♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello.

I'm David Rubenstein, and I'm at the Tisch WNET Studios at Lincoln Center, and I am pleased to say I'm with Ron Chernow, who's a Pulitzer Prize winning biographer and one of America's most distinguished writers.

Ron, thank you very much for giving us your time today.

CHERNOW: I'm pleased to be with you, David.

Thank you.

RUBENSTEIN: So let me talk a little bit about your own background, before we talk about your latest book on, uh, General and President Grant.

So you grew up in New York?

CHERNOW: I was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Forest Hills, Queens.

Then I did, uh, two degrees in English literature, one at Yale University and one at Cambridge University.

And I never studied history.

This is my dirty little secret.

So everything that I've written about in my adult life has been self-taught.

RUBENSTEIN: You graduated from Yale in 1970, I recall.

CHERNOW: Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: And so, from 1970 to 1990, you were writing magazine articles, journal articles.

You were not, you hadn't written a book, is that correct?

CHERNOW: Right, "The House of Morgan" was my first book that came out in 1990.

And so when I was freelance magazine writer, uh, I was doing, um, feature stories, profiles, investigative reporting.

I published in about, uh, 20 or 30 different, uh, publications.

It's kind of a whole side of my life that people don't know about.

RUBENSTEIN: But freelance writing is not exactly something that put you in the Forbes 400, is that right?

CHERNOW: No, it's a very, very punishing way to make a living.

Also, what I felt was that I was, um, I was a reasonably good, um, journalist, but I think I'm much better, um, book writer.

You know, writers, uh, divide into sprinters and marathon runners and I was a decent, uh runner.

But as those who read my very long books, know I'm much better as a marathon man.

RUBENSTEIN: So, your first book was on the "House of Morgan".

CHERNOW: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: And you followed it up with a book on the Warburg's?

CHERNOW: Warburg's, right.

RUBENSTEIN: And then a book on John D. Rockefeller.

CHERNOW: Yes, called "Titan".

RUBENSTEIN: And each of these books was 600, 700 pages.

CHERNOW: Uh, even a little bit longer.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, and did your publisher ever say, "Maybe a shorter book would be read by more people?"

CHERNOW: No, the strange thing is, that I've written these, um, gigantic narratives, and the books have not only, uh, had critical success, but um, almost all of them have been best sellers and have sold in astonishing quantities.

You know what I found, David, is that the public is very eager to be, um, uh, educated, as long as they feel that they're being entertained, uh, at the same time.

And, also, lovers of history and biography actually like to wallow in long sagas, so the length of my books is not as much, um, of a hindrance as you might imagine.

RUBENSTEIN: So after you wrote these three books on important people in the American financial system, CHERNOW: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, you decided to go into a different direction.

There was somebody very important in the American financial system, Alexander Hamilton.

CHERNOW: Yeah, who was, who was a perfect transitional figure for me, because there was certainly enough financial history that I knew that it would appeal to readers of my first three books.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, Alexander Hamilton was reasonably well known, but I would say the least well known of the founding fathers compared to some of, let's say Washington, perhaps, or Jefferson.

But a young man named Lin Manuel Miranda.

CHERNOW: I've heard of that guy, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: He apparently, on the way to vacation in Mexico, picked up a copy of your book, read it there while he was relaxing... CHERNOW: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: And then came up with the idea of a play that was in rap.

Now, did he tell you about this at some point and what did you tell him?

CHERNOW: Well I met Lin in the fall of 2008.

He was still starring in his first musical, which was called, "“In the Heights"”.

He invited me to a Sunday matinee.

I found out from mutual friend that he had read the book in Mexico and had made a profound impression on him.

And I went backstage, and I said, "So, Lin, I gather my Hamilton book made an impression on you."

And he said, "Ron, as I was reading the book on vacation, hip hop songs started rising off the page."

And then he said to me, he said, "You know, Hamilton's life is a classic hip hop narrative."

And I'm thinking, "Pal, I have no idea what you're talking about."

And then we were off and running.

He asked me on the spot to be the historical advisor to this, as yet, nonexistent show.

RUBENSTEIN: So, um... After you had written Hamilton and before it became so famous, uh, you wrote another book, um, uh, on George Washington, for which you won the Pulitzer Prize.

CHERNOW: That's right, mmm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: So, do you think George Washington is sitting in heaven saying, "Look, why didn't he do a play about me?

I'm more important than Alexander Hamilton.

Why didn't they do a play about me?"

Have you ever thought about that?

CHERNOW: Well, you know, it was Lin's inspiration to match up hip hop with Hamilton.

I didn't understand the connection at first, but I think what it is, is that the way that Lin presents him in the play, which is accurate as-as a very intense and driven personality.

In the hip hop music and lyrics, very intense and driven, so there's a perfect match... RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CHERNOW: Between the style and sensibility of the man and the hip hop music.

But, Washington's life did not move to a hip hop beat and certainly Grant's life did not move to a hip hop beat.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, let's talk about, uh, the book that you wrote after Washington and the before, the one you're working on now, Mark Twain, which will come out in four or five years or something like that?

CHERNOW: Probably.

Mm-hmm.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, so this is a book on General Grant and President Grant, Ulysses S. Grant.

Many people would say, "Why do we need another book on Grant?

Everybody knows he won the, uh, Civil War as a good general, alcoholic perhaps, and then he was a terrible president, corrupt and so forth."

That's the general wisdom.

In fact, when I was growing up, when you see lists of presidents, he and James Buchanan would be at the bottom of the worst presidents.

CHERNOW: Yeah, well I, you know, in the book, I tried to retire, you know, three chief myths about, uh, Grant.

Number one, that, uh, he was the victorious general in the Union, for the Union Army in the Civil War, simply that he was a brutal butcher who would hurl thousands of young men to their death.

In fact, he was a brilliant and sophisticated strategist.

I try to combat this notion that he was kind of a hopeless drunkard who stumbled through the Civil War in an alcoholic haze.

And most importantly, I try to counter the notion that it was a failed presidency dominated purely by scandals and nepotism and corruption.

CHERNOW: Grant had been preceded by five generals in Virginia.

George McClellan, uh, John Pope, Ambrose Burnside, uh, Joe Hooker, and George Gordon Meade.

Those five generals, uh, had the exact same advantages of manpower and material that Ulysses S. Grant and had not been able to defeat Robert E. Lee.

Ulysses S. Grant did.

So clearly something was going on, other than the fact that the north had a larger population greater manufacturing capacity.

RUBENSTEIN: You do say in your book that he did have an alcoholic problem.

It was a binge drinking kind of problem, but not one that kept him from doing what he needed to do, when he needed to do it.

Is that right?

CHERNOW: Yeah, you know.

There are many people who worked closely with Grant, who said they never saw him touch a drop of, uh, liquor.

And then others, you know, had very different, uh, accounts.

I had to reconcile that.

Well, what I discovered, he was a binge drinker.

Uh, he'd go for two, three months without touching a drop of alcohol, only to succumb to it two or three day spree as they called it, but he had tremendous sense of responsibility.

He never drank on the eve of the battle, certainly never drank during a battle.

But, afterwards, when the pressure was off, he would slip away to a town where his men could not see him and he would have a two or three day, um, bender.

CHERNOW: Um, he-he was not kind of a drunkard.

Somehow that term conjures up a, um, an irresponsible person indulging this weakness.

And actually, by the time he was president, he had largely conquered the problem.

RUBENSTEIN: And the third myth, you might say, is that he was, um, a corrupt president and his presidency was a failed presidency.

And you think that is not fair because of what?

CHERNOW: Um, the-the corruption did happen, uh, in his administration.

Grant was not personally involved in it.

He did not condone it.

He-he prosecuted it, but those things were real, but what I tried to show in the book, was that that was, to my mind, however real, the minor story of the administration.

The major story is what he did to protect the 4 million former slaves who had become full-fledged American citizens after the, uh, Civil War.

And particularly, Grant's very courageous crusade to stamp out the Ku Klux Klan in the South.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he was born in Ohio.

CHERNOW: Yeah, he was born in the southwestern corner of Ohio.

Um, just outside of Cincinnati today.

Three small towns.

Uh, he was born, Hiram Ulysses Grant.

The boys mercilessly teased him about the initials H-U-G, so he dropped the Hiram.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CHERNOW: And he became, uh, Ulysses.

The S was added by accident when the local congressman nominated him for West Point.

RUBENSTEIN: But, he didn't really want to go to West Point, as I understand it.

His father kind of proposed him, but did he go reluctantly to West Point?

CHERNOW: Very reluctantly.

He didn't want to go, but his father was very stingy and his father saw West Point as a free form of vocational education.

