Grant and Twain: The Story of a Friendship That Ch Export

~ ~ by Mark Perry

"Why was it that after the loss of more than six hundred thousand Americans in a catastrophic civil conflict, men like Twain and Grant could not complete the victory sealed at Appomattox? Why, deep into their own century, could they not stay the hand of southern (and American) injustice, which freed the slaves to be citizens but then denied them their rights? Books, theses, and endless monographs would be written on the subject in the decades following the passing of Twain's generation." (p.218)

Perhaps we can explore these questions as we discuss the book.

POINTS TO PONDER

Could Twain have written any of his books had he lived in our lifetime (from the 1950's onward?).

Do the qualities that make an excellent military leader in wartime carry over into the presidency of the United States? How would the two leadership positions differ and how would they be the same?

LINKS ON THE INTERNET
Mark Twain in Cyberspace
Everything on the Internet about Mark Twain, he would have loved it!

Ulysses S. Grant Homepage
All you would ever want to know about Ulysses S. Grant

Three Week Schedule

Week 1: Prologue, Chapters 1 - 2. Through p 63

Week2: Chapters 3 -5, pp 64 - 148

Week 3: Chapters 6 - 8, Epilogue, pp 149 - 239

Questions: Previously have you read the Grant memoirs and/or Twain's Huckleberry Finn classic? If your answer is no, would you be inclined to read these books now?

Discussion Leaders: ELLA and HAROLD

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When "Sam" Grant left Galena, Illinois he was a slight, compact, little forgettable man among resplendent blue-clad recruited boys of the 21st Illinois volunteers who were off to fight the war. The townsfolk tittered and muttered "God help us."

Sam Clemens grew up on the frontier, the son of a judge, struggling to find his way in the world, trying not to embarass his family, and the townsfolk in Hannibal, Missouri sighed at the boy who wanted to be an author.

They were just two boys with dreams.

This book is peopled with names you will recognize, friends of both of these great Americans.

You will love reading and discussing it, so join Harold and I in November. Please post a message if you are interested; we will be delighted to welcome you.

I think you have found us another great discussion book. I too look upon the Twain/Grant friendship as another unlikely association of strange bedfellows. This book tells the story of the interesting collaboration of the popular author and the already terminally ill ex President. The result was the completion and publication of the Grant’s memoirs shortly before Grant’s death in 1885, a publication that has never since been out of print since its initial printing 120 years ago.

There is much for us to discuss from this story including the need to coax a successful retired General and ex-President of the US to write his memoirs. Today that is the first project for every ex-President after leaving office. And another thing that sounds strange to us today is the prospect of an ex-President facing poverty in his old age. Yet this state apparently was a very real prospect facing Grant in his day before the retirement security of former presidents was provided for by 20th century legislation.

We will need at least 4 or 5 committed participants (hopefully many more) for this proposed discussion to make. Ella and I invite you to join us on Nov 1st to discuss this book. Simply make a short post here indicating your commitment.

In particular we invite new Seniorsnetters who have never previously join the discussion.

For More Information on the Book Click Here: Click Here.

Count me in!My order with B&N for the book-so should be here, meanwhile I'm re-reading Huckleberry. Am looking forward to the discussion--Yvonne

I ordered the book so count me in. I hope I get it before 11/1.

OH, THIS IS GREAT!

WELCOME YTSKOLE2 AND SCRAWLER!

We will have a quorum in no time and will put this book in our COMING DISCUSSIONS!

Thanks so much to both of you for joining in.

I'm looking forward to joining you also. I hope to have the book by the end of the week.

You know, the PBS TV show, "The American Experience" did separate documentary specials on both Mark Twain and Ulysses Grant. I saw them some ago and, unfortunately, remember them only a little bit. Gosh, those documentaries would be fun to have in conjunction with this discussion! Maybe my library has them? I 'll try to find them.

What a treat!.

Harriet

Hi Harriet! Am so happy to see you here and participating in this book discussion. It's going to be a good one and, before I go any further with this, I must make a confession! Tis dreadful, I know, but I have never read Huckleberry Finn - all my life I've heard of it - it's being banned - it's the best that Twain wrote - it's the worst, etc.

Confession is good for the soul and my soul is fairly bursting from my skin at the moment. Is it such a shameful thing never to have read it before this? I'll leave it for you to judge.

Perry says this in his "Note on Sources:"

"I commend to the reader The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, edited and with an introduction by Michael Patrick Hearn, as the most detailed study of how Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn."

I've reserved it at my Library and will have read it by the time our discussion begins. I read very little fiction (except for a good mystery now and then); my favorite books are biographies and have always felt they make wonderful discussions. We had two months of McCullough's JOHN ADAMS and we also had a good time with Ben Bradlee's A GOOD LIFE and many others, too numerous to remember.

Thank you all for joining us.

p.s. to Harriet - do try to find the documentaries, I'll do the same, a good idea!

Harold and Ella

I was just notified that my copy of "Grant and Twain" is in at the library. So will pick it up today and peruse to see if I want to read and discuss it.

Thank you for allowing me to join you in reading this book. I'm a huge Twain fan and very excited about our discussions. I can already tell I have much to learn.

I just got the book from the library yesterday, and have gotten it started. It's still a 7-day book, so I'll have to hurry. Maybe I can get it checked out again around 1 November, so I'll have it in hand for the discussion. I'm sure John'll read the book, although he may not participate in the discussion.

OPAL HARRIET AND MARY! THANKS SO MUCH FOR POSTING A MESSAGE, WE ARE SO HAPPY TO WELCOME YOU TO THIS DISCUSSION.

WE WILL ALL LEARN TOGETHER! THERE IS NO SUCH A PERSON AS AN EXPERT AROUND HERE, WE JUST LOVE TO READ BOOKS! AND DISCUSS THEM! AND THESE TWO MEN ARE WORTH EVERY MINUTE, EVERY PAGE, EVERY POST, EVERYONE'S OPINION.

I think we have at least 5 participants and Ella an my self makes 7. There is still plenty of room for more so any one out there come on and sign up for Nov 1st.

I'm going to take the next 10 days off to visit my brother in the mountains in Northern New Mexico. We are gong to take a three day trip to visit the ancient Anasazi site at Mesa Verde Colorado. I'll be back in plenty of time for Nov 1st.

Harold, I do envy you your trip - that's one of our favorite areas in the world. We're going to do three back-to-back Elderhostels in that area in April - just out of Cortez, CO; Farmington, NM; and at Mesa Verde. Really special places!

I am back from New Mexico, and my copy of the book ordered from B&N prior to my departure was waiting for me on my porch. I will begin reading it at once and should be finished with a first reading when we begin the discussion on Nov 1st.

I arrived at my brother’s house at 9,000 feet elevation near Red River, NM just as an early snowstorm had ended. My last 40 miles through the Cimarron Gorge and the winter white scene at the house looked the same as when I departed from my last Xmas visit on Jan 3rd. This time the weather cleared and the snow melted within two days except for the mountaintops. There was one additional snowstorm as we passed over an 11,000 foot high pass in Colorado on our return trip from Mesa Verde to Red River. I have some 300 plus digital pictures from the ancient Anasazi sites at Aztec, NM and Mesa Verde CO, a few of which I am sure will be available on a Web page in a few weeks.

It appears we have five committed participants (Ytskole2, Scrawler, Harriet M, Ann A, and Mary Z) in addition to Ella and myself. This should make a great discussion. We look forward to your participation.

And there is still time for anyone else out there to get the book from your library or from B & N or other on-line Booksellers. In particular we would welcome new Seniornetters. As we use to say in the 1940’s, “come on in, the water’s fine!”

Not in Ohio, Harold, too darn cold

Sounds as though you had a wonderful trip, glad you made it back down to earth safely from the great heights!

Yes, it's going to be a good discussion, hope everyone remembers the starting date.

While coming home from the doctor today I was wondering what others thought about the Civil War and if they agree with me that it was our country's greatest catastrophe. We've all been through many terrible devastations involving our country but nothing that so divided people and ruined lives as that war.

Although the book touches on Grant's great achievements this is not primarily a book about the civil war; rather it is the story of the lives of two immortal men who became friends afterwards and therefore left us a great legacy.

Does everyone agree?

My mother (Lottie) and her sister (Emma) grew up in Greenwich Village at the lower part of Manhattan when it was truly a village unto itself, with winding criss-crossed streets and lighted solely by gaslight. This historical area still confuses lost visitors who can't understand how West 4th Street can cross West 10th St. Their mother came from Stockholm which gives me my Swedish heritage.
My beloved mother was born in 1892 and died at the untimely age of 39. But my wonderful Aunt Emma, who was born in 1895, died nine years ago just one month under 100. She knew me in my adult years when history meant more to me and often shared many memories.
Aunt Emma told me that my grandfather knew Sam Clemens (the real name by which his neighbors obviously knew him). Sam Clemens spent much of the latter part of his life in New York City and lived at 14 West 10th Street (Greenwich Village). I have no idea how well they knew each other -- it might have been just a passing tip of the hat -- but I have a hunch it was more because Sam held a Missisippi River pilots license and my grandfather George Bancker (who died before I was born) held a license to pilot on the Great Lakes. I have his license in my possession.
Sam Clemens attended the Presbyterian Church at Fifth Avenue and West 12th Street just around the corner from where he lived. This is the church where I was christened. Many years ago I had occasion to need confirmation of my birth and went to that church where they obligingly found the record and gave me a letter to prove it. If I had known then what I know now (as the old expression goes) I would have asked to see some of the Mark Twain records.
Like all American boys, at least of my generation, I read over and over Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, as well as Pudd'nhead Wilson, Life on the Mississippi, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Celebrated Jumping Frog, etc. etc.
I should add that when I made a swing through the United States by car in 1960, I stopped by Hannibal, Missouri, and spent a considerable amount of time getting back into my boyhood mind and browsing the area -- watching the Mississippi River flow by, looking for rafts such as used by Huckleberry Finn, examining local caves wondering which one Injun Joe had lived in, searching for the island where Tom hid out pretending he was dead, etc. And of course there was that never-to-be-forgotten white fence. There were a lot of them in Hannibal.
I guess I can't resist your discussion, Ella. Count me in!!

Robby

Here is a MAP of Greenwich Village. My mother and my aunt grew up on Perry St. which, as you can see, is just two blocks from West 10th Street where Mark Twain lived. You can also see how West 4th Street crosses West 10th St.
I realize that none of this is of any interest to anyone here. Just be patient with me as I re-live old memories.

Robby

ROBBY! We are so happy to welcome you to the discussion and I can't get over how fantastical it is that we have a person in our midst who has a relative who might have known, etc., etc.! You'll love the book and these two men, how admirable they are in many ways, although human in others!

You were the audience that Sam Clemons was writing for - as he says "I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but will strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience."

See you on November lst.

I will be lurking here. I'm overcommitted and don't have Robby's boundless energy (who does?) but I can't resist peeking in. I grew up with Mark Twain's stories: he was my father's favorite author and he used to read us to sleep at night with Twain. When I saw the PBS series on Twain a few years ago, I was struck by how much my father was like him in many ways. So I feel especially close to him. I know less about Grant, but he is an interesting man and I am eager to learn.

HELLO JOANK! Welcome and you don't need Robby's energy or you don't need to feel committed. Just drop in and add your comments; your memories of Twain's stories and books read to you by your father will add to our discussion and Grant, equally good as an author much to his surprise, will be an added attraction to you.

This book is available at most libraries, at least in our own so you don't need to purchase it! Happy to welcome all of you.

Robby thank you for your participation. I look forward to hearing more of your family and their past connection with Twain and his world.

I love and encourage any comment by a participant with some actual connection to the book and its subject, authors, location, and etc. In the “Last Escape” discussion we had some five participants who 60 years ago were active participants in the events that were the subject of the book. It was interesting to hear their view of the events the authors were writing about.

And JoanK you are most welcome to lurk. Perhaps from time to time you might post a short comment on your reaction to the discussion. Also do not hesitate to tell us more of the influence of the Twain stories on you.

I did not see the PBS “Twain Series” that you mentioned. Perhaps you or others who remember it, may post comment relative to material on the Grant/Twain relationship in the PBS series.

Harold:-There is no more connection between my family and Twain than what I stated. It is very minor. However, earlier in my life I was an avid reader of his material so am looking forward to participating.

Robby

Is everyone is ready for tomorrow's kick-off? I hope to see all of you here then, ready to discuss this intriguing friendship.

