[HN Gopher] The Reconstruction of Ulysses S Grant (2017)
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The Reconstruction of Ulysses S Grant (2017)
Author : blending
Score : 29 points
Date : 2024-04-12 23:19 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.damninteresting.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.damninteresting.com)
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time (of the article):
|
| _The Reconstruction of Ulysses S. Grant_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14103128 - April 2017 (12
| comments)
| ghaff wrote:
| Grant is probably the US president who has been most
| rehabilitated by US history over the past few decades. Jackson
| and Wilson are probably the two who have come to be viewed far
| less favorably.
| bee_rider wrote:
| That we're moving in a direction that appreciates someone like
| Grant is a sign that we're improving as a society.
|
| Pros: nice to his wife, destroyed traitorous slavers.
|
| Cons: alcoholism (it is a health problem not a moral failing),
| too trusting in business.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| It's an interesting example of "Politics as the Art of the
| Possible" that Fort Bragg (after the Confederate general) was
| recently renamed as the wonderfully generic _Fort Liberty_ ,
| rather than "Fort Grant".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Liberty
|
| We can be sure "Fort Sherman" never made the short list
| though it might have gotten some chuckles, at least among the
| brass hailing from northern states.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Sherman's march achieved its aims; Reconstruction fell a
| bit short.
| pkulak wrote:
| It fell short three generations later. Grant wiped out
| the KKK and had former slaves in elective offices. Sure,
| he didn't fix all the problems in 8 years, but he did
| more than anyone could have expected, and a lot of his
| progress was rolled back later.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Is being a traitor bad? Where does George Washington rank on
| the historians' lists these days?
| 48864w6ui wrote:
| We generally call traitors who win "patriots".
|
| Drawing swords, scabbards, etc. etc.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| I am going to have to tap out from that. George
| Washington was undeniably a traitor, and also a patriot.
| zabzonk wrote:
| grant's autobiography is well worth reading - quite funny at
| times. but when it gets into the battles it kind of loses me,
| having only a vague grasp of geography and topology. possibly why
| i am not a great general?
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of history books, including but not limited to those
| dealing with battles, are handy to read with maps (often
| topographical ones) of the area open if they're not in the
| book. Back when I listened to audiobooks while commuting, I
| learned that a lot of history books were a poor match for the
| format.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| And yet many history podcasts such as Mike Duncan's "History
| of Rome" seem to do fine in the format.
| ghaff wrote:
| It probably depends on how much military minutiae you get
| into. I've only listened to a few of Duncan's podcasts but
| I've also enjoyed a lot of (but not all of) Dan Carlin's
| podcasts. The thing is they mostly aren't about tactical
| elements of battles or history more generally. (They
| probably assume some general knowledge of the overall
| geography which I have.) I've also read books, not just
| military but ones like Endurance, that it's really useful
| to be able to look at a map.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I read Grants biography three times. For all of his faults,
| Grant was a genius in reading his opponents mind and knowing
| what his troops were capable of. Terrain and geography played a
| role but it is secondary to his men's welfare.
|
| When Rosecrans were trapped by the Confederates after the
| battle of Chickamauga, Grant was assigned to take command and
| free the trapped Union army. Grant arrived and quickly saw that
| the Union troops were starving and that Confederates blocked
| the most direct supply routes and many mules and horses were
| driven to death in an attempt to feed the troops. Grant quickly
| launched a surprise attack to establish the "cracker line" a
| direct route to supply the troops with hard tack, a staple food
| of Union troops.
|
| Once his troops were fed and recovered their strength, he went
| on the offensive. At the battle of Missionary Ridge, Grant's
| troops charged up a mountain against Confederate canon and
| drove Braxton Bragg off the field. For several months Bragg
| thought he was close to destroying an entire Union army and
| suddenly Grant showed up and turned the tables on him.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > Mrs. Lincoln went out that evening without the Grants, taking a
| short carriage ride from the White House to Ford's Theater to
| watch a play. There, John Wilkes Booth entered their box and
| assassinated Lincoln.
|
| if you have Apple TV (I know, yet another streaming service)
| you've been seeing _Manhunt_ about the hunt for Booth. This is an
| excellent show. Check it out if you can.
| Runways wrote:
| What is this tracker link? 'thebrowser.com'?
| mulmen wrote:
| It's a newsletter. The link from the email was posted instead
| of the target. You can just go to the main site to learn about
| it.
| dang wrote:
| Fixed now!
| webwielder2 wrote:
| Chernow's biography of Grant is excellent, and very edifying for
| me personally. Grant was both a great and good man, and should be
| much more revered in American society than he is.
| mulmen wrote:
| Should the link be updated to
| https://www.damninteresting.com/the-reconstruction-of-ulysse...
| instead of the tracker link?
| dang wrote:
| Ah yes. Fixed now. Thanks!
|
| (I've detached this comment from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40018633.)
| Jun8 wrote:
| The last photo of him sitting in his chair, desperately trying to
| finish his memoirs was taken in their house in Galena, IL. If
| you're in the vicinity make sure to visit it (and the nearby
| charming city with tons of history, e.g. the term lobbying was
| coined in the DeSoto House Hotel here). Tours are given by
| elderly and knowledgeable docents which include charming details,
| e.g. during the tour around the globe mentioned, Grant was so
| well wined &dined that he gained 50lbs.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Closer to our time, in the comments from 2017 we have this:
|
| > I live in General Sherman's birthplace: Lancaster, Ohio. I
| learned quite some years ago not to tell anyone in the South
| where I was from, unless I prefaced it with the fact that I was
| born in Kentucky.
| scruple wrote:
| I grew up not far from Lancaster, a little further to the
| southern border with WV. My family came from southwestern PA
| and that's where I was born. My uncle married a southern woman
| (from the hills of northern GA) and her and my cousins really
| had a big problem with where we lived. They probably still do,
| we wouldn't know because we haven't spoken to them since my
| uncle died. There are some very deeply embedded feelings that
| remain in the south about "the war" and it can be a real jolt
| to be confronted with them.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I think the civil war is what made America what it is today.
| One capital, one government and one army.
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