Grant was so unhappy at West Point, that while he was at West Point, there was a debate in the US congress about possibly abolishing West Point that Grant later wrote that he was rooting for Congress to abolish the academy, so he'd go back to Ohio.

RUBENSTEIN: So he graduates roughly, I think, 21st out of 39 students.

CHERNOW: Yeah, so right-right in the middle of the class, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he then gets assigned to, what was his assignment initially?

CHERNOW: Yeah, he-he went to a place called Jefferson Barracks in, uh, in St. Louis, and then, most importantly for the Civil War service, he served for four years in the Mexican War as a Quartermaster.

RUBENSTEIN: And when he was in the Mexican War, there was another young, uh, military leader who was also there named Robert E. Lee?

CHERNOW: Robert E. Lee was, uh, okay, there was significant kind of age and rank difference, 'cause Lee was older, and hence, you know, higher up.

Lee was on the staff of General Winfield Scott, who was the chief commander in Mexico.

And interestingly enough, David, you know the time of Appomattox, when Lee and Grant finally meet, Grant had very distinct recollections of, uh, meeting Lee in the Mexican War, and Lee said that there were many times during the Civil War, when he tried to remember Grant and could not, the reason being that Lee finishes the Mexican War, brevet Lieutenant Colonel.

Grant finishes the Mexican War brevet Captain.

There was a significant difference in rank between them.

RUBENSTEIN: As a general rule of thumb, I, lower level people look up to upper level people.

They remember them, but the other way, they don't look down and remember.

CHERNOW: That's right.

It's exactly, so, so Grant was invisible to him.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, he's in the military, and eventually, he gets assigned to California.

CHERNOW: Right.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, because there was the gold rush and he needs to go out there to have some troops out there, I guess, to protect somebody.

CHERNOW: Yeah, that was partly it.

There was, that was why troops were out there.

Uh, so he's assigned to these rather lonely, um, bases, uh, in Oregon, in northern California.

Uh, his army pay was very meager, which meant that he could not bring his wife and children out there.

And as often happened in Grant's life when he was kind of lonely and depressed and inactive.

He started to drink, and shows up one day at a pay table for his man drunk and he's runned out of the army.

That-that, um, history really shadowed him through the Civil War.

RUBENSTEIN: He wasn't court-martialed but he, um, had said he wouldn't get drunk again.

He did and he, more or less, resigned.

Is that right?

CHERNOW: Yeah, and he was kind of threatened with court martial, so he voluntarily resigned in order to avoid that, and then goes back to St. Louis.

Um, his wife, uh, Julia, daughter of a slave holder.

Julia had gotten a wedding present of 60 acres of land, just outside St. Louis.

So Grant becomes a-a farmer and fails at it.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay, uh, but the problem is that his father, Grant's father, hates the idea of slavery, and, uh, his wife's father is a slave owner.

CHERNOW: The Grants are abolitionists, the Dents, his in-laws, are slave holders.

And, um, the Grants were so outraged at the idea of Ulysses marrying into a slave owning family.

You know, Julia had grown up surrounded by about 20, 30 slaves.

Uh, the entire Grant family boycotted the wedding in St. Louis in 1848.

So long before Fort Sumter, Grant is involved in his own private Civil War.

RUBENSTEIN: But, then the most amazing part of the book, and maybe his life, is this.

The Civil War breaks out.

CHERNOW: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: He's out of the military.

CHERNOW: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: He's selling firewood on the streets of St. Louis to make a living, just selling firewood and this is when the war breaks out, and then before the war is over, he's the commanding general.

It's an incredible transformation.

CHERNOW: Yeah, okay, so, um, two months after the Civil War breaks out, he's a Colonel.

Four months later, he's a Brigadier General.

Ten months later, he's a Major General.

And by the end of the war, he's General in Chief of the Union Army, with a million men under his command.

This was somebody who, before the war, hardly ever had anyone under his, you know, command.

RUBENSTEIN: But how did that happen?

CHERNOW: When the Civil War breaks out, David, a third of the officers in the regular army were from the south, defect to the south.

There's a very acute shortage of, uh, officers.

Grant had all that West Point lore stored in his head.

Very significantly, when he was in Mexico, as a quartermaster, he was not required to fight any of the fights, but he made it a point of fighting in every fight that was purely voluntary.

This is kind of real courage.

So he counted four years of actual combat, um, experience, as well as, you know, the training at, uh, West Point.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

CHERNOW: And so, all of that kind of army lore, suddenly flickers to life.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he's, um, in charge of some part of the volunteer force of Illinois.

