General of the Army and 18th President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant won brilliant victories during the Civil War, orchestrated the defeat of the Confederacy, and dedicated his time in the White House to fighting the Ku Klux Klan. Before all that, he was an unlucky loser, an inept businessman, a lightweight who couldn’t hold his liquor in a hard-drinking society, and, for a brief time, a slave holder. You might have heard of the man who secured Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. This podcast is about the person who came before the Civil War hero, and the offbeat paths he walked in life before finding his calling.
It’s often we hear how our leaders, as children, demonstrate a unique skill or interest that then lends itself to their career or struggle down the line. George Washington couldn’t tell a lie. Joan of Arc had her first vision at 13. Teddy Roosevelt overcame asthma. Franklin Roosevelt contracted polio. Hitler failed art school. Stalin robbed banks.
Well for Ulysses S. Grant, his thing was horses.
Grant preferred to travel on horseback. He courted his wife, Julia, on horseback. Much of his command during the Civil War was performed on horseback. His preferred cure for the headaches he experienced was driving horses fast. Typically reserved in mixed company, if the subject of conversation turned to horses, he would come alive.
Ulysses Under Fire is a podcast about the early life of civil war general and American President Ulysses S. Grant. This episode contains an interview with Denise Dowdall, author of From Cincinnati to the Colorado Ranger: The Horsemanship of Ulysses S. Grant (Historyeye).
Other sources for this episode include:
The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Ulysses S. Grant)
U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Joan Waugh, UNC Press)
Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity 1822-1865 (Brooks Simpson, Zenith Press)
Grant (Ron Chernow, Penguin)
Hemlock and Hide: The Tanbark Industry in Old New York (Hugh O. Canham, Northern Woodlands, Summer 2011)
James B. Fry, the Ulysses S. Grant Homepage
The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox (John C. Waugh, Ballantine)
The Quartermaster's Department and the Mexican War (Alvin P. Stauffer, Quartmeraster Review)
10 May 2022
H.U.G.
Ulysses S. Grant was born into a shifting, dynamic world. Throughout his early life, the economic, social, and political dimensions of southwestern Ohio experienced radical upheaval. This episode sketches and skates through some of those trends. It also features a short clip of an interview I conducted with Grant expert and historian Professor Joan Waugh.
Sources:
U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Joan Waugh, UNC Press)
Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity 1822-1865 (Brooks Simpson, Zenith Press)
Grant (Ron Chernow, Penguin)
The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Ulysses S. Grant)
The Forgotten History of Ohio's Indigenous Peoples (Jessie Walton, Midstory)
The American Yawp (an open source history textbook project from Stanford University Press)
The Very Different But Connected Economies of the Northeast and South Before the Civil War (Carol E. Scott, B>Quest)
Interactive Access to Industry Economic Accounts Data (Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce)
Percentage added to GDP of the United States of America in 2020, by industry (Statista)
Slavery at White Haven (National Park Service)
History and Culture of Wayne National Forest (U.S. Forest Service)
Industry and Economy During the Civil War (Benjamin T. Arrington, National Park Service)
Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Sven Beckert, Vintage)
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Edward Baptist, Basic Books)
Our democracy's founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true. (Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project, New York Times)
The Economics and Politics of the 1619 Project (Peter Wood, Phillip Magness, and Robert Cherry, National Association of Scholars)
25 Apr 2022
Ulysses Under Fire Once Again
How should we remember Ulysses S. Grant on his 200th birthday? As a Civil War hero and Civil Rights champion? Or as a slave holder and president who sought to assimilate indigenous Americans into white society?
Professors and Grant experts Joan Waugh and Brooks Simpson weigh in.
Sources:
An Interview with Mary Robinson, Formerly Enslaved at White Haven (National Park Service)
De Blasio Won't Say If Ulysses S. Grant Statue Is a Hate Symbol (Scott Heins, Gothamist)
San Francisco Protestors Topple Statues of Ulysses Grant and Other Slave Owners (Lois Beckett, The Guardian)
U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Joan Waugh, UNC Press)
Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity 1822-1865 (Brooks Simpson, Zenith Press)
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