‘A Disposition to Be Rich,’ by Geoffrey C. Ward

Millions of Americans loved Ulysses S. Grant, but, as so often with love, the relationship can be hard to understand from the outside. Grant did not woo the public. A rumpled man, he seemed shorter than he was. When he opened his mouth, cigars and whiskey went in, but few words came out. His critics, then and now, have disagreed over whether he should be condemned primarily as a brute of a general or a dupe of a president.

Courtesy of Geoffrey C. Ward

"The Prison Barber Shop," by B. Gillam, from Puck magazine, July 8, 1885.

A DISPOSITION TO BE RICH

How a Small-Town Pastor’s Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated Man in the United States

By Geoffrey C. Ward

Illustrated. 418 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $ 28.95.

To those who adored him, he looked rather different. He and Lincoln saved the Union in the Civil War, but only Grant lived to receive the nation's thanks. And he won without ego. "There was no nonsense, no sentiment," wrote one private, "only a plain businessman of the Republic." The newspaperman Charles A. Dana called Grant "the most honest man I ever knew, with a temper that nothing could disturb."

One man did disturb that temper. Grant would dig his fingernails into the armrests of his chair at the thought of him, and told a friend he wanted to kill him, "as I would a snake. I believe I should do it, too, but I do not wish to be hanged for the killing of such a wretch." When Grant died a year later, on July 23, 1885, the public blamed that "wretch," who pitied himself as "the best-hated man in the United States."

His name was Ferdinand Ward. In 1880, when just 28, he had persuaded the former president to become a partner in Grant & Ward, a Wall Street brokerage house. Ward reported astonishing profits, occasionally doling out cash to his partners. Grant believed he was rich. In reality, Ward was running a Ponzi scheme. In 1884, it blew up, bankrupting Grant and his family.

The author of this elegant new biography of Ward, "A Disposition to Be Rich," is his great-grandson. For decades, Geoffrey C. Ward has told Americans stories of their ancestors. He has edited American Heritage, collaborated with the filmmaker Ken Burns and written esteemed books like "A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt" and "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson." All this time, he has freighted about a box of letters, preserved by his grandfather, documenting the fall of his earnest family because of one remorseless son.

In telling this personal tale, Ward applies his characteristic scrupulousness and narrative skill. Vivid, living people swarm the pages. Ferdinand Ward's quarrelsome father, the Rev. Ferdinand Ward, went to evangelize India as a young man. Told that missionaries should die on the spiritual battlefield, he concluded that it might be an excellent policy for his detested colleagues though not for himself, and returned to wage doctrinal battles in a small church in Geneseo, N.Y.

Ward's mother, Jane Shaw Ward, was pious, nervous and depressed. Young "Ferd" was often alone with her in "the dark parsonage," Geoffrey Ward writes. "It was fragrant with spices imported in wooden boxes from India, but the carpets and curtains and furnishings were drab and worn, shabby testimony to the truth of his mother's teaching: no one should expect virtue, no matter how conspicuous, ever to be rewarded in this world."

Many more people appear: Ward's honest brother, William, and his collaborator James D. Fish; not to mention actresses and mistresses and Samuel Clemens. Even characters who play no role receive scrutiny, often in extensive footnotes. When a letter mentions Gen. Artemas Ward, the author recounts the general's resentment of George Washington and his troubles with gout.

Perhaps this book follows family members at excessive length, but from them we get the truest picture of Ferdinand Ward. "It is hard to trust his word or confide in him as to anything," the Rev. Ferdinand Ward wrote of him to another of his children. "This we know too well. There is no use denying it." But when Grant & Ward appeared to thrive, the prodigal repainted the dark parsonage and stuffed it with gifts, and they doubted their doubts. Money made them believe — or want to.

T. J. Stiles is the author of “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt,†which won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. He is writing a biography of George Armstrong Custer.

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