Stan McChrystal  00:00

Grant believed that the Constitution was the governing document, and if we go back to his conduct during the Civil War, he had gotten broad latitude from President Lincoln to operate the armies to fight the war, but he'd very carefully limited the power they exercised to protect that of President Lincoln's. He believed that that's the way the system ought to work, and as soon as you looked for personal loyalty to a president over the Constitution, as soon as you allowed passionate decisions like he felt President Johnson had made, then you undermined the sanctity of that.

‍

Colleen Shogan  00:40

In August 1867, President Andrew Johnson shocked many Americans by suspending Secretary of War Edwin Stanton from his office. Stanton and Johnson were deeply at odds over plans for Reconstruction after the Civil War, and the president wanted the Secretary out of the way. In Stanton's place, Johnson appointed Ulysses S. Grant, the general who had led the Union Army to victory during the war, to serve as interim secretary during the fragile peace. The president's actions enraged radical Republicans in Congress, pitting two visions for the nation's future against each other, with Grant caught squarely in the middle. But as today's guest, General Stanley McChrystal argues, Grant's loyalty to the rule of law was more vital than any loyalty to power. So, what can we learn from Grant's courage under fire? I'm Colleen Shogan, and this is In Pursuit, a podcast that explores lessons from America's past to write the history of America's future. Episode 14: Ulysses S. Grant stands his ground. General McCrystal, welcome to In Pursuit.

‍

Stan McChrystal  01:52

Thanks for having me.

‍

Colleen Shogan  01:53

So we're here to talk about Ulysses S. Grant today, and I've long been fascinated by Grant, really because of the unusual start to his life, he had a very difficult early years, a lot of challenges. So, can you explain to us, you know, what his early life was like and how that led into all the success that he later experienced?

‍

Stan McChrystal  02:20

Well, absolutely. And first, Ulysses S. Grant actually didn't have a middle initial that was put by the register registrar at West Point when he reported. But he had a a growing up period in which he loved horses. He was not really interested in going to the military academy, but when he went to West Point, he excelled in things that were important to him. He did not excel in academics or the other parts of it. So he came out of West Point as a graduate, honorable but not one of the superstars. Early in his career, the Mexican War kicked off, and young Lieutenant Grant goes off to Mexico. He finds the war, and he writes about this to be a very unfair thing-a larger country picking on a weaker country, Mexico. But he actually performs incredibly well during the war and comes out with a really good, solid reputation. Then you get to the peacetime army after the completion of the Mexican War, and the peacetime army, to a great degree, was isolated outposts, often without your family, and people who had a weakness like he did for alcohol, the boredom, the loneliness,

‍

Colleen Shogan  03:43

missed his wife, right?

‍

Stan McChrystal  03:44

Exactly. All of those things come together, and although he reportedly and said that he actually loved the military service, he just wasn't doing very well. Didn't have the kind of self control, and so he left the military.

‍

Colleen Shogan  03:58

And that finds him in the 1850s. He's actually selling firewood on the streets of St. Louis. I mean, that's how down and out he was,

‍

Stan McChrystal  04:06

and it was intensely embarrassing to him because he would run into old comrades who would still be in the service or doing better. And here is Grant selling firewood, working in a tannery at one point, just clearly struggling to survive, and I think it gave him a sense of what adversity feels like. I'm not going to say it humbles you, but it makes you realistic about what the world is actually like.

‍

Colleen Shogan  04:38

How do we make sense of his meteoric rise during the Civil War, what lessons did he learn, perhaps from his earlier life, from his earlier military service, that impacted his tenure during the Civil War?

‍

Stan McChrystal  04:53

Yeah, it's a great question. Of course, the U.S. Army before the Civil War was 12,000 people. Once. The Civil War started. It went to hundreds of 1000s of people, so the requirement to to establish units, grow units, meant you need some trained professionals, and he was a trained professional. He knew at the junior level at least how to drill soldiers. He knew basic tactics. He had been part of a very successful operation in New Mexico, so while he hadn't led at senior levels, he had an exposure to that. So when the Civil War starts, he offers himself and proves himself very competent in raising regiments. And then, because things are going so fast, there's just this absolute need for any military competence you can find, because there just aren't many officers who've ever led soldiers before. So very early out in the West, he is given command and he establishes a reputation at Forts Donaldson and Henry of being decisive, of being unwilling to waver, and then of course, in the Battle of Shiloh, which was a a mixed reputational experience for him, he shows he's rock hard. There is a point at one night at at the evening of the first day when essentially the Union believes they're whipped, and someone says that to him. We got whipped today, and he says we'll whip them tomorrow. And it just shows the the strength of the man, the commitment.

