The Generals: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee
By Nancy Scott Anderson and Dwight Anderson
Knopf, 523 pages, $24.95
They both attended West Point. They both served in the Mexican War. They fought against each other during the final year of the Civil War. But Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant did not meet face to face for the first time until April 9, 1865, at Appomattox, when the Virginia aristocrat surrendered to the Ohio-born son of a leather tanner.
Their meeting that day took place inside the parlor of a modest private home. Grant made small talk while secretaries copied the surrender documents. Lee sat alone to one side, flushed and rigid, all business for the event he`d confessed he would have died ”a thousand deaths” to avoid. But simplicity and awkwardness notwithstanding, Appomattox inspired myths that testified to its staggering importance both to sectional pride and sectional reunion-and to the enduring reputations of both generals.
The fact, for example, that Lee arrived in a splendid dress uniform and Grant in a mud-splattered private`s outfit has fueled the legends of the Confederate warrior as a grand Cavalier and the Union commander as a ”plain business man of the republic.” Actually, Lee merely wanted to dress appropriately should he be taken prisoner; and the only reason Grant did not change his clothes is that his fancy uniform did not arrive in time at his headquarters (an explanation from Grant`s ”Memoirs” inexplicably missing from this new book).
Appomattox signaled great things for Grant and Lee. Lee`s refusal to fight on, sacrifice more lives when defeat was inevitable, and turn to unseemly guerrilla warfare, plus his remarkable poise and dignity at the surrender, melted Northern hearts and aroused Southern hopes. Grant`s magnanimity in victory-he allowed Lee`s officers to keep their sidearms and take their horses home for spring planting-shone a beacon light toward reconciliation. Each general would become a great hero in his section.
Yet as this skillfully crafted dual biography makes clear, beyond the contrast in style, seldom have parallel historical figures been less alike. . .or less likely to meet on equal terms on the grand stage of history.
These enormous differences-of blood, birth, personality and military sensibility-give this book its compelling flavor and narrative drive. The Andersons weave the Grant and Lee stories like the woof and warp of a complex tapestry. The result is rich and satisfying; a vast improvement over Gene Smith`s 1984 ”Grant and Lee.”
Lee was the scion of great Virginia families, the adored apple of his doting mother`s eye, and next in line to the mantle of his father, the Revolutionary War hero ”Light Horse Harry” Lee. The elder Lee`s early reputation set a standard; his later life as a reprobate formed a warning. Robert Lee spent the rest of his life doing his duty.
Grant, by comparison, had an indifferent mother and a disapproving father, and devoted his life trying to please him, and thereby prove his worth-at least so the authors assert.
Lee graduated near the top of his class at West Point, and never earned a demerit. Grant finished near the bottom, with demerits to spare. Lee kept himself in tight control and loved discipline. Grant drank-maybe not as much as legend holds-but at least often enough to make his benders the talk of the Army. Lee was spectacularly handsome, a ”marble model”-Grant, short and plain. When soldiers glimpsed Lee, they cheered, charged or wept. The first time the Secretary of War approached Grant with the words, ”I would know you anywhere,” he shook the wrong man`s hand. Lee never wavered; winning or losing, at Arlington or in a tent, he remained the ideal symbol of his class. Grant was something of a slob in his youth, yet became so fastidious near the end of the war (the authors don`t say why) that he took to washing out his own underwear, bathing out of portable tubs and tying up his tent flaps so no one would see him undressed.
Their brides were as different as they were. Lee wooed and wed a descendant of Martha Washington, homely and slovenly, but more important, heiress to Washington`s relics and spirit. Grant courted plain and portly Julia Dent. But while the Lees were frequently separated, and Mary Lee became an invalid, the Andersons suggest that the Grants remained deeply and physically in love.
As a commander, Lee was the chivalrous knight, a born leader of men, determined to wage war like a gentleman benevolent to civilians. Grant was modest but relentless, constantly pushing toward what the authors call ”the only race that really mattered”-victory-no matter what the cost. His admirers claimed U. S. Grant`s initials stood for ”Unconditional Surrender,” but his detractors branded him a butcher.
The Andersons` character study occasionally leads into the realm of speculation. Their claim that Grant could only succeed by showing off for higher authorities-his father or Lincoln-is unconvincing. And their suggestion that Grant was a mystic, Lee a fatalist, demeans both as brilliant generals.
The insights in this book far outweigh the excesses. The personality portraits emerge as much more than distinct halves. Each is full and fulfilling. The result is lively biography and, for the most part, good history. Especially vivid is the portrait of life in Army camps and the no-excuses depiction of both Ulysses` and Julia`s insensitivity toward minorities. Julia was indifferent enough to bring her own slave to her husband`s headquarters; the general once tried to ban Jews ”as a class” from camp. However, the authors` suggestion that he did so to get at his father, whose speculating partner was Jewish, is intriguing but inadequate.
One huge question is left unanswered by the authors-unasked, in fact. Lee won his early battles outmaneuvering less skillful Union foes, Grant by overpowering his enemies with superior numbers and wholesale sacrifice of lives. By the time they faced off against each other in 1864, Lee was vastly outnumbered and outsupplied. Yet he hung on for another year through skill, pluck and the devotion of his men. What might have happened, to the war and to history, had Grant been pitted against Lee from the first? We can only guess.
