The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

I bought the unabridged Audio CD, which is a huge bargain and played great in my car CD player. I read 2 biographies about Grant first and then this autobiography. The biographies were by Chernow (first) and Brands (second). Between those 2, I recommend the Brands book first but the Chernow book is worth reading and has a lot of commentary from people who knew Grant. But I think this autobiography is better because you are hearing Grant's own words. It will show you that Grant was truly a brilliant guy. It's like you are there as it happens. He tells you why it happened, what happened, and what he was thinking. If you want to understand the Civil War (why it happened and how the North almost made a deal with the South to let them keep slavery) and Grant, read this autobiography and the Brands and Chernow biographies. The CD's are excellent for all 3. Grant wrote this book when he was dying with cancer, but you can tell he had a brilliant mind and that he was a very good guy. I read a lot of history and of all the people in American history, I think Grant is my favorite and I have great respect for him. This book gave me a much better understanding of the events and thinking that led to the Civil War, or as Grant called it "the Rebellion". Grant had compassion and during the war, he helped the "Freed Men". After he left the Presidency, Grant was in great financial shape until he was swindled and lost everything ($750,000) - he only had about $100 left. Shortly after that happened, he learned he had incurable throat cancer (probably from the cigars). Can you imagine? Most people would have given up - but not Grant. How could Mrs. Grant avoid poverty? Mark Twain was a friend of Grant's and offered Grant 70% of the profits if he would write an autobiography. Grant forced himself to write it even though he was dying - he died a week after finishing the book. It was a huge success. It made $350,000 for Mrs. Grant - a HUGE amount of money in that day (like $10 million today). Grant died shortly after completing the book. I have a lot of respect for Mark Twain for helping Grant by giving him a MUCH better deal than anyone else would have given Grant. I enjoyed this Autobiography very much and felt like I was listening to Grant. One thing I didn't know was how some of the U.S. cabinet officers were traitors and helped the South. For example, just before the war, Secretary of War Flood moved weapons to the South and left them weakly guarded. When the war started Flood became a Confederate general. Also, I was shocked to learn that the South had better rifles than the North. Grant was an AMAZING guy - brilliant, honest and good in every way. I think he's one of the most important people in US history - definitely Top 10 - with Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, etc. He's a great role model. Grant didn't want to be a general - he wanted to be a math teacher. He was good with numbers and his early experience in the army was as a quartermaster. When the war started, he volunteered because it was his duty. He was promoted because he was smart, organized, brave and a good leader who won battles. His promotions were merit-based, not due to political connections, as happened during the war - for example, General McClernand was a politician who became a general and he was not a good general. 2 of the first victories of the War were Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. It was Grant's idea to take those forts - he saw the opportunity, planned the attack, and managed it. He was opportunistic. It started out to take Fort Henry but he saw an opportunity to also take Fort Donelson, and he did. Vicksburg was the key to the War because it controlled the Mississippi River. It was considered a Fortress that couldn't be captured, but Grant captured it in July 1863. The 1862 elections had gone badly for the Republicans and voluntary enlistments had ceased. When you read the details of the Vicksburg Campaign you will realize that Grant was a military genius - like a chess master, except that the battle was much more complicated and sometimes Grant wasn't aware of where the enemy was or their strength. You will see that the North would NOT have won the Civil War without Grant - at the least the North would have made a deal with the South to allow them to keep slavery, because the voters in the North were getting tired of the War. Without Grant's victories, Lincoln would have probably lost in the 1864 election - Grant's victories gave Americans hope. When you read the Autobiography you will see that Grant was a good, humble, fair, honest, dependable guy and that he was a military genius. He was like a Chess Master and could comprehend what was happening and all the alternative courses of action and their consequences, AND he was aggressive. Most of the other Generals would NOT follow up an advantage - they would stop and rest, giving the Confederates an opportunity to escape or entrench. The 2 top generals before Grant (Halleck and McClellan) were that way - they weren't aggressive and wouldn't seize opportunities - they couldn't see the opportunities that Grant saw. I think if Grant had been in charge, the North would have won the war within one year. I didn't understand the importance of logistics - it's critical because without food and ammunition the North would have lost. Grant writes about it from his actual orders for the various battles and explains the challenges. I like and respect Grant very much. That's why I'm writing this review - Grant deserves more credit than he gets. You will also learn that Sherman, Sheridan and Admiral Porter were critical to winning the War, that Lincoln was a good guy, and that Stanton was a jerk but he saved Chattanooga.

