans in congress and stand with them on the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments that then into retreat the republicans are even saying let's let the south handled this. he said no, we have to deal with this. so that is one of the finest moments when he stands forward to defend the rights of the movement. >> i would like to ask about the change in the military reputation and what it causes of course after 1865. sometime around the start of the century, and now the correct interpretation seems to be recovering. can you tell us why there was this change or there's different thoughts on it. >> it came about because of what he called a lost cause. the generals and newspaper editors actually launched and the only reason to be lost as they were overwhelmed by the superiority of the union army of the industrial might of the north and the grant willing to let them be killed to robert e. lee. we've known that is not true but it hasn't seeped into the popular imagination that grants casualties one by one are actually less than the fact since writing the book i've become i becomea friend of gened petraeus and w the get-go tuesdy he and i together did a conversation together at west poinwestpoint and he says grante greatest american general. on what basis? he says three categories, strategy the overall sense of what you're doing, automation, combining them armies and the particular battle. he and he said grant is an a+ on all three. so she said i read grant in preparing for the series in iraq and i told my genitals in iraq he is a great american general. how do they feel about the confederate generals in the base that we are having right now? grant defended robert e. lee and said you need to realize the spiritual leader of the south and the way we treat robert e. lee will be the way that we hoped he would respond. in the first monuments they were both in cemeteries as the greatest of the century wives and daughters wanted to put into the cemetery is the man that had been imported. it's raised in the cities and these often were we want to tell you who is in charge. this is jim crow so this is two different things. i think some of these deserve now to be put into museums and not on the streets. but it is a very complicated issue and we have to remember about historical reason that this came into being. i wish we did have a monument. he became a follower of grant and republican advocate of reconstruction. we have very selective use of the monuments. >> i heard a very disturbing story at west point was without one or two. i wonder how that worked when he was the father of this young m man. at the end of his life he writes to julia he will finish the memoirs three days before. he can't speak this to julia he's too emotional. he says it wouldn't bother me a bit if i discovered they were in a bed in pain and near death but if they had been separated from the moral values that you and i teach them. there is no way of explaining it. >> i was wondering if you had any views about why there seems to be so much interest. i read the biography which i thought was wonderful. then i saw the wonderful reviews of the book and had to read your book as well. i was just wondering why. >> david mcauliffe said we want to recover people who for various reasons under the radar said he did a wonderful job with harry truman and grant seems to be one of those figures. perhaps the celebration in 2011 and 2015 but that's also kind of put grant back into the spotlight. in a strange and interesting story which for many years in southern illinois university and now mississippi state university grant has returned. and it's fascinating he's just thrilled to have the papers and they are building a whole new floor to the library. >> when you are writing a new history are you grappling and when the story changes over time how do you see the role and grapple with the history aside from the popular notion over time. >> we call this the historiography. so yes, different figures are viewed in different ways. if there was a wonderful biography that won a pulitzer prize in the 1980s but it was written at the end of the antiwar, anti-vietnam period so that wasn't the time to lift up. will we ever again select a general to be president of the united states? where experience is iraq and afghanistan have made some of the strongest wondering about the military. and so, you have to be very aware of the historiography. ten, 20, 30 years from now there will be new books as well as there should be. and in our own political culture to see people in a different light in earlier generations. >> the statue of long street is a very neat statue and he looks like he is this huge guy riding on a public course [inaudible] >> when he came the east to lead the union armies he won the victory at gettysburg and was the commander of the army. i'm sure that grant will replace me and bring someone from the west to be my replacement. but he was so surprised that grant did not. if grant wanted sherman promoted one more time you said you will not promote charmin unless you support me a. thank you very much. >> re: the presidency it was the worst thing that stuck with him at the time. the. he became america's center and did nothing about it the constituencies might be geographical or we need someone from pennsylvania or massachusetts or illinois. if you want to accuse grant. he said i believe i know what you are doing you know more about this and i do so he gave great authority to the great commanders. he did so in many ways to the members of the cabinet. he then became loyal to them and he should have looked more closely at the. >> is it really possible that there are no great stories or is it simply the publishing industry will not publish the books about people that are perceived to be failures? [laughter] the positions are killing him in and the way they are treating their wounds. he probably would have become one of the better. so there are stories out there. from time to time we need to take fresh looks at these people. >> good comment [inaudible] >> can you talk about the inability to deal with those individuals to the overall legacy. >> good question. i didn't want to minimize that he didn't do. i also think another factor is granted in-flight confrontation. maybe this is another quality of an introvert. i'm not sure. william rose grant would have been voted as likel likely to sn the class and they did confront him and let other people know that he's not the person that should be leading the army wherever he is. .. >> >> [applause] >> host: this is a distinct honor to set here with dr. danielle allen. >> guest: i am glad to be your. >> host: i want to talk about how i came to know about your book. i was sent this book from people what c-span there is a book coming out do you