And gradually he does well and he gradually gets more and more responsibility.

But his two big victories at that part of the war were in Shiloh and Vicksburg.

RUBENSTEIN: Why is Vicksburg, Mississippi, such an important place in the Civil War?

CHERNOW: So the one bastion that's left for the south, uh, is Vicksburg.

When that falls, what happens is that, it slices the confederacy in half.

A lot of the Confederate supplies, particularly, um, horses and cattle, were west of the Mississippi, so the Confederate Army Confederate supplies, they're suddenly on opposite sides of a river controlled by the Union Army.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he prevails in Vicksburg, which is a great help to the Union.

CHERNOW: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: And shortly after that, Lincoln says, "This guy can win battles.

Why don't I bring him up and make him the general for all of the military?"

Is that right?

CHERNOW: Yeah, I mean, he's winning battle after battle in the, in the west.

Then what happens in February 1864, Congress revives the rank of Lieutenant General, the rank that had only been held by, uh, George Washington.

RUBENSTEIN: So, um, he ultimately is put in charge of the entire Union force, and in the end, it gets down to his fighting against Robert E. Lee for the control of Richmond and that area.

Is that right?

CHERNOW: Yeah, what happens, so-so he pins down, uh, Robert E. Lee and his army in, uh, Richmond and Petersburg and then remember Grant had been quartermaster, so his strategy against Lee, um, is to, he systematically cuts off every railroad link and every canal link that has been feeding the Confederate Army as Fulshare and clear out the Shenandoah Valley which was the breadbasket of the Confederate Army.

That's why Robert E. Lee suddenly has to break out and escape to Appomattox Courthouse.

RUBENSTEIN: So, in the end, um, the Appomattox effort doesn't really prevail.

Lee is, uh, recognizing he needs to surrender.

And so how does he communicate that to Grant?

CHERNOW: Oh well, they exchange messages and Grant, interestingly, said that, uh, when he first gets the message that Lee is ready to surrender, he was jubilant.

But then he became sad and depressed, and there's a beautiful passage in his memoir, where he said, "I felt like anything other than rejoicing over the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and gallantly and had suffered so much for cause."

Though that cause was the worst for which they could have fought.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, earlier in his military career, he was seen as demanding unconditional surrender and U.S. Grant was said to stand for, "Unconditional Surrender Grant."

CHERNOW: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: But, when he meet at Appomattox, what does he do?

CHERNOW: Okay, um, he immediately issues rations for the starving Confederate soldiers.

He allows the Confederate officers to retain their horses and sidearms.

Um, he does not allow his men to-to gloat or celebrate.

He was afraid that this would embitter the south and make reconciliation after the war impossible.

And there was also a very kind of real fear at that point, that the Confederate Army would kind of, you know, flee to the hills and fight on, you know, in guerrilla warfare.

RUBENSTEIN: Grant is a conquering hero, and he's in Washington DC.

And, one night, uh, after Lincoln made a speech that was heard by John Wilkes Booth... CHERNOW: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh Lincoln invites the Grants to go to him, go with him and Mrs. Lincoln to Ford's Theater.

Why did the Grants not go?

CHERNOW: Um, Abraham and Mary Lincoln, uh, had visited Grant at his headquarters in City Point, Virginia.

Um, they attended a military revue, and at that revue, Mary Lincoln, who was having distinct psychological problems at this point, um, Mary Lincoln sees the beautiful young wife of General Edward OC Ord riding next to her husband.

She flies into a jealous rage.

This was completely in her mind.

CHERNOW: Julia Grant tries to intervene to protect Mrs. Ord and as so often happens when you intervene, these situations, then Mary Lincoln turned on Julia.

Um, and so, um, and Julia felt very bruised by this encounter.

So the night that the Lincolns were going to Ford theater, Julia had announced to her husband that she refused to go to any social event that Mary Lincoln was going to be at, so they cooked up an excuse that they were gonna take a train to their house in Burlington, New Jersey.

And you know, had Grant, uh, been with Lincoln in the box at Ford's theater that night, maybe Grant would have had a security entourage.

Maybe Grant, with his military instincts, would have sensed something... or maybe Grant would have been killed along with Lincoln.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, Lincoln's killed.

Grant comes back to Washington, Um, he doesn't really know that well the vice president, now become the president.

CHERNOW: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: But he tries to work with him.

