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842475b
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Washington dwelt upon the transcendent importance of education underscores the stigma that he felt about having missed college. As president, he lectured a young relative about to enter college that "every hour misspent is lost forever" and that "future years cannot compensate for lost days at this period of your life."15" --
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Ron Chernow |
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03d20ff
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The blessings and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary, but especially so in times of public distress and danger," he assured his men, hoping "that every officer and man will endeavor so to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country."
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Ron Chernow |
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a546666
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When the couple rode by the shore one day, John became so enraged at Fidelia that he drove their carriage straight into Chesapeake Bay. When Fidelia asked where he was going, John replied with a sneer, "To hell, Madam." To which she retorted boldly, "Drive on, sir."17"
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Ron Chernow |
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ce937a9
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we must consult our means rather than our wishes."36"
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Ron Chernow |
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b50c577
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These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
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Ron Chernow |
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fffe9a9
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This is the true secret . . . that wherever a regiment is well officered, the men have behaved well--when otherwise, ill--the [misconduct] or cowardly behavior always originating with the officers, who have set the example.
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Ron Chernow |
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9cf60bd
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It is the child of avarice, the brother of inequity, and father of mischief. It has been the ruin of many worthy families, the loss of many a man's honor, and the cause of suicide. To all those who enter the list, it is equally fascinating. The successful gamester pushes his good fortune till it is overtaken by a reverse. The losing gamester, in hopes of retrieving past misfortunes, goes on from bad to worse."37 Washington"
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Ron Chernow |
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cac658d
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While the folks at home embraced him as an improbable hero, Washington was denigrated in England as a reckless young warrior and in France as an outright assassin. He would have been crestfallen to know that, for some high-ranking folks in London, his behavior only confirmed that
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Ron Chernow |
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e8f5355
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Man proposes and God disposes.
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Ron Chernow |
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e1e4693
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Simon Wolf wrote during Woodrow Wilson's tenure, "President Grant did more on behalf of American citizens of Jewish faith at home and abroad than all the Presidents of the United States prior thereto or since."
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Ron Chernow |
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b88c984
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Willing to take heat on the issue, Grant showed courage and fairness in endorsing merciful treatment for Lee. "Although it would meet with opposition in the North to allow Lee the benefit of Amnesty," Grant told Halleck, "I think it would have the best possible effect towards restoring good feeling and peace in the South to have him come in."33 Any chance for such a harmonious outcome was shattered in late May when federal judge John C. Und..
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Ron Chernow |
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2228962
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George Washington possessed the gift of inspired simplicity, a clarity and purity of vision that never failed him. Whatever petty partisan disputes swirled around him, he kept his eyes fixed on the transcendent goals that motivated his quest. As sensitive to criticism as any other man, he never allowed personal attacks or threats to distract him, following an inner compass that charted the way ahead. For a quarter century, he had stuck to a..
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president
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Ron Chernow |
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bf377a2
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As president, he lectured a young relative about to enter college that "every hour misspent is lost forever" and that "future years cannot compensate for lost days at this period of your life."15"
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Ron Chernow |
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4b7fd23
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Washington grew as a leader because he engaged in searching self- criticism. "I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors," he once wrote. "The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this, because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults or remove prejudices which are imbibed against him."41 The one thing Washington could not abide was when people published criticisms of him without first giving him a chance to re..
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Ron Chernow |
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0ba284c
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The outside world may have wondered about Grant's sympathies, but his private statements leave no room for conjecture about his inexorable drift toward Radical Republicanism. Welles later speculated that by fall 1866, Grant "was secretly acting in concert with the Radicals to deceive and beguile the President."80 Grant didn't regard it as deception so much as adhering to bedrock principles, telling Badeau he had "never felt so anxious about..
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Ron Chernow |
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3247ef0
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The speech lacked soaring cadences or memorable lines, yet it touched on two explosive issues at the finale. He advised Native Americans that their days as a hunting, gathering people were numbered and that he favored "civilization, christianization and ultimate citizenship" for them.89 Then, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Grant championed black suffrage."
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Ron Chernow |
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ed47892
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Grant's postwar fame didn't spare him the bane of his father-in-law's glaring presence. After he and Julia settled into their Georgetown home, Colonel Dent had no qualms about moving in with them, forcing the victorious Union general to tolerate under his roof a cranky, unrepentant rebel who pontificated about the North violating southern rights.
