Ron Chernow on impact of President Ulysses S. Grant

The historian behind the hit Broadway musical Hamilton is award-winning author Ron Chernow. His biography of founding father Alexander Hamilton has sold more than a million copies across all formats. Now Chernow is back with his seventh book. It is called Grant. It chronicles the life of Civil War general and 18th US President Ulysses S Grant. Ron Chernow joins us now. We're pleased to have him back at the table. Welcome. I am pleased to be here Charlie. Thank you. So for a famous biographer like you the first question might be why Grant? Well you know I always had this fantasy of writing a big sweeping saga about the Civil War and Reconstruction and Grant is the person who is at the center of that. It's really two acts of the of the same drama and just if you look through the prism of Ulysses S Grant's life everything significant that happens between 1861 and 1877 he is right smack at the center of it. What what made him the great general he was? Well I think you know. And he doesn't get credit for that as you point out. You know it's very interesting because Robert E Lee is always glorified as the great general but Grant captured three Confederate armies at Fort Donaldson in 1862 in Vicksburg in 1863 most famously Appomattox in 1865 and yet Lee is the one who's romanticized as the greater general. Robert E Lee never captured a Union Army. Grant was a decisive he was determined he was aggressive and unlike Lee who had plans for winning individual battles Ulysses S Grant had a strategy for winning the entire war and he did that Charlie by he took all the Union armies which had been operating independently and he coordinated that so that they were functioning as a single fighting unit and that was the winning strategy. Functioning while he seemed to drink quite a bit as you point out in the book he was described as a drunkard and had to promise people I promise not to drink before we go to battle. Well what I've tried to do Gail you know when this book is to change the terms of the controversy was granted drunkard to was Grant an alcoholic and he was an alcoholic. What's the difference between a drunkard and an alcoholic? Well I feel with you know drunkard that there's it's a Victorian term it implies that drinking is a moral failing nowadays we know that alcoholism is a chronic disease and Grant had it once he took one drink he could not stop drinking it triggered off an extreme personality change he became a rather jovial and silly personality and what I discovered was that there was a definite pattern to his drinking because a lot of people in good faith said I never saw Grant drink but what he would do he would not touch a drop of alcohol for two or three month periods after a major battle he would then go up to a small town on a side trip have a two or three day bender that his officers and his men never saw and then he would come back as William Tecumseh Sherman said fresh as a rose when I would tell this story to my friends in AA they all said the same thing Ulysses S. Grant was a high-functioning alcoholic and as you mentioned it ran on his family as well he served in the Mexican War and you talk about in the book how as far as Grant was concerned the Civil War was in large part a consequence of the Mexican War can you explain that a bit more? Right because you know the abolitionists felt that by adding Texas and other territories in the south and southwest of the Union that these would potentially become slave states and would expand the power of the slave empire. Grant was although he fought with distinction in the Mexican War he said that it was the most unjust war in his view ever waged by a stronger nation against a weaker nation and indeed the acquisition of territory after the victorious war against Mexico did ignite the debate about abolition. I'm interested in how he thought about Lee did what was his did he respect Lee because there's a famous story that you know that when he accepted the surrender as Lee was coming back you know the Union soldiers made a certain. Grant respected Lee but he also thought that Lee was highly overrated he said Robert E. Lee was a man who needed sunshine he felt that Lee was actually politically operating in a much more much easier environment in the in the south where he was constantly glorified where Grant in the north where there was a lot of anti-war sentiment the so-called Copperhead Democrats. Grant felt that he was constantly being denigrated from his own side so that Lee had a lot of advantages. Grant had more advantages in terms of manpower but Lee was fighting on home territory Lee was fighting a defensive war which is much easier. Lee had all of these spies who could track the other Union movements and Grant had to protect these very long supply lines going down from the north into the south. When people talk about great memoirs they talk about Charles de Gaulle yeah and they talk about Ulysses S. Grant and then they suggest that his friend or was he his friend Mark Twain may have had some impact some role. And it was a memoir he didn't want to write I thought that way. He didn't want to write it a year before he died he was financially wiped out by the Bernie Madoff of his day at the same time he was diagnosed with cancer of the throat and tongue an excruciating way to die and in excruciating pain he wrote this memoir during the last year of his life Charlie so many people ask me did Twain write the memoirs that I went down to the Library of Congress and I said show me the original manuscript I went through every page of the original manuscript just to verify that the manuscript was in Ulysses S. Grant's handwriting and the Twain said of Grant's memoirs the style is flawless no man can improve upon it and I don't think that. So how come he was such a good writer? Yeah there was a Twain connection though to the memoir. Well he was such a good writer because Grant had always prided himself on his writing he wrote all his own wartime orders. Charlie he wrote all of his own speeches as president so in a way and he was also considered a great raconteur and people had heard him tell these stories and so in a way it's not so surprising he produced what is now thought to be the greatest you know military memoir in American letters. But the Twain connection though is because yeah the Twain published the book. Twain published the book. Yeah absolutely. And he wrote 10,000 words a day. So is this a musical or not? Yes. No I think. Yes Lin when he was here. What'd Lin say? What do you say? Well I think it's safe to say that Grant's life does not move to a hip-hop beat but I'm hoping it'll be a feature. You never know. I wouldn't bet against Lin. Big book round turn out Grant goes on sale tomorrow wherever you like to buy your books and you can hear more of the CBS This Morning on our podcast on iTunes and Apple podcast