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In reply to the discussion: Trump: 'Robert E. Lee was a great general' [View all]NNadir
(33,511 posts)...was an actual alcoholic. There is simply no evidence of dependency.
Many people, Cadwallader, famously, and probably Rawlins, wanted to magnify their own role in Grant's outstanding success by claiming to have helped in "managed" his drinking.
Grant managed himself quite well, thank you. His innate brilliance, coupled with his outstanding decency comes through to anyone who thinks clearly and takes a hard look. What he wasn't was a braggart, and I note the contrast with the man with tiny hands and a tiny mind who currently occupies the once exalted office Grant once held. Grant let his actions speak for themselves. The orange fool, by contrast, is a living demonstration of the Kruger-Dunning effect.
My oldest son has pretty much the same low tolerance for alcohol that may have characterized Grant. He drinks rarely, but when he does, he gets pretty drunk pretty quickly. Anyone who saw him at the one or two occasions alcohol has gotten the best of my son, might assume he was an alcoholic. Fortunately my son understands this about himself, and behaves accordingly, especially where driving is involved.
One of the great personal attributes that Grant had was his famous love for his wife. Her absence depressed him unless he was highly involved in work, which for much of the war he was. He may have gotten drunk a few times missing her, and his tolerance was low, but the seizure on this point in the life of a great man is small minded and frankly, illiterate.
As evidence of Grant's clear thinking, many can cite his Memoirs, which is considered the greatest book ever written by a US President, all the more remarkable because it was written when he was in great pain dying of cancer. Mark Twain - who admittedly had a financial interest in the work - called it the Greatest Military work since Caesar's "Commentaries." I haven't read enough military autobiographies to judge whether that is true, but I would not be surprised to learn it's not too far off the mark.
The prose describing the surrender scene, which Grant apparently wrote just days before he died, is simply some of the most beautiful prose I've read about the war - and I've read a lot - and summarizes the whole affair with simple but powerful language that is simply remarkable.
"...that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people had ever fought..."
What more can be said about that war?
I suspect that the emphasis on the role of drink in Grant's life was part, in many cases, and this includes the efforts of racists in maligning his Presidency as incompetent and corrupt, was involved with jealousy, opposition to his policy of human decency and resentment of his quiet greatness.
For all the complaints about his cabinet, criticism of which will be dwarfed by historical assessments to come of the sycophants around the orange fool, no man ever chose a better Secretary of State than Hamilton Fish. (We may compare that with the two most recent disgraces who have occupied office of Secretary of State.) That alone says something about the importance of Grant's Presidency, but of course, the 14th and 15th amendments which he willed into the Constitution, are possibly his greatest legacies, equally as important with his great victories in the Civil War.