I'm ready! It depends upon what time you start. If you start really early (ET) then I will be there. Otherwise I will join you tomorrow evening.

Robby

I am going to jump the gun and open the discussion an hour early. I suggest this first day we center on the 19 page, Roman numeral numbered pages, that our author styled “Prologue.” I see this as a very integral part of the book, a Chapter 1 regardless of what the author chose to call it. It is here that Mark Perry begins his story quite late in General Grant’s life setting the stage for his telling his story of Grants last eventful year and the role Mark Twain played in it.

The Prologue paints an interesting view of the post Civil War Eastern US social structure. Here we as readers are introduced to the General and his second son Ulysses S. Grant Jr (Buck) at an awkward time in their lives, the occasion of the bankruptcy of the Wall Street firm of Grant and Ward. Here we are treated to a substantial amount of the details that led to the firm’s financial collapse. Save for the fact that the financial losses are measured in the low single digit millions instead of billions, the story might remind us of the great business collapses of the past decade. We are also introduced to the firms other principal a 19th century wheeler-dealer, Ferdinand Ward. Again we see an early version of some present day Wall Street actors. Details on Wards lack of business ethics were apparently available to our author’s research, but Ward seems to have escaped the scrutiny of today’s Internet, or at any rate he is unknown to Google.

General Grant himself was financially involved in the Grant and Ward Firm even though the principal Grant in the firm was Ulysses S. Grant Jr. He was probably the best educated of Grant’s children with a law degree and membership in the NY Bar. Click his name for a web site with biographical information on him, and his later life in California.

With the collapse of Grant and Ward, general Grant’s financial position Immediately fell from being able to provide his wife Julia with a staggering $1000 a month to spend, as she wanted, to near poverty causing the General to rethink his previous determination not to write and publish his war memoirs.

The Prologue also introduces us readers to Mark Twain already a budding author who had been introduced to Grant at the White House during Grant’s term as president. The two seemed thereafter to have run into one another often enough to be styled friends. I did not see much humor in Twain’s Chicago toast introducing the General involving the big toe in or out of his mouth (page xxvii) but as Perry said “the joke has paled over the years.”

Good morning, Harold! Of late, I have developed the poor habit of not being able to sleep very well and to change my routine of reading, laying abed wide awake, eating, I decided to change my routine and at 1:30 am (ET) I am looking over the first few pages of our book.

I agree with you that the Prologue was an integral part of the book and sets the stage for all the rest of it and you have described the situation Grant found himself in very well, but....

Before we begin his financial health I have a few thoughts about the man before his ruinous finances:

Why did the author put Grant’s name first on the title page and start his book with a description of the man? Out of respect for an ex-president do you suppose?

On first reading of the book, I had checked a few descriptions of Grant - ”slight, compact, even forgettable,,,,,the little man with the epaulets”

Would this slight, small man have a chance to be elected president today or even make it to a debate do you think?

Perry states that the best description of Grant came from Abraham Lincoln - “He fights.”

Another description - “Ulysses don’t scare worth a damn.”

A private in the war said of him – “He looks as if he meant it.”

Are any of those worthy of an epitaph of Grant?

And we are told by Perry that Grant’s greatest desire was to be a “captain of industry, mimicking in his dress and demeanor the worldly mien of those he admired most..”

What are we to think of this man?

He certainly didn’t lack for resolution is one way of looking at him.

And to answer the question in red in the heading, I must be honest and say No - I have neither read Grant’s Memoirs or Twain’s books, although I have tried to read the latter with little success (sorry, Robby, perhaps had I been a boy?); however, of the two authors I would rather read Grant’s Memoirs as I have had a life long interest in that tragedy that so pierced our country and cost so many young lives and such bitterness, and have been to many of the battlefields where I’ve spent quite a number of hours reading everything there was to see, inside buildings and out.

So, what are your thoughts on this - our first day of discussing the book?

later…..ella

Good morning, Ella and Harold. What intriguing questions you both propose to open the discussion!

I've never read Grant's memoirs, but I adored Mark Twain and read many of his books before I was nine years old. My father had bought complete sets of the works of a few authors...Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Guy De Maupassant...and I devoured them. Those books were available in my house and I was a child who couldn't live without reading, so I worked my way through them purely because they were THERE.

Twain, in particular, affected me. ROBBY, I laughed out loud at his CONNECTICUT YANKEE, TOM SAWYER and HUCK FINN too. More than that, I understand now that I absorbed some of my earliest values from his books. I began to pick up the contradictions Twain loved to portray in his characters. He had a knack of showing up the differences between the morality that some people preached, and the hypocrisy of how they actually behaved. Twain's negative viewpoints about slavery also came through to me loud and clear. I think his books made me look at the world with a more discerning eye as I grew up.

I wish I could recapture the uncomplicated pleasure I felt about reading back in my childhood.

ELLA, I wondered about the order of the names in the title of the book too. Gosh, I kept getting the title mixed up in B&N and the library because of that problem. I wonder, will Grant possibly be a more major character in this book than Twain? (I didn't finish reading it yet.) Or maybe Mark Perry did his title in alphabetical order?

Do you feel that in our current age of visual mass media, a public figure must be tall and imposing to merit serious consideration?

During the Civil War, Grant must have come across as a giant figure in the newspaper reports of his day. He was probably perceived as a HUGE man because of his battlefield victories, even though he was an unusually slight man physically.

Even in recent times, I think accomplishment is a more important barometer in the public perception of a politician than physical height or appearance. Remember, after World War II, General Eisenhower enjoyed a reputation that was based on his effectiveness as a military leader. His famous grin was just icing on the cake in his rise to the presidency.

However, I think that physical attractiveness and charisma are probably overly important assets to any modern NOVICE politician who is just getting started.

HAROLD, I'm fascinated by the contrast between Grant's analytical, shrewd behavior as a battlefield general, and the naive trust he invested in his business partner, Ward. His life must have come crashing down on him when he learned of Ward's perfidy.

Harriet

Good morning! I am here but for the present just "listening."

Robby

Ella, regarding the title of our discussion Book, while I do believe because the subject centered on Grant and his memoirs giving his own first hand history of the great war, the Grant name is properly placed first in the title. I do, however, have my own particular complaint with the title.

First let me say more supporting the preeminence of Grant in the story of the Grant/Twain friendship. This is the fact that Grant was about to pass on the opportunity to create a primary source relative to the history of the war that only he as the commanding general could contribute. If he passed on that opportunity this primary source (from the horses mouth) would be forever lost and the history of the event would be left to the interpretation of secondary researchers. Continuing I suppose it was the Grant and Ward firm’s bankruptcy and Grants terminal illness, not Mark Twain that were the prime motivating force causing Grant to change his mind and to actually write the memoirs. Twains role was relatively minor in that his intervention prevented the publication by an opportunist publisher under financial terms inconsistent with their true value to their author.

My complaint with the title is the subtitle, “The Story of a Friendship That Changed America.” No, while I appreciate this book as an interesting story that truly changed the outcome not only for Grant but also Twain, I see no fundamental resulting change for America. True America received a first hand historical primary source from the one person most involved in the events, but this falls far short of fundamental national change. I suspect the subtitle is the insertion of another opportunist publisher’s marketing department.

Harriett, I suppose some people just are lacking in business acumen. Mark Perry seems to stress Grants lack of business skills in the early chapters. This was in marked contrast to his father Jesse Grant who seemed very capable of managing his small business interests. Jessie attained sufficient community success to get his son Ulysses a political appointment to West Point. Ulysses Grant on the other hand was a notable business/financial failure both before and after the Civil War.

Grant’s great strength lay in his soldiering skills. Do you suppose that this ability stemmed from his particular knack in handling horses that were so important to the military of the day? Despite his demonstrated equine abilities Grant’s West Point grades were not high enough to get him a cavalry assignment, leaving him in an infantry regiment.

It was during the Mexican War that Grant’s military talents became apparent. One might suppose that more mussels than a 120-pound lightweight could carry would be required, but Grant did not seem to require greater stature. He seems to have exerted real leadership of troops in the field catching the attention of his superior officers and winning promotion to Captain. Grant was successful in his field, which was the Army, not business.

Did you (like me) notice the names of Grants West Point classmates and his fellow Mexican war associates and how evenly divided they were in the coming North/South conflict? One interpretation of the Books account of the Mexican War would picture it as a dress rehearsal for the coming Civil War.

"Varina Jefferson Davis,[the wife of Jefferson Davis], on April 27, 1897, referring to a line in the general's memoirs, pointed out that "the gentle hearted soldier" had said,'Let us have peace.' And I believe," she added "that every portion of our reunited country heartily joins in the aspiration.

She cited several instances of the general's humanity, including the influence she was told he had exerted "in several direction[s]" in behalf of Jefferson Davis during the dark days of Fortress Monroe and the "care" he exhibited for [the South's] desolate, improverished people" when he directed that the soldiers at Appomattox should keep their horses, saying they would need them to cultivate their farms.

She noted his "manly sympathy" in returning General Lee's sword "to the hand which had made its fame as deathless as that of Excalibur." And she cited his integrity and courage in threatening to resign his commission when others proposed to arrest and imprison Lee despite the terms of the surrender. "Even the stress and heat of hostilities, military and political," she said, "the humanity of the man shone through the soldier's coat of mail." ["Crown of Thorns and Glory"]

It is one thing for friends and family to praise General Grant, but it's high praise indeed; when it comes from the wife of a former enemy.

I have read "Huckleberry Finn" but it has been awhile. I have not read "The Personal Memoirs of US Grant" but I do have "Let Us Have Peace" by Brooks D. Simpson on the dinningroom table waiting to be read (along with several other books). I'd like to read Huckleberry Finn with you folks and I tried to find Grant's Memoirs, but was unable to do so. But if it could be found I'l like to read that book as well.

Scrawler, thanks for your post and your comment on the Grant memoirs and Twains Huckleberry Finn Book. I have read neither as of now, but I was much impressed with both through the reading of the Mark Perry book. In this regard some 6-weeks ago when Ella in an E-mail first mentioned this book, I spent over an hour with the Grant Memoir in an easy chair at our big San Antonio B&N. I managed a speed browse some 50 to 60 pages and was surprised how interesting the General’s writing style was. I don’t know that it is the type of book that would make the quorum for a seniors net discussion but I now understand why it has remained popular enough to keep it continuously in print through the 120 years since its original publication.

I suppose I have always considered Huckleberry Finn a kids book, and as an adult I never gave it a second thought. I was surprised at Mark Perry’s interpretation of Huckleberry Finn as expressed in our book that we will discuss in detail I think first next week and more in the concluding week of our discussion. I would like to see a Senior’s Net discussion of Huckleberry Finn and despite the fact that I have never led a fiction discussion, I might be inclined to propose it myself.

Scrawler also thanks for your interpretation of the Grant attitude toward the Peace that followed at the War’s end. I think you have described well the willingness of the military led by General Grant to resume the normal Federal relationship subject to the new Constitutional requirements made necessary by the war. Grant essentially concluded the initial reconstruction period by the end of his second term as President. Unfortunately the process was woefully incomplete and had to await a second National reconstruction almost a century later.

Please forgive my inability to join this discussion for the next few days. Due to the election, I find myself unable to read anything that doesn't have some connection to it plus my grandson is working here on getting out the vote. (the Democratic vote that is). He pops in an out, gets no sleep, eats on the run but is really enjoying his first foray into our democratic process of voting for our president. I asked him if he wanted to eat breakfast yesterday and his reply was, "Thanks, Grama, but I don't have time and we are being well fed by the Jewish Women's Club in Bexley!" This morning, election day, he left at 3am and his enthusiam is just a wonderful thing to see!

I have started the book and will try to read more after today. It seems very interesting and such a different approach to some unknown, to me, history.

SCRAWLER – Tell us more about the book you are quoting from – “CROWNS OF THORNS AND GLORY, please. Is it a biography of Jefferson Davis? I’d love to read it!

I spent a few days on the Army Base at Fort Monroe, VA on an Elderhostel trip and found it fascinating – the only fort in the USA to have been built with a moat and we were given a tour of the old Fort which is under an earthern mound and were shown where Jefferson Davis stayed during his capture. Click here for more information: Fort Monroe photos

The story of Appomatox is one we all know, I’m sure, it’s well worth a trip though to renew our faith in humanity - we may need it in the next few months!

VOTE TODAY!

