He was the most fascinating of all those characters I think yeah but Grant uh he was a most unlikely
candidate to be ultimately the commander in chief of the Union Army and President of the
United States for that matter I mean he when they sent him to West Point the people of
his his town were they said they were embarrassed that they had sent such a creature uh he he
was essentially an indifferent student he was at the bottom of his class well not the
total bottom but he was down there and uh he did in fact perform very well in the Mexican
War but he was a Quartermaster uh they wouldn't give him uh top infantry or cavalry jobs but
he was very brave and then he of course continued in the army and he wound up out in California
uh drinking a lot and it got him in trouble and he essentially had to resign from the
army and then he sort of bumbled along in a series of jobs uh real estate salesman and
failed farmer and he wound up working for his father in a leather goods store in Ohio
and uh and when the war broke out uh he he could not seem to get a commission in the
regular army but the governor of the state gave him a commission to train recruits and
he did it so well that they gave him more recruits until finally he had what constituted
a brigade and that a required a brigadier general and suddenly Grant is a general now
general once you've reached the rank of general you're up in the stellar uh group of commanders
it's quite different from the jump from colonel to general and generals have essentially commands
of their own they can do what they want to do within reason and Grant clearly saw uh
whereas some of the other Union commanders did not see that uh an offensive forceful
move uh out of the the the Cairo Illinois which was the sort of jumping off point down
some way down the Mississippi River Valley either the Mississippi River or the Tennessee
River or one of those rivers Grant was determined that he was going to have an amphibious operation
and this was almost unheard of uh but he got along well with the navy and he uh they they
had the transport to take his army uh hundreds of the vessels and they had ironclad boats
to protect them Sherman was brilliant uh I I read his writings and I marvel at them he's
so like Lindbergh he really had has a gift for gab or a gift for writing and he's a very
smart guy he's intellectual uh but he he was essentially he didn't show it but uh I mean
he was gruff he he wasn't a pretentious intellectual Sherman uh he married well and but he too
got out of the army uh because he couldn't make a living in it wound up he was a president
of a bank that failed and then he was a president of a street car company but when the war came
along he was immediately was made a colonel in the regular army and he fought at Manassas
first Manassas and wound up uh unfortunately uh making a statement that got him in a lot
of trouble he secretary of war was visiting his command in Kentucky and secretary of war
asked him how many people do you think it will take to subdue this uh rebellion in the
Mississippi River Valley and Sherman told him he thought it would take two hundred and
fifty thousand men there weren't two hundred and fifty thousand men in the entire army
at that point and this news got back through the secretary of war uh to the newspapers
having the secretary of war suggest that this was a crazy idea and the newspapers seized
on that and said Sherman was crazy and that he was insane and so on and it literally drove
him from his command and he he wound up uh getting his command back uh as a Quartermaster
essentially what Grant used to be but he was so good that Grant they they functioned very
well together and Grant then made him his second in command uh at at Shiloh This excerpt
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