I am frank williams, your cochair. Every other year, we have the john and craig show. [applause] and that is much deserved because they get high grades from you, high marks from you, deservedly so. I am not even sure what it is they are going to talk about this morning. [laughter] but we will be entertained, i can tell you that. So what can we say about two of our very loyal members who have time on our long board of advisors . Is my dear friend from Mississippi State executive and director of the ulysses s. Grant association and now the ulysses s. Grant president ial library where i serve as president. And he is recently the editor, along with david nolan and louis gallois, of the annotated memoirs of ulysses s. Grant. The first time this has really been done. I highly recommend it. It is in the bookstore. Get one. And get two. [laughter] , who is really a naval historian, but turned to lincoln and wrote a great book that won 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 history,bal absolutely superb. Published by oxford. Get a copy. Some of us are as interested in rubber history as much as we are the civil war. Please welcome John Marszalek and craig simons. [applause] my wife and i recently moved back to newport, rhode island. Anybody in rhode island is neighbors of anyone else in rhode island. I want to acknowledge franks help in being my translator as i learned the rhode island dialect and translated it into common american english. Lo cently learned what the lore ofw was, the war. There going to talk about book frank mentioned, the fully annotated edition that has come out recently. John was the executive editor and principal creator of this document. All of you know that john and i have been Close Friends for a long time. My task however is to interview him. And im going to pull no punches. I will be as tough as nails in this. John, howuestion is, great is this book . [laughter] i have heard it is almost as good as a certain book on world war ii. [laughter] goes. Re it already started. I really do have questions to ask john. And john, of course, has answers. He always has. Memoirs are considered one of the greatest president ial memoirs ever penned under trying circumstances treat they are clear without being cluttered. They are not apologetic, not selfserving. It is in effect an american icon. Team, butu and your you in particular, think about attacking this . It is almost rewriting to kill a mockingbird taking this on. John that is an excellent question. Fortunately, i have an answer for that one. I do not have answers for most of craigs questions, but that is another story. Seriously, what happened, interestingly enough, we looked back at the first volume of the papers of ulysses s. Grant going back to 1967. And in that particular first volume, there is a statement to the effect that when the grand fulliation completed the number of volumes of papers of ulysses s. Grant that what was going to happen next was we were going to take on his memoirs. That is listed. It took a little bit of time as you might guess. Simon who ivey come to admire even more when i see what he has accomplished, and his wife is still working with us on the memoirs. We decided we wanted to do this. To fulfill what the grand association promised. Frank williams is the president of the grand association. He mentions this same point in several comments he has made. Attempted towe take the memoirs of ulysses s. Grant, not change anything he said, but to fully annotate it. Basically, if you consider the memoirs have grant been imprinted ever since 1885, they had never been outofprint. All sorts of famous historians have done it. We asked ourselves, how dare we even attempt anything like this . What we have attempted to do is to make the memoirs, written in 1885 when people knew who grant , and living inut mississippi particularly, talking about places along the Mississippi River that do not exist any longer, but grant mentions them and Everybody Knows where they are and who these people are, etc. What we attempted to do is think of a modern audience. And a modern audience is sitting and looking at the memoirs. They come across something, the name of a person or place, and they say, i have no idea who that is. What we tried to do is have you put your eyes at the foot of the page and read footnotes. As you know, most books no longer use footnotes. They use and notes end notes. It takes you a lot of flipping backandforth. It took a lot of discussion with our publisher, fortunately Harvard University press. At first, they wanted to do the end notes. We said that would defeat the whole purpose. What you do now is your reading along and you come across say Craig Symonds. Nobody knows who Craig Symonds is. [laughter] is weso what we try to do searched to find where Craig Symonds is mentioned and just do a little footnote saying he is such and such and this is why grant is talking about him at this particular time. What you will notice is up to mcphersoni think jim did an addition edition with a wonderful introduction with about 100 annotations and notes. We have over 2000. You can see as you are reading along 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, not what we have to say. Keep in mind, i will shut up after this. Whennteresting thing is grant wrote his first article about shiloh and sent it to century magazine, they were appalled it was so bad. It was terrible. It read like a battle report, etc. What they told him to do is just talk like you do when you are sitting around with your friends and your telling them about what happened at shiloh. Do that. So grant does that. Our job is not to correct grant, not to interfere with his conversation with his friends. And we are just sitting there basically, and grant says something. People may look over, and we dont say anything. Something he messes up, we say by the way, general, what you probably really meant was such and such and this and