good evening, everyone. hello. my name is steven woolfolk, the director of programing and marketing for the kansas city public library. thank you all for joining us tonight. one of the questions that i found myself answering lot as we've emerged from a pandemic and new light library leadership that closed our locations a while there is what do you hope accomplish with kansas city public library's and my answer to that question is the same as it was 15 years ago. our programing, an extension of our collection. we seek out presentations on a variety of topics that represent a variety of viewpoints presented by credible sources and practice that might look like this if you were here, you probably have some interest in the civil war and if you were to if that were to manifest in the stacks, you might head down to the fourth floor had two nine 73.7 star browsing the books and you'll find shelf after shelf of books about the civil war right. you'll find entire tomes dedicated to broad studies of the war. you'll books that are an examination of a single, obscure battle. you'll find books about political intrigue. but eventually you're going to come across something that interests you. and we hope that you have a similar experience. you're browsing our print calendar or our calendar events tonight. i think it's a great of what we try to do with our programing. i would imagine that everyone here is with the american civil war. i suspect that all of you have probably of ulysses grant, but maybe you didn't know that his first battlefield test came in an attack on a confederate camp near belmont, missouri. and maybe you know that it was mark twain who advised him to undertake the writing of his two volume autobiography. so we have our topic the leadership origins of ulysses grant and sources do not come much credible than our friends at the u.s. army commanding general staff college tonight. welcome back harry laver he is the current major general, william ace staff chair of historical research, the commanding general staff college, and the author of a general who will the leadership of ulysses grant and coeditor of the art of command american military leadership from george washington to colin powell. he's currently working on a new book grant and generals, a study in military command. and before we get started, i should mention tonight's presentation is in conjunction with exhibit that you saw outside as you entered ulysses grant missouri on loan from the missouri humanities council. if you didn't get a chance to look at it before you came in, i hope you will before leave. it's fantastic. and it's on display through tomorrow, but perhaps right now, perhaps to give you some framework for viewing the exhibit, please help me. welcome back the kansas city public library. dr. harry. s labor thank, you. well, thank you it's some of the conversations beforehand. it's nice to be back person it's nice to be back at the central branch. it's always nice coming down here thanks to steve and to and simon. everyone here at the kansas city public library for continuing the that you've got with us up at the command general staff college is my colleague some of whom are in the audience with you tonight i think will attest that we welcome the opportunity to come down and to talk with you the community about things that we're interested things like the civil war in grant a quick thanks as well to one of my colleagues who is here chris, who is the liaison between our department and the and he's the one that does all the legwork of coordinating and getting a bunch of sort of chaotic historians organized to be down here on certain dates and working with the staff here. so, chris, thank you for organizing that. and. thank you, too, for you for coming out on what seems to be a nice september. right. based on the weather, we can hope that continues. but i do appreciate i've seen a lot of familiar faces. it's good to see you again. and i appreciate coming out and supporting us. you know, the the programs that we do of coming out and talking to communities prior to coming to the staff college, i worked at a university in south louisiana and we had something similar in that we would go out. in one instance it was to retire every year by a retirement community about a month. somebody, the history department would go out and do a talk. the residents at the retirement community and one of the times they went out to do that, it was a talk grant in robert e lee when. they're going head to head in 1864. and of course, i got there a little bit. i was setting up the powerpoint they didn't have a staff like we have here setting up the powerpoint and getting the imagery and some of residents started to come in early to grab a seat and one gentleman came and he sat in the very front and i had recognized him from times i've been out there previously was a world war. two veteran still had the crew cut from the 1940s glasses that were nearly stick is the ones i wear when i don't have. and then he was sort of dozing as i was setting up the powerpoint and i had an image of grant and i'm pretty certain it was when you seen the background here in as i'm getting it ready i sort of hear a wrestler i look around behind and he sort of has stirred and he's squinting through his glasses and he's looking at the screen and he says that's a yankee general. sir, you're absolutely right. i could not disagree that that that indeed is is a yankee general. and this yankee general, why we're here to talk tonight about in part, his experiences in missouri during, the war, and in part how he developed his leadership early in the war to become the grant that we all recognize and. we all we all think of. so, too, to start the story. let's not start at the beginning and said, i'm going to start little bit in the middle as we talk about this man. and we're i'm going to start as april the sixth of 1862 and more specifically six in the morning on april the sixth of 1862. and if we could go back in time, we would be sitting down with general grant at his breakfast table at headquarters, which was luke did in a small town, savannah, tennessee. now savannah is right on the river and just north of the mississippi tennessee state line. so pretty deep into into tennessee just a few miles from the mississippi state line, grant sitting down at his breakfast table in a house called the cherry mansion when cherry was a unionist and granted up his headquarters, there with him around the breakfast table, some of his staff office, they're all sort of going through that, have come in overnight. orderly comes in and he sits a