‍

Colleen Shogan  06:31

He was a quartermaster in his earlier service. Explain to our audience what a quartermaster is and and why that was important?

‍

Stan McChrystal  06:39

Well, he was trained as an infantryman, although he was gifted as being a horseman, he was put in the position of being the quartermaster for a regiment. And in those days, the quartermaster had huge latitude in buying foodstuffs on the local market. In fact, he put together a very innovative way to make their own bread instead of buying bread to buy the the materials for it, make their own bread. He understood that at the end of the day, as soldiers say, amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics, and he understood that logistics decides what an army can do, almost like a dog's leash. And if you don't sort out the logistics, then you're never going to go very far. And this comes through all of his campaigns through the Civil War, right?

‍

Colleen Shogan  07:27

And yes, so in the Civil War, that actually comes into really good use because to move supplies, and he's really racing against the Confederacy to do that.

‍

Stan McChrystal  07:36

Everything is about moving relatively huge armies. The campaign around Vicksburg was really a logistics exercise. As he maneuvers forces, he establishes a canal, he builds roads, he does river crossings, all to position these massive amounts of foodstuffs and ammunition that you need where you need it, when you need it, and it gives him the ability to conduct operations that the Confederates actually didn't think he could do.

‍

Colleen Shogan  08:06

In your in pursuit essay, you one of the most finest points you argue of Grant's leadership actually occurs after the Civil War in 1868 with the Stanton Crisis. Some of our listeners may not be familiar with this? Can you explain what the concern was?

‍

Stan McChrystal  08:24

Sure, it was a constitutional crisis that most of us don't know about. In 1868, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, and that forbade the president from removing cabinet members from their positions. President Johnson, who had followed the slain President Lincoln, was at loggerheads with much of Congress, and he was pursuing a policy toward the South that many people thought was incorrect. Secretary Stanton, the Secretary of War, and he became in opposition, and so he fired the Secretary of War, and he told General Grant to replace him. General Grant, at that point, was General of the Army, and it's important to understand that because he wasn't just a general; he was the most famous general coming out of the Civil War. He was the obvious political force in the country, so everything he said and did had outsized focus on it. So he fires Stanton and basically takes on Congress, and he tells Grant to go in and fill the role. Grant does it, but he does it in a very constrained way. He says, "I will fill this role until Congress reestablishes or resigns.

‍

Colleen Shogan  09:52

They're on a long recess. This is different than than today. There were Congress recesses for one or two weeks, or maybe at most four weeks. But then. Recess for a while.

‍

Stan McChrystal  10:01

It's months, and so Grant goes in and fills the job, but he never assumes the job in the way that I am now the Secretary of War. He acts as a caretaker, and he does that because he believes that the Constitution says that the Tenure of Office Act is correct, and therefore his constitutional duty is to follow that, not loyalty directly to President Johnson. And so he does this. And as soon as Congress acts when they come back, he leaves the the office, goes right back to being general in the army.

‍

Colleen Shogan  10:36

Was Andrew Johnson happy about this after Grant's, you know, said, "Hey, the keys of the office are going back to Secretary Stanton.

‍

Stan McChrystal  10:44

Extraordinarily frustrated by it, and so you have the opportunity to have a war between the general of the army and this vice president, who, by act of assassination, becomes president. And it could have been a huge personality battle because President Johnson got very personal in his attacks and very public in his attacks, and what General Grant did was not take the bait. He just stepped back, he kept quiet, and he allowed events to transpire and showed himself the more disciplined person.

‍

Colleen Shogan  11:19

So, what kind of pressure did Grant come under when the president and Congress were arguing over Stanton's reinstatement, and what was at stake with this issue? I mean, obviously he was concerned about Johnson's own pursuit of his version of Reconstruction, but it was a larger constitutional question. Correct?

