Olivia: Alright Jackson, lightning round. When I say 'Ulysses S. Grant,' what's the first word that pops into your head? Jackson: Butcher. Or maybe... drunkard? Definitely not 'literary genius.' Olivia: Exactly! And that's the myth we're going to dismantle today. Because we are diving deep into Ron Chernow's monumental biography, simply titled Grant. And Chernow, who won a Pulitzer for his biography on Washington, basically wrote this book to argue that we've gotten Grant almost completely wrong. Jackson: He felt Grant's reputation needed a complete overhaul? Olivia: A total rehabilitation. Chernow argues that the 'Lost Cause' narrative, pushed by Southern sympathizers after the war, deliberately painted Grant as a corrupt, brutish failure to undermine his work on civil rights. And that's the story that stuck for over a century, even though the book was named a Top 10 Book of the Year by The New York Times and is widely acclaimed. Jackson: Wow. Okay, so if he wasn't just this gruff general, where do we even start? Chernow's book is massive. Olivia: We start at the end of his life, because it’s one of the most dramatic and revealing stories I’ve ever read. It’s a story about how Grant, the man who saved the Union, was forced to write his now-famous memoirs. And it wasn't for glory. It was because he was facing absolute ruin.

Jackson: Ruin? This is the former two-term president and the hero of the Civil War. How could he possibly be ruined? Olivia: It’s a perfect storm of tragedy. First, there's the financial collapse. After his presidency, Grant, who was always a bit naive about money, goes into business on Wall Street with a charismatic young financier named Ferdinand Ward. The firm is called 'Grant & Ward,' and Grant believes he's coasting on a tide of easy riches. Jackson: I have a bad feeling about this. This Ward guy sounds like a 19th-century crypto bro. Olivia: That’s a perfect analogy. In May 1884, Grant discovers that Ward is a complete fraud. The profits were manufactured from thin air. The entire firm was a Ponzi scheme. Grant is wiped out. His family is wiped out. Friends who invested because of his name are wiped out. He's 61 years old, a national icon, and he's reduced to accepting charity just to pay his household bills. Jackson: That's devastating. The humiliation must have been crushing. Olivia: It was. He confessed to a friend, "I could bear all the pecuniary loss if that was all, but that I could be so long deceived by a man who I had such opportunity to know is humiliating." He felt he'd lost his reputation. And just as he's reeling from this, disaster strikes again. Jackson: It gets worse? Olivia: Much worse. On Christmas Eve of 1883, just before the full extent of the fraud is revealed, he’s returning to his Manhattan town house. The streets are icy. As he pivots to give his driver a holiday tip, he slips and crashes to the ground, tearing a thigh muscle and possibly fracturing his hip. He's bedridden for weeks, hobbling on crutches, and his health starts a steep decline. Jackson: Okay, so he's broke and now he's physically crippled. This is unbelievable. Olivia: And then comes the final, fatal blow. In June 1884, he's at his seaside cottage, eating a plate of peaches. He takes a bite, swallows, and winces in pain. He says he thinks something stung him in the throat. But the pain never goes away. He procrastinates seeing a doctor, but by October, the diagnosis is in: inoperable throat cancer. Jackson: Oh, man. Broke, crippled, and now a death sentence. What does a person even do in that situation? Olivia: He fights. He's terrified of leaving his wife, Julia, destitute. Other generals had cashed in on their fame by writing memoirs, but Grant had always resisted, considering it boastful. Now, he has no choice. He agrees to write, first some articles, then the full memoirs, purely for the money. He says, "I consented for the money it gave me, for at that moment I was living upon borrowed money." Jackson: So this literary masterpiece that we have today was born out of pure desperation. Olivia: Utter desperation. And he writes it while enduring unimaginable suffering. The cancer is in his throat, so swallowing is agony. He's in constant pain, relying on opiates and even cocaine water sprayed on his throat just to get through the day. The drugs cloud his mind, but he forces himself to work, writing for hours in his leather armchair, wrapped in blankets. Jackson: How did he even focus? Olivia: Sheer willpower. When the pain in his hand becomes too great to write, he dictates. When his voice fails, he scribbles messages on scraps of paper. He's in a race against death, and he knows it. Mark Twain, who ends up being his publisher, is astounded. Twain visits him and sees this dying man, producing thousands of words a day, and he says the writing is flawless. He calls the memoirs "a literary masterpiece." Jackson: Twain himself said that? That's the ultimate endorsement. Olivia: It is. And Grant finishes the manuscript just one week before he dies. The book becomes a colossal success, selling a record-breaking 300,000 copies and earning his family a fortune, securing their future just as he had hoped. It’s one of the most heroic acts of his life, and it happened long after the war was over.