And then possibly, I hope, the president and the vice president and senators and other lesser VIP’s from local, state and federal governments will stop my phone from ringiing so many times. Who would ever have thought I would complain about the President of the USA calling me!!! Does it have anything to do with the fact that I live in Ohio or is everyone getting these recorded messages?

HARRIET – whatever do you mean by your statement – “I wish I could recapture the uncomplicated pleasure I felt about reading back in my childhood.”

Uncomplicated pleasure – I am intrigued by that! And….

also that you think “accomplishment is more an important barometer than physical attributes?” I hope every American believes that to be true but then we will never agree on "accomplishments" will we? Only history - maybe 50 years from now - can judge.

HAROLD, can it be true that you and I are the only ones here that have not read “HUCKLEBERRY FINN?” If you want to give it a try online, I’ll try also but, like you, I’ve always thought it a kid’s book and I don’t particularly care for fiction much anyway.

The author does state at the end of the Prologue that the two books written by Twain and Grant are “perhaps the finest work of American nonfiction ever written and the greatest of all American novels.”

Now that you have browsed through Grant’s memoirs would you agree that possibly that statement is true? Why would you not believe it would appeal to Seniornetters when it was so profitable when published?

We should be pointing out the similarities of these two men as described in the Prologue; startling actually. Both were sons of successful men who expected much – I’m not sure if the fathers lived to learn of their sons' destinies. I read the book a few months ago and will stumble over that fact later on I’m sure.

I am somewhat amused to read that they were “frontier boys” when I do not think of Hannibal, Missouri as the frontier and neither is Galena, Ohio.

They both struck out on their own at an early age and struggled to find their way in life and due to circumstances Grant became well known earlier than Twain – I did like the description Twain gave of Grant as having ”iron serenity.” A good description of the man in wartime and in the presidency.

ANN - just read the PROLOGUE for now - it's short and has a wealth of information about the two men in it. We'll be looking forward to your comments.

As we will for all of you! So happy to have you here with us.

Grant certainly was a very interesting fellow. In the prologue, Perry presents a vignette about an ordinary day in his life. Grant was so highly regarded in 1881 that Mark Twain, a man who greatly enjoyed the perks of success, could impress his friends merely by introducing them to the ex-president.

On this particular day Mark Twain visited Grant with his friend, literary arbiter William Dean Howells. Howells hoped that Grant's influence could ease the way toward a diplomatic appointment for his father by President Chester Arthur.

The trio settled down to conversation, and, as the time lengthened, Grant issued an invitation to lunch. Apparently, unlike Mark Twain who loved rich food, Grant retained an ascetic preference for the battlefield fare of his early years. Lunch consisted of "ample helpings of bacon, baked beans and coffee." I thought the menu was a reflection of the simplicity of Grant's tastes and the connection he retained with his military past.

HAROLD, you triggered a memory from the TV documentary on Grant's life when you talked about your response to skimming the memoirs. The documentary stressed that Grant was remarkable for the consistent, easy-to-read, writing style that he adopted when he finally began to write his memoirs. Didn't he do so under the duress of physical illness and extreme financial need?

Apparently Grant, who had never before earned a reputation as a writer, brought to bear all of the tenacity, organization and clarity of vision of his military years to produce a memoir that he hoped would provide some financial security for his wife after his death.

Harriet

How to change ones name? Did you note as a baby, Grant was named Hirum Ulysses Grant. Jesse Grant wrote a Congressman relative to a West Point appointment for his son. The Congressman was a former political friend who was estranged because of Jesse’s abolitionism. It was a surprise to Jesse when Ulysses received the appointment. The Congressman not sure of the boy’s name guessed, writing the name on the application paper as Ulysses S. Grant. So Hirum Ulysses became Ulysses S. thereafter.

I suppose I was sort of surprised at Grant’s rather casual attitude toward religion.. According to Perry, he saw it like cannon ball; a curious nuisance that caused more fear than harm.

I don’t think the comparison as it is expressed is a good one. It might have been applicable to the artillery used during the Mexican War but Grant’s Federal Artillery in the closing years of the Civil war was devastatingly harmful to those facing it.

In Chapter 1 Mark Perry gives a brief outline of Grant’s success as an army officer during the Mexican War; he also outlines his several failures as a farmer and in business after he resigned from the army. It appears the Civil War erupted at just the right moment for Grant who was the right man, at the right place, at the right time. He immediately received an Illinois State militia appointment to organize and train Illinois volunteer recruits. This carried the rank of Brigadier General and quickly led to command of Federal operation to suppress rebellion in Missouri and command of operation against Confederate positions on the Mississippi.

Grants initial position organizing and training Illinois volunteers sparked my interest because my great grandfather Christian Hull and his brother were both Illinois volunteers at that time. They participated in the Mississippi River battles that made Grant famous. Christian Hull Survived the war, but his brother died in Tennessee, not from a rebel bullet, but from eating army chow.

"Crowns of Thorns and Glory" by Gerry Vander Heuvel is a book centered on the lives of Mary Todd Lincoln and Varina Jefferson Davis. The author writes not only about the similarities of the women's two lives, but also what were different about their lives. Both women lost children and both had to deal with hateful slanders from the newspapers of the day;Iat a time when a women's name only appeared three times: at birth, marriage, and death. These women were very much abused by the press. Both were hated by the South during the war; although Varina Davis was responsible for bringing the North and South closer together when she moved to New York City towards the end of her life. Varina Davis got along very well with Julia Grant and although she never met General Grant, he was influential in getting her husband out of prison.

From his mother General Grant seems to have inherited many of the traits that distinguished him. She was a silent and religious person with a great common sense and good judgment. His father was an aggressive, hardworking person whose shrewdness and thrift gave him a good business sense.

We can see in the first chapter that General Grant did not inherit his father's good business sense. But the traits that he inherited from his mother were probably what made him such a good general.

According to his "Personal Memoirs," he writes, "I did all the work done with horses." He was in the middle of his class at West Point except for his work in mathematics and he was an excellent horseman. Both of these would have been very important in a career as a soldier.

I was a little surprised to read that "with the Mexican War, Grant was never in sympathy" (Personal Memoirs). But than again this shows Grant's humanity. He felt that the Mexican War was all political.

I won't have a copy of the book in front of me during the discussion, but I did read it a few weeks ago. The only Twain I'm sure I've read is "Letters from the Earth", which is wonderful! I have ordered an abridged version of Grant's Memoirs from our library, mainly for John to read. I don't normally deal with abridged versions of anything, but our library has two copies of the full version, neither of which may be checked out - reference only.

As to the title, I agree with Harold about the subtitle's not really reflecting anything about what is inside the book. I felt the book was primarily about Grant and the events surrounding his writing of his memoirs. He and Twain met after his presidency, and Twain planted the idea of Grant's writing his memoirs in the first place. Twain continued to encourage Grant, and saw that the book was published.

WE DON’T KNOW WHO IS PRESIDENT YET? Good heavens! What an election year – one for the books isn’t it?

Quoting Scrawler’s last post – “It is one thing for friends and family to praise General Grant, but it's high praise indeed; when it comes from the wife of a former enemy.” Insert either Kerry or Bush in place of the name of General Grant and let us have peace!! Indeed let us have peace from all enemies, foreign and abroad.

It might have been a relief this year to have had a man such as Grant in this election who was “the least political of any of our presidents” and a man of few words – had an aversion to argument.

Have we had anyone like that running for president lately? Hahahaaa

Thank you, SCRAWLER, for the name of that book. My branch of the Library does not have a copy but I reserved it from another branch and will be getting in a few days; it sounds like one I will be very interested in. I’ve read quite a lot obout Mary Todd Lincoln but know very little about Varina Davis.

HAROLD, you didn’t answer my question as to why Grant’s memoirs would not appeal to us today. And MARY please tell us what John thinks of the abridged version of the memoirs okay? They were very popular at the time and made a fortune for Grant’s heirs.

HARRIET reminded us of one humorous story in the book concerning Twain and Grant, but a precious one – a humorous one that is something that I can relate to very well – is the story of Twain meeting President Grant in the White House and neither of them could think of a thing to say while shaking hands so Twain just looked at Grant and said “Mr. President, I am embarrassed. Are you?”

Just what would you say if you were in a receiving line meeting a president for the first time?

HAROLD, I can’t remember a book we have discussed about the Civil War, can you? Isn’t time we did one? A biography perhaps of one of the generals or just a book in general?

I learned a few new things about the years leading up to the war and I’ll list them here:

”Denmark Vesey was put on trial and executed in Charleston for plotting a slave uprising.”

John Quincy Adams signed the Tariff of Abominations.

Daniel Webster and Robery Hayne debated the question of slavery on the Senate floor.

I’ve heard of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in Virginia and, of course, the underground railroad, but I think it is time for a book discussion on the Civil War.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Gotta run, later, Ella

Clemens's father was always full of great visions of great wealth which he passed on to his son. Although he was able to educate his soon, he died in 1847 leaving very little besides a tract of land in Tennessee. His mother was a practical woman and she was a memember of a titled family.

I found it interesting that although there were many similarties in the way Grant and Clemens were brought up as children. The big difference came from the traits that they inherited from their parents. Clemens had great visions of great wealth from his father throughout his life, while Grant inherited his mother's common sense and good judgment.

Some very deep stuff here-I'm trying to pull my response to messages #27 and #29Meanwhile to share my family lore of a greatgrandmother(I barely remember) on family farm on Ohio river east of Cincinnati,running things while men in family imprisoned at Andersonville prison,hiding the two vital horses from Morgan's Raiders(Confederate)she succeeded, her brothers were starved to death--maybe a book on the Civil War from the perspective of the horse!Yvonne

That was quite an unexpected ending to the election. So it’s not the economy stupid, its morality. Now we know (???).

Ella I am inclined to agree with Mark Perry’s judgment that Grant was perhaps the least political of all of our Presidents, but I’m not sure that being non political made positive contributions to the success/failure record of the Grant Presidency. This might have been a factor leading to some of the scandals that marred his administration. A better politician might have avoided these adverse events,

I remember when I was in high school history the Grant administration was sometimes cited as an example of the notion that great generals do not make great Presidents. Republican politicians with presidential ambitions such as Dewey, Taft, and Stassen, expressed this argument prior to 1952 when Eisenhower was first urged to seek the Republican nomination. I think that General Eisenhower was probably much more of a politician than General Grant. I think he proved this by the political nature of his role as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the war. Managing the international combinations of temperamental, ambitious generals such as Montgomery, de Gaulle, Patton and etc was very much a political experience. Yet this experience did not completely protect his administration from scandals.

Ella I don’t see any particular reason for the Grant memoirs not being interesting to readers today aside maybe from the obvious that they are not of importance to our current everyday experience. I found their reading in the hour plus I spent browsing them at B&N quite enjoyable. On the subject of Civil War book discussions, we did do Jay Winik’s, “April 1865” a few years ago. It was a title where we saw Grant as a General at the peak of his military career. I suspect also that over the past 7 years other Civil War discussions have occurred, but the only one I can think of now was the novel, “Cold Mountain” or something like that.

Harriet asked:

HAROLD, you triggered a memory from the TV documentary on Grant's life when you talked about your response to skimming the memoirs. The documentary stressed that Grant was remarkable for the consistent, easy-to-read, writing style that he adopted when he finally began to write his memoirs. Didn't he do so under the duress of physical illness and extreme financial need?

Yes Harriet Grant had already been diagnosed with throat cancer when he wrote his first article for the Century magazine. I think this was the Account of the Shiloh battle. About p-55 Perry notes that the first draft was much like a military dispatch written to superiors summarizing the battle; it was dull and uninteresting. After coaching by Johnson and Gilder the Century Magazine editors he responded to their suggestions that urged him to bring in accounts of his personal experiences and other interesting stories about the event, its participants and particularly himself in a rewritten article that was an outstanding success. See p-59 for Perry's comment on Grant's Writing abilities.

Everyone, I am sure, has noted our Discussion Schedule in the heading; this week we are concentrating on the Prologue and Chapters 1-2 and I certainly did our discussion a disservice when I failed to quote pages in my last post. It is helpful when we are speaking of a particular passage in the book if we quote the source of that passage so others may comment it.

Sterling qualities (p.7) such as being underterred, unfazed and unafraid and also bringing a singular concentration to everything he did, were obviously wonderful in times of war, but not for the leadership of a country, right, Harold? Interesting what qualities do make a good president. I’ll might list a few here, in my humble opinion. What can all of you add?