that. That is really what we are tempting to do, to bring this and one of the greatest pieces of American Literature up to par for modern readers in this 21st century. Craig one of the Great Stories about the grant memoirs, and i will let john at to this add to this, but the short version is he had financial troubles late in life. He trusted people he should not have trusted. Much of his family fortune went away. An almost simultaneous with that, discovered he had a lifethreatening health circumstance. What was going to rescue his family from destitution was the offer to publish his memoirs. This photograph on the screen is one of the famous photographs and shows him, supposedly, that is why im asking john how much truth there is to this story, writing these 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 war, but he is racing against time as he does it. How much truth is there to all of that . John i think you hit it pretty much on the head. As you know, and one of the things i might add, after the civil war was over, a lot of the 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. On the union side in 1875, William Tecumseh sherman wrote his memoirs. How can we put it . He was very blunt. He said exactly what he thought and who was no good and who did not do what he should have done, etc. That is 1875. Grant has been asked to do this, too. What happens even before this is ntury magazine puts out the battles of leaders series. They want to get grant because if you get grant, you get everybody. Grant says im not interested. Im working with my aide. If you want to know what i think about the civil war, check with him. Dont bother me. Besides, who will care about what i think about what happened in the civil war . Nobody will care, nobody will read the book. Several things happen. One of the big problems grant 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 eating lunch with his wife and one of the kids, i cannot remember which one. Anyway, he absentmindedly grabs a peach and bites into it and gets a terrible jolt in his throat. He thinks his wife thinks what probably happened was maybe there was some sort of a bee on it that stung him. As the good wife, she said you better go see a doctor. No, i dont need to do that. About a week later, a doctor visits a friend in the cottage nextdoor. They call him over. I think julia called him over. Looks at grant. Does not say anything. Says you better go see your doctor. His doctor is in europe. It takes three to four months before he gets back to manhattan, before he sees his doctor, and he already has this cancer. As craig was pointing out, the problem grant has is he has decided to go in with his son,. , ulysses s. Grant, jr and work with the wizard of wall street, ferdinand ward. He is no wizard. He is a charlatan. , some peopleing call it yeah. All we know is the guy is taking money from me, allegedly giving me investments, giving me money, realties, etc. But it is just coming from what craig has just invested. It is 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. We are kind of short. Just for a short time. So grant goes to see the head of the new York Central Railway company, one of the vanderbilts. Andthing leads to another, in a short time, everything collapses. Grant has what he has in his pockets and what his wife has in her purse. About 81. That is all he has. Remember, there is no president ial memoirs at this time. Not president ial memoirs. There is no residential pension. Exactly. Said so eloquently, what grant decides to do, he does not want to write a memoir, but he decides he has got to do something to create some money for his wife and family. So he decides to do those four articles in century magazine at 500 a pop, which was a lot of money in those days, which will not take care of his problems. He knows he has cancer. He knows he is dying. You better write these memoirs to have something to do, and it works. We will get into that later. Craig here he is on the porch writing and longhand these memoirs, a race against death. His health is declining, obviously. Editor or any member of your team perceived in any way in the writing of that that there is a deterioration that takes place from the beginning to the end of the book . Can you tell here is a man beginning to falter . Is there any sense of that . John oh, yeah. You can see that. He is sitting someplace. Most of it he writes in new york city at east 60 six st. The building is no longer there, but there is a plaque they are. That is where he does most of his writing. Remember, this is less than year that he is doing all of this. You can see the writing deteriorate. His hand is pretty firm, but then it gets worse and worse. Then he stops being as total and full and just says this is what happened, this is what happened. He ends up, as you know, in grants cottage near saratoga. The reason he went there was because it was cooler there. It gets very humid in manhattan in the summer, so they moved him up there. That is where he finished. The only thing that kept him alive during all of this time was this writing. He would write for five hours a four or five hours a day on these memoirs. When he finally put his pencil down, he said, i have said everything i have to say. Three or four days later, he dies. And that is the end of it. But it is amazing. I would add one story. Ron wrote a wonderful biography a lot of and so have other people. But what is particularly interesting is ron said i got to thinking. I am perfectly healthy. I could not get as many words out in one day as grant could, despite the fact that he had this cancer. It is an amazing story. Craig the interesting thing about that, this brilliant piece of American Literature comes from the pen of a dying man in a remarkably short time. And yet for many, grants postwar reputation was of someone not that clever. Supposedly the clever one who can figure out how to turn the corner and outflank his