The War Without Grant (review)

Book Reviews195 knew was the son of an overseer and so doomed to ever remain in that class. "So few overseers have gone" to the war, she complained bitterly. To many in the South the struggle was a genüeman's war and a poor man's fight. Sons of plantation owners rode off to the field of glory with personal body slaves in attendance while their womenfolk waved handkerchiefs and cheered their gray-clad knights. The folks at home then helped the war effort with such pitiful tasks as making uniforms out of old garments and hats from palmetto or straw. With evident pride Kate recorded that "the Southerners are a noble race ... in proportion as we have been a race of haughty, indolent, and waited-on people, so now we are ready to do away with all forms and work and wait on ourselves." With that for the record Kate then went on to express true feelings on the return of two Negro women when she wrote, "Annie and Peggy got here from the salt works today and we are glad to have somebody to wait on us again. I expect we will keep them busy." When Grant moved in on Vicksburg the Stone family moved to Texas. Writing back to friends Kate summed up her impressions of the women of Texas in the line, "There must be something in the air of Texas fatal to beauty." Now completely cut off from practically all news, Kate began to record the rumors which seemed rampant throughout the South. She half hoped they were true. Attacks on Washington, Generals McClellan and Rosecrans severely wounded, victory at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, and many more were prayed over. Although all of these journals and letters treat the Confederate story, it is in such material—from both the North and South—that the student of the period finds the best accounts of what the greatest number felt and experienced. In such simple records of day-to-day experiences is the human history of the Civil War fully revealed. Arnold Gates Garden City, New York. The War Without Grant. By Robert R. McCormick. (New York: The Bond Wheelwright Company. 1950. Pp. 230. $7.50. the appearance of The War Without Grant in 1950, sixteen years after the publication of the author's Ulysses S. Grant: The Great Soldier of America, has caused his current pubbsher to reissue the earlier volume and to make both works available in boxed form. This is as it should be, of course, for the two volumes must be taken together to furnish the complete picture of the Civil War. They should be read in inverse order of issue, for The War Without Grant is in every way an advance agent for the book—or any book—on Grant. The War Without Grant is not, however, as scholarly or as valuable a work as the late Colonel McCormick's biography of Grant. The author has here tried to cover all of the Civil War campaigns in which Grant was not a participant, and, by way of contrast, one campaign—The Wilderness—which Grant directed. He has attempted to do this in 230 pages of large print, with no bibliography, and with only nine of the fifteen chapters footnoted at all. The result is really a compilation of short essays, possibly dictated almost from memory by a man who knew the Civil War well. It is not a book to be read with much compre- 196civil war history hension by one approaching this war for the first time, for the background of the conflict is sketched too lightìy, and the continuity is broken too often. Nor is it a book for military students; not enough space is devoted to plans, orders, and tactical dispositions. Finally, the reader seeking factual biographical material should look elsewhere, for the brief sketches of nearly all commanders conform to the theme of the volume: Nothing very good was done anywhere unless Grant was there. Accepted as a series of essays on Civil War campaigns and leaders, this book will be provocative—sometimes irritating—to the serious student. The author makes some rather flat statements of fact...