Is that right, that's, uh, President Johnson?

CHERNOW: Yeah, uh, he-he-he tries, First year or so, you know, they have a fairly good, uh, relationship.

Grant later said that Johnson was revengeful, passionate, and opinionated.

And basically what they clashed about was Reconstruction.

Grant was a strong supporter of Reconstruction.

Um, Johnson was doing everything he could to undermine it.

RUBENSTEIN: So, President Johnson is impeached by the house and in the Senate, he is not convicted by one vote.

So he stays in office... CHERNOW: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: But clearly couldn't have been reelected or elected.

CHERNOW: Right, yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: So the Republican party needs a candidate, and when you have a winning general, sometimes those generals get nominated.

So, did he really want to be President of the United States?

CHERNOW: You know, I think he did.

He was generally reluctant to give up his job as General in Chief, which he loved.

He was also giving up his military pension becoming president and there was no, neither presidential pension yet.

And so here was someone who had had a lot of financial insecurity.

So that was there, but no, I think he did want to be president.

RUBENSTEIN: So he now becomes president.

And, uh, what-what does he want to accomplish as president?

CHERNOW: Very importantly, Grant was the first president, um, to preside, um, uh, when the 15th amendment was in effect.

15th amendment gave black males the right to vote.

Um, this had triggered a violent backlash in the south, 'cause a lot of the southern states had large black populations, South Carolina, Mississippi had a majority of black.

The Klan starts a reign of terror.

Um, that, um, murders thousands of blacks in the south without any prosecutions.

Grant appoints a crusading attorney general named Amos Akerman, from-from Georgia, who brings, um, 3,000 indictments, wins 1,000 convictions against the Klan and crushes the Klan.

I think it's one of the great, um, acts in presidential history that, uh, he did this.

And Grant was really militant on the issue.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, there are a lot of scandals in the Grant administration.

Is that because Grant himself is putting money in his pocket, or just friends of his, unbeknownst to him, are putting money in their pocket?

CHERNOW: Yeah, it was the latter.

You know, Grant himself was very honest during the war.

He's always rooting out, uh, corruption and profiteering and things like that.

Grant was an incurably naïve man when it came to business David, and there was just no learning curve.

It's not like he kind of, is burned and then he learns his, uh, lesson.

And so, um, you know, the worst scandal during his administration, so called whiskey ring.

Uh, his own chief of staff, Orville Babcock was, uh, in cahoots with the people who were evading these whiskey, uh, taxes and Grant found it completely incomprehensible, wrote a letter to Orville Babcock's wife saying, "I can't believe that this man whom I've had, you know, such intimate relations with for 14 years, uh, could be deceiving me."

Well, guess what, he was deceiving Grant and Grant goes on being cheated and deceived for the rest of his life.

RUBENSTEIN: So Grant is, um, not the most successful president, in the view of people then, because there were some scandals.

But, nonetheless, he gets renominated and reelected?

CHERNOW: Yeah, and then what happens, you know, in the middle of his, um, second term, in 1874, the midterm elections, as we all know.

Um, the Democrats come back into power in Congress armed with subpoena and investigative power.

And they are opposed to Reconstruction.

And so, the way that they really undermine Grant, is by launching all these investigations into corruption in Grant's administration.

It was really kind of a way of discrediting Grant, which also was a way of discrediting Reconstruction.

And it had kind of a powerful influence and certainly has had a powerful influence on historians writing about the period.

RUBENSTEIN: So if you look at the eight years that he did serve as president.

CHERNOW: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: What would you say his major accomplishment was?

CHERNOW: Well-well certainly, crushing the Klan and protecting the black community in the south.

But there were other major, um, uh, accomplishments.

Um, very emotional issue after the war, there was a Confederate blockade runner called the Alabama.

Uh, Americans wanted um, reparations from it.

Grant got international arbitration of $15 million uh, payment.

He began, uh, civil service reform.

He cleaned up a lot of the corruption.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

CHERNOW: On the Indian reservations.

On and on, so he actually had a very good record.

RUBENSTEIN: So, he's only in his 50s when he leaves office.

CHERNOW: Yeah.

And-and he had this tremendous wanderlust.

He was a great traveler.

He takes, um, an around the world tour, uh, that lasts for, I think, two years and-and four months.

He visits everyone.

I mean, he visits, you know, Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle and Prince Bismarck in Berlin, the Pope in Rome and wherever he goes, he draws enormous crowds, sometimes as many as 200... RUBENSTEIN: But why would that be, because people would say, "You weren't that successful a president?"

