Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by E.B. Long

Grant the tactician, the victim of his friends, the alcoholic, the plain and tough professional soldier, the ideal commander - all of these images are brightened in the work of Grant the writer as he assesses himself and the events that forged his character. Then began the rebellion that broke the Union and recast Grant’s fortune: the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the battles of Shiloh, Corinth, Appomattox, Five Forks, Sailor’s Creek, Vicksburg and Lookout Mountain, the bloody Wilderness campaign, Sherman’s “March to the Sea,”.

Unquestionably, it is the finest literary achievement by any American president, the frankest, least pretentious, most nearly tragic account we have of the failings and triumphs of leadership.Written as Grant was dying of cancer, it tells the straightforward story of his boyhood in Ohio, graduation from West Point, and the grimy military campaigns in the West and Mexico that ended with his resignation in disgrace and a return to Galena where he ran the family store. Mark Twain called it “the best of any general’s since Caesar.” And few historians would disagree. Grant is the first comprehensively annotated edition of Grant’s memoirs, clarifying the great military leader’s thoughts on his life and times through the end of the Civil War and offering his invaluable perspective on battlefield decision making. In a world dominated by egos run wild, spiking the ball of life, etc., here we see the calm, measured tone of a great general and a great statesman. Among the autobiographies of generals and statesmen, the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States, focused mainly on his military career during the MexicanAmerican War and the American Civil War, and completed as he was dying of throat cancer in 1885. Not for what they say, but rather for what they do not say.

Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant by E.B. Long