A good communicator
A good delegator
Business sense
Excellent diplomatic skills
Ability to judge other people’s skills and knowledge

That’s just off the top of my head without a great deal of thought.

Our first chapter gives us insight to Sam Grant’s character as it portrays him at West Point – can you imagine entering the Academy today weighing only 117 lbs and standing just five feet one? Is there today a physical qualification by any chance? I wonder how these qualifications have changed over time?

When I graduated from high school I remembering weighing 118 lbs and being 5’4” tall. Grant would have been called a “shrimp” in our school. But I would have loved this shrimp if for no other reason that he was so affectionate and loving; never have I had a love letter such as this: (p.19)

”In going away now I feel as if I had someone else than myself to live and sRtive to do well for. You can have but little idea of the influence you have over me Julia, even while so far away. If I feel tempted to do any thing that I think is not right I am sure to think, ‘Well now if Julia saw me would I do so’ and thus it is absent or present I am more or less governed by what I think is your will.”

WOW!

I have another question that maybe HAROLD could answer – how long must a West Point graduate serve his country?

WELCOME YSKOLE – That’s a fascinating story of your family in Ohio. Thank you for sharing that with us. There is a little tea and gift shop near here on a site that supposedly Morgan’s raiders stayed at or raided (gosh, I forget the history of the place as it has been some years since I have been there), but I have been to Andersonville – and you cannot leave there without being in tears!!! We spent a whole day there.

Now that the excitement - hype - whatever - of the election is over, calm can, hopefully, reign again and I hope all of you will continue to stay with us through this little book for the next couple of weeks. There is much to talk about.

"At the forefront of the Grant movement were moderate Republicans, most of whom would have concurred in the endorsement of the New York Times:

The next Adminisration will find the business of Reconstruction accomplished, so far as laws and enactments can do it. What will be needed then will be the restoration, - or rather the inspiration, - of mutual faith and good feeling, of common sentiments, motives and principles of action between the different sections of the Union. The North will need a man in whose devotion to the principles that have been established by the war...they can have a firm and abiding faith. And the South will want a man in whose justice and magnanimity they can find security against relentless persecution, and the protracted infliction of ruinous punishment for past offenses." (Let Us Have Peace)

"He [William T. Sherman] believed that his wartime comrade wanted nothing to do with the presidency: "I think if Grant can avoid the nomination he will." To his brother in the Senate, he reported that Grant "never has said a word that looks like wanting the office of President." But it was to his father-in-law, Thomas Ewing, Sr., that Sherman gave the most detailed analysis of Grant's position:

He does not want to be President, told me that 50 millions of dollars would not compenste him therefor, but that events might for him [in] spite of inclination - just such events as would "complel him to throw himself into a breach." If the Republicans can find a good nominee he will be content. He is not an extremest at all, but his many good officers at the South force him to the conclusion that there is necessary there some strong power to protect the negroes & union men against legal oppression, or the acts of badly disposed Ex-Rebels. He is frank and friendly to all well disposed men South. He is very reticent, wisely so to strangers, but open and frank with me and others he knows well." (Let Us Have Peace)

I think we have here a man who really didn't want to be president of the United States, but because he and others were afraid of what the Radicals both in the Norh and South would do to the southern states and especially to the negroes they felt they needed a "popular" man to unite the country. Unfortuantely, for Grant he was so uncomfortable in this situation that he surrounded himself with those he thought were his friends, but who were not necessarily qualified to do the job and many of these "friends" to advantage of his friendship.

"He despised the partisan maneuvering and crass opportunism characteristic of politics, possibly because they reminded him of his father's sharp business methods. Always sensitive to criticism, he knew that he let himself be drawn into a political contest was to put his reputation at risk. Nor could the presidency add to the glory and fame he had won on the battlefield; indeed, it might tarnish it." (Let Us Have Peace)

We've just picked up the abridged copy of the Memoirs. The title is "The Civil War Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant". You asked for John's take on the book. He had read the introduction and preface, but had not finished the first page before he was saying "read this part", "listen to this". I want to give you one quote that was amazing to me. He starts out by saying what the South really wanted and how the Southerners interpreted the Constitution.

Grant then writes, "The fact is the constitution did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to 1865. Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring. If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers."

That one quote just blew me away - certainly a concept that had never occurred to me.

Thank you Scrawler for your message #45 giving us Sherman's comment on Grant's lack of interest in the Presidency. He seems to have been much less interested than Eisenhower was in 1950. It would seem Grant's 1868 nomination, as the Republican candidate was much less sought, than Eisenhower's 1950 nomination and much more a draft of him by the convention. In contrast Eisenhower in 1950 after initial coy disinterest, actively campaigned for delegates against three seasoned political opponents. This further confirms the Perry picture of Grant as the most non-political of our Presidents.

Ella regarding your summary of what we look for in a president today I agree that the first two, a good communicator and a good delegatetor are of prime importance. In particular I think these were the strong suits of 2 of our recent ex-Presidents, Ronald Regan and Bill Clinton. Regan has sometimes been referred to as the Great Communicator.

And regarding your question as to the lengths of West Point Graduates active service commitment, I think it is quite short though in emergency times it can be extended. About 15 years ago the San Antonio, NBA team drafted a Naval Academy star player. I remember they had to wait only one year before he was able resign and join the team. Generally I think they serve longer and the Spur’s player did have a continuing reserve commitment.

HAROLD: David Robinson may well have gotten special treatment, although I seem to remember at the time the papers said no.

Joan, you are probably right that the normal active duty requirement was longer. I vaguely remember some general provisions allowing consiceration of a resignation request after the one year. In this case the service accpted. David Robinson I know had a spotless service record and is today an outstanding citizen of San Antonio.

Hey Robby are you Ok? The last we heard from you was message 24. It was Halloween and you were straining at the bit to make your first post the next day. Now your long absence leads us to wonder, did the witches or goblins get ya?

I've been so busy examining the start of Islam in "The Age of Faith" that it has taken all my time. Islam is so relevant these days.

Robby

I found a copy of the tape of the PBS documentary on Ulysses Grant that aired on TV a few years ago. I'm very much enjoying watching it in conjunction with this book and our discussion.

It's rich with old photographs, some of which show Grant as a very young, clean shaven man. I'm always fascinated to get a good look at the face of the man under the beard that was so popular in the nineteenth century. I thought Grant had a singularly intelligent and pleasant face.

We all know that the press vilified Grant as a "butcher and a drunk" (P.30 of the Perry book) after the terrible casualties of the Battle of Shiloh, but the TV documentary gives some idea about the response of the soldiers who had suffered these awful dangers under his command. When Grant appeared among the men, as he often did, the soldiers crowded around him, eager for even the most casual contact. He would receive a chorus of almost reverential greetings.

"Evening, General." "Pleasant weather, sir."

Although the press maligned him, his Union soldiers seemed to believe that General Grant was the man who would succeed in winning the war and finally getting them home. Grant had the the skill to communicate with his army and inspire loyalty.

A few more tidbits from the first two hours of the Grant TV documentary.

During the battle of Vicksburg, Grant would ride through and look at portions of the terrain. He seemed to be able to put together small things...a group of soldiers moving forward, the positions of some cannon, the incoming direction of some enemy firepower...and get a really accurate idea of how the battle was going and what was actually happening. It was the mark of an extraordinary General. He had the ability to accurately assess the progress of the fighting, even in the ongoing chaos and death.

It was as if he had played out the battle in his head, like a chess game, before the actual combat started. During the battle. he attended to strategy and, only after it was complete did he allow himself to feel the impact of the death and maimed soldiers. Maybe he had more than one reason for his drinking?

He may have continued to drink intermittently during the course of the war. Nobody knows for sure, but there is a strong suspicion that he may have overused liquor during a reconnaissance trip prior to Vicksburg

I'll keep you posted on any tidbits from the second half of the TV show.

Harriet

Harriet, how did the PBS film handle Grant’s Presidential terms? I would doubt that he was personally involved in the several high profile scandals, but they did occur on his watch. As a result he caught much contemporary criticism for them, events that now characterizes the history of his Presidency.

Several of the major Scandals during Grant’s terms as President were the Jay Gould, James Fisk attempt to corner the Gold Market, This was particularly close to Grant as his brother-in-law was involved. Grant, however, acted promptly to release Federal gold to the market that thwarted the scheme of the plotters, but resulted in other monetary problems. Other scandals were the Credit Mobilier scandal, a plot to rake-off large profits from the federally subsidized trans-continental Railroad construction project; a whiskey ring scandal diverting Federal money to private pockets; and the revelation of the Secretary of War receiving kickbacks from Army contractors.

A curious modern repeat of the Jay Gould gold market scheme came in the 1970’s when the Hunts attempted to corner the silver market. For a while this scheme seemed to be working. In the end, however, the price scheme failed and the price fell rapidly to the great financial distress of the principals involved. This incident while not without impact on the National economy was much less than the Gould venture because money was no longer the basis for the national currency. One lasting result, however, was the removal of most of the silver from US coins.

In 1852 he departed with his regiment for the Pacific coast by way of the Isthmus of Panama. Mrs. Grant, who had given birth to a son, did not make the journey.

While in the Isthmus of Panama delays occurred. Cholera broke out and many died. Grant was the quartermaster and he buried the dead and by his energy and resourcefulness prevented a greater loss of life. From San Francisco, he was ordered to Fort Vancouver near present day Portland. Grant remained there until September 1853 when he was sent to Humbolt Bay, California.

I've been to both places and they can be very cold and dreary places now; so I can only imagine what they would be like in Grant's time. He was lonely for his wife and family and he was troubled by money worries; so at times he would drink more than he should have. When his commanding officer warned him about his drinking, Grant resigned and his resignation was accepted by Jefferson Davis, the secretary of War at the time.

In the '50's, I read a wonderful book by Harnett T. Kane, titled "Bride of Fortune", which is about Mrs. Davis. From that book, I furthered my historical reading by enjoying "The Presiden't Lady" about Rachael Jackson, Andrew's wife, and "Love Is Eternal" about Mary Todd Lincoln. Both books were authored by Irving Stone.

I am liking this book as it is so comfortable to read and the posts in here are full of further info on Grant and Twain.

My GGrandfather and his brothers were members of the Union Army regiment from Indiana. We hold a silver sabre that is said belonged to my ggrandfather, maybe, since I just don't think that we had relatives with enough money or education to be an officer in our family history. I think I heard that only calvery officers carried swords.

Harold, the Credit Mobilar happened during Grant's presidency?? I didn't know that. Remember our wonderful discussion of the building of the Trans Continental Railroad by Stephen Ambrose?? I loved that book.

WHAT INSIGHTFUL, ENGROSSING POSTS ALL OF YOU HAVE GIVEN US.

So much here to contemplate I hardly know where to begin to comment! Thank you all so much for the additional material from other books, tapes, etc. It adds much to our conversation!

SCRAWLER, I must repeat, at least partially, this one sentence from the book LET US HAVE PEACE – ” What will be needed then will be the restoration, - or rather the inspiration, - of mutual faith and good feeling, of common sentiments, motives and principles of action”. Golly, that is what is needed now - after this election wherein the country was divided over issues and I am hoping that we can have peace again in my lifetime!

Click here for a review of the book that SCRAWLER is reading: LET US HAVE PEACE by Brooks D. Simpson

Interesting that two of the books that B&N lists under the title "People who bought this book also bought" are two that we have discussed in the past - THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY and JOHN ADAMS, and sometime in the near future Harold will be leading a discussion on UNDAUNTED COURAGE by Ambrose. We are au courant.

MARY!!!! What a statement for Grant to have made, can we really believe that the framers of the Constitution would really have considered the right of a state to withdrawn from the Union? That’s amazing and convinces me that we should READ GRANT’s Memoirs. Do continue to tell us more about them, okay?

HARRIET, you said – “General Grant was the man who would succeed in winning the war and finally getting them home. Grant had the the skill to communicate with his army and inspire loyalty.” And I wonder if that is why Bush won this election – my neighbor, who has many friends in the armed forces, believes that is true. That the Commander-In-Chief in the White House inspires confidence and therefore deserves loyalty.

WELCOME BACK, ANN! AND ROBBY, TOO!

