BOOKS: To Rescue the Republic: Bret Baier with Catherine Whitney

Nov. 13—Bret Baier's "Three Days" trilogy may have ended but he's still writing about crucial moments in the careers of American Presidents.

Ulysses S. Grant is his latest presidential subject.

In "To Rescue the Republic: Ulysses S. Grant, the Fragile Union and the Crisis of 1876," Baier looks at the contested 1876 presidential election and Grant's role in keeping the post-Civil War nation whole in the wake of the electoral divide.

There was no clear winner in the contest between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who carried the Northern states, and Democrat Samuel Tilden, who won the majority of the former Confederate states. The Southern states threatened to rebel again if Tilden did not win.

The votes were close. Electoral College votes of three states were disputed. Eventually, Hayes won by one electoral vote though Tilden won the popular vote by several thousand ballots.

Baier provides insight into Grant's role as the sitting President in resolving the constitutional crisis of 1876.

But while Baier's previous books, "Three Days in January," "Three Days in Moscow" and "Three Days at the Brink," presented short biographies followed by detailed chapters of the specific three days in the presidential careers of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt respectively, "To Rescue the Republic" spends the majority of its pages detailing the life and career of Grant with some pages near the end of the volume on the crisis.

This is no complaint. "Republic" is a fine biography of Grant and much shorter and to the point than the recent Grant biographies such as Ron Chernow's "Grant" and H.W. Brands' "The Man Who Saved the Union."

Baier charts Grant's boyhood as the son of a tanner, his unexpected entry into West Point, his early military career which ended in ambiguity, his mediocre even miserable life as a civilian, then his meteoric rise as a brilliant Union general in the Civil War, which led to the presidency less than four years after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.

Baier's look at Grant and the "Crisis of 1876" is timely given the current division in the nation and the recent 2020 presidential election.