BRIEF THOUGHTS ON US GRANT'S "ALCOHOLISM"

FORUM PROMPT: How would you characterize Grant’s drinking?

 

As much as I hate to take the wishy-washy position of saying that Grant’s drinking habits lie somewhere between Sacco’s assessment of relative sobriety and Chernow’s assessment of alcoholism, I think that is the most fair position. Grant’s drinking problem was most likely more severe than Sacco characterizes, but less severe than Chernow characterizes. Rather than focus on whether Grant was or was not an alcoholic, I think it is more useful to analyze the factors which make this a debated issue. 

 

The biggest obstacle in determining an accurate picture of Grant’s drinking is the lack of primary source accounts. Both Sacco and Chernow lamented the small number of primary sources available, which were mostly second hand stories written years after Grant’s death. There are a number of reasons why accurate, timely records of Grant’s drinking are absent from history. 

 

First, the soldiers under General Grant respected him and did not want to embarrass him by revealing his drinking problem. One of the soldiers’ accounts which Chernow referenced, briefly mentioned Grant’s drinking, but quickly backtracked, saying that he should really not talk about it. Grant was a very successful general and his men sought to protect his reputation. However, if his drinking would have come to the point of getting in the way of his leadership, soldiers surely would have been more willing to write complaints about him in their diaries and letters home.

 

Second, those who witnessed his drinking did not want to ruin his reputation while he was still alive. Many of the accounts about Grant’s drinking were written or published years after Grant’s death. On the one hand, these could have been written by those who had a bone to pick with Grant and knew he wouldn’t be able to refute the stories once he was dead. They may have exaggerated the extent of his drinking in an effort to mar his memory. On the other hand, they could have been written by people who did not want Grant to live to see himself disgraced, and thus waited to expose his drinking problem. The sources available are most likely a mix of the two. 

 

I would also like to look at whether Grant’s drinking, which seemed to be a moderate problem, but not necessarily alcoholism, was justified. Grant had fought in multiple wars and had been away from his family for a prolonged period of time. Not that this was an excuse for Grant to be drunk when he was supposed to be leading a group of soldiers, but in the off time, it is understandable to see why Grant would turn to alcohol in the same way many soldiers throughout history have and many soldiers continue to in the present. At this time, and even today, resources for soldiers dealing with PTSD and other trauma related to being in war were lacking. Grant’s drinking problem was probably less of an out of control alcohol addiction, and more of an unhealthy coping mechanism. 

 

Regardless of the severity of Grant’s drinking problem, which I’m sure will always be a debate for historians, it is more important to assess the motives for the accounts of his drinking that are available, and look at the factors that may have led to the development of a drinking problem for Grant or others in the Civil War. These two topics are much more interesting to debate because they analyze the rationale of historical figures which can be compared, contrasted, and corroborated with the rationale of people in similar situations today. Saying that Grant did or did not have a drinking problem does not change the way we view history, but looking at Grant’s motivations for drinking and the motivations his contemporaries had for diminishing or exaggerating its severity can allow us to see these complex people in new ways.