I was just re-reading the section in Chapter One (p.18-23) about the American-Mexican War of 1846 wherein Grant is described in the first battle of his life and one in which he learned a great deal about war. He very admired Zachary Taylor, his commander (later president of the U.S.) and our author states that Taylor became a role model for the young Sam Grant. Zachary Taylor Biography

Taylor believed (and no doubt Grant also did judging by the way he waged war later) that ”the more violent the battle (and therefore the shorter the battle) the more lives would be saved.“

Possibly true, but so cruel to read it in writing like that isn’t it?

Grant wrote to Julia – “Wherever there are battles a great many must suffer. If we have to fight I would like to do it at once and then make friends.”

Easier said than done methinks!!!

Perry writes that Grant’s drinking first began in earnest after the Mexican war because he hated army routine – probably very boring to a “MAN WITH FIRE.”

Later, ella

I just must add a line or two more about Grant as I'm afraid it will not be noted as we move along toward our next week's assignment.

The battles of the Civil War were so awful:

"The casualties at Shiloh were more than have been lost in all previous American wars combined, and the people of the North were stunned by the casualty lists. Grant was not. 'I gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest.' Lincoln defended Grant against criticisms that he was a butcher, incompetent and a drunk. Hearing this last, Lincoln said that whatever Grant drank should be sent to the North's other commanders.....Lincoln supported his commander, calling his campaign (of Vicksburg) 'one of the most brilliant in the world.'

So much to discuss here, it is difficult for me not to quote everything in this book! I hope I'm not being too boring.

On p.31, Perry describes the Battle of the Wilderness - Grant's first test against Robert E Lee, in which Grant sat on a stump, whittling away on an old piece of wood during a nightmarish battle that preceded one of the most brilliant campaigns in military history - one that must be studied time and time again in military circles and academies.

WHAT DO OTHER SOURCES HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS BATTLE - THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE READING OTHER BOOKS OR WATCHING TAPES?

In chapter 2 Mark Perry tells us something of Mark Twains interface with his famous literary Hartford neighbors Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister Isabel Hooker. Harriet Beecher Stowe was of course the author of the pre-Civil War book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” This book did much to accelerate the abolitionist movement that resulted in the Civil War. These were the Twains neighbors with whom they frequently visited.

Twain had read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” He admired it but its northern view of slavery- the beatings, cruelties, escapes, posses, slave hunters, etc- was not a part of his personal boyhood pre-war experience. Yet the Harriet Beecher Stowe experience got him thinking of slavery particularly as a topic for a book. Twain thought he might combine the Mississippi River, Hannibal, pride, avarice, slavery and the human condition into another book. He began writing in June 1876 and by August had some 16 chapters of Huckleberry Finn written; it was the story of a white boy, Huckleberry Finn and an adult black slave Jim who had escaped from Hannibal and were on a raft heading south on the river. The 16 chapters took them to Cairo, Ill where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi. Here Twain developed a sever writers block. He realized he had to make a decision to either send Jim and Huck up the Ohio to freedom or continue them down stream to slavery.

Mark Perry leaves this decision undecided at this point simply saying Twain wrapped up his manuscript an put it away. He returned to it only in 1884 when in the midst of his Friendship with Grant, he finally realized what Huckleberry Finn was really all about.

In fact how Twain resolved this problem becomes the purpose of the book. It is Mark Perry’s unique interpretation of Grant, Twain, the Mississippi River, Huckleberry Finn, Jim, and Southern culture that follows in chapter 4 that gives meaning and purpose to his book, “Twain and Grant” and particularly to the meaning of (and justification for) the addition of the sub-title “The Story of a Friendship that Changed America.”

Like I said all this comes in Chapter 4, particularly pages 91 – 102 which will come next week.

"...But Grant did not share the belief in Lee's superhuman qualities that seemed to paralyze so many eastern officers. "I am heartily tired of hearing what Lee is going to do," Grant told the brigadier. "Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land on our rear and on both our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."

"..his [Grant's] 17,500 casualties in two days exceeded the Confederate total by at least 7,000. Under such circumstances previous Union commanders in Virginia had withdrawn behind the nearest river. Men in the ranks expected the same thing to happen again. But Grant had told Lincoln that "whatever happens, there will be no turning back."

While the armies skirmished warily on May 7, Grant prepared to march around Lee's right during the night to seize the crossroads village of Spotsylvania a dozen miles to the south. If successful, this move would place the Union army closer to Richmond than the enemy and force Lee to fight or retreat.

"Our spirits rose," recalled one veteran who remembered this moment as a turning point in the war. Despite the terrors of the past three days and those to come, "we marched free. The men began to sing." For the first time in a Virginia campaign the Army of the Potomac stayed on the offensive after its initial battle.

"Hand to hand fighting like this usually ended quickly when one side broke and ran; but today (May 11) neither line broke and few men ran. It became an atavistic territorial battle. Blood flowed as copiously as the rain, turning trench floors into a slimy ooze where dead and wounded were trampled down by men fighting for their lives. "I never expect to be fully believed when I tell what I saw of the horrors of Spotsylvania, "wrote a Union officer, "because I should be loath to believe it myself were the case reversed."

The day before the Bloody Angle, Grant had sent a dispatch to Washington declaring that "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." Newspapers picked up this phrase and made it as famous as Grant's unconditional surrender note at Fort Donelson.

From May 5 through May 12 the Army of the Potomac lost some 32,000 men killed, wounded, and missing - a total greater than for all Union armies combined in any previous week of the war.

"Lee's army is really whipped," he [Grant] had written to Halleck...The prisoners we now take show it, and the action of his army shows it unmistakably. A battle with them outside of intrenchments cannot be had. Our men feel that they have gained the morale over the enemy and attack with confidence." So Grant ordered an assault at dawn on June 3 at Cold Harbor.

The horrors of this day, added to those of Spotsylvania, created something of a Cold Harbor syndrome in the Army of the Potomac. Men in the ranks had learned what European armies on the Western Front a half-century later would have to learn again about trench war-fare. "The men feel at present a great horror and dread of attacking earthworks again," was how one officer put it. ["Battle Cry of Freedom"]

Modern tactics for the first time in military history were used to attack Lee in the Battle of the Wilderness. But just as European armies would have to re-learn these tactics; we today are still fighting bloody battles in Iraq. I consider myself a war-baby (born in 1943). There hasn't been a day in my life that somebody (and most of the time the US) hasn't been fighting. I can't help but wonder if we will ever see "Peace in our Time" after all didn't we fight the war to end all wars!

Thank you, SCRAWLER, for your post about Spotslvania - there are many sites on the Internet about the battles of the Civil War, including this one but I think you have said it well - it was bloody, it was awful - bloody awful!

How could a man - a sensitive man - come home to wife and family after seeing such horror and resume life as if it never happened, but, of course, they didn't. I'm sure the memories lived on until the end of their lives.

"I consider myself a war-baby (born in 1943). There hasn't been a day in my life that somebody (and most of the time the US) hasn't been fighting. I can't help but wonder if we will ever see "Peace in our Time" after all didn't we fight the war to end all wars!"

AMEN!!!!

I'm a few years older than you; having been born in 1928 on Armistice Day and when I started learning history at elementary school age I was convinced I was born on the day my father returned from WWI, and I remember thinking what a surprise I must have been to him! Hahahahaaaa

He fought in WWI in France in the trenches, never mentioned the war; my husband fought in WWII in the South Pacific, never talked about it.

Those of us who stay at home have no idea of it all, yet I shudder when I read of it.

Thanks, HAROLD, for getting us started so well on Chapter Two and Mark Twain - somewhat of a relief from the war. But how is it that Twain could have done this (p.37):

"The Civil War found Clemens a volunteer in the Marion Rangers, an irregular Confederate unit raised from his hometown of Hannibal. His enlistment did not last long. After spending several weeks as the unit's second lieutenant, Clemens decided he had had enough war........so he left for Nevada with his brother Orion."

It was that easy to leave when you enlisted? No one bothered to check on your whereabouts? No desertion was declared? I don't understand.

If many felt that way, we would have had no Civil War at all - which might have been a good thing huh?

I seem to remember reading about desertions being punished back then as it is now.

When I read of the battles, I remember being up on Lookout Mountain listening to a Confederate re-enactor tells us about how the army pulled tons of equipment up this 90 degree slope so that they could get a better view of the Union army and of course, a better chance of repressing the army. He reminded us about the intense heat, the wool uniforms, the bugs, rains--all of the things that effect battles.

At Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield, one can see the trenches that the soldiers laid in, waiting for the enemy. You can still find lead balls from the soldiers guns. Same at Pickett Battlefield plus the numerous sites of the Atlanta battles.

Regarding Twains brief service in the irregular Confederate unit, I do think when he deserted he was in real danger of summary execution had he been caught. The fact was, however, that because of the frontier conditions his getting caught was probably pretty unlikely. He just disappeared on to the wilderness trail heading west to emerge in Nevada where there was no danger.

I think Twains decision to desert was certainly a wise choice that probably made possible his entire future career as a writer, Mark Perry does not tell us anything about the unit that Twain briefly served, but the term, "irregular," to me seems ominous since irregular units of this type during the later war years in Missouri engaged in guerrilla operations more outlaw in nature than military.

One of my problems in understanding the Book is Mark Perry’s interpretative connection to Twain’s Huckleberry Finn book that I have neved read. This has led me to search the Web for some detailed analysis of the plot of this book. Perhaps some of you who have also never read the book or who read it many years ago would also be interested in more information.

Frankly I thought more collage orientated cheat type information would be available, but Click Here for an Encarta Encyclopedia report that is the best of several that I found. This is more a synopsis than a review and does give the reader a general outline of the details.

Also for many contemporary literary reviews that evaluate the book without disclosing too much detail about the plot, Click Here.

"The Adventures of Hucklebery Finn" begins as "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" ended with Huck being adopted by the Widow Douglas. But Huck soon realizes that if he wants to remain with the Widow Douglas he has to "curtail his swearing and smoking and commence attending school."

About this time Huck discovers that his alcoholic father has returned and he is afraid that his father will discover the treasure that he and Tom found and Huck gives the money to Judge Thatcher.

Huck's father takes him into the woods where he starves and beats him. But Huck manages to escape and stage his own death. He flees to an island, where he discovers a fugative slave, Jim. After awhile Huck returns only to discover that the town people are saying that it was Jim that "kill'd young Huck."

The rest of the book deals with Huck and Jim and their adventure of going down the Mississippi.

It was intially condemned in some quarters as inappropriate material for young people, but it sold well. Twain re-created the Antebellum South, but most important gives us an insight into slavery.

If you read the book or saw the movie “COLD MOUNTAIN” which, although fictitious, probably portrayed the fate Mark Twain might have encountered had he not gone west – GO WEST, YOUNG MAN, GO WEST!

I wonder if that desertion ever bothered him?

Do you know that even in the late 50’s and early 60’s people that we knew were still believing that the West Coast is where all the opportunities for young people lay. I can remember a young neighbor with his first child selling out his little first-starter house to enable him to pay for the trip west where he believed jobs were better with better pay.

Is it still true?

Why is it I do not find Mark Twain as interesting a character as is Sam Grant? I find I made few check marks and underlines in my book in Chapter Two which is for the most part about Twain, but I do find some of his remarks that are quoted in this chapter funny; there is this regarding the references he provided Livy’s father as to his character::

”They said with one accord that I got drunk oftener than was necessary and that I was wild and Godless, idle, lecherous & a discontented & an unsettled rover & they could never recommend any girl of high character & social position to marry me-but as I had already said all that about myself beforehand there was nothing shocking or surprising about it the family.”

Both Twain and Grant were fortunate to have had good marriages and found love in their lives, weren't they?

Golly, what a poor businessman Twain was to have spent the fortune he made from his writing and to have spent it so carelessly! Frittered and twittered it away in material goods.

I had never heard all the scandal attached to the Beecher family before, had any of you? WELL, WELL! And such religious folk! And I can’t find anything about Henry Ward Beecher on the Internet or Lyman either. Interesting characters!

Time for lunch, later...

WHERE IS EVERYONE TODAY? WHAT ARE YOU ALL THINKING ABOUT MARK TWAIN?

Goodness, my progress in reviewing the two videotapes on Grant and Twain is going slowly, and I am still deeply involved with the four hour documentary on Ulysses Grant. I've completed watching the first two hours of the tape. It goes into detail about Grant as a general, and is entitled "The Warrior." The next two hours deals with "The President." I still haven't watched that part yet.

HAROLD, I made careful note of the points you brought up in your post #53. I'll be glad to watch out for any take on the scandals you questioned in your post if you and ELLA feel that more information on Grant will not be intrusive to your schedule? Or if you both prefer, I can move on to the Mark Twain videotape sooner?

Meanwhile, I was eager to talk about the final part of the "Warrior" segment on Grant. Please forgive me for not being more au courant on Mark Twain.

I had never thought about the effect of the coming presidential election on Grant during the fiercest fighting of the Civil War. I was surprised to hear Grant described as much concerned that he "carried the Union on his back." He felt that he HAD to produce victories in order to ensure Lincoln's reelection.

Grant believed that if Lincoln was turned out of office by a war-weary electorate who had lost all hope of victory, the new Democratic president would surely feel it politic to negotiate for terms of peace with the South. Those terms would be likely to include tacit acceptance of the right to secede, and the South would have consequently, in effect, won the war.

Grant had made one of his few tactical blunders at the battle of Cold Harbor during this pressured time. He lost over 6000 Union troops in a few minutes. It was particularly tragic and traumatic because their loss did not serve any useful purpose and that battle was ultimately lost.

Again, Grant was vilified as a butcher and anti-war sentiment swept through the North.

This was particularly damaging to Lincoln's hopes for the upcoming presidential election. Grant's anxieties about the need for a victory increased greatly and exacerebated his usual post battle trauma about the casualties his troops had suffered.

Then General Sherman took Atlanta! Grant was overjoyed. He never hesitated to award full credit to Sherman, even though his old friend had been following the tactical orders in Grant's master plan. It was Sherman's victory, but it was Grant's master design of strategy that had placed Sherman in the time and place to take advantage of this Confederate vulnerability.

Optimism swept through the North and Lincoln was reelected. With Lincoln still at the helm, Grant was now sure that complete victory was only a matter of time.

I wonder what went through General Lee's mind when Lincoln was reelected? Did he write any memoirs talking about HIS state of mind during the weeks before Appomatox? It would be interesting to read Lee's thoughts as the cause he believed in so fervently vanished into the mists.

Love all the posts in this discussion!

Harriet

Clemens’ actual experience with the Missouri State Guard was very limited and was typical of many men in these very early days of the war. He rode to Colonel John Ralls’ house and took the oath of allegiance to the Missouri State Guard. In that oath, he pledged to support both the state and Federal constitutions. He did not swear allegiance to the Confederate government. Then he and his comrades drilled and camped. They really had nothing to do.

The unit held a company election and Clemens was elected to the post of second lieutenant.

They did not engage in any fighting. Grimes reports no violent encounters at all during this time. Hannibal newspapers confirm that no one was shot and killed in the manner described by Mark Twain in his Private History of a Campaign that Failed. The name "Marion Rangers" also appears to have been a creation of Mark Twain. There is no record in Grimes’ memoir or in any other source of the name being used. Sam Clemens suffered from a painful boil and sprained his ankle during the short time he was in the field. All his little unit did in June and July was hide. It must have been very boring and was obviously not much fun.

We don’t know exactly how Clemens came in from the field. Amnesty was available to all who would lay down their weapons. Newly promoted Union General Lyon issued a proclamation stating that, "All persons who … have taken up arms, or who are now preparing to do so, are invited to return to their homes, and relinquish their hostile attitude to the federal government, and are assured they may do so without being molested for past occurrences." (6/22/61) The local Union commander, Colonel R.F. Smith of the 16th Illinois headquartered in Palmyra issued another amnesty offer on July 3rd.

Men took advantage of the amnesty offers in Marion County. On June 23, 1861, the Hannibal Daily Messenger observed "…quite a number of the daring adventurers, and chivalrous, but duped and misguided young men of this and Ralls Co., who participated in the late action near Boonville, are returning perfectly satisfied with their brief campaign."

Sam probably took advantage of this offer as well. He must have done it pretty early, too. By July 26, he and Orion were on their way to Nevada. He arrived there on August 14 and went to work for the Lincoln administration as a secretary to his brother Orion.

Harriet I don't think Lee ever wrote of his Civil War experience. At any rate a B&N search for him as an author yields nothing. If any book by him had been published almost surely it would have shown up in their used book dealers suppliment, but it did not.

Ann, if I understand the dates correctly San Clements reached Nevada from Missouri in less than 3-weeks. Was that possible in the pre-RR days?

I think that the Union Pacific RR was finished by then and maybe he could have. I will look that up or assume that the city of Hannibal has made a mistake in their dating but allowable.

No, the Union Pacific RR was completed by 1869 and the Missouri Pacific RR came into being in 1876. So, the three weeks was certainly not a possibility in the early 1860's, as you say.

When do we get to comment on the cancer of Grant?? I found a good site laying out the way it is treated now, 120 years later and with much chemo, radiation and intense surgery plus an incredible team of doctors, nurses, therapists of different modalities, they can still only promise 5-10 years of survivability and much of that time is taken up in treatments.

I was amazed by the sophisticated knowledge that the doctors had back then, right down to naming is ephithileal cancer which is one of the many forms of cancer. The word epithelial can apply to many cancers of the body organs and has a certainty of metastisising throughout the body quickly. It is one of the most aggresive forms of cancer and is known to be caused by excessive alcohol intake and smoking.

I read your link, Harold, and almost fell asleep while doing so. I think that they are over explaining the book. Maybe one should take seriously the warning put there by the author at the beginning of the story. Maybe Twain was just trying to write a good book for boys of the time and one that they would enjoy reading. Coming from the background that he did, he was bound to put in his thoughts on slavery and the white man's response to the freeing of the slaves. But, to bring it to the attention of the growing boy was important to him. Plus, his books sold well and he made a lot of money, so why not try to elaborate on the Tom Sawyer book. He did need money!!

Today marks the beginning of our second week and the opening of chapters 3, 4, and 5 for discussion. While opening the subjects of the new chapters we can continue to probe the earlier issues that are now in progress.

Ann, discussion relative to Grant’s mouth cancer and that disease are certainly open. Do post the link relative to the modern treatment. I too note that the doctors were quick to diagnose Grants problem, but unable to offer any actual treatment. Radiation treatments of cancer probably did not begin until WW I and drug therapy did not come until the 1950’s. In Grant’s time even surgery could not be use since the usual result was a more rapid multiplication of the cancer. His treatment was pain relief in the form of twice daily swabs with opiate solutions.

On the interpretation of Huckleberry Finn, I understand how one might conclude it has been overdone. I suppose I have no problem with seeing the raft as a symbol for the freedom sought by both Huck and Jim. Yet I can’t really believe Mark Twain as he wrote the book saw it as anything but a sequel to Tom Sawyer, a boys adventure.

As for over interpretation surely none can exceed Mark Perry’s interpretation of Finn that pictures Grant’s Civil War campaign down the Mississippi, and Twain’s nostalgic 1882 return trip down the river as a symbolic reenactment of the fictional 1830’s raft journey of Huck and Jim to freedom. In the earlier raft journey Huck found freedom from his drunken father and his guardian, the widow Douglas; Jim found freedom through the fortuitous act of a new master who legally freed him. In our book Grant’s journey down river brought freedom to many thousands of slaves, and through Twain’s 1882 journey he came to understand the impact of Grant’s achievement leading him to a new understanding of Grant’s role in the creation of a new America.

Well look who’s over interpreting now!

"[Grant] was not a great president, but he was a competent, middle-of-the-road president. There were a lot of scandals associated with his administration, but that was comparatively new. Financial scandals were not a part of the presidency until the Civil War because, until then, America was a country where people and the government didn't have a lot of money. The Civil War created a huge national debt. More than $400 billion in greenbacks was put in circulation...

Reconstruction which should have been the big moral crusade following the Civil War, had been killed stone dead by Andrew Johnson. Grant couldn't revive it; Lincoln could not have revivied it in that condition. The biggest problem the government faced was the national debt. Meanwhile, you have the rise of industrial America, and there's a lot of money around. Railroad companies were happy to bribe any congressman they could shove money at.

The two biggest [scandals] were the Credit Mobilier scandal, which involved a railroad company, and that wasn't really Grant's scandal. During the Andrew Johnson adminsitration, Credit Mobilier had paid off at least fifty congressmen. It gave them stock in the company, and the stock rose in value. But they hadn't had to pay for the stock.

The finance company for the railroad needed a grant from the government, a huge amount of land. With the land as collateral, the fiance company could then raise money.

The important thing was to get Congress to approve giving huge amounts of federal land. Credit Mobilier handed out the stock and was able to finance the railroad. The stock rose in value. These congressmen, in effect, had a financial interest. The scandal broke, but it broke during the Grant administration. Somehow Grant was blamd or tarnished by what was really an Andrew Johnson scandal simply because it came to light during Grant's presidency.

The other big scandal was the whiskey fraud scandal. For some time in border sttes, the way Democrats financed their political campaigns was to siphon off some of the whiskey tax that was imposed during the Civil War as a way of helping to finance the war. The tax collectors would hand some of the money over to the federal government, but they would keep some of it to finance political campaigns.

After the 1872 election, the Republican party needed a new moneybag, and it could not find one. The Republicans in some states started engaging in their own whiskey tax fraud in order to finance Republican campaigns. Grant had no idea this was going on.

With all these scandals wirling around him, Grant was in a unique position. He was the first president who had to cope with a lot of financial scandals. Ever since the Gilded Age, most American administrations have had financial scandals. But Grant was personally blamed because his scandal was the first." ("Booknotes Life Stories" by Brian Lamb)

It is interesting that the same problems that faced Grant in the 1800s also face us today - a huge national debt and finding a way to finance political campaigns.

Scrawler, your comment

"Reconstruction which should have been the big moral crusade following the Civil War, had been killed stone dead by Andrew Johnson"

really surprised me. I had all my schooling in Texas (obviously a Southern state) and then moved to Tennessee, and I have NEVER heard of Reconstruction as being a good thing. It's always been put in pejorative terms as the terrible, oppressive thing that the conquering North did to punish the South. Interesting how different parts of the country view the same events.

(Of course, I'd never gotten any inkling that the South actually lost the war, either. VBG and a bit of sarcasm here.)

SCRAWLER, I picked up the book, CROWNS OF THORNS AND GLORY, at the Library today and made the mistake of taking it in with me for a bowl of soup at a local restaurant while out doing errands – mistake because it is absolutely fascinating and I continue reading it, even though I’m in the middle of another good one about the MOTHERS OF PRESIDENTS.

Thanks for the suggestion and thanks also for your remarks on the scandals of the Grant presidency, which as you pointed out in no way involved him, but nevertheless the “buck stops at the desk of the president.” (You and I are alike obviously in our reading and TV tastes as I rarely miss a Brian Lamb interview!)

Yesterday I had C-SPAN on while doing other things and not listening carefully until an author mentioned that the gold in California was used to help finance the Northern campaign in the Civil War because of the results of a duel between two men – Broderick and Terry; one a pro-slave fellow and the other an abolitionist. The abolitionist shot the other man (both were prominent in politics in the state) and therefore the winner made sure that the gold found its way to the U.S. treasury to help finance the campaigns. Interesting! Wish I had heard the author and name of the book –

Yes, yes, how to finance political campaigns and pay off the national debt – still issues that Congress ignores!

HELLO, MARY! You have a fellow traveler in this discussion and that is HAROLD, who is also a born and bred Texan and I want to know what he knows or thinks about the RECONSTRUCTION of the South.

I know very little and need to be educated in that regard! Carpetbaggers and the like that plagued the South from the North is all I remember hearing about.

But in reading of Varina Davis and the desolation of the South – the looting and the burning of the lovely homes of the South, the despair of the people at the end of the war cannot help but make one feel very sad

– on the other hand it reminds me of two small brothers fighting in the yard and one getting knocked down and hurt. Mother comes racing out to confront the situation and the dilemma is that the one brother standing points and says “He started it.”

There is the Civil War.

HARRIET – A big thank you for watching those tapes. I never thought – and never learned – the reason that Grant continued on after those horrific losses and, therefore, was forever after called the butcher. Your post needs repeating:

"he (Grant) "carried the Union on his back." He felt that he HAD to produce victories in order to ensure Lincoln's reelection…..Grant believed that if Lincoln was turned out of office by a war-weary electorate who had lost all hope of victory, the new Democratic president would surely feel it politic to negotiate for terms of peace with the South. Those terms would be likely to include tacit acceptance of the right to secede, and the South would have consequently, in effect, won the war.”

I’M LEARNING SO MUCH FROM ALL OF YOU, KEEP UP THE LESSONS, PLEASE!