foe. Andrant was a full bank grant was a fullback who strap on the helmet and went up the middle. That was unfair, but that legacy has stayed with him. One thing i used to tell my students about this is you need original drafthe of this thing. Because here is a guy with a mind who could not only write this, but writes it with very few corrections, notes, changing. John and i do this all the time in our books. Is that true, john . John that is true. The amazing thing when you look at the original manuscript written in pencil, there are very few changes. One of the big changes he does hee which is interesting is mentions in passing that his father had lived with the family of john brown. They said you have got to talk about this. You have got to say something. He added paragraph and does that. Generally speaking, it is amazing. He writes like he wrote his orders. Craig the existence of that manuscript tends to put the lie to the old myth that it really was not grant, the grant was not capable of a work like this. It must have been somebody else. The culprit most people site the candidate for this role is mark twain. Mark twain did have a role in this as i understand. How did that work out . Is an interesting story, some of it true, some of it not true. Mark twain did not write anything. What he did is in some isolated instances, he did provide some editing but very little because he was traveling. This is the time huck finn is being written. The story is being told that grant is just about ready because of all the things we talked about, he is just about ready to actually sign a contract with century and company to do the memoirs because he kind of had promised them and all of that. Says he is entering a building in new york city and heres a couple of editors from century magazine talking about i think grant will sign. Well, who knows . He rushes over to grants house and says i heard you are going with century, what are they offering you . Grant said 10 . Says they would not give a beginning author that little. I am willing to give you much more. Company,i found it a charles l. Webster and company. Charles webster happens to be related to mark twain. Company isdea is the founded originally so mark twain can find a publisher for his big book, huckleberry finn. 70 of thes grant profit. 70 of the profit. Craig that is the deal you had for this book, right . [laughter] john exactly. Actually, grant wrote everything. He wrote all of it. Why is he so accurate . That is another myth. There is a myth is full of errors. It is not true. It is quite accurate. Where grant messes up sometimes is he will say in such and such 20,342. , we had well actually, 24,000. So we do make that as a notation, but it is not a big deal. What we found was most of our work was identifying people grant mentioned so modern readers could understand. Craig here we are at the Lincoln Forum talking about grant. We want to talk a little bit about grant and we can together. Lincoln together. They dont meet until relatively late in the war. We will talk about that in a minute. You if youto ask have any sense of when lincoln began to perceive grant was the guy. Is it after shiloh . After vicksburg . When does he kind of see this is the one . As you know, that is a debatable point. But i think it was vicksburg. I think when grant accomplished what he accomplished in vicksburg, and then he is ordered to go to chattanooga to rescue the union army and he does, lincoln says i think i have 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 the old tacticng about maneuvering the other army of outmaneuvering the army, etc. You can attack on every front. And simultaneously, exactly. When he comes to washington and meets lincoln for the first time, they talk and find out we agree. We pretty much agree on the way this should be done. Another thing that strikes me is that grant had the right personality to do what he did. He understood and lincoln understood it would not be a good idea because it had not worked with john pope to bring someone from the west to take over in eastern army and say i am responsible for it. Those easterners could not do a thing. Grant understood. He kept george meet on as commander of the army of the potomac and work that way. Understood Henry W Hallock because he took his place as commanding general. You may or may not know this, but the guy who had the commanding general ship of either army the longest time was henry halleck, and yet he hated the job. Who wrote his . John i dont know. I heard it is out there. [laughter] craig the idea of attacking simultaneously across a broad this aour friend calls concentration in time. At the time, a lot of generals said concentration is the key to success. We concentrate our army, we can defeat the army. What most battlefield generals try to do was put the concentration in place. At grant and lincoln saw concentration in time spread 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 saw in theat other, which is interesting. John this is what i think is so great, too. Lincoln basically says to grant, they talk and no they generally agree. He says i know you will do the right thing so i dont really care to know the specifics. Just do it. Basically says win this war for me. This is what grant basically does. Key pressures, pressures he pressures, pressures. You look at the virginia campaign. What normally happened with lincolns other generals is they would attack into virginia and fight somebody, usually robert e lee, and get defeated and in they would turn tail and go back to washington. Grant does not do that. He keeps 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 lee. And look at the proportion of both. You will see grant is hardly a butcher. He is using his facilities, what he has. And he is a great man when it comes to finding supplies for his army, which is something we dont talk about. Craig they did not always agree, however. Im going to put up another