Grant & Taylor

Josiah Bunting III, is a soldier, educator, and author. His diverse and accomplished record includes eight years as superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute.

He is a trustee of the George C. Marshall Research Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and a former trustee of the American Association of Rhodes Scholars. Bunting chairs the National Civic Literacy Board at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Delaware.

He is the author of five books. Bunting’s work on Grant is one of the acclaimed new series of concise presidential biographies edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Lieutenant General Bunting resides with his family in Newport, Rhode Island.

Q: Why is Grant relevant today?

A: Grant represents a very pure and elemental sense of what I would call dutifulness. That is to say he gave himself completely to his mission, without calculating celebrity or glory. He was an unadorned general officer dedicated to accomplishing the task at hand. That, to me, is the relevance of Grant for this age. We are living in a time in which Americans, more than anything else, are captivated by riches and celebrity. Here’s a man who was basically interested in performing his mission, performing it properly, and getting home. We see that in some World War II generals, Omar Bradley and George C. Marshall come to mind, but nowadays we are a long way from that.

Q: In your opinion, what was Grant's greatest achievement as president?

A: I agree with Frederick Douglass, who said that Grant was the best guarantor that the legacy of Lincoln would be preserved, namely, in the work of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Grant was entirely sympathetic to what he took to be Lincoln’s last legacy, which was to preserve the results of the Civil War, at the heart of which was the country’s guarantee that the freedmen would be free, that they would be citizens, and that they would have their franchise. In Grant’s first inaugural, he talked about the importance of the passage of the 15th amendment, and there’s the Ku Klux Klan Act and the Enforcement Acts.

It’s really a question of historiography. Grant’s record in these and other areas was just not remembered, except by those who took a dim view of that record. Grant’s record of accomplishment as President has never been properly presented to the American public as it should be.

Q: You point out in your book that Grant's Native American policy is a particularly underappreciated aspect of his presidency. Why do you think that is so?

A: There are a couple of reasons: First, Grant’s policy irritated contemporary journalists to some degree, and confounded his close friends and associates Sherman and Sheridan, who thought it was a very misjudged policy. Second, Grant’s policy was submerged by other issues during his presidency.

Q: As an educator, if you had one "take-away point" for today's students to remember about Grant, what would it be?

A: That he had an uncalculated, uncalculating notion of service to the country in a cause that he thought was transcendently important. That’s it. This generation needs to have takeaways like that.

We’re in a time of happy revisionism for Grant. I’m encouraged by that.

Q: You are now working on a biography of George C. Marshall. Any comparison between Marshall and Grant?

A: Grant and Marshall were both managers of profound organizational genius who gave themselves to the mission at hand. They were not interested in glamour, glory, and all that. Both generals had a real instinct for the big jugular. That is, they were not distracted by other things. They got right at enemy.

Q: Most Americans do not think of Grant as having had a sense of humor. You mention in the bibliography of your book that Grant reveals a certain wisecracking spirit in his Memoirs. Do you have one or two favorite examples?

A: My favorite is his take on intellectualized generals like Henry W. Halleck. Grant noted that they took great pains to try to figure out what Frederick the Great, for example, would do in a given instance. But unfortunately, the rebels were thinking of something else, he said. In addition to his sense of humor, Grant has charity in describing others, he is almost always generous-hearted toward others in his writing.