cup of coffee down in front of general grant here. and grant picks up the cup of coffee as is. and there's discussion on among his officers. grant typically was was quiet picks up the cup of coffee and just as he's about to take that first sip the rumble of distant artillery fire comes rolling up tennessee river valley conversation stops immediately grant pauses cup poised in midair sets it back down stands up and says, gentlemen, the ball's in motion, let's be off. so grant and his officers gather up the papers that were there on the table. they rush out the front door of the cherry mansion again, which is on the tennessee river. you can still visit it today down stone steps that slaves had crafted decades earlier on board to grant's steamboat, the tigris and the captain of the tigris was frantically trying to get up ahead of steam to make their way nine miles south on the tennessee to a place called pittsburg landing. and it was there army of about 40,000 was in camped near a small log methodist that the locals knew as the shiloh meetinghouse and was there just as grant was, to take that first sip of coffee, that confederate army under the command of general albert sidney johnston had attacked grant's forces, catching them really just as they were waking up when the riverboat it down to pittsburg landing as the river boat approaches the landing what grant's is this roiling of hundreds of men horses, wagons all this chaotic stew of going around on the riverbank and as the riverboat pulls up grant sees that the road away from the landing goes up a bluff and he had been there with the army before it went up the top of a bluff before moving to flatland inside the. first thing grant did was to order additional ammunition forward because he could hear that the intensity of the fight. the volume was growing, the the loudness. it was growing as as more and more fire and small arms fire, fire just starting to swell. so he orders ammunition forward. from there, he gets on horseback and he heads out a from the river trying to find the end of the battle line and he wants find his division commanders the generals that are subordinate to him and talk to them and see what is happening. where's battle? what has happened this morning and he begins working his way back towards the river looking for these division commander in about halfway back he comes across his fifth division commander, general named benjamin prentiss. and in the terminal of the day, he tells prentiss, you have to hold this position at all hazards and there grant makes his way back to the landing and once he gets back to the landing he starts to put together a defensive line protect the landing. now, between the landing and the confederate that was advancing was a really deep it ran perpendicular to the river and so grant starts building this line on the opposite of the ravine. the confederates would have to go down to then attack his position. well, sure enough, by late in the day, confederates had fought their way into that. the confederate officers got their men lined up at the bottom of the ravine. the order went out and up out of the ravine. they came into a world of union artillery and musket fire. it sent tumbling back down into the ravine again. but the confederate officers once again got their men organized in line. despite the casualties suffered just from that one assault, let alone entire day. they got their men lined up again and a confederates started to screw up their courage for one more assault up out that ravine. the order came echoing down the line, stop, attack, stop the the confederate commander had decided they had done enough for the day they'd finish off grant in his army in the morning and really could have argued grant's army had lost its cohesion and its spirit, its energy mended nowhere. their officers were officers didn't where their units were. it was just absolute chaos. well, late that night towards midnight heavy rains started to fall. in one of grant's division commanders his division commander, general named william tecumseh sherman, started making his way through the pitch darkness and rain back towards the landing, struggling through sleeping man, wounded man, dead man is assumed he would find his commander back at the landing. well, sherman finally gets to the landing and he finds grant crouched down underneath the tree. now, grant's headquarters at this point, was in one of the few structures at the landing up on top of the bluffs. but the small building had been taken over by surgeons who were just doing continuous amputations, one after another, one after another. grant couldn't could not stay in there. so he was down, crouched a tree again where sherman found him rain dripping off the brim of his hat. small lantern next to him, giving off a meager light, fighting against the rain in the darkness. and at first, neither spoke. grant seemed to be deep in thought. sherman was trying to assess the mood of his commander and finally says, well, we've had the devil's own day, haven't. and grant said, yeah, they looked up at sherman and said, look, tomorrow, though. you know, oftentimes times when we think of commanders like grant here. we have this impression that they were born his great commanders, that the day they were born they popped out that way grant's smoking a cigar giving orders. but of course that's not how it happens didn't happen that way with grant really for most great military commanders that's, not how it happens. they're not just simply born that way. and in fact, those who do succeed typically do so by learning, learning from their education of opportunities, learning from mentors that they have as they go through their career. and perhaps, maybe most important learning by being self-aware to learn from their own experience as and as we'll see grant is a classic example that and especially the important he learned early in the war and his experiences here missouri now now if if there was ever an who was not as a great commander it grant you know as an he was about five seven but he always looked shorter because was always slumped over. he sort of shuffled along. he not very charismatic. one of his staff officers said grant could stay silent and three languages. he was perpetually rumpled. not the image we have of the great military captain. so even as a young child grant did not show great promise, really great promise for grant himself would tell the story that as a young when he was 910 years old or so he had a desperate desire to own a and his father jesse grant it off as long as he could. and finally said to young grant, okay. farmer