gardeninacity

The eve of Martin Luther King Day seems an appropriate time to write a review of Ron Chernow’s new biography of US Grant, the commander of Union armies and two-term president. Chernow’s book shows that Grant’s life and posthumous reputation are tied up in the struggle for racial equality.

During and after his life, Grant has been subject to a great deal of criticism. He has been portrayed as leader of a corrupt and ineffective presidency. He was also characterized as a military leader who clumsily overwhelmed his more skillful adversaries with massive force, generating massive casualties in the process.

Chernow’s lengthy but very readable biography provides a different portrait. He shows that the denigration of Grant, like the deification of Robert E. Lee, (and the associated statues), were both part of a political project to rehabilitate the Confederacy and justify the Jim Crow racial caste system that emerged in the latter part of the 19th Century.