President Grant and the First Family at their cottage in Long Branch, New Jersey during the summer of 1870.
>>18428992Fellows in the background thankful to Massa Grant for setting them free.
even Sherman admitted Grant had no business being president
>>18428992Why does he always looked sad ?
>Julia Grant was the fifth child of Frederick and Ellen Dent, a Missouri plantation family. Her childhood was an idyllic one she mostly remembered consisting of long walks through the countryside, picking flowers, horseback riding, and fishing for minnows. Her mother had been noted for her beauty, but Julia did not inherit her looks and was considered the least attractive of the four Dent daughters; she also had a lifelong issue with lazy eye and so preferred to be photographed from the side. The Dents owned 30 or so slaves, which Julia also remembered being considered beloved members of the family.>She avidly read romance novels and was an indifferent student, especially at mathematics, although she enjoyed history, literature, and philosophy. Julia completed schooling at 17 and her third cousin James Longstreet, a junior army lieutenant, brought along his friend Ulysses Grant, also a recently minted lieutenant, on visits to the Dent home. Grant, who was 22, began pursuing her. Julia was polite but not initially open to his advances as she was only 18 and did not feel ready to make the leap from girlhood to womanhood, nor did she know anything much about dating aside from what she read in romance novels.
>The Mexican War began and Grant departed to serve in that conflict. Long afterwards, he would denounce the war as a mistake and a wrongful theft of Mexico's rightful territory, but at the time there is no indication he had any special feelings about the war. Julia also knew little about it, but when her suitor came back, fresh from experiencing the carnage of the battlefield for the first time, he seemed a little shaken and less boyish than he'd been when she first met him. She also knew that several of her former schoolmates had served in the war and didn't come back from Mexico.>Julia finally accepted his proposals and they married in August 1848 in a small ceremony at the Dent home. There wasn't room for a large wedding party and the sweltering Missouri summer weather would have discouraged it anyway. She adapted to the perpiatric life of a military spouse rather well, although her housekeeping skills were limited; she'd never had to learn any as a girl, the family servants always took care of all that. Julia could not cook to save her life despite some attempts; she finally gave up and let the family's cook handle meals and long afterward, as First Lady, she was embarrassed that she had no personal recipes to contribute to the White House cookbook.>Having little skill at math, Julia was not great at handling family finances; the military wives she knew often angered their husbands by spending recklessly and she was afraid to do that. Grant however never revoked her responsibility at handling the money; when she made an occasional mistake, he made up the difference.
>>18429035Grant was a heavy drinker, a total alcoholic
>The couple had four children born between 1850 and '58. Julia was not much of a writer and didn't have a strong capacity for self-reflection or probing her inner feelings. She didn't share her husband's self-discipline, a virtual requirement for a military man, and throughout her life started numerous projects she never completed. Grant never let his wife's somewhat limited mental furnishings bother him; he seems to have found them charming in their own way. His letters to her seldom discussed military affairs, politics, or other heavy topics.>The Civil War forced her to take on more responsibilities and deal with her husband's frequent absences and the ever-present danger of his being killed, injured, or captured as well as frequent moves around the country. Julia was also nagged by her upbringing; in Missouri, she was often told by locals that she was a Southerner by upbringing and manners and only supported the Union cause out of a sense of duty to her husband. She protested that her home state was part of the West, not the South, despite the attempts of some to convince her that Missouri was a Southern state and that secession was allowed by the Constitution; as proof of Julia's limited intellectual horizons, she confessed that she had no idea what the Constitution even was.
>>18429076Everyone drank back then; it was a near necessity due to water being unsafe to drink much of the time.
>Consequently, unlike some Civil War wives such as Varna Davis, Julia was no co-president and was happy to limit her role to domestic duties and raising the children. Sometimes her political naivety could be embarrassing. Once she purchased a gray bonnet at a shop in Louisville and some people told her she ought to not wear "Rebel gray." Julia was puzzled by that as she could not imagine anything un-patriotic about wearing an article of clothing. During the summer of 1862, she visited her husband at his headquarters in Corinth. En route, Julia unknowingly bunked in a plantation house that had been commandeered for use by the wives of some Confederate officers. The women were cordial enough, but felt she ought to know the Union cause was in error and some of them began singing Confederate battle songs. Julia left the room as she felt it would be wrong for her to listen to "the enemy's music.">The Dent family also felt similarly. This resulted in a few arguments with her father Frederick, who assured his daughter that the Constitution did not forbid a state to secede. At one point an exasperated Julia asked the obvious question: "Why then don't they simply write a new Constitution, one more suited to our present day?"
>>18429070>>18429064yeah idk man, she wasn't that pretty or particularly smart but Grant apparently saw something there he liked, whatever it was
>>18428992didn't know he crossed his legs while sitting
>>18429121It was common back then, before insecurecels started freaking out over it. It's a "fancy pose" like the classic Napoleon hand in jacket pose and contraposto e.g.
>>18429076Southern revisionist, Grant was a good man, slandered by men who meant no good. Theodore Roosevelt ranked him in the top 3 of presidents. Shame on you for perpetuating ignorant lies against him.
>>18430334>revisionistThe standard narrative until recently was that there were good men on both sides and the war was an unfortunate fraternal tragedy. Who's the real revisionist here? Drinking was the least of Grant's flaws. He was as arrogant and catty as any general in the war and had the unfortunate distinction of being the first of the corrupt pro-business candidates, a tradition which would continue throughout the Gilded Age.
>>18430389> there were good men on both sides and the war was an unfortunate fraternal tragedyI agree completely. I speak of Southern politicians and propagandists after the war who spread rumors and slandered men without good cause. There were corrupt men in Grant’s cabinet, but I cannot abide with the man himself being labeled corrupt.
