If you could have dinner with one person who is no longer with us, and whose obituary was published in The New York Times, who would it be, and why that person? Not Forgotten is asking that question of a variety of influential people this summer in a series of posts called Breaking Bread.  Today we have David H. Petraeus, a former C.I.A. director and the highest-profile general from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I would like to host General Grant for dinner at the Lotos Club, one of the oldest literary clubs in the United States (founded in 1870, early in President Grant’s administration). Besides celebrating writers and those in the arts, the club, in Midtown Manhattan, has also recognized military and government leaders (including the former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and me) at its annual state dinners.  Hosting Grant — a great writer as well as a great leader — at the Lotos Club would thus be very fitting. He would feel welcome there.  Coincidentally, the lovely old townhouse that houses the club, on East 66th Street just off Fifth Avenue, is next door to the address at which Grant lived the final years of his life.  I have long admired Grant and felt that some historians were unduly critical of him at various points in the last century (although more recent biographies have once again recognized his extraordinary qualities and how fortunate we were to have him in uniform during the Civil War, in particular).  In my view, Grant stands alone among American military leaders as hugely impressive at all three levels of war: tactically (as shown in his capture of Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee early in the war); operationally (the Vicksburg victory in 1863, one of the greatest operational-level campaigns of all time); and strategically (devising and overseeing the first truly comprehensive strategy for the Union forces to defeat Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army).  In January 2007, a historian at the Command and General Staff College gave me a copy of “Grant Takes Command,” a 1968 history by Bruce Catton, as I was preparing to head to Iraq to command the troop surge. I read it during the tough early months of that endeavor, and I found Grant’s example inspirational.  Especially impressive was his sheer fortitude in the face of congressional sniping, press criticism, political pressures, battlefield setbacks and terrible casualties.  Most important, as the first Union commander to come up with a comprehensive strategy to defeat the Confederate forces, he was the first to give battle to Lee and not retreat back to Washington immediately afterward. Rather, he wrote to President Abraham Lincoln in 1864 that he intended “to fight it out all summer on this line if that’s what it takes.”  Of course, it took all summer, all fall, all winter and part of the spring until the surrender of Lee’s army at Appomattox in April 1865. Again, through it all, Grant displayed extraordinary fortitude and quiet determination in dealing with the enormous pressures on him — and then displayed remarkable magnanimity and respect in agreeing to the terms of Lee’s surrender.  After the war Grant dealt calmly but firmly with the erratic behavior of President Andrew Johnson in the wake of Lincoln’s assassination. And although as president (1869-77) he was tarnished by financial scandal after placing too much trust in some members of his cabinet, he sought to be compassionate during the Indian Wars and in the conduct of Reconstruction, and demonstrated integrity in guiding the nation through a host of financial crises.  And he was modest and unassuming in all that he did. Toward the end of his life, when facing financial ruin — a result of misplaced faith in his investment advisers — he turned down charity from admirers and sought to secure his family’s future by writing his memoirs. They are still regarded as the most literate, forthright memoirs of any major American military figure.  With the help of Mark Twain, the memoirs were an enormous commercial success when published after Grant died, on July 23, 1885, at an Adirondacks retreat. Twain, by the way, was among the earliest members of the Lotos Club.  For me, Grant was always captured best in the pithy response he offered to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, his most trusted commander, after the nearly disastrous first day of the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, when Grant’s army was almost pushed back into the Tennessee River. Sherman had emerged from the darkness to encounter Grant sitting under a tree with the rain dripping off his slouch hat.  “Well, Grant,” Sherman said, “we’ve had the devil’s own day today, haven’t we.”  “Yep,” Grant replied, taking a soggy cigar out of his mouth. “Lick ‘em tomorrow, though.”  And he and his army did just that – all the way to Appomattox.  Read the obituary “A Hero Finds Rest”
Anderson Cooper said he would dine with his father, Wyatt, a screenwriter who died when Anderson was just 10.