Leonardo DiCaprio’s Big Middle Finger to the Confederacy

I’m okay with that. I’m looking forward to the miniseries.

Grant has long been underappreciated as a human being... first elevated to mythic status in his own time, decried as brutal by his contemporary adversaries; his presidency... misunderstood and maligned by the politics of every generation that has commented upon it. My own research into the man rather than the myth, reveals a remarkably pragmatic yet empathetic man whose greatest attribute was likely resolve. He would've "fit in" well in the modern U.S. military... possibly even rendering solutions to strategic problems even now, we seem incapable of solving.

That said... I believe Hollywood is going to get one thing glaringly "wrong" in this-Grant's true feelings for his Confederate enemies. It is a matter of documented fact, not "revisionist" history, that Robert E. Lee was respected by virtually ALL serving officers in the Union Army... possibly in many more ways than by his own corps commanders in the CSA. Grant also held close affinity with some of the South's leading general officers... most of whom he had served with as a junior officer. I can tell you from personal experience that being classmates at a service academy forges bonds not easily broken by political views or even moral obligations. I sincerely believe Grant disagreed with the institution of slavery (his views on treatment of Irish Catholic deserters during the Mexican American War are telling)... but I'm equally convinced he perceived the complexities of the issue in a more specific sense than we are today, so far removed from them.

I think we fail to understand that Grant lived during a time when words like "honor" meant something... and men were willing to fight and die over things long before the accompanying hatred made it inevitable. In that sense, the U.S. entered our Civil War with "hot blood" over "cold calculation"... a heat that rapidly cooled into a growing desire for peace and reconstruction. Personally, I believe that is what Grant would've preferred to be remembered for.

I probably would have watched it...before I read this article.