Ulysses S. Grant: Essays and Documents (review)

358CIVIL WAR HISTORY dard for such efforts, and one hopes that future editors will select and edit their contributions as carefully. Howard N. Rabinowitz University of New Mexico Ulysses S. Grant: Essays and Documents. Edited by David L. Wilson and John Y. Simon. (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981. Pp. xii, 145. $13.95.) The editors of Ulysses S. Grant: Essays and Documents imply that their book affords an outlet for the kinds of articles and documents on Grant appearing in the Newsletter of the Ulysses S. Grant Association until it ceased publication in 1973. Though the articles and documents here would grace a newsletter, they do not clearly merit publication in a book. Neither singly nor collectively do they develop new insights into Grant as a military or political leader. Certainly the first two essays are rather prosaic. In his article, delivered as a paper in 1973, Richard Current argues that Reconstruction was "essentially a continuation of the Civil War" and that Grant, dependent as he was on limited political support and military resources, did about what he could in directing a "Southern Policy." Current calls on scholars to reconsider the role of Grant in Reconstruction, predicting that they would give him much higher marks than he has received in the past. Similarly, E. B. Long, after looking at Grant's "independent" military actions, insists that we are due for "some judicious and fair revisionism" of the stereotypic view of Grant as an inept president. Their calls for rehabilitation , however, have been answered otherwise in recent studies: William McFeely often portrays Grant as an adroit but opportunistic politician who sacrificed the goals of Reconstruction and the Republican party for personal political ambitions; and writing about the retreat from Reconstruction, William Gillette sees Grant as an able tactician who failed to shape a coherent strategy for reconstructing the South. Two essays depict Grant in minor military and diplomatic episodes. Charles Ellington minutely describes Captain Grant's effective command of the Fourth Infantry Regiment in its transit of the Isthmus of Panama in 1852. Biographers of Grant—Lloyd Lewis, for example— have lauded him for his leadership in the isthmian passage, but in less laborious detail. According to Horatio E. Wirtz, Grant was a "diplomat extraordinaire " in 1879 when, on his trip around the world, he conferred with Chinese and Japanese leaders on their conflicting claims over the Ryukyus. He offered, Wirtz asserts, "forthright advice" and acted with "innate tact." Though Grant opened the door to negotiations between the two nations, his diplomacy was not sufficiently "extraordinaire" to lead to a definitive agreement. Appearing in the book are two documents bearing on Grant in the Civil War. One is a journalkept by Quartermaster General Montgomery BOOK REVIEWS359 Meigs on the fighting in 1863 at Orchard Knob, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge. Published here for the first time, it is similar to Meigs's dispatch to Edwin Stanton that became the standard account of these engagements. Military historians and remnants of Civil War Round Tables may find its description of Grantissuing crucial orders in battle to be of interest. Appropriating nearly half of the book are the reminiscences of Samuel Beckwith, Grant's telegrapher and cipherer. The account was published in the New York Sun in 1913; one may question whether it should have consumed new print. But few biographers of Grant have gone to Beckwith, and he does provide some intimate, though rather bland, sketches of the commander. The editors expect to publish more volumes of this sort. When they do, they might exercise a more careful judgment on the essays and documents deserving a place in Grantiana. Carl M. Becker Wright State University Lost New Orleans. By Mary Cable. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company , 1980. Pp. xvi, 235. $21.95.) Architectural history is this book's central theme. Despite the timeless quality of New Orleans, virtually every lot of its real estate has been the site of not one but a succession of structures. Cable's volume deals with notable and less well-known buildings which have fallen before the ravages of swampy terrain, rain and flood, hurricane winds, innumerable fires and, most especially, human wreckers and rebuilders. On most...