Five-minute digest
Personal Memoirs
Summary
The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant were written in a race against death. In the spring of 1884 the brokerage firm of Grant & Ward collapsed through his partner's fraud, leaving the former president living on borrowed money. That autumn he was diagnosed with cancer of the throat. He began by writing articles on his battles for the Century Magazine, then contracted with his friend Mark Twain's publishing house, Charles L. Webster & Company, for a two-volume memoir. He dictated and then wrote in pencil through the winter and spring of 1885 as the tumour advanced, and finished at Mount McGregor in the Adirondacks a few days before he died on 23 July. The preface, dated that month, notes that he had been 'reduced almost to the point of death'. The book covers his life only to the end of the Civil War, with a short conclusion. Volume I moves briskly through his Ohio boyhood, his reluctant entry into West Point, and an early cough that frightened a family with consumption in it. The Mexican War is narrated by a junior officer who served under both Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, and who calls it 'one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation' and sees the Civil War as the nation's punishment for it. The Panama crossing of 1852 kills about a third of his party with cholera. There follow lonely Pacific service, resignation, and a bout of fever and ague. The Civil War chapters show his education in command: the discovery near Florida, Missouri that his opponent 'had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him'; Belmont; the demand for 'unconditional and immediate surrender' at Fort Donelson; the surprise and near-disaster at Shiloh, where he spends a rainy night unable to bear the amputations in a field hospital; and the long Vicksburg campaign, which cut loose from its supply line and ended with the city's surrender on 4 July 1863. Volume II covers the relief of Chattanooga, his appointment as lieutenant-general, and the Overland Campaign of 1864. He gives an unsparing admission that he always regretted the last assault at Cold Harbor. The siege of Petersburg follows, then the final pursuit of Lee, during which Grant suffers a sick headache treated with mustard plasters until Lee's note offering surrender cures him instantly. At Appomattox he feels 'sad and depressed' at the downfall of a brave foe fighting for 'one of the worst' causes 'for which a people ever fought'. The prose is famously plain, exact and unrhetorical. Grant assesses colleagues and opponents with dry candour, admits his mistakes sparingly but plainly, and keeps logistics, terrain and timing always in view. Twain called it the best military memoir since Caesar's Commentaries. It sold some three hundred thousand sets and restored his family's fortune.
Top Lessons
The enemy is as afraid as you are
Grant's account of approaching Colonel Harris's camp with his heart in his throat, only to find it abandoned, gives the book's central psychological insight. Courage in command began, for him, with imagining the other side's fear, and he says he never again felt trepidation facing an enemy.
Plain style as a moral choice
Grant writes without heroics, gore or self-justification, letting dates, distances and numbers carry the story. The restraint makes his few judgments more forceful: the Mexican War was unjust, Cold Harbor was a mistake, the Confederate cause was among the worst ever fought for.
Writing against the clock of a terminal illness
The memoir is also an act of dying well: Grant finishes a major work to secure his family while the cancer destroys his ability to speak and swallow. The preface's brief reference to being 'reduced almost to the point of death' is the only overt trace of the circumstances in the text.
Disease was the larger enemy
From cholera on the Isthmus to measles and smallpox at Vicksburg and fever and ague in Missouri, Grant records illness as a constant force. His own sick headache before Appomattox shows how stress and relief act on the body.
Verified Quotes
“Later I was reduced almost to the point of death, and it became impossible for me to attend to anything for weeks”
“There was consumption in my father's family, two of his brothers having died of that disease, which made my symptoms more alarming”
“For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation”
“Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions”
“About one-third of the people with me died, either at Cruces or on the way to Panama”
“I managed to keep along very well until 1858, when I was attacked by fever and ague”
“It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him”
“The sight was more unendurable than encountering the enemy's fire, and I returned to my tree in the rain”
“I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made”
“I spent the night in bathing my feet in hot water and mustard, and putting mustard plasters on my wrists and the back part of my neck, hoping to be cured by morning”
“When the officer reached me I was still suffering with the sick headache, but the instant I saw the contents of the note I was cured”
“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought”
“The universally kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last, seemed to me the beginning of the answer to "Let us have peace”
Medical Lens
The memoir is a document of terminal illness as well as war. Grant was diagnosed in 1884 with a carcinoma of the throat, generally attributed to heavy cigar smoking. His physicians treated the pain with topical cocaine solution and morphine, and he wrote on through dysphagia, haemorrhage and loss of voice, communicating by pencilled notes in the last weeks. The text barely mentions any of this (only the preface), which is itself revealing. Within the narrative, disease recurs everywhere: fear of hereditary consumption at West Point, yellow fever and cholera, the 1852 Panama crossing that killed a third of his party, malarial fever and ague, measles and smallpox among recruits, and orders establishing general hospitals during the Vicksburg campaign. The Shiloh field-hospital night and the Appomattox 'sick headache', probably migraine though any such label is retrospective, cured by Lee's letter, are classic passages for teaching about war surgery and stress-related somatic symptoms. Persistent stories of Grant's drinking are absent from the book.
- Preface
Grant notes he was 'reduced almost to the point of death' while writing and that his son F. D. Grant helped with the work.
- Vol. I, Ch. II
A wasting cough before graduation and the family history of consumption, which later killed his younger brother and sister.
- Vol. I, Ch. XIV
Cholera at Cruces and Panama in 1852; hospital hulk and tents; roughly a third of Grant's party dead and a seventh of the regiment lost overall.
- Vol. I, Ch. XVI
A year-long attack of fever and ague in 1858 that undermines his farming.
- Vol. I, Ch. XXIV
Shiloh: bruised and sleepless after his horse falls, Grant takes refuge in a log-house used as a hospital, where amputations go on all night, and returns to the rain.
- Vol. I, Ch. XXXII
The flooded winter before Vicksburg: malarial fevers, measles and smallpox among troops, hospital arrangements Grant credits with limiting deaths, and orders establishing general hospitals between Duckport and Milliken's Bend.
- Vol. II, Ch. LXVII
Sick headache treated with hot mustard footbaths and plasters, cured on reading Lee's note; Grant's 'sad and depressed' feelings at the surrender.