Read Grant: A Novel for Free Online Page A

uttering a word he turned through them slowly till he reached the
Times
. Bylines were rare back then. He pointed at the lead article and said he supposed Cadwallader was the author.
    Cadwallader was.
    The General lit a cigar with a flint-and-steel lighter and blew a puff of gray smoke. “Well,” he said quietly, “it’s factually correct, and steps are being taken to remedy the situation. And if you never write more untruthfully than this, Mr. Cadwallader, you and I won’t have any problems.”
    A great cheer came up from the Chicago street, and then what sounded like two different bands playing two different songs at the same time. Cadwallader stretched out his legs and wiggled his toes.
    The thing about Grant was that he didn’t
look
the part of a hero. He looked and acted exactly like what he was, a hard luck Western farmer, carrying with him the air of empty fields and dusty roads and the small-town harness shop. For the first two years of the war, in the midst of all those Eastern generals with their tailored uniforms and their polished manners, he was just somebody to ignore.
    Only, by 1863 the little Westerner with the unkempt beard and the quiet voice had somehow or other managed to have two separate Confederate armies surrender to him—at Fort Donelson, at Vicksburg—and forced another into headlong retreat at Chattanooga, and when he took command of all the Union forces in 1864, a collective sigh had seemed to go up from the nation. “The
boss
has finally arrived,” one private soldier in the Army of the Potomac told Cadwallader, and Cadwallader printed it in the Chicago
Times
for the whole world to read.
    The other thing about Grant, of course, was that he was a thousand times more complicated than he looked, and that was the mystery of him. Lincoln knew it instinctively. Lincoln knew all about the mystery of character. In the worst days after Shiloh,when that jackass Whitelaw Reid had written his famous article about Grant the bungler and the butcher, the Radical Republicans had sent a Senator over to the President’s Palace to demand that Grant be fired. And Lincoln heard him out, thought it over in silence, then shook his head: “I can’t spare this man: he fights.”
    The one and only time Cadwallader ever saw Grant lose his temper was during the Battle of the Wilderness, May 1864. “Uncle” John Sedgwick’s VI Corps had just been routed in a surprise attack and over five thousand Union casualties were already reported. Grant was sitting on a camp stool, smoking his cigar and receiving dispatches, when one of Sedgwick’s surviving officers came thundering up on his horse. As soon as he spotted Grant the officer started stuttering that the army was in a terrible crisis, Lee was about to cut them off at the Rapidan River, and if he
did
cut them off all communications with Washington City would be lost for good, and then they
would
be doomed. And Grant stood up and took the cigar out of his mouth and flung it to the ground.
    “I’m heartily tired of hearing what
Lee
is going to do,” he said with genuine fury. “Some of you always seem to think he’s suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both our flanks at the same time. Go on back to your command and try to think what
we’re
going to do ourselves, instead of what Bobby
Lee
is going to do!” Later that week he wrote General Halleck the famous letter where he said he proposed to fight it out on this line if it took all summer.
    Rain pattered against the window and ran down the glass in silver bullets. Out on the street the parade sounded as though it was winding up in a hurry. Cadwallader pulled out his watch. Three more hours till the monumental goddam banquet. Plenty of time for a nap.
    There were two reasons the people had elected Grant President twice before.
    One was because in his simplicity and competence U. S. Grant embodied the perfect American allegory, rags-to-riches, log-cabin-to-the-President’s