Books: Anti-climax

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The war gloriously won, in spite of tactical errors at Shiloh, brutal human waste at Cold Harbor, Grant was unfortunately awarded the presidency. He knew nothing about politics or human character, neither of these imponderables being tangible matter of action. His chosen advisers were crooked or incompetent (the minister to England, a poker expert, taught the game to British peers, started a fad), his policies pathetic; but grimly he stuck to both. Scandals rivaling Teapot Dome culminated in the gold corner by Gould and Fisk, shrewd rascals who dazzled Grant with their powerful wealth, involved the honest dupe in fiasco.

Years later Grant flattered himself that he too was a Wall Street potentate, only to learn in tragic finale that again he had been duped, used, ruined. Yet, under stress of terrific pain (cancer) his pathetic persistence in scribbling memoirs that would support his widow is the courageous characteristic that well overshadows faults and stupidities.

The Significance. While other generals were tracing with blood and gore elaborate patterns of Napoleonic strategy, Grant defied all the rules, applied common sense, accomplished feats that Napoleon would proudly have claimed. All this can be gleaned from Woodward's interesting if arbitrary and cavalier account, but his great general is only too often submerged in the man, shiftless, gullible, pathetic.

The Author. When Woodward was a small boy in South Carolina he read a book which proved the South had won the Civil War. Such was his surprise when he later learned otherwise that his curiosity, permanently caught, culminated in his study of Grant. In between time, however, he was advertizing man, banker, author of Bread and Circuses, George Washington, and admitted originator of the word "debunk." Patriots, private as well as professional, cavilled at his .debunking of George Washington, will carp at the same treatment of Grant. Of Washington, Author Woodward replied he had made no effort to "show him up"; had merely tried to humanize him. Of Grant he will no doubt say the same.