Bruce Catton and Ulysses Grant

Grant Takes Command, Bruce Catton

It was Bruce Catton who really introduced me to the American Civil War, though in a sense I grew up with the war.  As a child living in Georgia, I camped with my Girl Scout Troop at Stone Mountain, the Confederate Mount Rushmore, with its giant bas-relief of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.  When family visited, my parents took them and us to every battlefield and plantation historic site within driving distance.  But it was finding Catton's three-volume history of the Federal Army of the Potomac on my parents' shelves many years later that brought the war alive for me, introduced me to military history, and made me a student of this four-year fratricidal conflict.

Catton, who was born in 1899, also grew up with the war, hearing stories from the veterans in his small Michigan hometown. After serving in the First World War, he became a journalist, working in newspapers before he became the founding editor of American Heritage magazine in 1954.  He was not an academic historian, but his many books about the Civil War were meticulously researched and documented.  Though he won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1954, his work was often labeled "pop" history (a dismissive term still sometimes used for historians who aim at or accidentally reach a wider non-academic audience).  Catton wrote in a relaxed, colloquial, but never sloppy style, and his narrative voice is unmistakable.  To my mind, he is the Anthony Trollope of historians.  He wrote complex narratives with a large cast of characters, moving his central story forward with frequent digressions to follow subplots, all of which come neatly back to the main theme.  He had a journalist's eye for description, for the telling detail, for the apt anecdote.  Writing about a war unprecedented in the slaughter of young men, he wasn't afraid to include the lighter moments that came even in the midst of desperate battles, while never playing for jokes.  He constantly brought in the common soldier's point of view, quoting diaries and letters as well as reminiscences written many years later.

Grant Takes Command is the final book in a three-volume biography of Ulysses S. Grant, focusing on his military career.  (Catton was chosen to complete the trilogy after the author of the first volume died.)  When I was reading John Jones' A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, my confusion with the lack of maps or notes led me to read with my National Geographic Atlas of the Civil War close at hand.  Its brief summaries of major battles made me curious to read more, particularly about the last years of the war, and there on the TBR shelves was this book, just exactly what I wanted.  (I had read the second volume, Grant Moves South, in my pre-blogging days.)

This book covers Grant's military career from late 1863 to the end of the war.  It opens in July, just after his great victory at Vicksburg.  With the equally important Federal victory at Chattanooga in November of that year, Grant became the military hero of the North, its most successful general and its best chance of winning the war.  Congress voted to revive the rank of Lieutenant General, last held by George Washington, and in March of 1864 Grant was promoted and made general-in-chief of the Federal armies. Following his career in 1864 and 1865 really gives a good overview of the war in general, because even when he wasn't in the field, as with Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas, he was still in charge, in frequent contact with his commanders across the entire front.  But Grant did spend most of his time in Virginia, facing Robert E. Lee and his army, taking his own men into some of the worst fighting of the war, at the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg.  He famously said that he would "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."  It took much longer than that, and many thousands of deaths, before he finally brought Lee to surrender in April of 1865.

Here Catton was writing a life, not strictly military history, and like all good biographers he wanted (in the words of  historian Paul Murray Kendall) "to elicit, from the coldness of paper, the warmth of a life being lived."  First, Catton let Grant speak for himself, quoting frequently from Grant's own words, his letters and dispatches as well as his later Memoirs, and his reminiscences in Around the World with General Grant.  Catton also paid close attention to the people around Grant, his "military family."  Whenever possible, his wife Julia joined him in camp, bringing one  or another of their sons with her.  Grant's aid Colonel Horace Porter wrote that they "were a perfect Darby and Joan," who in the quiet evenings sat together holding hands, "looking shy and mildly fussed if anyone noticed that they were doing it."  Grant was an attentive father, as much as he could be while absent in the field, constantly worried that his children weren't getting a proper education.  He didn't want his sons wasting their time on music or dancing, though he didn't object to it for his daughter Nellie.

Grant's marriage to Julia and their family were the center of his life, the balance for everything else.  Catton gave equal attention to two other crucial partnerships, with Abraham Lincoln and William T. Sherman.  In Grant, Lincoln found the general that he and the country so desperately needed. He told one of his secretaries, "I'm glad to find a man who can go ahead without me . . . He doesn't ask me to do impossibilities for him, and he's the first general I've had that didn't."  Grant later said of Lincoln, "He was incontestably the greatest man I have ever known."  The second partnership, with Sherman, became a major factor in the eventual Union victory.  After Grant's promotion, Sherman took over his command in the western theater, but they continued to coordinate their military movements in Virginia and Georgia. Sherman once wrote Grant," I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come if alive."   Or as he once more bluntly put it: "He stood by me when I was crazy and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now, sir, we stand by each other always."

