Ulysses S. Grant, a graduate of the American Military Academy at West Point in 1843, did not go there because he dreamed of being a soldier. The future Civil War general and president of the United States with two terms left because, as he will later remember, his father “said he thought I would do it,” and I thought so too, if he did. ”
The Ohio-born tanner’s son was initially so unenthusiastic about military life that he followed Congress debates on the future of West Point that took place during his first semester, in the hope that the Military Academy would close and he could go home without embarrassment. Despite his deep ambivalence, Grant’s experiences at West Point and as a young officer provided formal and incidental preparation for his later career and gave him a glimpse of future comrades and enemies of the Civil War.
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He found military training “boring”, but liked novels
While critics would later exaggerate Cadet Grant’s poor performance, he was actually a graduate in the middle of his class (21st out of 39), had math skills and had unrivaled riding skills. Due to leading demerits and a dismal “standing in all tactics”, he served his final year as a modest private. His only management position was the presidency of the literary cadet society.
The surviving drawings and paintings from Grant Point’s years at West Point show the first signs of what the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz called a “special gift” common to renowned painters and generals: namely, remarkable visual memory . After Grant had studied a map, his staff officer Horace Porter remembered that “it seemed to be indelibly photographed on his brain.”
In his memoirs, Grant made no secret of his lack of commitment to military training and academics. He describes the former as “boring and uninteresting” while noting the latter: “I rarely read a lesson the second time during my entire internship.” Instead, he spent much of his time “devoted to novels, but not those of a trashy kind.” Immersing himself in the imagined worlds of Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and other popular writers of the 19th century, Grant learned, as his biographer Jean Edward Smith suggests, an “appreciation of linguistic precision”. However, it does not absorb the romantic vision of war common to period fiction. About the war, he was a hard realist.
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Grant met old acquaintances later on the battlefield
Grant during the capture of Mexico City in the Mexican War of 1846-1848.
VCG Wilson / Corbis / Getty Images
As Smith points out, commentators tend to overstate the importance of West Pointers’ relationships with their later careers. It was not always easy to predict the success or eventual military failure of a peer. A number of the cadets who showed the greatest military promise in the years leading up to the Civil War disappointed, while the least remarkable, Grant among them, sometimes succeeded beyond all expectations. But life at the academy was extremely isolated, holidays were scarce and the body was quite small. The cadets would have been thrown into each other’s company in a way that would likely have exposed their reaction to adversity. In many cases, first impressions were cemented by the service together during the Mexican War of 1846-1848. (The small size of the regular army almost guaranteed that perceptions – deserved or not – would piss off officers throughout their careers.)
What did his peers think of Grant? His reputation for drinking, which he probably made a good part of while he was separated from his family at a series of distant posts in the Pacific Northwest after the Mexican War, has been widely disseminated in circles of the army, and derogatory stories persisted throughout the civil war. No one envisioned Grant as a future commander. As a good friend, the Confederate General James Longstreet noted that it was “to the surprise of many” that Grant turned out to be “the man of the day”. Nevertheless, acquaintances recognized very early on what would become his distinctive qualities: tenacity, loyalty and a feeling of calm in the face of physical danger.
Grant, for his part, was a passionate observer of human nature who believed that going to West Point at the “right time” – he had met more than 50 future civil war generals there – as well as his experiences in Mexico, revealed “of great benefit. “In addition to teaching” practical lessons, “the Mexican War introduced him to” older officers, who became visible in the rebellion. “
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Grant explains the importance of his early acquaintances with those whom he opposed during the Civil War: “I do not pretend to say that all the movements, or even many of them, were made with special reference to characteristics of the commander against whom they were directed. . But my appreciation of my enemies was certainly affected by this knowledge. Brief but nuanced sketches of characters of men whom Grant knew at West Point or in Mexico enrich his memories. For example, he pitted the “straight” but “irascible” Braxton Bragg, whom he defeated at the Battle of Chattanooga, at Longstreet, with whom he resumed his friendship after the war: “Longstreet was an entirely different man. He was brave, honest, intelligent, a very capable soldier … just and kind to his subordinates, but jealous of his own rights. “
Grant and Simon Buckner: loyalty, betrayal and lasting respect
General Simon Bolivar Buckner was an American soldier and politician who fought in the United States Army during the Mexican-American War and in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
Duncan 1890 / Getty Images
Perhaps no relationship reveals more clearly how the West Point connections informed Grant’s experience in the Civil War than his knowledge of Simon Bolivar Buckner. On Saturday October 29, 1842, the name of Grant appears in the circulation documents of the library next to a volume of the history of Tite-Live on Rome. In the next column, Buckner’s is written in a book on Napoleon. Neither could have predicted how their paths would cross over the following decades: during a hike on a volcano during an R&R in Mexico; in New York, when Buckner loaned Grant money to go home; on the opposite sides of a battle for Fort Donelson, held by the Confederates, in Tennessee, in February 1862.
Buckner had been left in an impossible situation at Donelson by the departure of his two superiors and the flight of a detachment of cavalry. But when he wrote to Grant to discuss the terms of the surrender, the answer came: “No condition, except an unconditional and immediate surrender, can be accepted.” Clearly disappointed, Buckner replied: “The distribution of forces under my command … and the overwhelming force under your command, compel me … to accept the ungenerous and unmatched terms you propose.”
Grant described their meeting after the surrender with typical candor and a touch of humor: “I had been at West Point for three years with Buckner and then served with him in the military, so that we knew each other pretty good. During our very friendly conversation, he told me that if he had been in charge, I would not have gone up to Donelson as easily as I did. I told him that if he had been in charge, I shouldn’t have tried like I did. “
READ MORE: Ulysses S. Grant: known for scandals, overlooked for achievements
Donelson gave Grant his first taste of fame: the newspapers presented him as an “unconditional surrender”. Meanwhile, Buckner spent months as a prisoner of war.
Their relationship survived even this confrontation. And when Grant died in 1885, racing to finish his memoirs and trying to save his family from bankruptcy, Buckner was one of Grant’s last warmest visitors – and he would serve as a porter at his funeral. When the journalists asked Buckner who was leaving us what he and Grant had discussed, he refused: “I can’t tell you… The visit was purely personal; and … it was too sacred. “
Although tempting to read it as a sentimental story about a war between reconciled brothers, the anecdote sheds some light on the elementary strangeness of this period in the history of West Point and the country. And it highlights the ways in which confused intimacy – a delicate network of personal loyalty, betrayal and enduring respect – is woven through the national tapestry of the Civil War.
Elizabeth D. Samet is the editor of The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysse S. Grant. His books include No Man’s Land: preparing for war and peace in America after September 11. She is an English teacher at West Point. This essay does not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the United States government.