Why was he so popular overseas?

CHERNOW: Well, again, um, you know, Ulysses S. Grant was the most famous American, uh, after, um, Abraham Lincoln in the second half of the 19th, uh, century, and, uh, people knew that he was the hero of the, of-of the Civil War.

And again, his-his record as president was better than it was characterized, you know, for many years afterwards.

RUBENSTEIN: After he comes back from his around the world tour, he says, like many people who've had power... CHERNOW: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, maybe I could do this again.

Maybe I should have a third term and that was allowed then.

CHERNOW: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, how close did he come to being nominated for a third term, and did he really want to be president again?

CHERNOW: There-there were two things I think that were very important to him in terms of getting a third, uh, term.

Number one, in the south, all of the, um, you know, Republican carpetbag administrations, uh, you know, had been, uh, overturned, so there were these redeemer governments in the south, which were launching Jim Crow.

He felt that that reversed the verdict of the war.

You also felt that having traveled to all these foreign countries that he had a much deeper understanding of foreign affairs than he had before, so he fell in kind of, those two areas.

He could make a real contribution.

RUBENSTEIN: But in the end, he doesn't get the nomination.

CHERNOW: Yeah, Garfield wins.

Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: So he doesn't go back to Illinois or Ohio, He goes to New York.

CHERNOW: Yeah.

Right.

RUBENSTEIN: And, uh, he decides to get involved in the financial community a little bit.

And what happened that was so terrible to his reputation?

CHERNOW: Uh, a few years before he dies, uh, he formed a partnership called Grant and Ward, with a young man named Ferdinand Ward who was 29 years old.

Lionized as the "Young Napoleon" of finance.

Uh, a lot of people invest with Grant and Ward.

Really on the strength of Grant's name.

Grant again, incurably naïve has, uh, entered into a partnership with the Bernie Madoff of his day.

Grant was very complacent.

Ferdinand Ward would put letters in front of him.

Grant would sign it without reading it.

Ward would not let him actually look at the stock certificates in the, in the safe.

And the whole thing is a great big Ponzi scheme.

Grant wakes up one morning.

Grant thinks he's worth several million dollars.

He wakes up one morning, discovers that he's worth $80 an Julia's worth $130.

So all of their life savings have gone up in smoke.

RUBENSTEIN: So he's basically broke.

And so, he does something that he hadn't wanted to do before, which is to write his autobiography in effect.

CHERNOW: He-he writes his Civil War, um, memoirs and his publisher is, uh, Mark Twain.

I'm always asked, did Mark Twain write the memoirs?

No, Twain said his influence was limited to trivial matters of grammar and punctuation.

It was written by Grant.

Grant had always actually been a very, very good, um, writer.

He said, the same time that he's writing the memoirs, he's dying of cancer of the throat.

RUBENSTEIN: He'd been a big cigar smoker.

CHERNOW: During the Civil War, he smoked 20 cigars a day.

RUBENSTEIN: But the thing that's often interesting to people who are presidential scholars is, it is universally agreed that the greatest presidential autobiography was written by Ulysses S. Grant.

CHERNOW: Yeah, that doesn't deal with his presidency.

RUBENSTEIN: That's right, that's interesting because it's not, it only deals with his Civil War period of time.

CHERNOW: Yeah, right.

RUBENSTEIN: And would he, was he planning to write about the presidency, or he just didn't live long enough for that?

CHERNOW: No, I mean, I think that, um, you know, he was doing this for money.

He was afraid that when he died of this throat cancer, that Julia would be left destitute.

They'd lost all their money.

So he's doing this in a purely as a financial, uh, proposition.

But he gets into it and suddenly's kind of reliving his, uh, glory days.

But, he never had an intention about writing, um, about his presidency.

And of course, the tremendous market was for a memoir about his generalship during the Civil War.

RUBENSTEIN: So just as he finishes the memoir, he dies.

CHERNOW: Uh he puts down his pen literally a few days before he, it's like he willed himself to stay alive to finish it.

RUBENSTEIN: Will we be seeing any hip hop plays on Grant?

CHERNOW: No, but there's gonna be a feature film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and possibly starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

RUBENSTEIN: Really?

CHERNOW: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, congratulations on your success with that book and with Hamilton and thank you very much for your time, Ron.

CHERNOW: My pleasure, David.

Thank you for having me.

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