‍

Stan McChrystal  11:40

Grant believed that the Constitution was the governing document, and if we go back to his conduct during the Civil War, he'd gotten broad latitude from President Lincoln to operate the armies to fight the war, but he'd very carefully limited the power they exercised to protect that of President Lincoln's. He believed that that's the way the system ought to work, and as soon as you looked for personal loyalty to a president over the Constitution, as soon as you allowed passionate decisions like he felt President Johnson had made, then you undermined the sanctity of that.

‍

Colleen Shogan  12:20

Was there a conflict that he was serving even as an interim as Secretary of War while he was still the commander of the army?

‍

Stan McChrystal  12:29

I think he viewed it as a conflict, but because the president had told him to do it, you could make an argument that says no. But in reality, being in both of those roles now would be like being Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it would be an inherent conflict of interest. So I think that everybody thought the president-not everybody, but much of Congress and of course General Grant thought that President Johnson's decision was just flawed, and so they tried to navigate it as calmly as they could, and then reverse it.

‍

Colleen Shogan  13:05

What did Grant learn from that episode? Did that influence his future leadership when he becomes president of the United States himself?

‍

Stan McChrystal  13:13

It's hard to say. He was already being mentioned for the presidency at this point, so everybody knew that he was the most likely person to ascend to the job. I think it reinforced his belief that the Constitution was critical. But as we see, when he becomes a president, it's even more complex than he was prepared for. And many things about his presidency were effective, but there are also things we point to now that says that he wasn't fully prepared for the job in terms of knowledge of how the system worked.

‍

Colleen Shogan  13:48

Common criticism of Grant's presidency is these allegations of of corruption, which doesn't really square against everything else we know from Ulysses Grant. So, how do you make sense of that when you think about Grant as the totality of a person?

‍

Stan McChrystal  14:05

Yeah, I think of Grant as personally honest. I think of him as almost scrupulously so. I think of him as somewhat naive in the the ways that the world of business, which he had not really been a part of, or the world of politics functioned. Now, clearly, he'd learned a lot during the Civil Wars. He became increasingly senior general in his time as general of the army after that. But I think that he was caught in a web of personal loyalties, Naivete, and he is responsible for that. I'm not excusing the things that happened, but the reality was, I think that in most of those cases, he was caught flat-footed, and that was unfortunate.

‍

Colleen Shogan  14:55

Perhaps trusting people that he shouldn't have trusted, or maybe being too.

‍

Stan McChrystal  15:00

I think for sure, and if you think back, the military tries to build up the idea of trust. You trust your superiors, your subordinates with your life, and it's not really the perfect schoolhouse to prepare you for environments of either business, slightly corrupt business, or politics, or the game can be much more hard-edged.

‍

Colleen Shogan  15:24

One of the greatest achievements of Grant's career was the writing of his memoirs. Of course, writing them under dire circumstances, he knew he was dying of of cancer at that point of time, but yet wants to write his memoirs for a number of reasons, I understand that this is required reading by senior leadership in the military. Can you tell us what you learned from reading Grant's memoirs?

‍

Stan McChrystal  15:52

Well, the first thing you're exactly right. He wrote it with throat cancer, and he knew he was dying, and he needed the money for his family, not for himself. And so there was an impetus not just to get history down, but to take care of the loved ones. They are considered the standard for a military memoir, and they are because he is so plain-spoken, so clear. He he literally says what he's got to say in a way that has no obfuscation. There, there's in flowery language. Flowery language, it just cuts right to the heart of it. And his view of what was happening, not only in the part of the war he was in, but more broadly, was extraordinary. And so, I think anyone who's ever tried to write anything about their own careers, as I have. We start with that being the goal. That's a high 

‍

Colleen Shogan  16:45

goal. That's a big

‍

Stan McChrystal  16:46

understanding. We can't get anywhere close to it. But he had Mark Twain help edit it.

‍

Colleen Shogan  16:51

That's true, and so

‍

Stan McChrystal  16:52

that that helped.

‍

Colleen Shogan  16:53

Yeah, absolutely. And of course, you served in in the military for many many years, decades. So you must have some thoughts about this tension between civilian control or leadership of the military and also military command. So, how do you, when you look at this, how do you think about Grant?

‍

Stan McChrystal  17:12

Perfect. I, of course, I'm a great admirer of General Grant, but to the wider question, we talk about the balance between civilian and military roles. There's a tension to it, and it's a very delicate tension, because in reality, if either side doesn't uphold their part of the bargain, if the military doesn't remain apolitical, then it's a threat to civilian governance. If the civilian governance doesn't treat the military apolitically, then it doesn't work. And we've never in our country's history never had it completely right. We like a teeter totter. We go a little this way, that way. Sometimes that's big personalities come along. A Douglas MacArthur comes along, has an inflated view of themselves, and and sort of threatens that balance. But I think General Grant understood that at the end of the day, that was the critical thing. You had to try to maintain that balance, and it had to be separate from personalities. If he was a huge personality as general of the army, he shouldn't have outsized power there unless he runs for office and he's elected to it.

‍

Colleen Shogan  18:23

I worked for a senator who was on armed services, and I thought about this balance all the time because as we were, you know, performing functions of oversight on Senate Armed Services, but you also had to have a lot of respect for the military command and their expertise because even though members of Congress and senators travel abroad and try to enter theaters of war and understand what it's like on the ground, there is no substitute for the military leadership that is giving you the feedback who is who is actually fighting the wars or spending the time on the ground. So I saw that firsthand from the other side,

‍

Stan McChrystal  19:01

well, that's right. But I would tell you, for the military side, nor should the military be left uncontrolled. That's right. The military needs that control. It's it's like a really good marriage, a husband and wife. You know, one of you's always a little bit wrong, and the other's sort of reminding them. Right. And that's the kind of a balance, and it means you've got to take your ego and put it in check.

‍

Colleen Shogan  19:26

It should be a really good conversation that goes back and forth. It's a continuing dialog. That's how I always felt on armed services when it was working well.

‍

Stan McChrystal  19:33

A constant dialog, and one of the challenges, and I've talked about this before, is because the military grows up in sort of a guild, they don't know many politicians until they get pretty senior, and politicians don't know many military people until they're pretty senior. I would love to find a system where, at younger ages, they interact so that you have some confidence. Because a military person with all the uniforms and medals can be pretty intimidating, but they're just a person in there.

‍

Colleen Shogan  20:06

That's right.

‍

Stan McChrystal  20:07

And so what you've got to do is create the ability to communicate without these huge walls between us.

‍

Colleen Shogan  20:13

Now the military used to give some fellows that would do legislative fellowships for a year, and I think that was very productive.

‍

Stan McChrystal  20:19

I think it is, and any time I remember Senator Lieberman coming with Senator McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham to visit us, and the three of them were representative of people who could communicate with the military well. They all brought their strengths and weaknesses, but they did it beautifully, and it's important that that dialog constantly go on because, particularly when I was deployed 1000s of miles from the U.S. what they see and read can be very different from what we're actually doing. And they come out there and they see it and they go, "Oh, that's what you're doing. That's why it's actually a reasonable Approach

‍

Colleen Shogan  21:01

absolutely in pursuit. Of course, we're looking to have just these types of conversations and and dialogs. So, can you explain to us what can we learn from Ulysses Grant?

‍

Stan McChrystal  21:13

Well, one, he was an ordinary man. He wasn't 10 feet tall. He wasn't brilliant. He wasn't rock strong with his self discipline. He was very flawed, but he was also very committed to certain ideas. And so, all of us can be that. You know, there are some people you see in history say, "I could never be Alexander the Great because he was great. You could be Ulysses S. Grant if you chose to be that, and so I think what we can learn is, most of the leaders in our history are you and I, in that situation, who chose to live by the standards that we know are important.

‍

Colleen Shogan  21:55

Well, General McChrystal, thank you so much for joining us for In Pursuit, and what a wonderful conversation! And thank you for your service,

‍

Stan McChrystal  22:01

Colleen. A great honor. Thank you.

‍

Colleen Shogan  22:03

To read General Stanley McChrystal's essay on Ulysses S. Grant and to enjoy other great In Pursuit essays and podcasts, visit in pursuit.org. In Pursuit with Colleen Shogun is a podcast by More Perfect. The series is written and produced by Jim Ambuske, production services provided by Stand Together. Our theme music is Kleos by Charlie Ryan. Audio mixing by Curt Dahl of CD Squared. Please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast app, and tell us which Americans inspire you.

‍