SARGENT, Nathan. Public Men and Events.

...from the Commencement of Mr. Monroe's Administration in 1817 to the Close of Mr. Fillmore's Administration in 1853.

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1875.

8vo.; rust-color cloth stamped in gilt and blind

First edition, with Grant’s ownership signature “U.S. Grant,” on the front free endpaper, Jesse R. Grant’s library stamp on the front pastedown.

Sargent (1794-1875) was a leading Whig and Republican journalist who wrote vibrant and often scathing dispatches from Capitol Hill for the United States Gazette under the pen name Oliver Oldschool. Democrats and pro-slavery Whigs were favorite targets of his wit, and an 1842 description of John C. Calhoun in action on the Senate floor gives a good sampling of his style. “Mr. Calhoun utters his sentences with surprising rapidity and great indistinctness, pausing long between each; his voice is sharp, unmusical and unmodulated, he seems, therefore, to throw his sentences out by jerks, and to stop as if he had run plump against a post or a period. Every sentence seems to be an embodiment of a maxim, principle, or axiom…and his whole speech a string of these connected, if at all, by very distant ties of reasoning.” Whigs and Republicans rewarded him with a string of government sinecures, such as sergeant-at-arms of the House (1847-1851), register-general of the U.S. Land Office (1851-1853) and commissioner of customs (1861-1871). He wrote a campaign biography of Henry Clay in 1844 and a memoir, Some Public Men and Events (2 vols. 1875).

Grant was in the midst of the most important event in Sargent’s chronicle, the United States war against Mexico. Like a good Whig, Ulysses Grant deplored the conflict, but he swallowed his objections and followed his orders into the fray. He thought the war “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.” Two years of fighting in Mexico transformed Grant’s life, and gave him the experience that made his Civil War triumphs possible. The war matured Grant politically, intellectually and professionally; it schooled him in the politics of warmaking, and taught him that whether a war was just or not, once the shooting started “there were but few public men who would have the courage to oppose it. Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or history. Better for him, individually, to advocate ‘war, pestilence, and famine,’ than to act as obstructionist to a war already begun.”

The battlefields of Mexico taught him lifelong lessons about the dynamics of leadership as well as the grim realities of war. Grant cast a sharp, analytical eye over his superiors, noting the great difference between Zachary Taylor’s plain style and no-nonsense efficiency, and Winfield Scott’s pomp and grandiosity. “Both men were pleasant to serve under,” Grant wrote; “Taylor was pleasant to serve with.” Grant learned the difference between battles waged for sound strategic or tactical reasons, and those designed to puff the reputation of the attacker, and he saw the gruesome results that flowed from both. After surviving the battle of Palo Alto, Grant wrote home to Julia, describing how a Mexican cannon ball “struck close by me killing one man instantly, it nocked Capt. Page’s under jaw entirely off and broke in the roof of his mouth….Capt. Page is still alive,” but “the splinters from the musket of the killed soldier, and his brains and bones, knocked down two or three others…hurting them more or less.”

Such episodes stripped Grant of any illusions about the gallantry and glory of war, but he discovered, perhaps to his own surprise, that he liked it. Grant was the quartermaster for his regiment, and he chafed to get away from the supply depot and into the fighting. “You could not keep Grant out of battle,” said James Longstreet, and the quartermaster’s actions in the battle of Monterrey certainly proved the point. “My curiosity got the better of my judgment,” Grant admitted, “and I mounted a horse and rode to the front to see what was going on. I had been there but a short time when an order to charge was given, and lacking the moral courage to return to camp I charged with the regiment.” A third of the men in that charge were killed or wounded, but Grant survived unscathed. He further distinguished himself in the attack on Mexico City when, on his own initiative, he mounted a cannon in a church tower (over the fervent objections of the resident priest), and gave the Americans commanding fire power over the town.

It was a good war for Ulysses Grant, but he could not help seeing the damaging effect the conflict had on his own country as well as upon the Mexicans. “The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican War,” Grant said in memoirs, adding, “Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.” Grant was just as tough on himself, saying, “With a soldier the flag is paramount. I know the struggle with my conscience during the Mexican War. I have never altogether forgiven myself for going into that. I had very strong opinions on the subject. I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign.” Resignation would only come six years later, and not out of political principle, but from acute personal crisis.