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Ron Chernow |
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955f4c5
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Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"49"
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Ron Chernow |
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599474a
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John Adams summed up the case succinctly: "In general, our generals have been outgeneralled."
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Ron Chernow |
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4926c0d
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Henceforth he would project himself into opponents' minds and comprehend their fears and anxieties instead of blowing them up into all-powerful bugaboos, giving him courage when others quailed.
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Ron Chernow |
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039b1b1
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In early June, Grant traveled to St. Louis, where he had gained possession of White Haven and an additional 280 acres from the Dent family. It was another strange, dreamlike transformation of his life from his dreary years there in the 1850s. Now he was master of the plantation he had first visited fresh out of West Point, and Colonel Dent, having suffered a crippling stroke, depended upon him and Julia. Grant planned to spend several weeks..
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Ron Chernow |
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e103f0c
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Thomas Nast published an election cartoon entitled "Victory!" that showed Grant mounted on a white horse, waving a flag bedecked with the words "Union" and "Equal Rights," as he thrust his sword into the throat of Horatio Seymour, who sat astride a black horse with the initials "K.K.K." branded ominously on its flank."
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Ron Chernow |
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307f526
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As a West Point graduate, Grant had enjoyed an insider's knowledge of military personnel during the war, but as a Washington outsider, he needed the valuable advice of seasoned professionals about appointments.
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Ron Chernow |
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77d16d6
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The world of politics was filled with duplicitous people and Grant was poorly equipped to spot them, remaining an easy victim for crooked men. "They studied Grant, some of them, as the shoemaker measures the foot of his customer," wrote George Hoar." --
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Ron Chernow |
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5a83a2b
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On February 7, President Johnson met at the White House with five black leaders, including Frederick Douglass, who came to lobby for a civil rights bill. The black leaders were treated in a tasteless, abusive manner. After they shook hands with the president, their spokesman, George T. Downing, said they hoped he would support voting rights for blacks, which elicited a bizarre, rambling monologue from Johnson. He admitted to having owned sl..
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Ron Chernow |
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1df9e07
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In discussing this Romanian bloodletting with Simon Wolf, Grant declared that "respect for human rights" was the "first duty" of any head of state and that blacks and Jews should be elevated to a rank of "equality with the most enlightened." Grant showed surprising passion on the subject, saying "the story of the sufferings of the Hebrews of Roumania profoundly touches every sensibility of our nature."
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Ron Chernow |
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e5eb39d
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Reared with Methodist modesty, he could never admit nakedly to the true depth of his ambition. In this way, he was strictly Hannah Grant's son, not Jesse's. Ethical and honorable, he wanted to receive jobs based squarely on his merits, a faith he held so unalterably he called it "one of my superstitions."
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Ron Chernow |
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593f953
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Grant worded his message to remove any suspicion that he spoke for a particular religious denomination. Also buried in his statement was a courageous, farsighted plea for free, universal education for black children. The laconic Grant's crusade for public education was a unique event in his presidency, the result of a riveting speech that had forced an issue on the national consciousness through powerful oratory.
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Ron Chernow |
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e33e53a
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It quickly became apparent that a new president could not be named because three of the contested states with warring governments--South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana--filed one set of election certificates for Hayes and another for Tilden. Their returning boards, which verified the election returns, were in Republican hands, further tainting the results in Democratic eyes. Faced with this agonizing dilemma, Congress in mid-December call..
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Ron Chernow |
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7d6d267
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On June 20, at Johnson's behest, Attorney General James Speed ordered the U.S. attorney in Norfolk to abandon Lee's prosecution. On the same day, Grant informed Lee that no further actions would be taken to place him behind bars. Lee predicted that the government would procrastinate in granting his pardon, though he couldn't have predicted that his civil liberties and right to vote would not be restored until Johnson's broad amnesty in Dece..
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Ron Chernow |
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039385a
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The White Liners didn't bother with any such pretense of civility or restraint. On October 7, John Milton Brown, the sheriff of Coahoma County, reported a "perfect state of terror" had seized his jurisdiction. "I have been driven from my county by an armed force. I am utterly powerless to enforce law or to restore order."93 Disheartened by Grant's refusal to rush troops to Mississippi, Ames sat brooding and besieged in the governor's mansio..
