LEE AND GRANT: A Dual Biography

by Gene Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 11, 1984

The contrast between the Civil War's two great battle captains--in origin, personality, antebellum career, military outlook--is an enduring theme of American history and a natural for popular biography. Unfortunately, Smith combines florid storytelling with heavy, maladroit underlining. Here, purportedly, is a citizen's-eye view in 1864: ""This rootless son of the western frontier, indolent and passive. . . forty years of failure behind him, they said, claiming that he knew and understood the Sir Galahad of the Old South, of Old Virginia? Saying that he would conquer one whose strength was the strength of ten because his heart was pure? He, Grant, who became sodden and stupid whenever he had two drinks? Who slumped about, knew nothing of military history. . .""? The trouble with this passage (which goes on to liken Grant to Joan of Arc) is 1) that it's predicated on a questionable remark of Grant's to his mother (""1 know Lee as well as he knows himself"") and 2) Grant had become a popular hero, after Vicksburg, because of his plebeian origins, his plain ways, his very lack of grandeur. The book also makes emblematic use of a tale that is almost certainly apocryphal: that young Captain Grant was rebuked for unkemptness during the Mexican War by ""immaculately turned out"" Colonel Lee--presaging the contrast in their appearance at Appomattox, where Grant allegedly reminded Lee of the incident. (Had it occurred, it would have been the only time the two had previously met.) Apart from this kind of overcoloring, and the undiscriminating use of sources overall, the book has some relative strengths and weaknesses. Smith gives a sympathetic accounting of West Pointer Grant's humiliating descent' to Galena clerkship and of his post-presidential flounderings, redeemed by the race-against-death to complete, his memoirs (and provide for his family). He also frames Lee between his straitened, disgrace-shadowed youth and his sunny postbellum presidency of little Washington College. But Smith's military history is mostly personalia (there are, indicatively, no maps) and his brief review of the Grant presidency is stereotypical (""devoting his time almost exclusively to finding posts for the spoilsmen and political hangers-on. . .""). Flimsy but fairly energetic.

Pub Date: June 11, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION