Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, in detail
Ulysses S. Grant wrote his memoirs while dying of throat cancer, dictating and correcting pages as his body failed, racing to finish before the money ran out and leave something for his family. He completed the manuscript four days before his death in 1885. Mark Twain, who published the book, called it the finest memoir produced by an American since Benjamin Franklin's. That assessment has held.
The memoirs cover Grant's childhood in Ohio, his years at West Point, his service in the Mexican-American War, his difficult years as a civilian in the 1850s, and then the Civil War in full — from his early campaigns in Missouri and Kentucky through Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and finally the Virginia campaign against Lee that ended at Appomattox. The book closes at the surrender; Grant does not cover his presidency.
What makes it remarkable is the prose. Grant writes with a directness and clarity that military historians have studied for over a century. There is no rhetorical inflation, no self-pity, and almost no score-settling. He is generous to enemies and reserved in his praise of allies — Lee gets respect, Sherman gets genuine affection, McClellan gets damning understatement. His descriptions of battles are organized for comprehension rather than drama, which gives them a documentary authority that more literary accounts lack.
The book is long — nearly 300,000 words — and the Mexican-American War section, which Grant disapproved of, is a slog to get through. But the Civil War portion is among the best accounts of that conflict written by any participant. Grant's self-portrait is of a man who had limited imagination about his own capabilities until circumstances required them, who did not much enjoy war, and who understood that winning required outlasting the enemy in a way his predecessors had not.
The big ideas
- 1.
Grant's prose style — direct, clear, without rhetorical padding — is the memoir's most discussed quality and was widely praised in his own time by writers including Mark Twain.
- 2.
The memoirs are notably generous to Confederate opponents, particularly Lee, whom Grant treats with respect throughout and describes at Appomattox with care.
- 3.
Grant is candid about his failures in the 1850s — the civilian years between the Mexican War and the Civil War when he struggled financially and personally.
