McClellan was at Fort Vancouver from June 27th to July 25th, 1853 (from Lloyd Lewis “Captain Sam Grant”). It would be interesting to find where Anderson was at that time to see if the story of a social “circle” holds up. A Lieut. Hodges is the witness for Grant’s “little spree” that offended McClellan, but the evidence is that Little Mac’s expedition was not delayed a whit.

A Mrs Delia Sheffield who knew Grant at Fort Vancouver left reminiscences of his time there. The pages in Lewis’ book are interesting – they portray Grant as introspective and depressed, sadly missing his wife and children, but very far from being a slave to alcohol.

In July-August, 1853 Grant was promoted to full Captain and left Ft. Vancouver for Humboldt Bay, California to assume command of a company.

Grant had every reason to resign the army – despite his promotion, 9 other captains outranked him in his regiment. A lot of his friends were resigning at the same time. The pay was poor and he did not know when he would be able to re-unite his family. From his point of view, the skills he had acquired at West Point were probably more gainfully employed in civilian life. There is no need to appeal to a story about him being “forced to resign over his drinking”, though Simpson thinks that the post commander at Humboldt Bay, who disliked Grant, may have applied pressure on him.

The important point is that it was at Humboldt Bay that Grant’s spirit was at its lowest ebb. But the Anderson story clearly refers to his period at Ft. Vancouver, when he was still a Lieutenant and met McClellan. These are telling points against the veracity of the gossip passed on by Mrs Anderson.

Anderson died in 1872, and his wife told the story in 1889, a whopping seventeen years later. So we have to deal not only with Anderson’s memory of 1853-54, but his wife’s memory of what her husband told her.

It is a hearsay story, and the teller wanted it to be kept private. That was hardly to protect Grant, who was dead; more likely because she did not want the story to be open to question.

I have never read of Grant being a member of a circle that included McClellan & Anderson in the North-West.

The paymaster part seems to be true, but Mrs Anderson could certainly have heard that from her husband in other conversations.

Probably she just liked to gossip about famous people she had known. Without any corroboration, the story has to open to such doubts that it is not really admissable.

Regards,
Cash

Yes, I would say start with Simpson’s biography “Triumph and Adversity” and when you finish that go to his earlier book, _Let Us Have Peace_, which covers Reconstruction and the period before his presidency. It’s one of my favorite books and does an excellent job of challenging our tendency to draw a sharp line between the war and Reconstruction. Grant clearly continued to think of Reconstruction as an extension of the war itself. It really is a dynamite study.

Kevin pointed people to a post I once put up on Civil Warriors that suggests that some of the trite comments about Grant’s drinking (and its effects) are just that: trite. I’ve read the Longacre piece, and I find it flawed, unconvincing, and heavily dependent upon the work of others. But I’ve also long ago come to terms with the notion that even admitted ignorance does not bar someone from offering stupid or superficial analysis, and I’ve seen plenty of that on this issue.

There’s a notion that if one likes Grant, one defends him from these charges, and if one dislikes him, one raises all sorts of questions. Richard Williams and Mr. Bobrick are in the latter school. I’ve never seen anyone confess to being ignorant and then to offer more than ample evidence of it as I have in a certain blog in response to Kevin’s initial post, but then so little truly astonishes me any more.

Grant left the army in 1854, so we’d have to narrow the time period about the Patton Anderson story.

Or how about the steps taken during the Gettysburg Campaign to round up escaped slaves? Yes, civilized indeed.

Crystal,

I tend to agree with you, though I don’t want to touch the M. Sanford scandal. As I said before, it seems to me that the evidence is inconclusive beyond concluding that he drank on occasion and at times may have had a problem with alcohol. Much of what passes for interpretation beyond that tends to tell us more about the historian than anything else.