Tenacity: Remembering U.S. Grant

While the eyes of the nation were on Gettysburg this past Fourth of July weekend, the 150th anniversary of that three-day battle, we should not neglect Ulysses S. Grant’s great victory at Vicksburg, MS on July 4, 1863.

On this day Generals Grant and George Sherman made their triumphal way into the surrendered, starving and surrounded citadel of Vicksburg, MS, which had been considered by both sides to be impregnable. The South was split; Grant had destroyed both the Southern armies facing him, and Lincoln knew he had found true leaders to win the war.

What people may not remember is that it took over a year of slogging through what was then called “Swamp-east Missouri,” the then swamp lands of Pemiscot, Dunklin, Stoddard, and New Madrid Counties through which Grant built ramps, canals and dams in order to move his large army from St Louis and Memphis to attack Vicksburg. Unlike Generals Winfield Scott Hancock and George Meade at Gettysburg who failed to follow up their victory and who let Lee escape to fight again and again, Grant destroyed the armies facing him at Shiloh, Ft. McDonald and Vicksburg. Further, Grant overcame depression, drunkenness and defeats in delivering this real deathblow to the South and to slavery on July 4, 1863.

A year before Grant had turned two initial disasters, at Shiloh and at Fort McDonald in northern Tennessee, into the first major Union victories, and U.S. Grant became “Unconditional Surrender” Grant for his tenacity and refusal to accept anything but surrender from his opposing fellow graduates of West Point, most of whom fought for the South.

In my office in the State Capitol I display a marvelous portrait of Grant in a 125-year old Missouri oak frame. Grant grew up in Ohio, Illinois and Missouri in an environment in which blacks were referred to by the “n” word and he himself referred to them as “darkies.” As the war progressed Grant and his chief lieutenants (particularly chief cavalry officer Philip Sheridan) became great champions of what they finally termed “The Freedmen.” By the war’s end some 15-20% of all Union soldiers were African-Americans.

It was Grant and Sheridan who promoted the The Freedmen’s Bureau. Until Grant left the presidency after eight years, they maintained the rights of the Freedmen by frequent interventions of the military to stop Southern and KKK atrocities against blacks. Only after Grant left office did Jim Crow and the Klan come into ascendancy, unleashing a tragic legacy that did not end until the modern Civil Rights movement.

As many graveyards are newly rediscovered the Civil War casualty figure grows and now approaches 750,000 dead – twice as many deaths from all other American wars, including the First and Second World Wars combined.

As a Missouri House Democrat, we are in the minority.  But we in the minority should never forget the lessons of the St. Louis- and Memphis-based Army of Ulysses S. Grant – Unconditional Surrender Grant – in our battle for the common man and woman, and equality for Missourians. Thankfully we no longer engage in bloodshed to solve disputes, but Missourians will benefit if we adopt Grant’s tenacity and focus on long-term results rather than the daily skirmishes.

Grant lived out Winston Churchill’s famous dictum in WWII: “Never give up. Never give up. Never give in.”

Love your country. Love what Grant stood for in 1863: Victory and freedom over tremendous odds.