Trying to follow current news — Libya, Japan, Charlie Sheen, our legislature — just left me depressed, so I started preparing for the upcoming sesquicentennial of the American Civil War by opening a box of stored books.
My copy of James McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom” was falling apart, alas. That’s the first Civil War book to read, followed by Shelby Foote’s trilogy. Once I lent them to a friend who’d grown up in the South. When he returned the last volume, he mournfully joked, “They never told us in school that it turned out that way.”
To some degree, that’s the problem with my favorite book in the box: “Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant.” It’s a masterpiece of American literature, a best-seller in its day. But the Lost Cause mythology persists to diminish Grant and exalt Confederate commanders.
Winston Churchill once observed that “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” So even though there are passages of painful honesty in Grant’s “Memoirs,” the work should not be taken as an objective recounting.
Even so, I can’t help succumbing to admiration, for Grant could turn a phrase. He called the 1844 annexation of Texas “a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be acquired for the American union.”
As for the 1846-48 Mexican War, where he served with distinction: “I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign.”
His first Civil War battle was at Belmont, Mo., on Nov. 7, 1861. He landed soldiers from river transports and demolished a Confederate camp. The routed Rebels fled to the woods. Grant’s raw troops were celebrating as the Confederates regrouped and attacked. Grant’s subordinates realized the Union forces were surrounded and urged surrender. Grant replied, “We cut our way in. We can cut our way out.”
At Fort Donelson, Tenn., a few months later, Confederate Gen. S.B. Buckner asked for surrender terms. Grant’s reply was pithy and classic: “No terms except an immediate and unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.”
His 1863 Vicksburg campaign is still studied as a work of military genius. Later that year, he lifted the Confederate siege of Chattanooga. He was promoted and put in charge of the entire Union army.
Grant made his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac that faced Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Grant’s southbound army met fierce resistance. Previous Union campaigns had retreated on that account. Grant kept moving, telling President Abraham Lincoln, “Whatever happens, there will be no turning back.”
He made some serious mistakes — i.e., Cold Harbor — and pulled a brilliant but risky maneuver to disengage from Lee and get across the James River. He set siege to Petersburg, the railroad junction that served Richmond.
After nine months, Grant broke Lee’s defenses and the Confederates had to flee. Grant met Lee at Appomattox. And when I think of that scene, I feel better about our country: A Virginia aristocrat in splendid dress uniform surrendering to a stoop-shouldered, mud-splattered tanner’s son from Ohio — who gave generous terms, hoping to reconcile a divided country.
Grant led the way as the good guys won — on the battlefield, anyway. Then I ponder the current political and cultural power of anti-science yahooism and abiding racism . . . never mind, I was trying to avoid being depressed by current events.
Freelance columnist Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