picture here of a character. John a. Mclfriend ernan who was a war democrat. Lincoln needed war democrats in his coalition to keep the country together. Clernan comes to lincoln and asks permission to raise an army on his own and take the army down the Mississippi River and capture vicksburg. He was from illinois, like lincoln. This would open the markets to new orleans and so on so there are economic as well as strategic reasons. But mostly, there are political reasons why lincoln cannot say no or feels he cannot say no. He says sure. Grants theater of command. There is this guy, john mclennan, he has his own army, figure it out. Deal with this. How does grant deal with that . Got it exactly except one little detail. He also gets married about this time. He is bringing his new bride down the Mississippi River on their honeymoon. [laughter] his mind is on several things, i think. That would be fair to say. Grant basically takes a look at what is going on. He calls the commanding general sherman,gton, gets because they are fighting in north mississippi, and the idea is they are going to move and attack vicksburg before john mclaren can get there. Guess who is waiting for them . William t sherman. We are going to attack vicksburg. Says,claren shows up, he where are my soldiers . They are not around. They are with sherman. The real problem, as grant sees it, is that mclaren outranks sherman. He can take over that army. What does grant do . Becomes the person who controls that army in mississippi because grant out ranks mclaren. K who cannot stand mclaren, one of the reasons being he is not a west pointer. Whatever that is worth. I am not going to miss a straight line. [laughter] john the whole idea being that grant will command. He gets halek to agree to make mclaren one of the core commanders in his army. Theseout maneuvers all of people. Does he resent the fact that lincoln put him in this position . John he doesnt seem to. He understands what is going on. I think he understands the issue, the politics of it. Later on, grant does relieve mclaren of command. Did he check with lincoln . John he did not. That is one of the most amazing things. Later when they are fighting in the pittsburgh area, mclaren takes credit for one of the. Irst attacks grant had said no one is to send anything to any newspaper unless i get the ok. He does it anyway. Out he goes. Lincoln says, grant is doing great. Whatever you want to do. Fine. We talked about how lincoln came to admire grant. What about grants opinion of lincoln . Hisays in his a person, papers, he was by no means a lincoln man. When does he become one . John you should pardon the expression, but actually grant anan inor buch that first election. C. Was a douglas guy, etc. Et i think he does not really recognize the greatness of lincoln until he gets to washington. When he visits lincoln in the white house, and lincoln says some of the things he says, they agree on how to the war, later on he says lincoln is the greatest man i ever met. He had to meet him to know that. John they had never seen each other until that famous episode. Speaking of that meeting, of 1864,hotel, march when grant arrives in the national capital, comes east from the west. He is unknown in the east. There is the famous story where he walked up to the work, and he said we are pretty crowded, a lot of things going on in washington. We might be able to find you in the back. Grant and son. Well, sir, we at the president ial suite. They meet. This is the first time the two men actually see each other at the white house at a reception. John there is an even better story because what happens when grant,erk says general you can have this wonderful room, may i help you with your suitcases . He helps him. Grant comes back down and goes into the restaurant. These people are starting to whisper, who is that . That is general grant. They start sharing and yelling. Grant is a shy person. If you walk in this room, i guarantee you, he would look around, and he would find the place with the fewest people. He would hide himself. Chaman would walk in, hey rlie, how you doing . Etc. House, gets to the white and he picks up a pennsylvania congressman, and cameron, they andrt him, they get there, there is a big reception going on. Lincoln says, general grant, i am so pleased to meet you. What happens is grant is about my size, so he is short. For 6who is exposed 4 puts him on top of a sofa so everyone can see him. [laughter] he does it. Teenaged son. , first there is this meeting of the minds. There is this understanding of what a concentration in time means. There is a moment in his memoirs grant notes halek warned him not to tell the president or secretary stanton any of his plans for the forthcoming campaign. You wrote his biography. What is he thinking . He does not like lincoln because lincoln is not a professional soldier. He is a politician. Halek does not like politicians. A lot of army people dont like politicians. Lek is telling grant and others, whatever you do, make your plans, but dont tell the president because he is a blabbermouth. The next person that comes in, he will tell them the whole story. It will remind him of a joke. John exactly. What about the relationship . Grant is commanderinchief from this point on of the army. Lincoln was unhappy that mcclellan sent infrequent reports. We know that Jefferson Davis on the other side of the river craved daily reports. How frequently did grant communicate with lincoln, and was lincoln satisfied with the number of messages . John what seemed to be going on was that a lot of grants messages, some were coming to the president , some were coming to the secretary of war, stanton, who then talked to the president , etc. Look,n basically said, here is 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. Most importantly, 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. Says, i will take care of you, give you everything you want. That is really interesting. We like to joke. People like to ask us in mississippi about how is it weve got the grant papers in mississippi, for example. One of the things we tell them, and some actually believe it, what you have happening is a famous letter during the Wilderness Campaign lincoln rights to grant writes to grant. Grant had already written to lincoln, back and forth. On with aook, hang bulldog grip and shoe as much as possible. The mascot of Mississippi State university is the bulldog. No, no, no. We are not going there. [laughter] john i have to get that in. One last question, then we will go to the audience. Ends his memoirs at the end of the war. Is that because that is what people are interested in . Is that because he did not want to talk about the presidency . What is that about . John the answer is yes. [laughter] grant camelly, what that peopleas wanted to read about what he did in that war. They could not have cared less about his presidency. Token, grant is the only president in American History from Andrew Jackson to woodrow wilson, nobody else serves two terms except for ulysses s grant. 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. He did not like being president. The only reason he said he was president busy was worried if some house was elected, they would lose the effects of the war. Keep in mind, he is the only president , only president between Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson to do anything about africanamerican citizenship. This is another major thing. We will take your questions. Sir . Not sure this is on or not. I enjoyed the book. You indicated that grant was very fair in his presentation, was not arguing for to go position or anything, that was only reporting. The footnotes help understand his thinking. Grantstion is, what did leave out that was significant . John good question. Good question. One of the major things, and we could spend a lot of time obviously, one of the major things was the whole issue of was grant a drunk . He never talks about this. He says he is a binge drinker. There are times when he drinks. Sherman says this. He never drinks when he has to do something important. During his presidency, we have no indication that he drank. The indication we have is he would take his wineglass and turn it over it so nobody would fill it up for him. That is an issue. We dont really know a lot about julio. E doesnt say much about julio what is fascinating is there are not many letters between them. There were a lot of letters. We dont know where they went. I think really what it comes down to is grant just understands that the average reader is not going to buy his book for anything about the president. They are sick about politics. Of what wents idea on during the war itself and how he came upon some of these ideas. Quicktime. We also have the slides of quick comment. We also have the slides of grants tumor at the museum. It is tongue cancer. As a biographer of sherman, i have read shermans memoirs. I think they are well written. How would you compare shermans memoirs to grants . Grants a lot more. Herman tends to overtalk what you will want to do in two years is buy the new completely annotated version of shermans memoirs. We are working on that as we speak. [laughter] john we could talk about this, but people who are literary critics, and i am certainly not, have talked about that grants memoirs next to moby dick is the greatest piece of literary writing in American Literature. You might disagree. You might agree. These are the people that said it. One of the things i always tried to tell my students is dont take 25 words to say what you can say clearly in 10 or 12. That is what grant does. They are clean. You dont waste line which. Sherman is occasionally guilty of that. John he is. He prince a lot of his letters. I cant remember all of this. I keep dropping this. Just to give you an idea of some of the people who thought grants memoirs were important, matthew arnold, sherwood anderson, writer, stein, 1920s sinclair lewis, robert frost, and of course the modern. Grants position is as one of the great writers in American Literary history. No one would have believed that when he was a cadet at west point. John that is right. President d he was when he was losing his shirt in missouri. She told people, and they laughed. It just wont happen. He will never be president. Your beginning conversation set this up perfectly. If anyone wants to read the handwritten manuscript of grants memoirs, the library of congress has it. We have put the grant papers online. All of read for yourself his memoirs in his handwriting, and you can see the clear handwriting at the beginning. You can see when he is having a bad day. What is the website to get to that . Www. Loc. Gov and search digital collections. If you want to talk to me afterwards, i can explain how to get to it. The one i put to represent iants memoirs is the page have always regretted the last assault at cold harbor. I am happy to talk to anybody who wants to know how to get to it. John this is the lady that knows. If anybody knows that collection at the library of congress, she is the one. [applause] did you have a question as well . One more, and then a question. Memoirshave julios that were not published until the 1970s. They are not in her handwriting. Juliasgrant and memoirs. I will give my opinion, that bedot and what his impact was. John oh, yes. I really got to dislike him. With grant, and written his own book, but he was worried that grants memoirs would take away from him. Grant is writing. He is dying. Bedot says i want more money. He acted as a clerk for grant, but so did fred grant and his sisters in law. Anyway. Next. Back and forth, just to be fair. Yes, sir. That accused at of being a blabbermouth . Yes. What was the justification of that . They may both have thought of that. Halek did not like lincoln, and he certainly did not like stanton. Do what