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Grants memoirs:
an old soldier
remembers


By ROGER D. BRIDGES

Mary D. and William S. McFeely, Eds. Ulysses S. Grant Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Selected Letters 1839-1865. New York: Library of America, 1990. Pp. 1199 with index, appendix, notes and chronology. $35. (cloth).

The Civil War fascinates Americans like no other war in history. Thousands of Americans who participated in the war wrote essays, regimental histories and memoirs. Regiments gathered annually for reunions until well into the 20th century and published reminiscences in their proceedings. Today, the grandsons and great-grandsons of these men dress in replicas of Union and Confederate uniforms and join reenactment regiments. They hold mock battles pitting Blue and Gray participants against each other.

Historians also continue to revisit the war and to produce interpretive accounts of the conflict, its causes and effects. One of the best is James M. McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom (1989). In recent years the Civil War has inspired various television and movie dramas. Ken Burns, using original documentary and pictographic sources as well as the current assessments of scholars, kept millions of Americans glued to their television sets in 1990 for the highest-rated series in PBS history.

These historical treatments have been accompanied by an equally daunting biographical and autobiographical literature, including William S. McFeely's 1981 biography of Grant. Moreover, many leading war-time figures wrote about their participation in the conflict.

None of these firsthand accounts, however, compares with Ulysses S. Grant's Memoirs. In them Grant describes, in vivid yet restrained prose, both his actions and attitudes regarding the war, its events and its participants.

These Memoirs are the centerpiece of the recent collection of Grant's writings brought together by Mary and William McFeely. They are printed without change and with no addition to the explanations provided by Grant or by the original editors and publishers. The Memoirs, written in part to create an estate for Julia Grant and her children, was published after Grant's death in 1885 by Charles L. Webster, Mark Twain's son-in-law.

The McFeelys' primary contribution is adding between the same covers Grant's notes to his physician during his last weeks of life at Mount McGregor, N.Y., in June and July 1885, as well as a brief discussion of how Grant came to write the book. They assure the reader again that Grant did indeed write the Memoirs and that it was not — as was suggested by some at the time — the work of Grant's son Fred or of Grant's military secretary Adam Badeau, both of whom checked facts for the general but were rumored to have contributed more extensively to the project.

After a brief treatment of his early years, Grant discusses the Mexican War and his role in it. Here as elsewhere he is not afraid to draw conclusions. He says the war arose from a conspiracy to acquire additional territory for slavery from Mexico. He adds, "Even if the annexation itself could be justified, the manner in which the subsequent war was forced upon Mexico cannot." He thought it an unjust war, but once begun it required him to do his duty. While recognizing that the United States had gained "an empire of incalculable value" through the war, he concluded that "the Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war."

The main object of his Memoirs, however, was his personal account of the Civil War. Writing under the prospect of imminent death from throat cancer, he rendered judgments that are frank without being overstated. In plain but compelling prose, he explains his deeds and motives. He covers the entire war — both its insignificant and significant incidents. At least in retrospect, he recognized that his success at Vicksburg in 1864 was as important politically as it was militarily, if not more so.

Grant draws wonderfully apt word portraits of friend and foe alike. He shows his ability to capture the essence of character best, perhaps, in his anecdote about the colorful Confederate officer Braxton Bragg. Acting simultaneously as a company commander, post quartermaster and commissary, Bragg carried on a spritely correspondence about a requisition. When he disagreed with himself over the probity of the request, he referred the matter to the post commander. In exasperation, the post commander exclaimed: "My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarrelled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarrelling with yourself."

Finally, the McFeelys provide in this same volume 175 letters by Grant, culled from the Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, superbly edited by John Y. Simon and published in the 15 volumes issued since 1967 by Southern Illinois University Press. Unfortunately, the letters are not tied to the text in any tangible way. Moreover, the McFeelys do not use the information Simon and his associates so carefully compiled to put the letters in any other context. Instead, the context must be inferred from the Grant chronology that concludes the book.

If you don't have access to a copy of the Memoirs, you will be pleased with this handsome volume. Grant writes exceedingly well, and you will be amply rewarded by the substance as well as the style of his masterpiece. Even the letters will be of great interest. They clearly demonstrate that the classic quality of the Memoirs was no fluke and that the book was indeed written by the general rather than a ghostwriter. You will get even more satisfaction from this volume, however, if you also have access to Simon's ongoing edition of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant.•

Roger D. Bridges, director of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, Fremont, Ohio, since 1988, is also adjunct professor of history at Bowling Green State University. For the previous 18 years he was with the Illinois State Historical Library/Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. In 1969-70 he was assistant editor for volume four of the Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (1971).

March 1992/Illinois Issues/29


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