Much has been said lately of the Civil War. Grant's Civil War autobiographical has been on my read list for some years, so it seemed timely to visit the place and time after Grant's statue was toppled recently. I do not doubt that Grant's words are NOT on the reading list of this era's MSM and revisionist historical recollections. The book is written for and was a best-seller among veterans and general readers of both sides. It passed muster with the combatants. Grant's narrative is amplified on Kindle, providing easy search of names and places. In several engagements, the place names have changed since the events, and one wonders if they are not perhaps lost in history. Grant pulls no punches clearing up the matter of what the Civil War was about. It was over the slavery period. Grant, in crystal clarity, describes the reason and rationale of ending slavery at that moment in US history. That was the whole of the Civil War. There was no US future as had been demonstrated in the admission of new states under the dual politics of slave vs free. No other reasons cited to this day approximately approach the force of ending slavery, as told by Grant. Revisionist historians claiming the Civil War was not about slavery at all are ignorant, liars or both. If Grant's word had not rung true when this narrative became a global bestseller, it would have never been a bestseller. Grant is never seen to admire rebel generals as hero's. He knew most of them from West Point and the Mexican War. One by one, Grant correctly judges and anticipates his opponents with unnatural canny and defeats them. Every one of these generals was a traitor in Grant's cold accounting. That Northern MSM of the day championed rebel generals, lied about confederate casualties and bemoaned equally erroneous high Union body counts. The MSM hated Lincoln. Grant has a special place for treasonous Northern journalists. Credentialed Northern journalists are cited by name and given Lincoln's permission to accompany and record Grant and his Hdqtrs most important decisions. They systematically and suddenly disappear, freely moving into Confederate lines to divulge the plans, watch the outcome, report the calamity they stoked to simply disappear back into that media establishment. Grant was thoroughly familiar with the MSM of the times fake news and hoax playbook. The Confederacy never had a chance of victory, yet the media kept that silent. How the MSM narrative could be sold and believed in the North to nearly elect the do-nothing McClellan over Lincoln is a said chapter. The Confederate government was rotten to its core. Confederate civilians were not free; they were looted, impressed male ages of 14 to 60 and the women used as thralls to maintain the hopeless war machine. Confederate state citizens were held in a state of violence as virtual prisoners. There was no Confederate 'Bill of Rights". Grant takes the reader on that journey to illustrate precisely why.

I freely confess to having read this book simply because I one day remembered that it existed and that I hadn't read it. It seemed to me a gaping lacuna in my reading history. Now, having read it, I must say that the writing is competent - as it was edited by Mark Twain, one shouldn't expect less - and these memoirs of the famous General's life from birth to the end of the American Civil War are quite interesting, especially for someone such as myself who, due to my upbringing, knows rather too much about the history of Europe, whilst knowledge of the history of my adopted country remains comparatively scanty. But I must say here that I am not concerned here with the American Civil War as such, but rather with the personality of Grant and the role he played in them. These are, after all, "Personal Memoirs." What a rum fellow Grant seems to me, having finished the book, especially in Volume I. Volume II tends to bog the reader down in tactics, dispatches, skirmishes and engagements with - to me - very odd names for the locations of these set-tos all piled rapidly on top of one another. Grant is a curiously passive figure in his philosophical outlook. He didn't fancy going to Westpoint, was surprised he passed the entrance examination and, whilst there, hoped that a bill pending in Congress to abolish the military academy would pass. It didn't. Early on, during his account of the Mexican War, he lists two separate accidental deaths of superiors who were favourable to the young Grant and the effect that they had on his career, and then comments: "Neither of these speculations is unreasonable, and they are mentioned to show how little men control their own destiny." Throughout the book, proponents of free will or choice will find Grant as dogged an adversary as ever the Confederates did. Again, after being selected as head of all the National armies - The term "Union army" is not to be encountered herein. - Grant states again, "It is men who wait to be selected, and not from those who seek, from whom we may always expect the most efficient service." This determinism rather surprised me coming from an American where the credo is that each man makes his own destiny. Grant seems to have been what pop psychologists of today would denominate a "Type B" personality, through and through. But, once selected, Grant was as tenacious as a pit bull, as the Vicksburg and all subsequent campaigns bear out. He speculates upon this sterling quality (for a commanding officer) in him thusly: "Everyone has his superstitions. One of mine is that in positions of great responsibility everyone should do his duty to the best of his ability where assigned by competent authority, without application or the use of influence to change his position." And Grant carries out his duties, once assigned, with unmatched doggedness. An interesting read, this book, especially Volume I---The bewildering intricacies of Volume II are what leads me to bequeath it four stars - the memoirs of a man both determined and deterministic.

My husband loved this book and he felt it gave him a personal insight into the life of Grant!