you are going to do, talk to me, i will take care of it. In context, grant is replacing halek. Halek becomes a glorified chief of staff, a secretary, a conduit for orders from washington. There is that resentment. Halek had come from the west to save the union, and he had not done it. Grant comes from the west to save the union. Halek is saying watch out for this snake pit. That is part of what is going on. John that is exactly right. One thing i may disagree with slightly, halek really does not he does believe what is being said, but he likes the idea that he no longer has to make decisions. Grant can say general told me to tell you to shape up. On my 7000 mile car trip, i stopped in starkville, mississippi, to visit good university. He they took me with great pride to your center. I want to say how marvelous it was to get this glimpse of grant. I recommend everyone to go. I think having it deep in the heart of mississippi shows the historical restitution and looking north, looking south, we can look anywhere to find our heroes and renovations of them. The only thing missing was youu. In august. John i should also mention we also have the lincoln papers donated to us. That is a marvelous collection. [applause] it, and you are doing you are doing any research, we say any serious student, we would love to have you come and see our material and use our material. We have Something Like 17,000 linear feet of grant material, just letters basically. You cannot believe some of this stuff. Worku spoke of grants towards striving for africanamerican rights. That is one of the things i admire him for. I struggle with his general order number 11 and wishing he would have explained himself and trying to understand what provoked that and trying to wrap my mind around that and trying to forgive him for doing that. Mention what that was. John this is the question, 12,times order 11 or number because they screwed up in the numbering, but what grant did is he ordered all of the jews out of the mississippi valley. It is this horrible thing. You are right. If you really want to know about what actually happened, jonathan sarna, who is at Brandeis University has written several books, and the first book is particularly interesting. One of the things he points out that would be helpful to you 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. For example, he goes to passover at the temple in washington, d. C. , and sits through the wholesale money not whole ceremony not understanding what is going on. He tries to do something for the native American Indians at that time. Get grant tried to do is to some churches involved. In order to do that is he appointed somebody over all the christian missionaries. Guess what religious done thatation denomination individual belonged to . He was an orthodox jew. Sarnald of that john book. How do you reconcile the fact that julia owned slaves . From aes, julia came slaveholding family outside of st. Louis. It is a National Park now, near grants farm. Life,he, throughout her was very favorable towards slavery. He was not. The best example of grant himself is there is a situation where we his fatherinlaw gave him a slave. He worked next to the slave and africanamericans who worked on the property constantly. The neighbors thought this was terrible. Whites were not supposed to be doing this sort of thing. Grant are and ulysses supposed to be married, they are married without grants family there. They could not accept the idea that he was marrying a slaveholders daughter. Grant is not an abolitionist, but he is antislavery. From that period through the civil war and during his residency, he is doing more for africanamericans to make sure they get Citizen Rights than anybody has. We talked earlier about lincolns growth. Would you say the same thing about grant . John yes. The interesting thing is that julias did not. Her father treated the slaves well, etc. , etc. We will be putting out a new edition of the julia memoirs. You are a regular factory, arent you . At the beginning of your talk you mentioned how a lot of people considered grant to be the slugger type of general, and lee is the clever general. In reality, they are both clever generals. How do you believe these stereotypes of grant being not so clever came to be . John that is a good example of the lost cause. I apologize. It comes down to it is a lost cause. There was a group of lees former generals who formed a Southern Historical association, and the very purpose was to make sure that lee was considered a great general, and the fighting in virginia was considered the most important. If you have to build somebody up, you have to knock somebody down. A lot of these stories and myths develop, which historians are putting down. Washat the south overwhelmed in numbers and machineries, that we are the higher, more intelligent warriors, and it is grant with his bulldog grip that defeated us. It is part of the lost cause mentality. You look at the Vicksburg Campaign and the way he orchestrated that and the political constraints as well as the terrain and military constraints. Wass entire strategic map northern virginia. When he had a general that did not do well, he sent them out to to the west, where the war was won and lost. Im getting waved off. I have to call this off. Thank you all very much. John thank you. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] learn more about the people and events that shaped reconstruction every saturday on American History tv on cspan3. From worcester, massachusetts, the american antiquarian societys 14th annual lecture. Cornell University History professor Mary Beth Norton discusses the books she has a lecturence 1980 in titled reflections on gender in anglo american. Angloamerica. This is just under an hour. Explore foure will books written by mary beth daughters,ertys founding mothers and fathers, which was a finalist for the the devilsize, in separated by their sex