Imagine yourself in the year 1861. Imagine you’re about to turn 39; just a year shy of the big 4-0.
Looking back at your life, all you see if failure. You failed again, and again, and again. You failed in your military career, never rising about the rank of Captain and resigning in disgrace due to an alcohol problem. You failed as a farmer despite working round the clock. Living in a shack of a cabin, with your family, you’d been reduced to selling firewood on street corners to make ends meet. You pawned your prized gold watch to pay for your kids’ Christmas. You briefly worked in a real estate business and promptly failed at that too. You tried to get a county engineer job, believing your military experience and education might give you an edge. You didn’t get the job. Finally, you’d been reduced to accepting your father’s humiliating offer–an offer you’d turned down previously–to work for your younger brothers in the family leather-goods store in Galena, Illinois.
Your name is Ulysses S. Grant, and this is the story of how you went from being a middle-aged failure to Commanding General of the Union Army and President of the United States.
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For more, listen to the Podcast episode and check out my book, History Stories for Everyone, where I dive deeper into this and some of history’s other most fascinating and relatable human stories:
