To Rescue the Republic

August 16, 2021
Fox News anchor Baier (Three Days at the Brink) paints a flattering portrait of Ulysses S. Grant in this breezy revisionist history. Drawing analogies to today’s partisan discord, Baier focuses on “Grant’s resolve and heroism in times of unparalleled turmoil,” including his command of the Union Army during the Civil War; his two-term presidency (1868–1876), which encompassed the most hard-fought years of Reconstruction; and his controversial brokering of a “grand bargain” in the contested 1876 election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden. Baier claims that “we are so accustomed to dwelling on the failures of Reconstruction that we often overlook its successes,” including the 15th Amendment, which Grant helped push through in 1870, the election of the first Black U.S. senators, and the passage of the Enforcement Act, which Grant argued was necessary to curb racist violence in the South. Baier also refutes critics who fault Grant for supporting the withdrawal of federal troops from the South by claiming that Democrats and Republicans “were ready to give the Southern states a chance to do the right thing on their own,” and that “it’s unclear what more could have been done... short of permanent military occupation.” Though many readers will disagree with that assessment, Baier succeeds in humanizing Grant and clarifying the complex factors behind his decision-making. This is an accessible and nuanced introduction to an oft-misunderstood figure American history.

September 1, 2021
The latest book of pop history from the chief political anchor for Fox News. The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which Baier witnessed in his capacity as a political reporter and anchor, gave new meaning to the turmoil surrounding the 1876 presidential election. In this conventional biography of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) designed for general readers who have not studied the era, the election occupies only 50 pages near the end. A mediocre West Point cadet, Grant achieved little glory in the Mexican-American War, resigned his commission, and struggled to earn a living. The beginning of the Civil War found him clerking in a leather goods shop and farming. The only West Point graduate in the area, he was chosen to lead local units; after six months of intense activity against minor Confederate posts and lobbying by his congressman, a friend of Lincoln, Grant became a general. He turned out to be the most aggressive and imaginative Union commander. A national idol after Appomattox in 1865, he easily won presidential elections in 1868 and 1872. Recent historians have upgraded his performance in office, but Baier holds the traditional view that Grant was an honorable man but a poor politician surrounded by scoundrels. Scandals occurred regularly, and his final months in office were preoccupied by the mess following the 1876 election, which saw a closely contested battle that the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, barely won. As in his previous books on FDR, Eisenhower, and Reagan, Baier relies heavily on other biographies, including Ron Chernow's superior Grant (2017), and Grant's own memoirs, a straightforward and plainspoken history. Throughout, the author can't resist the use of invented dialogue and conjectures of historical figures' inner thoughts, but he gets the facts right. Better Grant biographies are not in short supply; readers should seek them out instead of this one.

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September 15, 2021
Until recently, historians have tended to focus on the rampant corruption that took place during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant. Famed as a war hero who wasn't deeply politically ambitious, Grant was an ideal candidate to succeed the tumultuous administration of the impeached Andrew Johnson. Baier (Three Days at the Brink, 2020) surveys Grant's life from his Midwestern origins through his undistinguished West Point education, his military successes leading Union forces, and his 1868 elevation to the Presidency. But, Baier argues, Grant's greatest political contribution was in his mediation of the disputed election of 1876 to choose his successor. Electoral results proving inconclusive, Grant proposed a commission to settle the election. Republican Rutherford Hayes was declared the election's victor, but at the cost of withdrawal of Federal troops from the South, leaving the formerly enslaved population at the mercy of its old enslavers and commencing Jim Crow segregation. Baier finds parallels to contemporary politics in this, which makes his account all the more compelling.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.