Poor Politician

ULYSSES S. GRANT--William B. Hesseltine--Dodd, Mead ($4).

U. S. history contains few more provoking mysteries than the personality of Ulysses S. Grant, described by Henry Adams as "shy; jealous; sometimes vindictive; more or less dull in outward appearance; always needing stimulants." Grant was an easygoing, touchy, unimpressive soldier in his early career, later a devoted family man who failed with an almost uncanny thoroughness as a farmer, rent collector, store clerk, before he blossomed as the stolid genius of the Civil War. An essentially honest man who labored in terrible agony to pay his personal debts. Grant became identified with the most scandalous corruption that ever touched a President. His administrations are remembered less for their legislative measures than for the magnitude of their swindles. President Grant was publicly entertained by Gould and Fisk just before those crafty scoundrels tried to corner the country's gold supply. His confidential secretary took bribes from the Whiskey Ring. Even though he was not directly involved in the Credit Mobilier exposure, it placed him under popular suspicion. "The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant," Henry Adams wrote, "was alone enough to upset Darwin." Corruption, bribery and precedence given measures for party expediency characterized his administrations, which were historically important in a negative sense, in that they gave a powerful impetus to reform, bred a widespread cynicism for democratic government, effectively discouraged able and conscientious men from seeking political careers.

Biographers have usually met the problem of Grant's politics by placing the great warrior and the poor politician in closed compartments and permitting no commerce between them. William B. Hesseltine has met it, in his exhaustive, 480-page study, by placing all emphasis on Grant's political career. The result is an eminently readable book which clearly describes the character of Grant's political thinking-- or of his political thoughtlessness--without quite accounting for either his occasional shrewd successes or his awe-inspiring failures.

Explaining Grant's stubborn friendship with gross and clumsy thieves on the familiar "blind spot" theory, Dr. Hesseltine notes that the President was so conscious of his years of business failures that he considered any man who could make a little money as the possessor of vast and mysterious gifts. But Grant's blind spot seems to have been singularly elastic, now large and now small, now enabling him to see through the most ingenious maneuvers of his enemies and now permitting him to adhere to men like Babcock, his confidential secretary, who "fished for gold in every stinking cesspool." That Grant's career was inconsistent, Dr. Hesseltine fully realizes. He seems less aware of its grotesqueness, its humor, and its influence on the course of democratic government. As a result the two brief chapters in The Education of Henry Adams remain the best summary of Grant's limitations. In himself Grant seemed to contain several distinct personalities: 1) the timid man who could not refuse a gift or disappoint a friend; 2) the general who would not lose a battle; 3) the ignorant countryman who thought Venice would be a fine city if only it were drained; 4) the energetic administrator who habitually relaxed, when energy was most needed, into apathy and silence. Such bedfellows naturally made strange politics.

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