If you are looking for something to lift your spirits during these short days and long nights, I can recommend Ron Chernow’s biography of Ulysses S. Grant.

It is hard to imagine a sadder sad sack than Grant at the outset of the Civil War.  Grant was notorious for his seedy, worn clothing and shambolic appearance.  Although his father was a very successful businessman who had put together a significant net worth, Grant was a drunk, a failed former Army officer, and a failure as a farmer who had drank, wasted, or been swindled out of every cent he ever earned.

Grant was working as a clerk in his little brother’s store in Galena when hostilities began and the Union began raising regiments to go fight. Despite the fact that he was a West Point graduate who had served competently in the Mexican-American war at a time when they were desperate for qualified officers, Grant couldn’t get a commission.

So Grant helped the Governor of Illinois recruit regiments and helped with paperwork. An existing Colonel, trying to train a regiment of volunteers recruited by Grant out of Mattoon, Illinois, lost control of his men and they began plundering local farms. The Governor, in desperation, finally made Grant a Colonel and instructed him to try to save the regiment.  Grant asked his father and brother for a small loan so that he could buy a new coat and a horse.  They refused.

Grant had a quiet unassuming manner, but quickly won the respect of the men and started marching them to Quincy, Illinois, training and drilling as they went. By the time they reached Quincy, they were trained up.  So Grant marched them into Missouri and began whipping the Confederate guerilla forces that were harassing Union outposts. Within six weeks of being commissioned into the Union Army, Grant had whipped enough slavers that he was promoted to General. After that, pretty much everywhere he went in the Mississippi Valley, Grant beat the pants off the Confederates.

Unlike other Union Generals who shrank from confrontation, Grant grasped that if you wanted to win the war, you were going to have to engage and destroy Confederate armies.  The northern public had a limited appetite for the war and it was incumbent on Union generals to bring their advantages in manpower and materiel to bear on southern armies before they disappeared.  So when Grant won a battle, he followed up the defeated Confederate army and pursued it until it was destroyed.

Grant was also quick to grasp that you had to destroy slavery if you wanted to defeat the slavers.  As Grant pushed into Confederate territory, his lines were flooded by slaves intent on liberating themselves.  They were eager to pitch in and help the armies that were destroying their oppressors.  Grant initially hired the freed men and women to fill noncombat support functions for Union armies. Eventually though he trained up regiments of freed men and sent them into battle where they distinguished themselves with their courage and skill under fire.

After each victory, Grant was careful to emphasize to Lincoln and to the press the critical role that freed slaves played in his victories over the Confederate armies.  By freeing slaves and employing them in Union ranks, the North could subtract from Confederate strength while adding to their own.  This policy helped build political support for increasingly broad emancipation proclamations and eventually the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery altogether.

Grant’s biography is a reminder of how little we know of the capabilities that lie hidden in the hearts of those who have thus far failed abjectly.  I’m not generally a fan of “great man” theories of history, but it’s hard to imagine how the North would have won the war had Grant not played the role that he did.  When the slavers fired on Fort Sumter, they initiated a chain of events that would lead to the destruction of their society.  They probably little imagined that they would be defeated by a Methodist with a drinking problem.  And yet they were.