Grant in Peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a Personal Memoir

Kurztext / Annotation
Adam Badeau served in the Union Army and assisted Grant in the preparation of Grant's memoirs.Grant in Peace is Badeau's biography of Ulysses S. Grant.

Textauszug
Chapter 1: Introductory-relations of the writer with General Grant.

General Grant did his country quite as indispensable and efficient service during the years immediately after the Civil War as in the field; a service often unknown to the world, or to more than a very few of the actors, or nearest observers of the time. I propose to tell the story of the part of which I was a personal witness, or in regard to which I can bear peculiar testimony. I shall treat his relations with the most prominent persons of the epoch, setting forth his opinions of them and his feelings toward them, and lift the veil from events of importance to history, or to the understanding of Grant's character and influence. I propose also to make known some of the circumstances of his Presidency and later career which have not hitherto been disclosed.

General Grant always knew that I contemplated writing his political history, and approved the intention. He promised me all the assistance he could give in its preparation, and refused his sanction to others who proposed a similar task. During his last illness, when it became certain that his military memoir would be widely read, I urged him to attempt himself a political volume, and he consented to do so if I would aid him. The chapters I now offer will include material that would have formed part of such a memoir, whether it had been written by himself or had remained my work, supervised and corrected by General Grant. To this I shall add personal details too delicate to have been submitted to their subject, or to have been given to the world during his lifetime.

My relations with General Grant began in May, 1863. On the 5th of that month, immediately after crossing the Mississippi River in the Vicksburg campaign, he requested my appointment to duty on his staff. He had never seen me at the time, and made the application on the recommendation of General James H. Wilson, his inspector-general. I was then a captain serving on the staff of General T. W. Sherman, in Banks's campaign against Port Hudson. My orders did not reach me till the 27th of May, just as the assault on Port Hudson was beginning. I was wounded in that assault, and unable to report to General Grant in person until the following February. I thus first saw him at Nashville, where he had established his headquarters, after the battle of Chattanooga.

Our relations at once became more than cordial. I was still on crutches, and he gave me a desk in his own room at headquarters, threw open his entire official correspondence to me, and delighted from the first to tell me all the details of his battles and campaigns. The bill creating the grade of lieutenant-general was then before Congress, and I had carried messages to him presaging its success. He discussed the subject freely, told me he felt no anxiety for the promotion, and would take no step to secure it; but, if it came, he would do his best to fulfill the higher duties it imposed. If otherwise, he would neither be disappointed nor in any way less devoted to the cause he served.

On the 3d of March he was ordered to Washington, and on the 11th assumed command of the armies of the United States. He at once assigned me to duty as military secretary, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel on his staff. I remained with him in this capacity till the end of the war; went through the Wilderness campaign and the siege of Richmond by his side, and was present at the fall of Petersburg and the surrender of Lee. During the next four years, those of the administration of Andrew Johnson, I was his confidential secretary and aide-de-camp. I opened all his letters, answered many that were seen by no other man, and necessarily knew his opinions on most subjects closely and intimately. Wherever he went at this time I accompanied him. In his tour through the South after the close of the war, in his visit to Canada, his journey

Beschreibung für Leser
Unterstützte Lesegerätegruppen: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet