Taylor “never wore uniform, but dressed himself entirely for comfort. He moved about the field in which he was operating to see through his own eyes the situation.” Meanwhile, Scott “always wore all the uniform prescribed or allowed by law when he inspected his lines,” including his “dress uniform, cocked hat, aiguillettes, sabre and spurs.” While Grant respects both men, he expresses a clear preference for Taylor: “Both were pleasant to serve under—Taylor was pleasant to serve with.” Old Rough and Ready, as Taylor was known, “saw for himself, and gave orders to meet the emergency without reference to how they would read in history.”
Near the end of his memoirs, Grant offers another fashion comparison—this time between himself and Robert E. Lee.
When he surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Lee “was dressed in a full uniform which was entirely new, and was wearing a sword of considerable value.” Grant, on the other hand, was in “rough garb” and “must have contrasted very strangely with a man so handsomely dressed.”
“I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on the field, and wore a soldier’s blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was,” Grant writes.
These contrasts in fashion are emblematic of Grant’s defining characteristic: a no-frills obsession with accomplishing the mission at hand, with little regard for optics or the trappings of power. Grant eschewed the pomp of the military elite in favor of a results-oriented approach to warfare in which he was always on the attack, always keeping the enemy on its heels.
Grant’s memoirs are a national treasure, a window into the mind of a man whose importance to our nation cannot be overstated: He was chief architect (along with William Tecumseh Sherman) of the military strategy that saved the Union and, by laying waste to the cotton-based Southern economy, created the conditions that allowed for an end to slavery.
Writing his memoirs as he was dying of cancer, the strong-and-silent Grant proves to be a skilled storyteller, chronicling his military career with the same straightforward, candid approach that served him so well as a warfighter. Still, there are long sections that all but the most dedicated historian will have to skim—detailed accounts of battlefield tactics and logistics. But the final hundred pages are worth reading in full. These offer a front-row seat to the last year of the Civil War, when Grant and Sherman oversaw the military campaign that, at long last, defeated Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, bringing a de facto end to the Confederacy.
Why did Grant succeed against Lee when all previous Union commanders had failed? The difference was that Grant’s predecessors, most notably George McClellan, had been fighting not to lose. They believed they could use high-minded tactics, gleaned from West Point textbooks, to back Lee into a corner while minimizing casualties on both sides. But Grant saw the truth: that there was no way to subdue the rebellion without accepting the hellish realities of war. He fought to win: "I gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest."
The best (partial) paragraph (p. 101):
The natural disposition of most people is to clothe a commander of a large army whom they do not know, with almost superhuman abilities. A large part of the National army, for instance, and most of the press of the country, clothed General Lee with just such qualities, but I had known him personally, and knew that he was mortal; and it was just as well that I felt this.
