Grant's Betrayal

Power, Corruption, and the Theft of the Black Hills

John Reeves

The controversial story of the secret conspiracy inside Ulysses S. Grant’s White House that led to the theft of the sacred Black Hills from the Lakota people, set against a backdrop of brazen corruption, Lakota resistance, and Gilded Age greed.

A riveting account of the secret, rapacious conspiracy that led to the theft of the sacred Black Hills, Grant’s Betrayal is set against a backdrop of brazen corruption, Lakota resistance, and Gilded Age greed. This unfamiliar story is about capitalism and fraud at the time of America’s first centennial. It’s also about loss. Over a period of several decades, the Lakota people lost most of their land, their bison herds, and their liberty to roam over their once-expansive territory.

After initially pursuing a “Peace Policy,” the Grant administration dramatically reversed course, choosing to pressure the Lakota people into relinquishing the Black Hills after the discovery of gold there in 1874. Referring to the unjust land grab by the Grant administration, a U.S. Court of Claims declared, a century later in 1975: “The duplicity of President Grant’s course and the duress practiced on the starving Sioux, speak for themselves. A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.”

Grant’s Betrayal sheds new light on the shocking dispossession of Indigenous lands by corrupt politicians, aggressive military commanders, and Gilded Age capitalists hungry for gold. The heroic resistance offered by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and other Native American luminaries is central to the story as well. This poignant narrative helps us better understand what it means to be an American by reconsidering an unjust and regrettable chapter of our history.

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Endorsements & Reviews

Praise for Solider of Destiny:

"In a tightly focused narrative animated by vivid battle depictions, Mr. Reeves connects Grant’s personal and professional redemption to the country’s. Absorbing.” The Wall Street Journal

"Reeves’s book provides a well-written and accessible approach to this crucial decade in Grant’s life. Few Grant biographers contend with Grant’s problematic relationship with slavery to the extent that Reeves does. Readers interested in Grant’s family relationships, views on slavery, and Civil War career would do well to read Reeves’s intelligent book.” Civil War Book Review

“Mr. Reeves wants us to share that intimacy to drive home how this person—not just the historical figure—began to behave in new ways.” The New York Sun

"An enlightening look at how Ulysses S. Grant benefited from slavery years before he helped end the institution. Reeves manages to stitch Grant’s flaws and virtues into a thought-provoking portrait of a key historical figure who never lost faith in himself or his country.” Associated Press

"Reeves has a clear, gentle writing style, which makes for an easy read . . . If you have not read much about Grant the man before, this book is a good place to start.” Emerging Civil War

“This concise, simple narrative has deeper currents. Reeves' book is more than an intimate study of Grant and his family in a critical period of the future president’s life; it is a study of a white middle-class America in which economics, politics, and technology rapidly changed their society at the terrible cost of the American Civil War.” New York Journal of Books

"Grant’s contradictions and complexities are on full display in this candid biography.” Publisher's Weekly

"A fine account of the formative years of Ulysses S. Grant. A capable portrait of Grant's critical period, with more than the usual attention to his racial views.” Kirkus Reviews

"This thoroughly researched and detailed book offers keen insight into Grant as an evolving soul attempting to navigate the trials and tribulations of life. It also dispels some of the myths of the future Union general as a wholly unsuited businessman and unstable drunk. Soldier of Destiny is a masterful account of the decisive Grant and how he remained resilient while 'lost in the wilderness,' only to emerge as a sword of deliverance at the moment his country needed him most.” HistoryNet

"Reeves has done a superb job of tracing the evolution of Grant's attitude toward slavery. But it was the impact of his experience as a Civil War commander that shaped his ultimate conviction that slavery must go if the Union was to be preserved and given a new birth of freedom. An added bonus of Reeves' lucid portrayal of this process is the most sensible and even-handed treatment of the issue of Grant's drinking that I have encountered.” James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom: the Civil war ErW