The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant by Ulysses S. Grant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars “How little men control their own destiny” Finished by Grant just before he died of throat cancer, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1885) is mostly his detailed account of the Civil War as he experienced it, written to earn money needed due to “the rascality of a business partner” and to answer those who thought his approach to the war cost more blood and treasure than necessary. Early on he says, “But my later experience has taught me two lessons. First, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred. Second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticized.” Grant also says he wants “to avoid doing injustice to anyone,” and although some figures don’t come off well, like the careful General Halleck and the controlling Secretary of War Stanton, Grant writes with an evenhanded air. He compliments southern soldiers, generals, and people, for though he disagreed with their cause (a rebellion to protect a doomed and amoral slave system) he thought they were sincere, and he doesn’t blame the south alone for the blood spilled to atone for “the wickedness of our nation.” His book is heart-felt, and though I sense him protesting too much about things like Sherman’s “perfect” march to the sea, his account is convincing. The first chapter traces Grant’s family in America back to 1638, profiles his self-educated tanner father, and depicts Grant as a hard-working boy who liked horses and who became a laughingstock for once naively explaining his bargaining strategy to a man before bargaining to buy his horse. This instance of Grant’s modest honesty yields a pithy insight: “Boys enjoy the misery of their companions. . . and in later life I have found that not all adults are free from this peculiarity.” Chapter 2 concerns West Point, which Grant didn’t want to attend, because “A military life had no charms for me,” but his father pulled some strings and off he went. Once at West Point (where he mostly read novels), he decided to graduate and become a mathematics teacher, but “Circumstances always did shape my course differently from my plans.” Then follow chapters on the Mexican-American War, which he thought was “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” During the war, he learned that “Nothing so popularizes a candidate for high civil position as military victories,” and that he was no fan of bullfighting: “I could not see how human beings could enjoy the suffering of beasts.” After a few chapters on his post-war life, including a vivid account of gold rush era SF, Grant embarks on his main topic, the Civil War, “The great tragedy of 1861 to 1865,” which runs from Chapter 17 to Chapter 70 (the last one). For Grant, the quartermaster who became a general, fighting is less important than strategy, topography, weather, supply, transport, orders, communications, and morale, etc. He devotes more time to dealing with swamps, rivers, levies, lakes, malaria, food, clothes, bridges, roads, trains, telegraphs, subordinates and superiors, etc. than to battles. And although he often praises the “dash” of southern soldiers and the “endurance” of northern ones, when he does recount the engagements with which he was involved, he never mentions individual feats of heroism or cowardice. He refers to regiments, brigades, and divisions etc. by commanding-officer synechdoche, as in, “Burnside was moved up between Warren and Smith.” He assesses generals like Sherman favorably and Rosecrans critically according to how quickly and effectively they could act to implement the overall strategy. Grant does not hide the carnage of battle: “One cannon ball passed through our ranks not far from me. It took off the head of an enlisted man and the underjaw of Captain Page of my regiment, while the splinters from the musket of the killed soldier and his brains and bones knocked down two or three others, including one officer, Lieutenant Wallon, hurting them more or less.” And he is aware of the suffering caused by war: “While a battle is raging, one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousands or the ten thousands with great composure, but after the battle these scenes are distressing, and one is naturally disposed to do as much to alleviate the suffering of an enemy as of a friend.” Indeed, as when he debunks the fanciful popular story about Lee surrendering his sword at Appomattox and Grant returning it to him, Grant is out to de-romanticize history and to de-glorify war. From bodies and bridges to roads and towns, the destruction was pervasive--and inventive, as in prying up enemy train tracks and using pyres of ties to soften the rails to wrap them around trees. Troops on Sherman’s march shot hounds they found to prevent them from hunting escaped slaves and went out empty-handed on foot in the morning and returned on horseback laden with supplies from local farms in the evening. Grant relates two anecdotes involving joke-cracking soldiers taking away one woman’s poodle and another woman’s last chickens. Once during a prolonged and ferocious battle Grant realized that wounded men were lying in no man’s land, so he wrote Lee to arrange two hours per day for both sides to retrieve them, and Lee wrote back that they’d need flags of truce, and soon 48 hours of back and forth had passed, and all but two of the wounded had died! Grant is a fine, dry writer, as when describing officers (“He was possessed of an irascible temper and was naturally disputatious”), giving advice (“The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on in front”), explaining orders (“Promiscuous pillaging, however, was discouraged and punished”), exposing human nature (“Bad habits, if not restrained by law or public opinion, spread more rapidly and universally than good ones”), or criticizing ambition (“It is men who wait to be selected and not those who seek from whom we may always expect the most efficient service”). The Appendix mainly reiterates many of the meticulous details already given in the Memoirs, down to the same verbatim excerpts of orders and reports. Robin Field reads the audiobook capably, but somewhat attenuatedly. For an author dying of throat cancer like Grant, Field’s voice and manner may be suitable, but his reading renders the Appendix (lasting nearly 3.5 hours of the audiobook) quite difficult to finish. When Grant says, “The President of the United States is in a large degree, or ought to be, a representative of the feeling, wishes, and judgment of those over whom he presides,” I wished he had written about his two terms as President. Grant was the kind of person (and general and president and author) who could write, “How little men control their own destiny,” but also “What I have done has been done conscientiously to the best of my ability and in the best interests of the entire country.” View all my reviews
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