#Ulysses s grant book full

The book is one of the most unflinching studies of war in our literature.” More than a century later, Gore Vidal added his own assessment: “It is simply not possible to read Grant’s memoirs without realising that the author is a man of first-rate intelligence.” One contemporary critic wrote that “no other American president has told his story as powerfully as Ulysses S Grant. His Personal Memoirs, published a few months later, were at once acclaimed as a masterpiece. On 23 July, having completed his final corrections, Grant died in his summer cottage on the slopes of Mount McGregor, in New York state. When Grant finished the manuscript in July 1885, it was rushed into galley proof. Countless veterans signed up for a story that was not just a presidential memoir, but a lasting and tangible mirror to their own individual struggles and sacrifice. They were dressed in the faded blue uniforms of the Union army, often wearing medals from Shiloh or Gettysburg. In the spring of 1885, while Grant was struggling to complete his manuscript, Twain’s subscription agents were spreading out across the US to raise advance orders for Grant’s memoirs, a two-volume set offered for $3.50. The overall effect is both intimate and majestic. On every page, his narrative has the simple directness of the finest English prose, inspired by the King James Bible on which he had been raised. Throughout this very substantial autobiography, like the great man he was, Grant is supremely generous to his enemies, loyal to his friends and associates, and always devoted to another civil war hero, his president, Abraham Lincoln. But this was not a matter that I thought of until afterwards.” In my rough travelling suit, the uniform of a private, I must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six feet high and of faultless form.

#Ulysses s grant book full

As he was a man of much dignity, with an impassible face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result, and was too manly to show it… General Lee was dressed in full uniform which was entirely new, and was wearing a sword of considerable value. “What General Lee’s feelings were I do not know.

I had my staff with me, a good portion of whom were in the room during the whole of the interview… When I went into the house I found General Lee. His account of the Confederate surrender is especially moving: “I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback in the field, and wore a soldier’s blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was. By many accounts, Grant’s memoirs fully capture the man himself: they are well observed, often humorous, invariably charming, penetrating and lucid. It was only his inflexible determination, the quality that had made him a great general, that mastered the torments of ill-health – sleepless nights, fear of dying – to articulate his account for a devoted American audience. When he began to write, he had begun to suffer the agonising pain of throat cancer. Grant’s memoirs are all the more remarkable for having been completed under duress. The reader finds himself on edge to know how the civil war is coming out.” has conveyed the suspense which was felt by himself and his army and by all who believed in the Union cause. Indeed, Grant’s life story is both remarkable and moving.įor the critic Edmund Wilson, who put Grant in the exalted literary company of Walt Whitman and Henry Thoreau, this powerful autobiography is “a unique expression of the national character. Although Grant was on the winning side, he was always brutally honest about both his successes and failures, and never failed to acknowledge the grinding poverty from which the civil war rescued him. The unputdownable heart of Grant’s book is his eyewitness account of the vicissitudes of the American civil war: the outbreak of hostilities the battle of Shiloh the campaign against Vicksburg the battle of Chattanooga Sherman’s March Lincoln’s assassination and Lee’s surrender. His narrative has the simple directness of the finest English prose: the overall effect is both intimate and majestic