War & Peace Quote by Ulysses S. Grant

Grant’s line is a blunt corrective to the romantic myths that cling to military heroes: he’s not asking to be admired for loving battle, he’s asking to be trusted for hating it. Coming from the general who accepted Lee’s surrender and later governed a country still bleeding from civil war, the sentence carries the weight of a man who has seen what war costs in bodies, budgets, and civic cohesion.

The key move is the double negation with a narrow exception. “Never felt any sort of fondness” strips away the swagger you might expect from a victorious commander; “never advocated it” goes further, disowning the easy political habit of waving the flag to mask ambition. Then he inserts a single, tightly policed justification: “except as a means of peace.” It’s not a lofty pacifism. It’s a hard-edged doctrine of necessity, a claim that force is only legitimate when it terminates violence rather than perpetuates it.

Subtextually, Grant is defending the Union cause against two temptations: the Lost Cause narrative that casts Northern force as tyrannical, and the perennial postwar appetite to turn battlefield success into a blank check for future adventures. As president during Reconstruction, he also needed war’s authority without war’s intoxication. The sentence functions like a moral demobilization order: respect the soldier, but don’t worship the war.