just down the road a horse that he wants to sell. and he gave grant $25 and he told him you go and you offer the farmer $20 for that horse. and if he won't take that offer, 20 to 50, if he won't that offer him 25. but under no circumstances do you offer him more than $5 for that horse. so young grant money in his pocket, instructions in his head. off he goes, approaches the farmer. i want to buy your horse. how much you're going give me for it. and grant dutifully says, my dad said to offer you $20 for the horse, and if you wouldn't take that to offer you 20 to 50. yeah. grant grant himself again. so deprecating he said it wouldn't a man of great intelligence to the final price that was on maybe surprising that that the he grew up with in the area called him useless grant rather than ulysses and truthfully grant really did not show much motivation for anything even as he moved in to his teens and i think his father was somewhat concerned what am i going to do with you lists? as as the family called him. and so his father, using his political connections, he his father dabbled in local politics, was to secure an appointment to the us military academy at west point in that era of the few opportunities for a free free at the government's expense grant. however recalled he had no interest in anything military whatsoever and the conversation when the appointment actually came in arrived and grant's father sat him down to. tell him this, the conversation, as grant recalled, like this. but i won't go, i said. he said he thought would, and i thought so. if he did so. no surprise. in 1839, cadet grant enrolled at west point. now, the time that spent at west point, probably the best characterization is mediocre. he barely survived french. he did pretty well at math. he liked the logic of math. what he excelled at, though, was something that would characterize his life that he excelled at throughout his life. in fact, he held the academy's high jump record for more than a quarter a century. all right. giving you a sense of his affinity for horses. but again it was a mediocre career. in fact, one point as he advanced over the first to second year, he was given additional responsibilities as more senior cadet. he ended up being devote demoted because. he couldn't take on the responsibility wouldn't take the responsibility of senior cadet command. so when he finally does graduate and he does graduate in 1843, he finishes 21 out of nine cadets. so below middle, right. so again mediocre average, nothing that said. this is going to be one of america's great military commanders. well, after point within a few, he went off to fight in the mexican war and his experience in the mexican war might deemed average as well. now, he had the great good fortune to serve under america's preeminent military commanders of the era one being zachary taylor, old, rough and ready, the other being winfield scott, old fashioned. he was able to see both of them up close how they exercised command. they had as grant recalled later dramatically different styles of command. you couldn't have had two more different sets of military commanders, but grant recognized the strengths of each as he watched them operate in those positions of senior command. and he learned from that as he would later on in the war. well, during the war we do see a glimpse or two of the grant that we will recognize. there was one incidents in which he's leading his unit across a river, ford and were some obstacles in the bottom of the river rocks such and so he was off on his horse he was a lieutenant at this point helping. his men clear these obstacles out from the river not far away, as grant termed. there were some dandy officers who were poking fun at him for getting getting his feet wet, getting his hands. but about that time, zacher taylor road by and taylor the point that is exactly the kind of leadership that the army needs is at the junior level so we see a little glimpse of grant and what he's going to become later on there in the mexican war. well, after the mexican is over, really became grant's time of personal. when the war is over, he station to the west coast of the united states. he served for a time at fort vancouver in columbia, for a bit of time at, fort humboldt in northern california. and these were isolated, desolate postings this point boredom the order of the day every single day and this is when grant really into two melancholy and as best we know this is also in grant turn to the bottle. in 1854 he resigned from the army we don't know the exact circumstances whether he was forced as in you're going to be court martial. we'll give you a chance to resign. or if grant simply made the decision to resign himself at this point he had a wife, julia, who was back east, two young children. he missed them terribly and he was miserable. whatever the reasons, grant resigns from the army in 1854 and he heads back east to start civilian life couldn't have gone much worse once he started life as a civilian, he tried ventures. they went bankrupt, tried investments. they went sour. he tried farming and grew rock and heartache and not a whole lot else. by the late 1850s, if we could travel back to the streets of saint louis, we would find grant, his old, tattered, threadbare worn out army coat, walking the streets, trying to sell firewood just to keep food on. the table for his family. but it could get worse in may of 1860. now we're this point less than a year away from the civil war, beginning in april with the confederates firing on fort sumter in may of 1860, grant took a job working for his father in his father leather goods store in galena, illinois. now his father was a relentless critic of grant, even as grant rises to the highest levels of military command, even as grant becomes president of the united states, his father was a relentless critic of grant and, so having to take a job for his father was really rock bottom grant. and for grant, really in many ways having to do that, a sign he had failed. he had failed a military officer. he had failed as a businessman, failed as a farmer, and even worse in grant's perspective, he had failed as a husband and as father, as a son, he failed as a man. and so this rock bottom for grant. but then came the war and with war came deliverance for you list grant after the confederate firing on fort sumter in april of 1861. grant in july, so a few months later accepted command of the 21st regiment of illinois volunteers. he accepted that rank as colonel now this photograph grant is about this same time period this is actually grant the one phot