At the time of his death, Ulysses S. Grant was the most famous
person in America, considered by most citizens to be equal in
stature to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Yet today his
monuments are rarely visited, his military reputation is
overshadowed by that of Robert E. Lee, and his presidency is
permanently mired at the bottom of historical rankings.
In an insightful blend of biography and cultural history, Joan
Waugh traces Grant's shifting national and international
reputation, illuminating the role of memory in our understanding of
American history. Using a wide range of written and visual
sources--newspaper articles, private and public reminiscences,
photographs, paintings, cartoons, poetry, and much more--Waugh
reveals how Grant became the embodiment of the American nation in
the decades after the Civil War. She does not paper over Grant's
image as a scandal-ridden contributor to the worst excesses of the
Gilded Age. Instead, she captures a sense of what led
nineteenth-century Americans to overlook Grant's obvious faults and
hold him up as a critically important symbol of national
reconciliation and unity. Waugh further shows that Grant's
reputation and place in public memory closely parallel the rise and
fall of the northern version of the Civil War story--in which the
United States was the clear, morally superior victor and Grant was
the symbol of that victory. By the 1880s, Waugh shows, after the
failure of Reconstruction, the dominant Union myths about the war
gave way to a southern version that emphasized a more sentimental
remembrance of the honor and courage of both sides and ennobled the
"Lost Cause." During this social transformation, Grant's public
image changed as well. By the 1920s, his reputation had
plummeted.
Most Americans today are unaware of how revered Grant was in his
lifetime. Joan Waugh uncovers the reasons behind the rise and fall
of his renown, underscoring as well the fluctuating memory of the
Civil War itself.