Mcfeely grant biography

Grant: A Biography

July 13, 2014
Not a float; June was a busy month...

I laughed and nodded when McFeely cited, as evidence Ulysses Grant felt complete only in battle , the fact that Grant finished the Mexican War with two big promotions and a sterling combat record despite never having been assigned combat duties. He was his regiment’s quartermaster, the supply guy in the rear of the column, back with the mules. But dude could not stay out of a fight. During the final assault on Mexico City, future adversary Robert E. Lee and the spearhead of US troops were pinned down under fire before San Cosme gate. Earlier, during preparations for the assault, Grant had, on his own hunch, reconnoitered a church whose belfry looked to him as if it could command the back of the San Cosme defenses. Now he rounded up some volunteers, unpacked a portable mountain howitzer, darted and dodged over the intervening terrain, parlayed with the padre in a politely intimidating Spanish, mounted the belfry, reassembled the gun, and began lobbing shells that scattered the Mexican troops. I once saw, bu

My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies

“Grant: A Biography” is William McFeely’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1981 biography of the Union general and eighteenth president. McFeely is a historian and retired professor of history. He has authored numerous books including biographies of Frederick Douglass and Thomas Eakins.

Although considered a seminal work on Grant, this biography is frequently criticized for being too harsh toward its subject and for relying too frequently on psychological interpretation. But while the author is too quick to criticize Grant at times, I found McFeely’s final assessment more balanced than expected.

I see no fault in McFeely’s psychological assessment of Grant, either. What is a biographer’s job if not to observe and fully assess his or her subject while distinguishing between fact and conjecture? In Grant’s case the task is all the larger due to his complicated and sometimes contradictory character. And McFeely’s judgment of Grant, while too harsh at times, is often spot-on.

But while McF

Grant A Biography Revised Edition

"Combines scholarly exactness with evocative passages....Biography at its best."—Marcus Cunliffe, The New York Times Book Review; Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

The seminal biography of one of America's towering, enigmatic figures. From his boyhood in Ohio to the battlefields of the Civil War and his presidency during the crucial years of Reconstruction, this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography traces the entire arc of Grant's life (1822-1885). "A moving and convincing portrait....profound understanding of the man as well as his period and his country."—C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books "Clearsightedness, along with McFeely's unfailing intelligence and his existential sympathy...informs his entire biography."—Justin Kaplan, The New Republic

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