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 ULYSSES S. GRANT
IS THE DRUNKEN, ANGRY JOHN
McCLANE OF PRESIDENTS

U
lysses S. Grant was put on this Earth to do two things:
kick ass and drink booze, and he will never run out of
booze, so you can assume he’ll be sink-­pissingly drunk
for his bout with you. Also, saying that he was put on this Earth only
to do two things isn’t an exaggeration; Grant was a failure at liter-
ally everything else he tried to do, including presidenting. He was
never a great student, he was never an athlete, and didn’t have many
friends. He wasn’t a terrific communicator, and as president didn’t
make enough of an impact to make a dent in any historical polls.
Grant wasn’t even a solid military strategist, which is probably
why he won so much. What Grant had, and what almost any great
general needs, was a deep, natural, and impossible-­to-­quantify in-
stinct for war. It is an unteachable skill that combines instinct with
practicality and total ruthlessness, and Grant had it in spades. He
never so much as picked up a book on strategy, and never made any

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 112 HOW T O F IG H T PR E SI DEN T S

decisions on the battlefield based on trying to be one step ahead

of the other guy; he just operated with a sort of primitive war IQ.
Grant was simply surviving by fighting every single day and every
single night; he was a mad fighter full of piss and vinegar and mostly
whiskey.
Oh, right, the drinking. Nothing could stop Grant from drinking,
not an important battle, and not even the soldier that Grant person-
ally hired to stop him from drinking too much. Let’s take that again.
Grant knew that he drank so much that he appointed an armed soldier
specifically to make sure he didn’t drink during the war, and he still
drank, and he might have been right for doing so. The drinking lowered
Grant’s inhibitions and helped him keep his cool in any situation. Hell,
even President Lincoln admitted that he wanted Grant in command
of the army specifically because of his drinking. He was an alcoholic,
but he was, according to Lincoln, exactly the kind of alcoholic that
the Union needed. Lincoln’s casual acceptance of Grant’s drunken-
ness is the strongest 1800s version of the “he’s a loose cannon but,
dammit, he gets results” speech that we will ever hear.
His constant drunkenness combined with his terrifying innate
battle prowess made him impossibly great as a soldier and later com-
mander of the Union Army, and by “impossibly great” I do mean
that he objectively should not have been as successful as he was.
He was regularly going up against generals who had more experi-
ence and skill and sobriety, and, like Washington before him, would
often return from battle unscathed despite having had his horse shot
out from under him, or his sword shot right out of his hand. He won
because he was lucky, full of liquid courage, and stubborn. Grant ad-
mitted on more than one occasion to having an inability to turn back
in battle after choosing to advance, an aversion based entirely on his
own superstitions. He thought it was bad luck to retreat, so he fought
and he fought and he fought and he fought.
But all hope is not lost, because you are holding a book about
president-­fighting, which—­unless a book called This Book Is Made
of a Poison to Which Ulysses S. Grant Is Allergic exists that I somehow
didn’t hear about—­makes mine the best book you could possibly

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 ULYSSE S S. GR A N T 113

have in this situation. Grant drank as much as he did because he

was cripplingly insecure, specifically about being naked. All of his
fellow soldiers would shower outside together in the morning, and
Grant was the only one who refused to be seen naked by any of his
men. He would bathe himself alone in his tent, and not a single other
soldier (not even his aides and helpers) was allowed to see him, per-
haps because he was worried they would laugh at or say disparaging
things about his genitals. John Quincy Adams swam naked every
single day and loved talking about it, while Grant, on the other hand,
steadfastly kept his genitals from everyone but his wife.
Now, this isn’t a book about presidential genitals (that will be my
next book), so it’s not my place to speculate on whether or not Presi-
dent Ulysses S. Grant had weird balls, but I would like to float that
out as a possibility before we continue. Again, it would be historically
irresponsible of me to state “Grant’s balls were super-­weird” as a
fact, as I am not an expert on how weird Grant’s balls may or may not
have been, but in the interest of thoroughness, I would like to leave it
out here as a potentiality. Grant might have had weird balls. You can
choose to ignore or exploit this when you fight him in a few hours.
It wasn’t just his comically misshapen balls that made Grant
uncomfortable. For someone who made a career out of killing and
helping other people kill, he was notoriously squeamish when it came
to blood. He hated the sight and taste of it so much that, on the rare
occasions when he did eat meat, he demanded that it be burned to
a near crisp. In fact, if it hadn’t been for his magnificent beard, you
might even confuse Grant with a woman. In his youth, he was small,
slender, and rosy-­cheeked, with a face like a little girl’s face. Some
historians have described him as “feminine” and “soft,” and his fellow
officers’ nickname for him up until the Mexican War was the “Little
Beauty.” His light, sing-­songy voice often startled people, who as-
sumed he’d have a more commanding voice, one more appropriate
for a commander.
I don’t know if you’ve settled on what kind of fight you and
Grant will be having, but if you could avoid using animals at all costs,
that would probably be wise. If you’ve already decided that this battle

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 114 HOW T O F IG H T PR E SI DEN T S

will take place on horse-­or sharkback, there’s very little this book
can do for you. If not, leave the animals out, because Grant had a
real soft spot for them.
Grant was rejected by both of his parents and not liked by the
other people in his age group (his nickname before the “Little Beauty”
was “Useless”), so he turned to animals. He rode and loved horses
and spent all of his time outside, bonding with and talking to animals,
the only things that couldn’t reject him or ask him why his balls were
so weird. He loved animals so much that, when he caught a teamster

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 ULYSSE S S. GR A N T 115

whipping a horse in the face during the Wilderness campaign, he

flew into a rage, used profanity (the only time in his life he did this),
and tied the man to a tree and left him there for six hours. It was the
angriest anyone had ever seen Grant, and this was a man who tried
to kill other men while drunk. If you so much as step on a spider while
going toe-­to-­toe with Grant, you’ll unleash an inner Hulk that you
don’t want to mess with. You won’t like Grant when he’s Drunk Hulk.
So, in your fight with Grant, assume he’s packed on a few extra
beer muscles, the kind that dull pain and turn everyone into a good
fighter. The smartest thing for you to do is draw blood (his or yours),
as quickly as possible, just to get Grant good and queasy. The second-­
best thing you can do is get a big crowd to show up and, if you can
manage, get that president naked. He will hate it.
Probably because his balls are so weird.

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