Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?

Two of America's most famous school child's questions are "What color is a white horse?" and "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?" I can answer the second.

Those of us who live in the northern part of Sonoma County daily pass by a road named Shiloh. Or we live on Grant Street, and it's time to learn why.

Many, who took history in high school, know that Grant graduated from West Point near the bottom of his class, fought in the war against Mexico (where we had the highest casualty rate per soldier in American history), served in the army in Sonoma County for a while and then resigned in disgrace because of drunkenness, failed in civilian life, and reentered the Union Army at the start of the Civil War, also known, in some places, as the War of Northern Aggression against Proud Illiterate Christians Defending Slavery (or something like that). During the war, the drunken but stubbornly heartless Grant achieved a measure of undeserved success by sending vast hordes of looting Union troops on stupid frontal assaults against tiny numbers of brilliant Confederate dudes, who would have prevailed if they had not fragged their best general, Stonewall Jackson, now a central name in gay rights history.

Most of the above is false, of course, a set of rumors first started in the North (by generals who wanted Grant's rank and by war correspondents who did their writing in the rear while running away with the other deserters) and later taken up by apologists for the South and its totally defeated army.

Part of the price by which Southern men were reconciled to the loss of access to slave women was a national glorification of Robert E. Lee and a denigration of Grant and the Union victories. Never mind that Grant's battles became the core study in military academies around the world (and unfortunately inspired the German army).

Robert E. Lee was, of course, one of several unusually able generals who fought for the South. At the start of the war, the best generals the country went with the South, one reason the South won so many early victories. They were the same generals that Grant defeated--Grant never lost a battle in his career or took a backward step. Of Grant, Lee later wrote: "I have carefully searched the military records of both ancient and modern history, and have never found Grant's superior as a general."

Grant was not a drunk, left the army because of low pay, and made a middle class living for his family in civilian life before the war. While the Union Army was slightly larger than the Confederate Army, in many of Grant's early battles, both sides had the same number of troops or Grant led the smaller force.

Among all the generals on the Union side, Grant was the only one who led successful offenses. His trademark in an attack was speed and the unexpected. For example, he mounted the first amphibious attack in modern warfare, coordinating the army and navy. His contribution was not simply tactics. Grant's strategy, the three pronged attack that included Shermon's' crushing march to the sea, cornered Lee and ended the awful fighting.

In a sense the decisive engagement of the Civil War came in 1862 at the battle of Shiloh where, for the first time in the conflict, two equal armies with two good generals met head on. Confederate General Albert Sydney Johnston's goal was to annihilate the Union Army, and he was a great general, but Grant destroyed the forces of Johnston (killed in battle) and Beauregard. After the battle, Grant noted that the South had fought hard and retreated in order. He understood what that meant: the war would be long and difficult. The South would have to be invaded and beaten on its own territory. Grant spent the next year trying to convince his superiors of the need to fight.

The South could have won. They were conducting a defensive battle around their own homes. They had interior railroads and rivers on which to move highly motivated troops rapidly from place to place. The North had to invade long distances and fight on unfamiliar ground, a logistical nightmare. But Grant was good at logistics. He was especially good at drawing relief maps of what lay ahead. He planned. His army moved food and ammunition.

Grant had to win fast. Democracies don't like long wars, and Lincoln seemed on the verge of being defeated for reelection. Grant did win, of course, at Appomattox Courthouse, where he granted generous terms to the South when Lee surrendered (Grant was not really an "unconditional surrender" man).

At the time the North was grateful. Grant was elected President twice, but he proved a political novice misled by Washington's corrupt elite. He did get some things right, though. He enforced the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, granting former slaves the right to vote, and he prodded congress into inventing the Justice Department to continue this work. "It is to Grant that we owe the institutionalization of universal suffrage and racial equality that we take for granted today," wrote John Mosier, historian. (For more on Grant, see Mosier's book with a foreword by General Wesley Clark, who ranks Grant first among America's military men.)

Reading about Grant has made me fonder of him. As a young husband, Grant planned to live out his life as a civilian in California, which he loved. He had not wanted an army career. His father had made him enter West Point for the free education. Grant's own goal was to become a math professor--he excelled at math--and he had a job lined up when the war with Mexico broke out. In his memoir Grant called that war "unholy," and he explained how the Americans had started it by advancing unprovoked into Mexico until finally the Mexican Army had to fight, at which point President Polk declared the country under attack. The motive for the war was to add Texas and other slave territories to the block of Southern states. As Grant saw it, the Mexican War was the start of the Civil War. In fact, Grant wrote that the Civil War was our punishment for what we had done to Mexico.

Grant's final act, completed at the behest of Mark Twain as Grant sat dying from cancer, was to write a memoir, the only Presidential memoir absorbed into the canon of American literature. Grant died within a week of finishing the book and providing an income for his wife.

That's who is buried in Grant's Tomb.