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![Ulyssess S. Grant, 1864 in City Point, VA Ulyssess S. Grant, 1864 in City Point, VA](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/aarpe/en/home/entertainment/books/info-2017/ron-chernow-interview/_jcr_content/root/container_main/container_body_main/container_body1/container_body_cf/container_image/articlecontentfragment/cfimage.coreimg.50.932.jpeg/content/dam/aarp/entertainment/books/2017/10/1140-ron-chernow-grant-portrait.jpg)
Author Ron Chernow, whose biography of Alexander Hamilton became the inspiration for the runaway Broadway hit Hamilton, tackles Ulysses S. Grant in his new book, Grant. A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, Chernow explores Grant’s remarkable rise from a failed businessman to commander of the Union Army to his ascension to the nation’s highest office. Chernow spoke to AARP about some of the early setbacks Grant encountered and the forces that influenced the life, perspective and impact of a man whose name is familiar, but whose struggles and successes have not been so apparent. Excerpts:
![Ron Chernow Ron Chernow](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/aarpe/en/home/entertainment/books/info-2017/ron-chernow-interview/_jcr_content/root/container_main/container_body_main/container_body1/container_body_cf/body_one_cf_one/par1/articlecontentfragmeImage1/cfimage.coreimg.50.932.jpeg/content/dam/aarp/entertainment/books/2017/10/1140-ron-chernow-author.jpg)
Your biography of Alexander Hamilton inspired a Broadway musical that has become a cultural phenomenon. Your biography of George Washington won the Pulitzer Prize. Why did you choose Grant as your next subject?
I had always wanted to do a book about the Civil War and Reconstruction. Grant's life is the perfect prism through which to view those two periods. Reconstruction is really the second act of the same drama and reversed many of the gains of the Civil War. It was Grant who not only was the victorious general during the Civil War, but who also carried on Lincoln's legacy preserving the Union and ensured that justice be [carried out for] the 4 million former slaves who had become full-fledged U.S. citizens with the right to vote. There was an enormous amount of resistance to that, particularly in the white South, and an extraordinary amount of violence. And Grant showed great courage both during the war and then during Reconstruction, in terms of protecting 4 million freed slaves.
What surprised you the most about Grant?
One of the things has to do with how consistent he was in his commitment to protecting and advancing the African-American community. He was born into an abolitionist family in southwest Ohio, but he marries into a family who at various times owned as many as 30 slaves. He had a lot of antislavery views but thought the abolitionists were kind of troublemakers. But Grant was a very, very honest man. He initially had doubts as to whether blacks were capable of being good soldiers, but then from his own observation, he saw that, in fact, they were extraordinarily brave and capable soldiers. His views begin to evolve and he becomes extraordinarily important in terms of pushing for the expansion of the number of black troops fighting on the Union side. This endeared him to Lincoln. Grant shows the capacity to grow and learn and change that I very much associate with great figures in history.
In the early stages of his life, where he experienced one failure after another and he was forced out of the Army because of the drinking problem, he seems like a likable and decent person, but provincial, and it seems like a small, narrow life in many ways. Yet he grows into a much larger figure than one could possibly have imagined.
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