Jackson: That whole story is just incredible. It completely changes how I see the man. It’s not a story of a butcher, but of this incredibly resilient, determined person. Olivia: And this incredible resilience he showed writing his memoirs is the same misunderstood strength he brought to the presidency. The book he wrote was a masterpiece, but his presidency, which has been so maligned, was in many ways his most important, and forgotten, battle. Jackson: Okay, let's get into this, because my high school history textbook basically skipped from the Civil War to the Gilded Age and just said Grant's presidency was a mess of corruption. Olivia: That's the "Lost Cause" narrative Chernow is fighting against. That version of history was deliberately crafted to erase Grant's real presidential legacy. And what was that legacy? Fighting for the civil rights of newly freed African Americans. Chernow argues Grant was the single most important figure behind Reconstruction. Jackson: More important than Lincoln? Olivia: In a way, yes. The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass himself paired them. He said, "liberty which Mr. Lincoln declared with his pen General Grant made effectual with his sword." After the war, it was Grant who had to enforce that liberty. And he did it with a vengeance. Jackson: How so? What did he actually do? Olivia: His most significant achievement was his war on the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was a full-blown terrorist organization, murdering black citizens and white Republicans to overthrow Reconstruction governments in the South. Grant didn't just sit by. He oversaw the creation of the Justice Department specifically to combat them. Jackson: The Justice Department was created to fight the KKK? I had no idea. Olivia: Exactly. And under his direction, the DOJ brought thousands of anti-Klan indictments. They sent federal troops into the South, not as occupiers, but as protectors of American citizens' right to vote and live in peace. By 1872, Grant had effectively dismantled the first iteration of the Klan. It was a stunning success for civil rights. Jackson: But all you ever hear about the Grant administration is corruption, like the Whiskey Ring scandal. How does Chernow square that with this image of a civil rights crusader? Olivia: Chernow doesn't ignore the corruption. He acknowledges it was a real problem, often involving Grant's appointees. Grant was too trusting of his friends, a flaw that cost him dearly in business and in politics. But Chernow's argument is that this has been used to completely overshadow his monumental achievements. Jackson: So it's like focusing on a few leaky pipes while ignoring that the man built the entire house? Olivia: That's a great way to put it. The "Lost Cause" historians and his political enemies found it very convenient to focus on the scandals because it distracted from the fact that Grant was using federal power to enforce racial equality—something they bitterly opposed. They created the caricature of the bumbling, corrupt, drunken general to erase the image of the determined civil rights president. Jackson: And the caricature stuck. For more than a century. Olivia: It did. It buried the man who fought for the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the man who saw the humanity in his black soldiers, and the man who, for a brief, shining moment, used the full power of the federal government to crush white supremacist terror.

Jackson: So what's the big takeaway here? It feels like we've been sold a completely different version of American history. Olivia: That's exactly Chernow's point. The real story of Grant isn't just about a general who won a war. It's about how history is written by the victors, but also rewritten by those who lose. The 'Lost Cause' narrative successfully buried the legacy of a man who fought one war on the battlefield and a second, arguably more important one, for the soul of the country during Reconstruction. Jackson: And his final act, writing those memoirs, wasn't for glory, but out of desperation and love for his family. It's a much more human, and frankly, more heroic story. Olivia: Exactly. He secured his family's future and, in the process, gave us one of the greatest pieces of American literature. It forces us to ask: who else have we misunderstood, and what other histories have been deliberately forgotten? Jackson: It really makes you wonder what other 'truths' we take for granted are just well-told fictions. Olivia: A question worth pondering. For now, we'll leave it there. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.