In 2011, the late Helen Pinkerton sent me a copy of her encyclopedic Crimson Confederates: Harvard Men Who Fought for the South (University of Tennessee Press, 2010). At the front of the book she wrote:
“For Patrick
Kurp, who shares a deep interest in the War, and who also is a great admirer of
U.S. Grant, the finest general of the War.”
Helen dedicated
the book to four of her paternal ancestors who served in the U.S. military,
including her great-grandfather, “Pvt. Josias Pinkerton (1832-1896), Co. H, 25th
Iowa Infantry, who served under Grant from Chickasaw Bayou [December 1862] to
Missionary Ridge [November 1863] . . . [and went on to serve under Sherman for
the balance of the War].”
Like Herman Melville,
about whom she published a book, Helen never made a distinction between Union
and Confederate losses during the Civil War. All were Americans. Like Melville,
she condemned slavery and the sundering of the Union while remaining sympathetic
to the depredations suffered by the South during the War. Grant, too, sought a
nuanced understanding of the War for all parties. In the final words to his
final chapter in Personal Memoirs
(1885), Grant writes:
“[T]he war
between the States was a very bloody and a very costly war. One side or the
other had to yield principles they deemed dearer than life before it could be
brought to an end. I commanded the whole of the mighty host engaged on the
victorious side. I was, no matter whether deservedly so or not, a
representative of that side of the controversy. It is a significant and
gratifying fact that Confederates should have joined heartily in this
spontaneous move. I hope the good feeling inaugurated may continue to the end.”
Another cause
for American pride is the remarkable fact that two of our finest writers, Lincoln
and Grant, also served as presidents. In her essay “Abraham
Lincoln and the Art of the Word,” Marianne Moore writes:
“With
consummate reverence for God, with insight that illumined his every procedure
as a lawyer, that was alive in his every decision as President with civilian
command of an army at bay, Lincoln was notable in his manner of proffering
consolation; studiously avoiding insult when relieving an officer of his
command; instantaneous with praise. To General Grant—made commander of the
Union army after his brilliant flanking maneuver at Vicksburg—he said, ‘As the
country trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain you.’ To Grant ‘alone’ he
ascribed credit for terminating the war.”
Grant was born
two-hundred years ago today, on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio, on the
Ohio River near Cincinnati. He died July 23, 1885, at Moreau, N.Y., in the
foothills of the Adirondacks.
[The
excellent “Abraham Lincoln and the Art of the Word” can be found in Lincoln for the Ages (ed. Ralph G.
Newman, 1960); A Marianne Moore Reader
(1961); and The Complete Prose of
Marianne Moore (ed. Patricia C. Willis, 1986).]
As it happens, just today I bought a reprint of "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel. 4 volumes, nearly 3,100 pages. Narratives of the war written by the men who were there. Originally published in 1887.
ReplyDeletefor forty years I have argued with anyone who will sit still that Grant and Polk are our two most under rated presidents. He was the best combination of general, president and writer. He also had one of the best Attorneys General, whom he asked to resign. His friendship with Clemens speaks volumes about the quality of his mind.
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