Grant and Sherman The friendship that won the Civil War

Review by Choice Review

A decade ago, joint biographies of individuals on parallel life paths came into fashion. Flood offers an interesting addition to this genre for those deeply interested in the US Civil War. The author provides a contrasting portrait of Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman, though he adds little original insight into these two complicated personalities. Flood's work focuses on the crucial wartime command friendship that ultimately achieved Union victory. He has little to say about how the prewar years shaped these key figures, and even less to say about why they drifted apart after the war. The book catalogs the two men's commonalities: both graduated from West Point and left the army in the 1850s; neither had successful civilian careers and both were devoted to their families. Militarily, each was willing to take enormous risks and both profited from military mistakes. Grant had dogged determination and brilliant strategic insights, while Sherman had the more conventional military mind. War drove their friendship, and postwar politics drove them apart. More analysis on both ends of this story would have strengthened the work. This said, general readers should enjoy the book. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Public and general collections. D. L. Wilson Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Booklist Review

The story seems like a fairy tale: two men who were remarkable failures as civilians use their West Point backgrounds to rejoin the army during the American Civil War. They steadily rise to the highest ranks and lead the North to victory over the secessionist South, becoming friends in the process. But that's exactly what happened. In his winning book, Flood underscores the powerful bond formed between Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman and tells the story of a friendship that would influence both the politics and the military operations of the Civil War. In 1860, Grant was working as a clerk in his father's general store. Sherman was a failed banker. Flood shows how--when war broke out--each man found the help he so desperately needed in the other. He describes how Grant discovered in Sherman a gifted and fearless subordinate whose support was unfailing. And in Grant, his superior, Sherman found someone who saw beyond his reputation for being crazy and recognized his brilliance. As the war raged on, the two men worked out the winning military strategy together, and their mutual admiration deepened. Flood reminds us how important their bond was in shaping the outcome of the bloodiest conflict this country has ever seen, as well as the republic that stands in its wake. One of the big-profile history books of the season and highly recommended for all history-minded readers --Jerry Eberle Copyright 2005 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Nodding acquaintances at West Point, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman met again in 1862 and liked each other immediately. The author of this engaging dual biography doesn't claim this friendship "won the Civil War," but it made Union leadership remarkably friction free. Sherman, returning from a four-month sick leave he took to combat nerves, arrived on the battlefield of Shiloh with reinforcements for Grant; he served Grant loyally during the Vicksburg campaign, then accompanied him east to share in the victory at Chattanooga in November 1863. When Lincoln appointed Grant leader of all Union forces, Grant gave Sherman the Army of the Tennessee, an independent command. He captured Atlanta and marched brutally across Georgia while Grant fought to a bloody stalemate with Lee near Richmond. The surrender at Appomattox restored Grant's pre-eminence, and he and Sherman remained close after the war. The key, Flood writes, is that Sherman was the ideal subordinate, brilliant but insecure. In Grant he found a leader whose poise was contagious and who convinced Sherman he could do whatever job he was assigned. Better biographies of both exist, but Flood (Lee: The Last Years) has written a solid book that illuminates their productive relationship. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Flood (Lee: The Last Years) presents the extraordinary friendship between two Union generals that changed the course of the Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, both West Point graduates, were unlikely candidates to become heroes during this turbulent period in American history. Both men failed miserably in business ventures before the outbreak of the conflict, but their partnership on and off the battlefield enabled the North to achieve victory. The author provides an analysis of a friendship that endured despite personal, military, and political struggles. Grant's "total war" strategy, to maintain pressure on Lee's army and damage the economic resources of the enemy to wage war, found its perfect counterpart in Sherman's March to the Sea campaign. For further study of key military figures, readers should consult T. Harry Williams's McClellan, Sherman, and Grant and his Lee, Grant, and Sherman: A Study in Leadership in the 1864-65 Campaign. This work includes an extensive bibliography of secondary sources and published primary sources, but it could have been improved by more research in archival manuscript collections. However, Flood's fluid prose style makes this a very enjoyable read. Highly recommended for academic libraries that serve undergraduate programs. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/05.]-Gayla Koerting, Univ. of South Dakota Libs., Vermillion (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A well-crafted study of "two failed men with great potential" without whom the Civil War might have ended differently. Flood (Hitler, 1989) opens with a dispiriting account of Ulysses S. Grant, the Mexican War hero and former Army captain who, in 1860 at the age of 38, found himself a clerk in a leather-goods store in northwestern Illinois; it would take a cataclysmic war for him to have a chance to redeem himself. As for Sherman, the beginning of the conflict found him heading a military school in Louisiana; after fighting at Bull Run, he was assigned to head a force on the Kentucky-Tennessee frontier, where he seems to have struggled with a few personal demons that for a time debilitated him. Sherman was relieved of command, the local papers reporting that he was insane; later, thanks to the efforts of Gen. Henry Halleck, Sherman was rehabilitated and eventually allowed to raise a division of his own. Assigned to the western campaign under Grant, Sherman got his first taste of his commander's ways at Shiloh, where Sherman was prepared to counsel retreat but held himself from doing so when Grant replied to his remark, "We've had the devil's own day of it, haven't we," with, "Yes. . . . Lick 'em tomorrow, though." What was to have been Beauregard's victory turned out to be a great Southern defeat, and the beginning of the end for the South. Flood's overarching theme of Grant and Sherman's friendship, born in fire, is sometimes swept under by a surfeit of Big Picture historical detail, but in those instances, the book becomes a careful survey of the Civil War in the West. Of interest to students of early modern warfare, in particular, is Flood's account of how Sherman, always in close contact with Grant, conducted his scorched-earth campaigns in Georgia and South Carolina--and how both generals detested the press, a theme that resounds in our own time. A worthy contribution to the Civil War literature. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Excerpted from Grant and Sherman by Charles Bracelen Flood. Copyright (c) 2005 by Charles Bracelen Flood. Published October 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. PROLOGUE In the early hours of April 7, 1862, after the terrible first day of the Battle of Shiloh, Brigadier General William Tecumseh Sherman came through the darkness to where his superior, Major General Ulysses S. Grant, stood in the rain. Sherman had reached the conclusion that the Union forces under Grant's command could not endure another day like the one just ended. When the massive Confederate surprise attack on the vast federal encampment beside the Tennessee River began at dawn on April 6, Grant's command had numbered thirty-seven thousand men. Now seven thousand of those were killed or wounded, another three thousand were captured, and more than five thousand were huddled along the bank of the river, demoralized and useless as soldiers. Sherman, who had been wounded in the hand earlier in the battle, was coming to tell Grant that he thought they should use the transport vessels near them at Pittsburg Landing to evacuate their forces so that they could "put the river between us and the enemy, and recuperate." Sherman found Grant alone, under a tree. Hurt in a fall from a horse on a muddy road a few days before, Grant was leaning on a crutch and held a lantern. He had a lit cigar clenched in his teeth, and rain dripped from the brim of his hat. Looking at the determined expression on Grant's bearded face, Sherman found himself "moved by some wise and sudden instinct" not to mention retreat and used a more tentative approach. "Well, Grant," he said, "we've had the devil's own day of it, haven't we?" "Yes," Grant said quietly in the rainy darkness, and drew on his cigar. "Lick'em tomorrow though." That was the end of any thought of retreat. At first light, Grant threw his entire force at the Confederates under General P.G.T. Beauregard, and after a second bloody day, Grant, with Sherman right beside him, had won the biggest Northern victory of the Civil War's first year. The author and Confederate soldier George Washington Cable wrote, "The South never smiled after Shiloh." * * * Shiloh was a great victory in itself, but that meeting in the rain symbolizes something more. Enormous military and political results flowed from the friendship between Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, two men who had been obscure failures before the Civil War. Their relationship as superior and subordinate began when they moved toward the Battle of Shiloh, which took place ten months into the conflict. At Shiloh they came together on the field, and here Grant and Sherman took each other's measure under fire and began two years of successful cooperation and friendship. They separated in the final year of the war to lead armies in different areas, but though their headquarters were hundreds of miles apart, they remained in virtually constant contact by what was then known as the "magnetic telegraph." Throughout the war, each supported the other's efforts in every way; each furthered and on occasion saved the other's career. In some ways the two men were different. Grant, whom a fellow officer described as "plain as an old stove," was reserved in manner and worked with decisive inner power. A man who knew Sherman described his torrential energy: "He is never quiet. His fingers nervously twitch his whiskers...One moment his legs are crossed, and the next both are on the floor. He sits a moment, then paces the floor." Sherman was an intellectual, widely read in military history and theory. Early in the war, Sherman, greatly talented but insecure, asked President Abraham Lincoln to agree that he would remain as second in command in a specific assignment and not have to lead it. By contrast, Grant operated on military intuition, thinking boldly and acting with quiet confidence: another officer said that Grant looked "as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it." (As Grant advanced into Confederate territory, Abraham Lincoln said of him, "When Grant once gets possession of a place, he holds on to it as if he had inherited it.") Grant needed a gifted and effective subordinate, and at first Sherman needed a man to give him orders and then stand by him, no matter what. And each needed a friend. They worked together for twenty-three months, planning, consuming countless cigars, learning the lessons taught them by their battles and campaigns. At that point, in March of 1864, Lincoln summoned Grant east to assume command of all the Union armies and to oppose Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during the final year of the war. Before they parted, Grant and Sherman agreed on what each had to do next. Grant would attack Lee in northern Virginia, working to outflank Lee until he could break through Lee's extended and continually thinning lines. Sherman would march southeast from Chattanooga, Tennessee, disemboweling the South. Turning that strategy into action, Grant's forces and Sherman's Army of the West supported each other as effectively as if the two men had remained together. By then the two leaders thought alike, and any differences they had were quickly resolved. After Grant came east to take the Union supreme command, he and Sherman did not meet again for a year. When they did, it was Sherman who traveled north on a swift courier vessel from his successful Carolina campaigns to meet Grant at City Point, Virginia, prior to a conference with Lincoln concerning what all three knew would be the closing scenes of the war. As Grant walked down the dock to where Sherman was coming ashore, one of Grant's staff witnessed this: In a moment, they stood upon the steps, with their hands locked in a cordial grasp, uttering words of familiar greeting. Their encounter was more like that of two school-boys coming together after a vacation than the meeting of the chief actors in a great war tragedy. Soon after that conference at City Point, Grant forced Lee's final defeat at Appomattox Court House, and in North Carolina Sherman brought to an end the resistance of the South's other remaining large army under Joseph E. Johnston. Grant and Sherman learned the lessons that led to the final victory during many desperate hours in dramatic campaigns. Those who believe that the North's greater industrial strength and manpower guaranteed the South's eventual defeat forget that those well-equipped Union columns had to be led by generals. The North had other good generals besides Grant and Sherman, as well as many that Lincoln tried in various areas who failed, but the partnership between these two leaders was unique. Grant and Sherman's way to victory required intelligence, luck, and brave soldiers, but it was built on the mutual trust that their friendship inspired. Excerpted from Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War by Charles Bracelen Flood All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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