La Cañada scholar learned volumes while researching his expansive book on Ulysses S. Grant
La Cañada resident and noted scholar Ronald C. White, author of the 2010 best-selling “A. Lincoln: A Biography” as well as two other biographies on the Great Emancipator, is well-versed in Civil War history.
In his studies of the era, White had come to know the figure of Ulysses S. Grant — a West Point graduate who served honorably in the Mexican War but was working as a clerk in his father’s Illinois leather goods store in 1861 when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter — and his subsequent rise to become the symbol of Union victory in the Civil War.
But of the man himself, White admits, he knew very little.
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“Ulysses S. Grant was obviously a part of my Lincoln biography. I knew what he did,” White said in a recent interview. “But after a year I came to a personal confession — I didn’t really know this man. And I don’t think most Americans do, either.”
In his effort to better understand “from the inside out” the war hero whose later presidency would come to be associated with administrative scandals and a Civil War Reconstruction period fraught with uncertainty, White set out on what would be a seven-year scholarly expedition into the life and writings of America’s 18th president.
The result of that deep dive, “American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant,” is a 650-page tome that aims to restore the Civil War general and two-term president to his former place of prominence in American scholarship and, perhaps more importantly, the American mindset.
“American Ulysses” was released by Random House on Oct. 4 and is already enjoying popularity as its La Cañada author travels as part of a national book tour, speaking at events from coast to coast.
On Wednesday, White brings the discussion closer to home when he arrives at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena for a 7 p.m. talk and book signing. After that, he is scheduled for a Nov. 10 appearance at San Marino’s Huntington Library, where he has a research fellowship.
White attributes much of the misunderstandings about his subject to revisionist history undertaken by postwar “Lost Cause” Southerners who aimed to advance a nostalgic view of the Confederacy and to tarnish Grant as a butcher of thousands.
But in his years of research, which included several readings of the 33-volume “The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant” as well as untold trips to experience Civil War battle sites first hand, White began to come away with a different picture of the man called the Hero of Appomattox.
“I didn’t know Grant the husband. I didn’t know Grant the father of four children, who had a love affair with Mexico and learned Spanish ... who lost all his money in a Ponzi scheme on Wall Street and who, afflicted with throat cancer, set off to write his memoir so his wife, Julia, could have money after his death,” White reflected. “It was a thrilling experience to get to know this man.”
Joan Waugh, a history professor at UCLA and fellow Grant biographer who also works as a Huntington Library Fellow, said White’s “American Ulysses” does a remarkable job of looking at the past with an open mind.
“Ron had a huge task,” Waugh said in an interview. “Just because you write on Abraham Lincoln doesn’t mean that you’re prepared to write about a general who was responsible for huge campaigns. (But) he did a marvelous job. Every journey begins with a first step, and he took it.”
Vroman’s Bookstore is located at 695 E. Colorado Blvd., in Pasadena. For more information, visit ronaldcwhite.com.
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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com
Twitter: @SaraCardine
