Millions of Americans loved Ulysses S. Grant, but, as so often with love, a relationship can be tough to assimilate from a outside. Grant did not woo a public. A rumpled man, he seemed shorter than he was. When he opened his mouth, cigars as good as whiskey went in, though couple of difference came out. His critics, afterwards as good as now, have disagreed over whether he should be condemned primarily as a brute of a general or a dupe of a president.
Courtesy of Geoffrey C. Ward
"The Prison Barber Shop," by B. Gillam, from Puck magazine, Jul 8, 1885.
A DISPOSITION TO BE RICH
How a Small-Town Pastors Son Ruined an American President, Brought upon a Wall Street Crash, as good as Made Himself a Best-Hated Man in a United States
By Geoffrey C. Ward
Illustrated. 418 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $ 28.95.
To those who adored him, he looked rsther than different. He as good as Lincoln saved a Union in a Civil War, though usually Grant lived to embrace a nation's thanks. And he won without ego. "There was no nonsense, no sentiment," wrote one private, "only a plain businessman of a Republic." The newspaperman Charles A. Dana called Grant "the most honest male you ever knew, with a rage that nothing could disturb."
One male did disquiet that temper. Grant would puncture his fingernails in to a armrests of his chair during a thought of him, as good as told a crony he longed for to kill him, "as you would a snake. you hold you should do it, too, though you do not instruct to be hanged for a killing of such a wretch." When Grant died a year later, upon Jul 23, 1885, a public blamed that "wretch," who pitied himself as "the best-hated male in a United States."
His name was Ferdinand ! Ward. In 1880, when just 28, he had swayed a former boss to become a partner in Grant & Ward, a Wall Street brokerage house. Ward reported startling profits, spasmodic doling out money to his partners. Grant believed he was rich. In reality, Ward was using a Ponzi scheme. In 1884, it blew up, bankrupting Grant as good as his family.
The writer of this elegant brand new autobiography of Ward, "A Disposition to Be Rich," is his great-grandson. For decades, Geoffrey C. Ward has told Americans stories of their ancestors. He has edited American Heritage, collaborated with a filmmaker Ken Burns as good as created esteemed books similar to "A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt" as good as "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise as good as Fall of Jack Johnson." All this time, he has freighted about a box of letters, preserved by his grandfather, documenting a tumble of his earnest family because of one heartless son.
In telling this personal tale, Ward relates his evil scrupulousness as good as narrative skill. Vivid, vital people overflow a pages. Ferdinand Ward's quarrelsome father, a Rev. Ferdinand Ward, went to admonish India as a immature man. Told that missionaries should die upon a spiritual battlefield, he concluded that it might be an excellent policy for his detested colleagues though not for himself, as good as returned to salary doctrinal battles in a small church in Geneseo, N.Y.
Ward's mother, Jane Shaw Ward, was pious, nervous as good as depressed. Young "Ferd" was often alone with her in "the dim parsonage," Geoffrey Ward writes. "It was fragrant with artificial flavouring alien in wooden boxes from India, though a carpets as good as curtains as good as furnishings were drab as good as worn, unfair sworn statement to a law of his mother's teaching: no one should expect virtue, no matter how conspicuous, ever to be rewarded in this world."
Many more people appear: Ward's honest brother, William, as good as his co-operator James D. Fish; not to menti! on actre sses as good as mistresses as good as Samuel Clemens. Even characters who fool around no purpose embrace scrutiny, often in endless footnotes. When a minute mentions Gen. Artemas Ward, a writer recounts a general's resentment of George Washington as good as his troubles with gout.
Perhaps this book follows family members during extreme length, though from them you get a truest design of Ferdinand Ward. "It is tough to certitude his word or confide in him as to anything," a Rev. Ferdinand Ward wrote of him to another of his children. "This you know as good well. There is no use denying it." But when Grant & Ward appeared to thrive, a prodigal repainted a dim parsonage as good as stuffed it with gifts, as good as they doubted their doubts. Money made them hold or wish to.
T. J. Stiles is a writer of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, that won a Pulitzer Prize as good as a National Book Award. He is essay a autobiography of George Armstrong Custer.
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