Grant Under Fire: An Exposé of Generalship & Character in the American Civil War

Impressively researched, "Grant Under Fire" is an iconoclastic but exceptionally well documented contribution to our clearer and more in-depth understanding of the role Grant played in the American Civil War. Informed and informative, "Grant Under Fire" is a seminal work of exhaustive scholarship and a critically important contribution to personal, community, and academic library American Civil War reference collections and supplemental studies reading lists. - Midwest Book ReviewThis book challenges Ulysses S. Grant's reputation as a military genius and as a reliable chronicler of America's bloodiest conflict.Grant suffered the biggest military surprise of the Civil War, committed the worst official act of anti-Semitism on United States soil, and came closest of all federal commanders to losing Washington, D.C. In ranking his generalship above Robert E. Lee's, Grant's defenders ignore his crude, pugnacious strategies that resulted in a costly war of attrition and his amateurish tactics of impetuous frontal assaults against fortified positions. In addition, his cronyism poisoned the Union war effort.This groundbreaking work resolves such persistent controversies as Grant's drunken partying with the enemy on flag-of-truce boats, unfairly blaming Lew Wallace for the slow march to Shiloh, pretending all along to possess a plan to pass Vicksburg, taking credit for the charge up Missionary Ridge, leaving wounded men to die between the lines at Cold Harbor, and mistreating Black soldiers and civilians. In doing so, Grant's celebrated Personal Memoirs are shown to be unreliable.