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Brooks D. Simpson Profile picture
@BrooksDSimpson
Mar 31, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
I'm teaching my presidency course, with today's topic being the sources of presidential power and influence, including the theme of crisis management and turning every crisis into a "war."
I also reflect on how my initial images of presidential leadership were forged during the years of LBJ and Nixon, two men who labored in the highly stylized shadow of JFK. I was the kid who watched conventions and followed politics when I was ten.
During the summer of 1973 I watched the Watergate hearings every day. Every day. That was reality TV before there was reality TV, because it was reality, even if at time it was often surreal.
I draw on those memories in teaching my course (I also drew on them when I met @JohnWDean many years later in the first of several encounters). I also now write about presidents, the art of politics, and decision-making.
I often try to imagine what the past was like for those who were experiencing it as their present.

I wonder what the future will make of 2020 and the state of the American polity and the presidency.

I wonder if future versions of me will be harsh or kind in judging us.
And, since it is now the fashion to link everything to #HamiltonMusical ... this seems appropriate ...

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More from @BrooksDSimpson

Brooks D. Simpson Profile picture
Jun 4
Time and again critics of Ulysses S. Grant's generalship claim that, above all else, he was "Grant the Butcher," who prevailed because of his superiority in resources (which was seemingly endless) despite a certain mindlessness and dullness.
Grant's supporters counter this charge largely in a statistical fashion. They compare the percentage of Grant's losses versus the percentage of losses suffered by other generals, including Robert E. Lee.
Sometimes these analyses focus on the 1864 Overland Campaign, which in the minds of some people is the only campaign Grant ever fought ... the claims of butcher rely mostly on May-June 1864.

Even then Lee's losses were also heavy.
Read 18 tweets
Brooks D. Simpson Profile picture
Jun 3
Today's the 160th anniversary of one of the most misunderstood battles of the American Civil War ... Cold Harbor.

The story of the battle has turned into a myth that in turn has long shaped the image of Ulysses S. Grant's generalship.
Make no mistake about it ... Cold Harbor was a significant setback for Grant and US forces during the Overland Campaign. Several US commanders performed poorly that day, especially in not carrying out George G. Meade's orders to reconnoiter the Confederate position.
However, we now know that tales of 7,000 men falling in less than an hour are false. We also know that the quest for a ceasefire to recover wounded and dead between the lines was botched by two prideful commanders.
Read 19 tweets
Brooks D. Simpson Profile picture
May 8
It's often asserted the as president Ulysses S. Grant destroyed the Ku Klux Klan.

The reality is not nearly as satisfying or uplifting to those who deplore white supremacist paramilitary terrorism as conducted primarily by veterans of the Confederate war effort.
The KKK became a shorthand descriptor for the many forms of white supremacist terrorism that slowly took organized form in the late 1860s. There were other massacres (Memphis) and attacks (New Orleans) against blacks and their white allies in the Reconstructing South.
By 1867 and 1868, when Black men in large numbers exercised the right to vote for the first time, white supremacist terrorism, often defined as KKK activity, targeted Black voters and Republican officeholders.

This was voter suppression, pure and simple.
Read 21 tweets
Brooks D. Simpson Profile picture
Apr 10
Yesterday I shared with you various images of the events in Wilmer McLean's parlor on April 9, 1865.

Today I plan to share a few more images that shape our memory of what happened that day ... and April 10, 1865 as well.

Grant and Lee met a second time this day in 1865.
These images fall into three categories.

First, there are images of an imagined surrender conference outside that draw upon talk of an apple tree at Appomattox.

Second, there's Lee's departure from the McLean House.

Third, there's the April 10 meeting.
Let's look first at the imagined outdoor April 9 encounter.

Sometimes Grant and Lee meet while mounted on their horses. A rather dapper Ulysses, no? Image
Read 10 tweets
Brooks D. Simpson Profile picture
Apr 9
Visual portrayals of what happened in Wilmer McLean's parlor on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House are worth some study.

Here's a simple early version: two generals, one table. Image
The table is a curious effort to bring together elements of the two tables involved in the event. Grant said at a brown wood oval table; Lee sat at a squarish marble table. Grant's chair was a swivel desk chair backed in leather, while Lee sat in a high-backed chair.
Image
Image
Yet it took a while for artists to include those four pieces of furniture, let alone to assign them to the general who used them. Image
Read 21 tweets
Brooks D. Simpson Profile picture
Apr 9
As true Americans commemorate the anniversary of Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox, let's recall that the events of April 9 marked an end to one of the most successful pursuits in military history ... one that is often underappreciated.
In some sixteen days the US forces under Grant's command repulsed a breakout attempt, severed Confederate supply lines and railroads, forced the evacuation of Petersburg and the the Confederate capital at Richmond.

That's for starters.
They then outmarched a foe determined to escape, blocked any chance of the enemy combining forces in North Carolina, then headed the insurgents off before they could reach the protection of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

In the process the foe suffered nearly 50% losses.
Read 5 tweets

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