ANN, thanks for the notes on Twain’s reason for leaving the Confederacy, it sounds as though it was legitimate doesn’t it – and NOW IS THE TIME WE TURN TO CHAPTERS 3-5 and talk about Grant’s cancer, as Harold noted!

Grant, and other presidents have made Long Branch, New Jersey famous throughout its history – HARRIET, have you ever been there?

Apparently it is enjoying a renovation, click and scroll down to see what is planned: Projects Under Development

And it is while at Long Branch, in 1884, that Grant first noticed the pain that was to turn into the cancer that finally killed him.

Before we leave the preceding chapters, may I just ask one question?

"If you had to choose one, would you rather meet and visit with the MAN WITH FIRE or the WOUNDED LION?

Thanks so much for all your fascinating comments. Love them!

Here's a link to a page on Throat Cancer and its treatment.

Throat Cancer Treatment

I liked the Wounded Lion best but both chapters were worth reading.

Oh, the Internet is absolutely astounding - if you want reading material tonight (hahahahaaa) here is an account of the Broderick-Terry duel:

San Francisco landmarks

Hi ANN! I looked over that site, OH, DEAR! I would rather avoid it altogether, it's not a pleasant thought to take with me to my dinner, which I'm just beginning to prepare - with my imagination my throat might start hurting!

After reading the chapter about Grant's cancer and then doing the research for that site and then reading it!!!!, I did have a sore throat. Suggestable material, isn't it? Enjoy your dinner! Remember no smoking or drinking allowed anymore!!

I have never heard of the reconstruction process being killed stone dead by Andrew Johnson or any one. History tells us it was a long and painful process lasting a full decade before citizenship was restored to people of the rebel states. This first reconstruction process continued all through the two Grant administrations and was considered completed at the end of his second term.

I think history is critical of the post Civil War program for its failure to offer anything really positive to improve the education and social position of the ex-slave citizens. In addition the process left the South (both black and white) economically and socially disadvantaged in comparison to the other states. It took another 100 years before in the 1960’s a second nation wide reconstruction began to address the basic social and economic issues. Today this effort seem to have made real progress toward the liberation, not only of the South, but the entire country from this tragic aspect of its past.

In this weeks chapters two ex Civil War generals, William T. Sherman and Philip H Sheridan are mentioned. I have two interesting stories concerning the post war careers of these officers that I posted as Message 325 on the old History Board, They are copied here as follows:

On the subject of the two civil war generals, William T. Sherman and Philip H Sheridan I have stories concerning each both of which I probably have mentioned in previous posts (probably the “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” discussion). The first concerns General Sherman telling how he almost lost his scalp during a post civil war inspection of the frontier forts in the Texas panhandle. The general in the company of another general officer were riding in an army ambulance on their way to a particular fort. An ambulance was the 19th century army term for a personnel carrier. It was a heavy wagon drawn by a team of multiple horses. There was an escort of about a dozen mounted cavalry. As the group made their way along the dusty road unknown to them there was a war party of some 150 Kiowa warriors lying in ambush. This party was led by an old war chief, a second chief/medicine man, and a third young chief on the fast track route for tribal leadership. The group left the reservation in Indian Territory under the guise of being a hunting party. The Indians observed the Sherman party approaching and held council to plan an attack. Most of the party favored an attack but the medicine man argued in opposition. His medicine told him they should not attack the first party to pass. Wait for the second, he urged, for a greater reward in scalps and booty. Reluctantly the majority agreed and Sherman and his party passed with out knowledge of the danger.

The next day an empty army wagon train of about a half dozen wagons passed. The Indians attacked, captured the wagons, and killed 4 or 5 of the drivers (one tortured in a most barbaric matter). Several escaped to spread word of the event. The Cavalry tracked the Indians back to the reservation where after questioning the principals admitted their role. They were promptly arrested and were ordered returned to Texas to stand trial for murder. At the departure time the medicine man made a suicidal escape attempt and died under a hale of bullets. The War chief and the young would be chief were returned to Jack County Texas where they were found guilty of the murder of the teamsters and sentenced in the State court to be hung. The Quaker administrator of the Kiowa reservation pleaded with President Grant and Grant asked the Republican reconstruction Governor of Texas to commute the sentence. This he did and the two were sent to the Huntsville State prison (the old “Walls” unit that today houses death row inmates). The war chief committed suicide by jumping from the wall. The young fast tract to be chief was later give amnesty, released and returned to Oklahoma where it is said he lived a long life, dying in the 1920’s a deacon in the Baptist church. This incident is mentioned (perhaps with out as much detail) by Dee Brown in his “Bury My Heart…..” book.

My Philip H Sheridan story illustrates the proposition that in the post Civil War army “rank has its privileges.” I think it came in 1876 a few years after the Sherman story. At that time Sheridan held high army command. He put together a turkey hunt inviting some 8 or 10 ex-army associates, wartime buddies. Most of the invitees had retired and were in civilian life. They were all ex generals or colonels. They assembled at an army post in Indian Territory. From there they set out for a two to three week hunting holiday. A company of cavalry commanded by the son of the president who carried the rank of colonel. (This was the Ferd Grant mentioned in our Grant/Twain Book who helped Grant write and edit his memoirs). For the period the group shot turkeys from their roosts in trees at night, hunted other game, played cards, and consumed large quantities of wine and harder drinkables (apparently at US Government expense). Like I said, “rank had its privileges.”

My source for this story comes from a re-print edition of a private very limited publication of a small booklet written by one of the participants and dedicated and presented to General Sheridan. I think the original print was limited to less than a half dozen copies.

Here are a few excerpts from "A Bullet for Lincoln" a novel by Benjamin King:

"It's a matter of resources," Morgan continued. "The Federal government has a nearly inexhaustible supply while the South has none. I do not pretend to be a military man, but it should be evident to the most casual observer that while the South may have had a chance in the first two years of the war, it has none now. Some may fool themselves into thinking that the South can obtain a negotiated peace, but Lincoln in the White House they haven't a chance. Lincoln has outwitteed them at every turn...

"Cotton is a dead issue...Even after the war there will be no great upsurge in demand. The warehouses in the North and in Europe are full. In addition to that, the English have learned to comb Egyptian cotton. King Cotton has been deposed..

"Consider his statements about his plans for the future. He refers to the rebellious states as 'erring sisters' and longs to welcome them back into the fold. He is willing to forgive and forget and let bygones be bygones. Gentlemen, the South is utterly ruined financially. Its facilities are right now near to ruin. No one can possibly forsee what further damage can be done but it will hardly be insignificant. Virgina is rapidly becoming a desert and I dare say Sherman's army will do no less to Georgia. It will take tens of millions of dollors and dozens of years to repair the damage. On top of that, Mr. Lincon wants to free the Negro and educate him so he can live as a citizen of these United States...

"If the South is to be rebuilt then most of the available captial will go to the South. It will go to already established businesses and it will be controlled by the government. The market will stagnate.

"What will happen to the nation if the South is left to its own devices?" Gold and Fisk were beginning to grin. Their faces aglow with the same vision.

"Instead of sinking money in the South, they will go west," Fisk said. "And in order to move west they will need railroads and the telegraph."

"Suppose Lincoln were not in the picture at the moment of victory?" Morgan asked.

"The public would be irate," Gould answered. "If he were laid low by the hand of a Southerner, it would go poorly for the South indeed... (New York City, August 8, 1864)

If Lincoln had lived the Reconstruction period would have been considered a "crusade" to help the people of the South. Although the above pargraphs are fictional; they do illustrate what happened after Lincoln's death. Perhaps you recognize the names in those paragraphs: Morgan, Fisk, and Gould. They were the financiers that took over the money after the Civil War and made monies off of railroads. If Lincoln had lived, no doubt that money would have found its way into the South to help rebuild it.

I think I would have liked to have met both Grant and Twain. I know what Julie Grant went through with Grant's illness. Both my son and my husband passed away from cancer. Grant showed his courage by continuing his work. That's one reason why I write. During my husband and my son's illnesses in order to keep myself sane, I started to write stories and poems just to take my mind off of what was happening around me.

Both men were probably pretty hard to get along with at times. But both tried to make their wives happy. They were not typical Victorian husbands who saw marriage as a good thing where their wives pamperd them while they themselves were confined to their homes, burdened with an average of five to seven children and saddled with endless drugery. But Twain and Grant saw to it that their wives had the help they needed and saw their wives more as companions rather than "chattle."

THANKS, HAROLD, FOR YOUR VIEWS ON RECONSTRUCTION, that is what I have always believed also but have never pursued the subject to any degree; and when you said it wasn’t until the 60’s that the issue was addressed, I WAS STARTLED! That wasn’t that long ago, not to someone of my age and, of course, you are talking of the Civil Rights Act.

In reading my present book that Scrawler recommended the Dred Scott case is mentioned often and so I looked it up to refresh my memory: Click here, it’s hard to believe today - Dred Scott Supreme Court Decision

HAROLD, I enjoyed those stories of Sherman and Sheridan, both famous for their leadership in the Civil War

SCRAWLER! You know firsthand the agonies of cancer, those years must have been very difficult for you - thank you for sharing that with us. It’s not easy!

I, too, have lost a son and a husband and although I don’t write (good on you!!) I try to keep busy. Seniornet discussions help because I’m so interested in books of history and courage! You are right in that Julia Grant was great with her husband and he appreciated her; both men appreciated their wives and it is good to read that! They were not just kept in the kitchen for their husband’s welfare, but took active parts in their lives.

What are you writing? ”Grant viewed the publication of his memoirs not only as a fitting coda for his life, but as the sole means at his dispoal to retrieve his reputation and leave his family financially secure.”

Campaigns have always been vicious, you just need to read history to put our present/past election into perspective don’t you? I mean…

”Blaine, Blaine, the continental liar from the State of Maine”

Grover Cleveland rode into the White House even though he admitted to having an illegitimate child and the Catholic vote in New York helped to put him there? Unbelievable!

Grant’s doctor was famous because he had found a cure for scurvy and it turns out to be sauerkraut and pickles!! That knowledge was passed along through generations as my Mother-in-law knew that; I can remember her stories of what they ate in the winter for vitamin C as they had no fresh vegetables. Of course, they canned, but the pickles and the sauerkraut they made took the place of our present lettuce, cucumbers, cabbage and celery we take for granted today.

I love history!

I had to look up the word “epithelial” in the dictionary but if a doctor ever mentions it in connection with me, I’ll now know what he is telling me!

So what are your thoughts on THE SMALL ROOM AT THE HEAD OF THE STAIRS?

LATER, ELLA

Ella one of the Chapter 3 inclusions that I have highlighted is the role of Grant's, 2nd son, Frederick Dent Grant. This son, as a boy, accompanied Grant on his Mississippi campaigns. He actually participated in fighting and received at least one battle wound. After the war he was appointed to WestPoint and upon graduation pursued a military career. In our book this is the son who assisted Grant as editor and researcher while writing the Memoirs. Also this was the Col Grant that was mentioned in my 1876 Phil Sheridan, Turkey hunt story. Later he served in the Philippines during the Spanish American War and held diplomatic posts. According to one of the two Web Pages linked below the cause of his 1912 death at age 62 was throat Cancer.

Col Frederick Dent Grant

Obituary

OK, Ella - here are John's comments tonight on the abridged version of Grant's Memoirs that he's been reading.

---------------------------------

Some thoughts about Grant`s Autobiography

First, the copy that I got from the library is edited down to only his civil war years, so I know nothing about the rest of his writings.

Second, over the years I have read a lot of civil war history, particularly the war as it happened around Chattanooga.

His writing is clear and concise. It goes into detail without getting bogged down. He obviously knew what he was writing about. If you had never read anything about the battles of the civil war, you would learn a lot about the military end of the war that Grant was involved in. He never gets into any part of the civil war in which he was not directly involved. His political insights are very deep. I wonder if he had this depth of insight at the time that it fits into the narrative or whether this is the summation of what he learned later.

I can understand why his books were best sellers. Published when they were, just a few years after the civil war, they were a subject that everyone knew something about but probably lacked any overall view. Imagine the effect of Eisenhower writing about WWII in about 1960, shortly after his term as president.

Grant`s writing compares favorably with the that of the "professional" writers of Civil War histories. He is no Douglas Southall Freeman or Shelby Foote, but who is?