About fifty pages in I got to thinking that this had a lot of the style and feel of Caesar's Commentaries. Perhaps I was over reacting but checking it out on the web it turns out Mark Tw3ain was of the same opinion so maybe I'm on to something. Before buying this I anticipated that it might be interesting but dull reading like so many 19th century books can be. Instead it is a real page turner. I'm not unfamiliar with the Civil War but didn't have a clear chronological grasp of the events. Most of what I've read is either very general or just a recitation of individual battles without any clear connection to each other. Grant fits the pieces together so that it is a memoir that makes sense. You get the feeling that maybe he and Lincoln were the only ones that grasped the Union strategy (the Anaconda Plan). You get the sense that at the outbreak no one on either side had any idea of the magnitude of what was coming. As the war grew there was no one with prior experience dealing with anything, military or otherwise on such a scale. Certainly there was nothing in Grant's background suggesting he had the qualification, yet as the war grew so did he - most others could not. Perhaps that is what is so good about this book - he could see the whole thing in his mind and the details as well. There is also a personal element as the story of the friendship that developed between Grant and Sherman (and to a lesser extent, Sheridan). Grant found few other commanders he could trust with his vision but in Sherman he found someone he could trust completely as well as someone with the capacity to understand his goals. None of this is stated explicitly, you have to read between the lines. It is inferred in the differences between how he writes about other officers versus about Sherman. It is interesting to read his evaluation of the enemy commanders and also how he viewed the Confederacy. Reading a historians account of a set of events 150 years past is one thing but reading an account not just of a contemporary witness but of a key participant who made the events is very different. This book is a classic. It is very readable and should be much better kniown

Grant was more than just a general, or more than just a military man, but a forward thinking man of his time. He was for giving African Americans the full benefits of the nation, was against cruelty to animals, and was a no-nonsense achiever and a very good strategist. It is these qualities that you read about this man that should make you nod your head and realize why a lot of his contemporaries disliked him due to the fact that they were mired in popular thoughts of the time; racism, animals weren't worth much other than their monetary value, and anyone who didn't see the world their way wasn't worth much. Hence Grant was the subject of a lot of intrigue as he went about bringing the rebellious south back into the Union. You understand these things not by him declaring the such, but by reading his accounts of how he was accused of a number of things, but triumphed regardless because of the meritocracy of the United States Army and Federal Government as it stood at that time. Even so, in spite of the support of President Lincoln himself, in spite of overcoming adversity without recognizing that the odds were stacked against him, in spite all of his positive qualities, he was eventually drummed out of the service for spurious allegations of alcoholism. But when you read his thoughts and recollections of the war he fought, and how he tried to support people he did not know that disliked him, it makes you want to shake his hand. What's even more interesting to read is that the south was actually split on the issue of slavery, and how several southern states were actually just shy of abolishing slavery, and how the same illogic of "white supremacy" echoes from the past that he sometimes hear today, and how this man just called it a bunch of nonsense that it actually is. I often heard about Grant, somewhat figured he was a good guy after a fashion simply because he helped end slavery by virtue of winning the US Civil War, but I was really touched by this man's heart and out look on not just the United States, but mankind and the world as a whole. That, and he spent time in the San Francisco Bay Area, and always wanted to return there. I'll admit that his style is a touch dry. He recounts events and how they unfolded, but he doesn't offer much in the way of descriptive texture; i.e. telling us how hot things were, what musket and rifle or canon fire sounded or felt like, or other sensory details, but that might have blown this thing up to well over a thousand pages. Anyway, I listened to the audio version as I read along with the text, and I'm glad I did. This book really makes you wish you had met the man, or that he was alive today living a well deserved rest. He doesn't brag nor otherwise embellish anything. He is simply matter of fact, and states that he's giving his opinion when he does give an opinion. And he has some foretelling of the future of potential conflict for ethnicities within the US. I am glad he wrote he memoirs, and am sorry they did not include his final years. Buy yourself a copy.

Grant's memoir is a wonderful read, very accessible. His discussions of the Mexican war are especially memorable, with such details of life and anecdotes, you wish he would go on. His account of the Civil War from his unique perspective is laden with battle formations and troop movements, but short on detailed accounts of individual battles, of necessity I expect considering the scope such a full accounting would entail (entire books have been written covering single battlefield engagements). His method of exposition threads battle campaigns together as they relate to a particular geographic field, thus rendering to the reader a good understanding of events - something a rigidly time sequenced accounting which jumped from western to eastern operation could not. I found his description of the 1864-1865 campaign that ended the war especially riveting. Grant gives us some inside information concerning those who served under him. While he treats his subordinate Generals kindly, he does share his opinions of their failings and strengths while under his command, insights worthy of further exploration by readers in other historical accounting of the referenced battles. In particular the reader cannot help but notice Grant's admiration for Sherman and Sheridan and their incredible competence, energy, and skill. I wish Grant had seen fit to include much more of his views on the United States, military preparedness, and the US political system. Thankfully he does share some things, most of which I found pertinent to our affairs today. In all, one comes away from reading this work with a profound sense of just how great a tactician Grant was. Fortunately for the Union, with the possible exception of Lee, he simply out smarted the opposition. Yet in this book full of detail of troop movements and battles, he somehow also managed to transcend the purely military discussion, and gives us insight into his humanity. He seems like a man I would love to have known.

The memoir itself was fine, if incomplete. Don’t expect anything from his life beyond the Civil War, he barely mentions anything beyond that and only at the very end. It seems as though it ended abruptly. The maps were pixelated on my kindle (I didn’t try my phone) and the footnotes aren’t even found in the book! There’s numbers, asterisks and letters for annotations, but they’re nowhere to be found. You might be better off finding a physical book. It’s interesting reading, but you don’t get all the information you should.