Books in Brief: Campaigning with Grant

Campaigning with Grant, by General Horace Porter (Da Capo, 632 pp., paperback, $12.95)

Da Capo, which has reprinted the memoirs of Grant and Sherman, among others, here saves an 1897 memorial written by one of Grant’s friends, who decided the Tomb on Riverside Drive in Manhattan simply did not do the man justice. Horace Porter served on Grant’s staff during the last year of the Civil War; he continued to serve him through his first term as President, but in this memoir he concentrates on that last year of absolute, incorruptible, and hard-won triumph. As William S. Mc-Feely, Grant’s latest biographer, writes in a special introduction to this volume, Porter’s story is told with nostalgia and affection; “with the passage of time, a patina of sentiment has obscured the raw bronze of killing.” But it is a good story nonetheless, done in a polished and ornate “literary” style very different from Grant’s own. Porter describes Grant the tactician, outgeneraling Lee. He provides examples of Grant’s noted perseverance. But he also captures bits of the man. It may not be essential to know that the general loved horses, pronounced corduroy “corjuroy,” disliked retracing his steps, and had a weakness for cucumbers, but it adds something to “a life imagined,” as one critic has called the biographer’s art. There is, of course, no mention of Grant’s capacity for power drinking: Campaigning with Grant is a loyal salute, not a stab in the back. Valets of all kinds, take note.

JM

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Joe Mysak

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Campaigning with Grant, by General Horace Porter (Da Capo, 632 pp., paperback, $12.95)

Da Capo, which has reprinted the memoirs of Grant and Sherman, among others, here saves an 1897 memorial written by one of Grant’s friends, who decided the Tomb on Riverside Drive in Manhattan simply did not do the man justice. Horace Porter served on Grant’s staff during the last year of the Civil War; he continued to serve him through his first term as President, but in this memoir he concentrates on that last year of absolute, incorruptible, and hard-won triumph. As William S. Mc-Feely, Grant’s latest biographer, writes in a special introduction to this volume, Porter’s story is told with nostalgia and affection; “with the passage of time, a patina of sentiment has obscured the raw bronze of killing.” But it is a good story nonetheless, done in a polished and ornate “literary” style very different from Grant’s own. Porter describes Grant the tactician, outgeneraling Lee. He provides examples of Grant’s noted perseverance. But he also captures bits of the man. It may not be essential to know that the general loved horses, pronounced corduroy “corjuroy,” disliked retracing his steps, and had a weakness for cucumbers, but it adds something to “a life imagined,” as one critic has called the biographer’s art. There is, of course, no mention of Grant’s capacity for power drinking: Campaigning with Grant is a loyal salute, not a stab in the back. Valets of all kinds, take note.