Politics & Power Quote by Ulysses S. Grant

Grant’s line is the rare presidential humblebrag that reads like a warning label. “Fortune, or misfortune” sets the tone: he isn’t polishing a legacy so much as admitting that the job found him before he found the job. Coming from the general who won the Civil War’s defining campaigns, the sentence quietly reframes fame as a trap. Victory put him on a conveyor belt to the White House, and he’s telling you he stepped on without a map.

The phrasing does double work. “Called to the office” borrows the language of duty, even vocation, as if the presidency were less a conquest than an assignment. That’s classic Grant: a man whose authority was built on obedience to mission, not ideological performance. Yet “without any previous political training” is both candor and preemptive defense. He’s acknowledging the mismatch between military competence and political navigation in a country where Reconstruction demanded legislative finesse, coalition management, and moral clarity under constant sabotage.

Context sharpens the edge. Grant entered office in 1869, a celebrity candidate in an era of party machinery, patronage, and corruption scandals waiting like sinkholes. His administration would become notorious for graft around him, not necessarily by him. This line anticipates that history: he’s signaling innocence about the tradecraft of Washington, and maybe a suspicion of it. The subtext is almost tragic: the nation wanted a savior; it got a servant, and the job required a politician.