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Ron Chernow |
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a43cf73
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Grant adopted unusual precautions, returning to the Willard Hotel twice daily for meals and staying indoors at night. When he set eyes on images of John Wilkes Booth, he immediately recognized the sinister horseman who had shadowed his path to the train station and knew that he himself had stood on the death list of intended victims.
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Ron Chernow |
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1c1a0e3
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In February 1866, he testified before Congress to oppose suffrage for former slaves: "My own opinion is that, at this time, they cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the right of suffrage would open the door to a great deal of demagoguism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways."
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Ron Chernow |
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27c6144
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The feud between Sherman and Stanton exposed a deep fissure that would shortly divide the country over Reconstruction. With the war ending, Sherman's old fondness for the South became more apparent. His views on slavery had remained strictly reactionary. When teaching in Louisiana before the war, he had written, "I would not if I could abolish or modify slavery . . . Negroes in the great numbers that exist here must of necessity be slaves."..
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Ron Chernow |
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7ef1dd9
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By the end of 1865, so-called Black Codes began to forge a new caste system in the South, a segregated world where freed slaves worked as indentured servants, subject to arrest if they left jobs before their annual contracts expired. It was a cruel new form of bondage, establishing the foundations of the Jim Crow system that later ruled southern race relations. In South Carolina, blacks were confined by law to their plantations, forced to w..
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Ron Chernow |
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ac0f3ce
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On September 9 the tour touched its nadir in St. Louis when Johnson, in another intemperate outburst, had the gall to blame Congress for the New Orleans riot: "Every drop of blood that was shed is upon their skirts, and they are responsible for it."67 Turning himself into a martyr, he proclaimed, "I have been traduced. I have been slandered. I have been maligned."
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Ron Chernow |
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2131c59
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The trial wasn't the finest hour of American justice as the treatment of the prisoners seemed medieval in its barbarism. Almost all of the male prisoners were dragged into the courtroom with linen masks shielding their faces and chains and heavy iron balls strapped to their ankles. With clanking irons, they shuffled in and, once seated, their hoods were removed. The military commission took testimony for seven weeks and ultimately found all..
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Ron Chernow |
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76ab901
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90 In the words of Frederick Douglass, "That sturdy old Roman, Benjamin Butler, made the negro a contraband, Abraham Lincoln made him a freeman, and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant made him a citizen."
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Ron Chernow |
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201aace
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An essential difference between the American and French revolutions was that the American version allowed a search for many truths, while French zealots tried to impose a single sacred truth that allowed no deviation. " page 714"
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american
american-revolution
french-revolution
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Ron Chernow |
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052a6e3
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it would have been better never to have made a sacrifice of blood and treasure to save the Union than to have the democratic party come in power now and sacrifice by the ballot what the bayonet seemed to have accomplished."90 Grant had striven to protect the black community, met regularly with black leaders, and given them unprecedented White House access, making global abolitionism an explicit aim of American foreign policy. In his annual ..
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Ron Chernow |
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2e0fcb1
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Greeley campaigned from the back of a train, delivering scores of speeches and previewing the whistle-stop style that later marked presidential campaigns. His campaign stumbled from the start and never found a secure footing. He was kept busy explaining his history of derogatory statements about Democrats. "I never said all Democrats were saloon keepers," he protested. "What I said was that all saloon keepers were Democrats."
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Ron Chernow |
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e9a505c
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112 In another message he wrote, "I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three." --
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Ron Chernow |
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c8ecde1
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livelihood."58 Grant promised to send the Oglala Sioux large herds of sheep and cattle for raising stock and to build schools that would teach them English. For the Indians, however, this didn't mean salvation so much as the wanton destruction of their traditional culture. Grant"
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Ron Chernow |
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c435a2a
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With snow-white hair and a massive forehead, Bismarck, in military uniform, welcomed Grant with both hands extended. Turning on the charm, he expressed surprise that Grant was only seven years his junior. "That shows the value of a military life," he remarked, "for here you have the frame of a young man, while I feel like an old one."70 Grant was entranced by the flow of wit that emanated from the worldly Bismarck with his imposing physique..
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Ron Chernow |