Sherman’s writing was a less heroic business and obviously more enjoyable, done in a period of three years when he was full of beans. It is impossible to explain this last-act recovery-really discovery-of his power after two terms of failure as president, more failure at business, and his pathetic search for acclaim, except on the theory that the writing made him relive the war years that had touched him with moments of true greatness. It was probably the most heroic achievement of his life, not excluding the military victories. He completed the manuscript in eleven months, nearly a thousand pages in print. Faced with terminal cancer and little time left to live, and faced also with virtual bankruptcy and a family he would leave without means of support, he took Mark Twain’s advice and went to work. It was the astonishing circumstances of the writing that encouraged the rumors. This is not to lend credence to claims and rumors about ghost writers.
Part of Grant’s restraint may have derived from a shaky command of grammar and spelling: “Good buy, Ulys,” he signed a letter to his spouse of twenty years, and issued an order about the same time for the arrest of the editors of the Memphis “ Bulliten.” The manuscript for the Memoirs must have presented a challenge to the copy editor. Better educated than his commanding officer, Sherman was more confident and comfortable with words and their uses. He takes the reader right up to the firing line with him. Grant’s book is guarded and even-toned, reticent or dispassionate about himself, generous with rivals, silent about his critics, and respectful-if not invariably fair-toward “the enemy.” William Tecumseh Sherman (“Cump” to his family) is offhand, forthright, outspoken, and intensely personal he has a flair for action narrative. Whatever their relative literary merits may be, few would dispute their claim to first place on the vast shelves of Civil War memoirs, the two with which to start-at least among those from the Union side.ĭifferences between the two books are comparable to the differences between their authors. Gertrude Stein and Edmund Wilson were enraptured by Grant’s prose, and Mark Twain compared his book with the Commentaries of Julius Caesar-though admittedly Twain was Grant’s publisher. The praise lavished upon them for their literary merits over the years has probably not been uninfluenced by the high place the old heroes had won in national history. It is well that they are revived and republished simultaneously in the Library of America series, for both are still readable and quite worth reading. These two famous Civil War memoirs, Grant’s published in 1885, Sherman’s in 1875, are linked in many ways, including the close relations of the authors and the common subject matter of their books.
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