Great Documentary on General Grant - netflix

Last night, May 15th, I watched a brilliant documentary on GeneralUlysses S. Grant. If you don't know me well, you may not know that I am an avid learner and I LOVE history! Even though I have read a couple of dozen books on Civil War History, I learned so much from this documentary.

There are so many topics to touch on in relation to this documentary, but I will begin with CHARACTER:

These days of so many bad men in positions of power, it was a great relief to be reminded of good men. When I say bad men, I mean selfish and corrupt men who are greedy and put accumulation of wealth and power above service to the country and the American people. I mean the politiians in charge today.

Ths documentary set the record straight on one of the great men of our history, General Ulysses S. Grant. And it reminded me of one of the heroes of all time, President Abraham Lincoln. Grant was faced with every wave of poisonous obstacles imaginable with the hardest tasks a man can face. He was a brilliant tactician who was pushed into corners where he had no opportunity to use his talents and he was forced to serve under lesser men who couldn't see the big picture, or who were unable to act.

In the beginning of his career, Grant was stuck out on the prairie in a dead fort with nothing to do. He was away from his new wife who had given birth to his first child. He fell into melancholy and drinking. Almost faced with having to resign he cleaned up his act. The Civil War brought him into the Western front where he could see opportunities for success but he was held back by foot- drgging stick-in-the- mud superiors who put their own ego and pride ahead of success. General Halleck was one of those. Grant showed him areas of potential success and Halleck had no interest in doing anything. Lincoln struggled with this throughout the war, one lazy or incompetent general after another. Finally, when he saw Grant's successes, he knew he had found his general, the one who wouuld stay the course and fight.

Grant carried the reputation of drinking thorughout his career despite the fact that he never again fell into the bottle. If anything it was cigars that were his addiction and his downfall. He died of throat cancer afteer his terms as president and you have to suspect that the 20 cigars a day that he smoked caused that.

I really never understood the map of the battles of the Civil War until I saw this documentary. I knew individual famous battles but not why they were fought where they were fought until I saw the battle plans as set out in this doc. For one thing, I never understood the importance of the rivers before.

Something that occurred to me while watching this program was how the modern MAGA movement has its roots in the defeat of the Cnfederacy. It is the Southern States including Texas that are the most rabidly anti-federal government because the government defeated their confederacy and ended slavery and the freedom of white men to exploit the labor of enslaved people. In the MAGA movement especially as stated openly by traitors like Steve Bannon, the destruction of the federal government was one of the goals so that the corrupt and the greedy could be free once again to rape the environment and enrich themselves at the expense of the country and the America people. We defeated the Confederacy in the Civil War but the poisonous snake reared its head once again in the political present.They re-branded the issue as States rights when it was always about the exploitation of people of another color. It is no coincidence that so many Confederate flags flew alongside the upside down red white and blue American flag.

But what hurt my heart was that we have no Ulysses S. Grant to save us now, nor any Abraham Lincoln, no man whose good heart is devoted to the service of the country - only robber barons.

Well, not to despair, all is not lost. many times in all our wars things looked grim and a miracle came along. Anyhow it is good to know as much about history as possible, so much to learn about the pattern in human events: "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Winston Churchill. >p/> Happy Trails! If you wish to communicate please use my e-mail rather than 'comments' as comments is entirely polluted by spam.

wrightj45@yahoo.com