Bruce Catton was probably never near the cutting-edge of Civil War scholarship, but his books are well-researched, neatly organized, and eminently readable.  I'm glad to have them on my shelves, and to see that so many are still in print - now considered classics.

Around the world with General Grant

Around the World with General Grant, John Russell Young. Michael Fellman, editor.

Ulysses Grant's second term as President of the United States ended in March of 1877.  He couldn't return to his most successful job, in the Army, and there was no clear role for ex-presidents to play (which is true today).  Though he thought of running again for a third term, it was much too soon to start campaigning (which I wish were true today).  Grant and his wife Julia decided it was the perfect time to travel.  Three months later, they sailed from Philadelphia on the U.S. warship Indiana.  Travelling with them was their youngest son Jesse and a party of friends that included John Russell Young, a correspondent for the New York Herald.

The Grants set out to tour Great Britain and Europe, but they had no definite plans, and in the end they just kept going.  Over the next two and a half years, they circumnavigated the globe.  Their travels took them to Scandinavia, Egypt, Palestine, Russia, India, Burma, Singapore, Vietnam, China, and Japan, before they finally headed home, sailing east across the Pacific to California.  John Russell Young traveled with them for most of the tour.  He filed some stories with his paper during that time, which he later collected and expanded into a two-volume work, published in 1879, a year after the Grants and their party returned home.  The edition I read is a one-volume abridgement from the Johns Hopkins University Press, edited by Michael Fellman, a professor of history at Simon Fraser University.

The original two-volume edition is available through Google Books, and I may download it someday.  I'm curious about what was cut, and why, in abridging and editing.  Professor Fellman doesn't discuss this in his notes, which seems a strange omission, particularly in a work from a university press.  I'd like to know what criteria were used.  Based on what is included, I suspect a lot of descriptions of scenery got cut, but also observations on the people, individuals and societies, that the Grant party met.  Without knowing how the original was abridged and why, I prefer to see it for myself, even if it turns out to be as dense as Anthony Trollope's two-volume North America.

Abridgements aside, I found this book very interesting and informative.  As I've mentioned before, I enjoy travelogues, particularly from the 19th century, though this incredible tour is in a class of its own, at least among Americans.   In its pomp and circumstance, and in its sometimes leisurely pace, it reminded me of Emily Eden's Up the Country.  I had already read Julia Grant's account of the trip in her autobiography, and Young provided an interesting contrast.  At times I was also reminded of Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, which coincidentally General Grant read while traveling.  But the similarities are in the American expectations and reactions rather than in the humor, which can't match Twain's. Young seemed to have the ex-President's dignity constantly in mind.

Grant is pretty consistently ranked among the worst of American presidents, and even  some of his staunchest friends were relieved when his term of office ended.  But whatever the disappointments of his presidency at home, he was given a hero's welcome wherever he traveled, honored both as the great victorious Union general and as the former president.  For many of the countries, he was the first American president ever to visit.  Everywhere he went, people packed the streets, organized massive receptions, built arches of flags and flowers to display his picture, sent him addresses and gifts of all kinds.  They also organized military reviews for the General, which was the one thing he avoided whenever he could.  He and his party were the guests of Queen Victoria at Windsor and the Emperor of Japan in Tokyo.  (The accommodations and transportation offered by the U.S. government and their hosts around the world made this trip possible for the Grants, who were far from rich.)   The General played billiards with the Maharajah of Jeypore, whose polite determination to lose to his distinguished guest was defeated by Grant's poor skill with a cue.  There were long conversations with Otto von Bismarck and a private audience with the newly-elected Pope Leo XIII (Young assured his readers that the visit had nothing of a "religious character"; Grant was in no danger of conversion).

It was fascinating to read of the honors Grant received, and impossible not to feel a twinge of envy.  I did not know, for example, that when a VIP visited Pompeii, the officials would excavate one of the sites in his or her honor.  Union Generals William Sherman and Philip Sheridan, who had already visited, had their sites, and of course their commanding officer must have his as well.  Unfortunately, the "Grant house" yielded nothing more exciting than "two or three brass ornaments, [and] a loaf of bread..."  When the Grants traveled by boat up the Nile, their personal tour guide was the renowned Egyptologist Emile Brugsch (Radcliffe Emerson would have had something severe to say about the access he gave them to various sites).  In Athens, the Parthenon and the entire Acropolis were illuminated in Grant's honor, for a private night-time visit.

For me, the real fascination of the book came in the second half, as the Grants sailed east from India.  There are more descriptions of the Asian than the European countries.  And on the long boat trips, Grant talked over his Civil War experiences in great detail.  In the conversations Young recorded, he analyzed his fellow generals, fought over the campaigns of Shiloh and Vicksburg, and told the story of Lee's final defeat and surrender at Appomattox.  As Professor Fellman notes, Grant was "discursive and casual," not to mention "candid and even salty."  It's an interesting contrast to the more formal tone of his classic Personal Memoirs, published shortly after his death in 1885.

While he was dismissive of Robert E. Lee and George McClellan, General Grant had a great admiration and respect for Abraham Lincoln.  The Grants were scheduled to go to Ford's Theater with the Lincolns on April 14th, but they made their excuses after an unpleasantness with Mary Lincoln.   The Lincolns took a carriage ride together than afternoon, during which Lincoln spoke about his plans after his second term ended in 1868.  He wanted to travel to Europe with their sons, and he hoped to visit Jerusalem, hopes that were of course ended that night.  Perhaps only a visit from Abraham Lincoln could have outshone Ulysses Grant's.  But in the end, whatever his popularity abroad, Grant couldn't win the nomination for another term.

The heroism of Ulysses Grant

Grant's Final Victory, Charles Bracelen Flood

Ulysses Grant has become something of a hero of mine, second only to Abraham Lincoln.  Not because of his presidency, which is generally considered one of the worst in American history, with the corruption that was so rampant in the Gilded Age.  A man of honor, Grant himself had no part in the corruption, but it was his administration and ultimately his responsibility.  Yet whatever the failings of his presidency, it was his part in winning the Civil War and preserving the Union that made him a hero, his military genius a perfect match for Lincoln's political genius.  Grant understood his duty as a soldier: to prosecute the war to the best of his abilities, under the direction of the Commander in Chief.  Unlike Lincoln's other generals, he didn't spend time complaining, shirking, or bragging.  He just got the job done.  In the middle of the war, when rumors began to circulate that Grant was drinking heavily, Lincoln reportedly said, "I can't spare this man. He fights."  To Lincoln's great relief, Grant also repeatedly refused to meddle in politics, rejecting any suggestion that he run for president in 1864 to replace the increasingly unpopular incumbent.

Earlier this year, I read Grant's Personal Memoirs, an account of his life up to the end of the Civil War.  I knew something of the background of the book, which was completed only days before his death in 1885.  In Grant's Final Victory, Charles Bracelen Flood tells the dramatic story of how the Memoirs came to be written, and by the end of his book I had an even greater admiration for Ulysses Grant.

In 1884, Grant and his son Ulysses Junior were partners in the New York investment bank of Grant and Ward.  The senior Grant, who understood little about banking, contributed mainly the prestige of his name.  This lack of knowledge would cost him deeply, both in money and reputation, when it was discovered that the firm's other partners were running what was basically a Ponzi scheme.  The firm crashed in early May, and the Grant family lost everything.  There was no pension for former presidents in those days, and Grant had no source of income.  Influential friends like William Vanderbilt began trying to raise funds, and ordinary people sent contributions, but Grant's pride made him unwilling to accept charity.

At this opportune moment came an offer from the Century Magazine for a series of articles on his war-time experiences.  To his surprise, Grant found that he enjoyed writing, and that he had a gift for clear, concise prose.  Writing could be a source of income, and a distraction from his difficult situation.  Even more than his financial worries, Grant's health had become a concern, with continuous pain in his mouth and throat.  In October of 1884, he was diagnosed with cancer of the throat and tongue. Realizing he was facing death, Grant decided to write his memoirs, hoping to make enough money from them to repay his debts and leave his wife, Julia, in comfort.

He was considering a contract with the Century Magazine publishers when Mark Twain came to visit him.  Twain, who had briefly served in a Confederate militia unit before deserting, had a great admiration for Grant.  Already a popular writer, Twain had recently established his own publishing firm to put out his books.  When he heard the terms that the magazine was offering Grant, Twain found them almost insulting.  He knew the book would be a best-seller, and he wanted it for his own house, but he also wanted Grant to have the best terms possible.  He eventually talked Grant into signing with him, on generous terms.  At the time, he did not know about Grant's illness.  When he learned of it, he did not withdraw his offer, though there was some doubt that Grant would live long enough to finish the manuscript.  Twain's confidence was more than repaid when he read the first sections of the manuscript and knew it would be a masterpiece.

