![]() I imaging that such biographers are trying to be honest, without being slavishly flattering or chronically hostile to the subject of their writing. ![]() So some things written don't really need to be repeated or given great weight and some extra grace might be extended to people that served in a very sacrificial and beneficial manner. So it seems to me that they can't separate fact from fiction and personal animosity from honest critique, and often engage in Monday morning quarterbacking relative to decisions made in the heat of the moment and the fog of war. The problems I have with such biographies are: 1) the authors don't have direct access or familiarity to the people or times 2) the authors have never been in a position of leadership and responsibility, especially during wartime, commensurate with the person that they are writing about. I read this after reading the Grant biography by Chernow. I am glad he wrote he memoirs, and am sorry they did not include his final years. And he has some foretelling of the future of potential conflict for ethnicities within the US. He is simply matter of fact, and states that he's giving his opinion when he does give an opinion. He doesn't brag nor otherwise embellish anything. This book really makes you wish you had met the man, or that he was alive today living a well deserved rest. 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.Īnyway, I listened to the audio version as I read along with the text, and I'm glad I did. He recounts events and how they unfolded, but he doesn't offer much in the way of descriptive texture i.e. I'll admit that his style is a touch dry. That, and he spent time in the San Francisco Bay Area, and always wanted to return there. 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. 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. 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. 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.Įven 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. Hence Grant was the subject of a lot of intrigue as he went about bringing the rebellious south back into the Union. 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. 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. Grant was more than just a general, or more than just a military man, but a forward thinking man of his time.
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