Publisher's Synopsis
Finally a feel good book about Ulysses S. Grant for the powerless, selfless, the disenfranchised lowlife; the patriotic dummies, distractibles, deplorables, and drunkards that are the underrated "salt of the earth." Before the States divided into two, the North and South and brother against brother for a nasty civil war, Ulysses S. Grant was a hard working family man that obtained a large tract of land as a gift from his father-in-law. He farmed and even sold firewood in the city on street corners to make a living for his wife Julia, and a son. Ulysses had the benefit of an education at the West Point Military Academy, and was distinguished as a soldier in the war with Mexico but he found the boredom of life in the army during times of peace, at remote barracks, impossible to cope with, and turned to Whiskey. His loneliness on the frontier finally got the best of him and he resigned his military commission on the day he was promoted to a rank of Captain. He sobered up and went home to the family, but every kind of civilian work he tried just didn't work out well enough for this unperturbable and persistent young man. When Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, angered, he organized his own local army of volunteers to fight for the Union. If you had been there when President Lincoln nominated Ulysses S. Grant to become Commander of all the Union armies, you too would likely have said, "Who is Ulysses S. Grant? Where did he come from? He's a nobody from nowhere!" Few civilians knew Grant before the Civil War, and many questioned his ability to win that critical Constitutional conflict. Ulysses Grant appeared to go directly from obscurity to head of all the Union armies. The American people questioned his character--even his reticence to talk with reporters made him more vulnerable to fake news. Many concluded erroneously, that he was not a match for General Robert E. Lee, another West Point Academy graduate. Some thought Grant was distracted by Whiskey while on duty, and a myth was created--"Grant was a drunkard." Others criticized Grant for using superior numbers to soundly defeat the South, and called him "a butcher." This book explores the nature and nurture of the man who became our "Defender of the Union" and the 18th President of the United States. The author, Thomas Edward Grant, has traced the Grant family from its early beginnings in the Colony of Connecticut. Ulysses was certainly a family prodigy and representative of the seventh generation in America. Thomas Edward Grant is of the 12th generation-- from the same family's beginning with the immigration to America of Mathew and Priscilla Grant, in 1630. This book answers the question, "Who was U.S. Grant and where did he come from?" The author finds that the answers to this question make Grant's transformation from "Useless" to victory and fame predictable, inevitable --and apparently, even pre-destined.