As his illness progressed, Grant was now in a race with death.  With the same courage and iron will he had shown during the war, he worked on, at times refusing medications that might cloud his mind.  Eating and drinking were so painful that he frequently went without even water, which weakened him.  Often unable to speak, he was reduced to writing notes, some deeply revealing: "The fact is that I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is any thing that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three."

On July 20th, Ulysses Grant put down his pencil; his book was finished.  That afternoon, his condition suddenly worsened, and three days later he died.  His state funeral in New York drew more than a million people, with both Union and Confederate generals serving as honorary pallbearers.  Royalties from his book eventually brought Julia Grant over half a million dollars, and the Memoirs are still in print.

This a compelling story, and Charles Bracelen Flood tells it well.  In the sections that cover Grant's writing of the Memoirs, he weaves in anecdotes from Grant's past, including a description of Lee's surrender at Appomattox, so the reader learns something of Grant's life.  I greatly enjoyed Charles Bracelen Flood's earlier book about Grant, Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War, as well as his 1864  Lincoln at the Gates of History.  I have also read Julia Dent Grant's memoirs, which she began writing two years after her husband's death, but which were only published until 1975.  They are of course very different from her husband's.  For one thing, she writes about their life after the war, including his terms as president, and describes a world tour they took in 1877 when they were treated like royalty everywhere they went.

Poignant memories and anniversaries

Personal Memoirs, Ulysses S. Grant

Two very important anniversaries fall this week here in the United States: the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Civil War, and the 146th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  There have been a flurry of news stories and articles marking the first, including several making clear the link between slavery and the war, which always sets off the Lost Cause/Gone With the Wind as history crowd. 

I wasn't really thinking of the anniversaries when I sat down with U.S. Grant's Memoirs.  I've had it on the TBR pile for quite a while.  I'd recently read Bruce Catton's Grant Moves South, as well as Charles Bracelin Flood's Grant and Sherman, the Friendship That Won the Civil War.  Last year I read Julia Dent Grant's memoirs (published only in 1975) and moved her husband's up the pile.  I'd also seen some recent references to the excellence of Grant's book (particularly in contrast to the unexcellence of George W. Bush's 2010 memoir, which cites Grant as an inspiration).

I found the Memoirs fascinating reading, if slow-going in parts.  Grant starts with his family history, briefly covering his childhood and his education at West Point (which he hoped would close while he was enrolled, sparing him from an army career). He covers the Mexican War in more detail than I expected, and I learned a lot about that war that I never knew or had forgotten - and living in Texas, I should know that history.

The bulk of the book is naturally focused on the Civil War, and it ends with the grand reviews in Washington in May of 1865.  This isn't a full autobiography; there is nothing on his presidency or life after the White House, though Julia Grant's book does cover those years in some detail.  I've had a biography of Grant on the TBR pile for more years than I am willing to admit, and I may be inspired to pick that up soon, to get the broader picture.

Grant wrote 20 years after the war ended, and with a clear knowledge that his death was imminent (he died of throat cancer just days after it was completed).  I would expect that gave him a sense of freedom in expressing his opinions of both events and people, where in the past, from what I've read of his war career, he was generally reserved and close-mouthed.  In any case, he clearly states that the Civil War came because of slavery, and he has an interesting argument that no state formed after 1789 had the right to secede.  He is especially scathing about Texas, for which he fought and so many died in 1845-1846 to bring into the union. As a resident of Texas, with a current governor who has advocated secession (because it worked so well last time), I cheered when I read those words.  Grant is also scathing about northern traitors; Buchanan's passive role in 1860 and early 1861; and about the shortcomings of generals like Halleck, McClernand, and Rosecrans, and Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War.  He also clearly shows his admiration and respect for General Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War; Abraham Lincoln, William Sherman,  Phil Sheridan, and David Porter in the Civil War.  In addition to the horror of Lincoln's murder, he sees clearly the defects of Andrew Johnson and the disaster that his administration brought, especially in Reconstruction.

Grant's Civil War battles, major and minor, are of course covered in detail, from Fort Henry to Appomattox.  The editor of this edition, renowned Civil War historian James McPherson, suggests in his introduction that the reader might want to have an atlas handy.  I wish I'd followed that advice.  It was hard enough to keep the different divisions/corps/brigades straight, let alone envisioning the country around Vicksburg, or the different roads through the Wilderness. That is where the book dragged a bit for me.

This was the perfect start to my own celebration of the Civil War's sesquicentennial.  In honor of the anniversary, I am going to clear all the Civil War books off the TBR pile - after all, I've got five years to do it!