John Z

-------------------------

I love his comment about thinking about Eisenhower's having written about WW II right after his leaving the Presidency. Mary

Here's a very complete explanation of Reconstruction and how it was applied during the years between of 1865 and 1877. Reconstruction

Having taken little notice of the Civil War except what I had to learn in school, I was surprised to find out that there were three amendments added to the Constitution during the war-13, 14 and 15th-and here's a brief summary of them>

Three constitutional amendments were passed in the wake of the Civil War: the Thirteenth, which abolished slavery; the Fourteenth, which granted civil rights to African Americans; and the Fifteenth, which granted the right to vote.

I noticed in my searches that Tennessee was the first state to sign agreement to the government's plan and so they were the first state to come back "into the fold". They were readmitted to the US in May of 1866.

Our first Civil Rights Act was the 14th amendment and we took a hundred years to get that right.

You must be a very strong person, in that you were able to write during the death processes of your son and husband. I have another friend who finds writing to be of benefit during a crisis, but she does it more in the form of journaling plus letters to her friends. I still treasure her letter to me during the crisis of her husband's heart surgery.

Mary Z thanks to you and John for the review of the Grant Memoirs. As I reported earlier I read quite a few pages during the summer while at our large B&N San Antonio store. Your conclusions pretty well coincides with my conclusions drawn from my short incomplete reading.

Ann I read your reconstruction link. It seems to describe quite well the political requirements imposed by the Congress. I feel it fails to describe the shortcomings of the law such as the failure to address the lack of positive programs to really improve the economic, educational, and social level of the new free citizens or to re-establish the re-admitted states with the economic position capable of competing with the other States. Also the site gives Jan 14, 1873 as the date when local political control was re established in Texas. Today in most Texas History books the date given for the end of reconstruction is generally 1876. I think that the earliest date might be the spring of 1874 when the first ex-Confederate (Democrat) Governor took office. This was Richard Coke who won the election in Nov 1873. The previous Republican Governor (an ex Union General) Edmund J. Davis refused to leave office barricading himself in the Capital. Coke was finally inaugurated in the spring of 1874.

The reconstruction act required that all returning states ratify the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. This was no problem since the large majority of the pre-War population was disenfranchised by the reconstruction acts. The 13th amendment freed the slaves and ended the institution forever; the 15th gave the new citizens the right to vote, a guarantee whose enforcement was delay another hundred years; but it is the 14th amendment that is the interesting one. It contained four principal sections the first of which contained the due process and equal protection clauses that have provided the legal basis for much of the social reforms that transformed our national society during the last half of the 20th century.

During the first years after the end of the War, General William T. Sherman was military commander in charge of Texas and Louisiana. His most remembered comment from this period was, “If I owned Texas and Hell, I’d rent out Texas and live in Hell.”

"Grant also solicited the help of an old friend, Adam Badeau, who had been one of his closest aides during the war...

"Grant needed Badeau and his talents. He trusted Badeau's eye of detail and admired his writing ability.

"But Badeau was hesitant to help Grant with his memoirs. He had his own work to do, he told Grant, and could not be diverted from it...Grant was insistent - the memorirs promised to be a great success he said, and they could not be completed without Badeau's help. "The proposition was a great blow to me," Badeau later wrote, "for I had looked forward to going into history as his mouthpice and spokesman, and of course, if he wrote a new work himself my special authority would be superseded...

What do you folks think of Badeau? I realize that Grant thought of Badeau as a friend. A comrade in arms who had aided him during the war years, but was he really a true friend?

On the other hand Badeau's career centered around - only one person - the life of Grant. Badeau's "Grant in Peace" (1887) is a detailed study of Grant's activites and characteristics, including Grant's weaknesses during his presidency. According to Badeau, cabinet appointments were determined upon whether Grant liked the apointees as campanions or as personal friends, and in part because Grant was unwilling to have any rivals "near the throne."

I don't know about you but doesn't it seem that Badeau might have some bitterness against Grant. Perhaps he felt that he should have been part of his cabinet. After Grant's inauguration as president, Badeau became secretary of the legation at London and in May 1870 was appointed consul-general at that port.

Scrawler, I was left with the impression that Adam Badeau after consideration quite freely agreed to assist Grant with the writing of his Memoirs. Though I think he was quite right in his concern that the appearance of the Grant account would certainly superseded his own; as it certainly has done. Apparently Adam Badeau felt sufficient loyalty to grant based on their wartime association to overcome his own writing interest. I take this as evidence of Grants great abilities as a military leader to inspire subordinates.

Ella, does sauerkraut contain Vitamin C? I understand the lack of this vitamin in the diets of sailors at sea for long periods is what caused them to be subject to a high incidence of the disease. In the 18th Century the Royal Navy discovered that limes would prevent it and after they began to stock this fruit British sailors came to be called “Limeys.” I understand Spanish sailors used onions or was it garlic pods for the same purpose.

At a matter of fact history tells us that the U.S. Army personnel stationed at the western forts in the 1870’s were also subject to a high incidence of Scurvy. This followed from the lack of vegetables in their diet that was predominately bread, beef, and coffee.

HAROLD, yes, I noted that son of Sam Grant’s also. I’m sure Grant was very proud of his son, and

MARY/JOHN! HEY! Now we get a bit more insight into those memoirs which is the topic of this book or the part that involved Grant and THANK YOU SO MUCH.

This comment interests me: He never gets into any part of the civil war in which he was not directly involved. His political insights are very deep. I wonder if he had this depth of insight at the time that it fits into the narrative or whether this is the summation of what he learned later.

Grant left out all other aspects of the war except the battles he fought in? I would never have thought that; how then did the book receive such public acclaim; certainly not as an overall picture of the Civil War.

Eisenhower never wrote any memoirs did he? He painted!! I visited the farm in Gettysburg where he spent his last days and some of his paintings are there.

Any other insights you have, we would be tickled to read!

Thanks, ANN, for the summation site of Reconstruction; I’m sure you noticed as you scrolled down this sentence: - "The end of Reconstruction essentially signaled the end of civil rights for African Americans; as the years passed after the end of the war, the North lost interest in continuing to pursue the matter and instead turned its attention towards other concerns."

As we mentioned before, it took the Civil Rights Act of the 60’s and LBJ to begin to make inroads into the problems faced by African-Americans.

Why was the WAR BETWEEN THE STATES called the “CIVIL” war? Who named it that and what was “civil” about it? Curious minds need to know. And how did he term “Yankees” come about? Anyone know? I can understand why southerners were called “rebels” – that’s easy!

HI, SCRAWLER! There is a lot of information about Badeau in these chapters, I wonder why Perry included him to such an extent? Henry Adams said of the man his "habits were regularly irregular" – I thought that funny but our author goes on to describe Badeau as” opinionated, ill-tempered, impatient, egotistical and aggressively ambitious, courting public notice and believing he deserved it."

Not a man that Julia would have liked very well, but one that apparently Grant felt he needed to help in the writing of his book.

I have a complaint about the title of Chapter Three – “THE SMALL ROOM AT THE HEAD OF THE STAIRS.” It is misnamed, in my opinion. At first glance, the title led me to believe it was a cozy place, a room in which Grant could find some small measure of peace at the end of his life, but in reality he was in pain in that room the whole time – misleading!

But how admirable he was near death, just as he was in life. His doctors (they made house calls and stayed and talked in those days, truly visited with patients, but then he was an ex-president) found him irresistible and when he could talk without pain he entertained them with stories of the war; he was uncomplaining and willing to follow every instruction.

By comparison, Twain comes off rather poorly in this chapter do you agree? A man of greed, a man wanting and pursing wealth and wealthy people.

On to Chapter Four tomorrow – “TURN HIM LOOSE!”

Harold, I thought that the site gave us a history of the amendments and there were lots links to other sites and descriptions of Reconstruction and its failures. We have always known that it failed.

Yes, Ella, I found Twain unlikeable throughout the book. What a curmudgeon! I felt he wanted to run everything when it came to publishing, not only his own books, but Grant's memoirs,too. In the question above about Twain writing his books in the 50's and 60's, I think that he could have, as the problems of racism definintely existed then.

Grant evidently recognized Badeau's talents in spite of the man's ability to turn away folks. Maybe just as Twain appreciated Coble's talents.

I wondered about that word "Civil" and decided that it meant "government connected" certainly not 'civil' as in describing a person's talents. Have no idea where "Yankees" came from but have always assumed that it was used back in the Revolution.

Are we only to Chap 4?? Good grief, I have jumped ahead, I think, as I am railing against Sherman's march through Georgia which was horrible!!

The origins of "Yankee" have been fiercely debated throughout the history of the Republic, and to this day the Oxford English Dictionary says the source of the word is "unascertained." Perhaps the most widely accepted explanation was advanced by H.L. Mencken, the well-known newsman-scholar (and don't tell me that isn't an unusual combination), who argued that Yankee derives from the expression Jan Kaas, literally "John Cheese." This supposedly was a derogatory nickname bestowed on the Dutch by the Germans and the Flemish in the 1600s. (Wisconsin cheeseheads can undoubtedly relate.)

The English later applied the term to Dutch pirates, and later still Dutch settlers in New York applied it to English settlers in Connecticut, who were known for their piratical trading practices. During the French and Indian War the British general James Wolfe took to referring derisively to the native New Englanders in his army as Yankees, and the term was widely popularized during the Revolutionary War by the song "Yankee Doodle." By the war's end, of course, the colonists had perversely adopted the term as their own. Southerners used Yankee pejoratively to describe Northerners during the Civil War, but found themselves, along with all other Americans, called thus by the English during world wars I and II.

And here's a more extensive explanation of the word-Yankee- origin. Word Origins I like the Jan Kaas (Yan keese) explantion myself. How about you?

On the failure of "Reconstruction" which was open on my upstairs computer and when I looked at it, I thought of you. Failure of Reconstruction Essay

Ann I read the Failure of Reconstruction essay that you linked. I think it does pretty well describe the failure of the post-war reconstruction under the several Reconstruction Acts passed by Congress. I think, however, the article might have been expanded to discuss the reasons for its failures. In this respect it might have noted the plan’s lack of provisions for creating new economic and educational opportunities for the people (Black and White) in the ex rebel states. As it was, the plan left the South with out a viable replacement for the slave economy of the past resulting in near subsistence economies, a system of social discrimination, and racial inequality. Note how quickly and easily in the 1960’s (despite dour predictions to the contrary) the South accepted Social equality in exchange for a new position of National economic and political Power.

I think the reading of this book has served to enhance my opinion of both Grant and Twain. Regarding Grant the book has picture him more as a human being rather than a General famous for leading an army to victory in a bloody war. In this book we see him as a man with a terminal illness determined to finish a final necessary project, the completion of this Memoirs.

I was also much impressed with Mark Twain. Prior to this reading, I really did not know much about him. Scrawler do you see in Twain’s development as a writer, a bit of parallel to Hemingway’s development 60 years later. Both seem to have self trained themselves as writers at an early age. After this book I better understand the reason for Twain’s high place in American literature.

Ella, Eisenhower did write his memoirs. They appeared prior to his 1952 bid for the Presidency. I too had forgotten them but suddenly remembered an old IRS ruling that allowed him favorable tax treatment for his earnings from the sale, a ruling that they quickly changed for subsequent war memoir authors. Click Here for Crusade In Europe by Dwight D, Eisenhower.

Here is additional information on another Grant son. This is his first son Ulysses S Grant Jr; this is the son knick named “Buck” who was the principal Grant in the Grant and Ward partnership whose bankruptcy precipitated the events leading to our book. Arguably he was the best educated of Grant’s sons since he had a degrees from Harvard and a Law degree from Columbia University.

Buck does not seem to figure much in the 1884 – 85 period after the bankruptcy during which Grant wrote his memoirs. During his period it was the other son, Fred Grant who was a principal aid. In his later life Buck moved to California where he was active in San Diego business and civic affairs until his death in 1928. Despite the fact that Buck was already 19 years ofd when the civil war began, he seems to have avoided wartime service. Click Here for a biographical sketch.

Yes, Hemingway and Twain were self-taught. As most of the writers prior to the 1950s were. I once read a biography about Jack London that stated that as a young boy, he was very poor and he used to go to the public library because he couldn't aford to buy books. There he would read every book on the shelf. When he decided to become a writer he used to copy down word for word his favorite authors. (This got him in trouble at a later time, but that's how he taught himself to write.) Later as he got older, he traveled and experienced things for himself. Jack London lived in Oakland, California and I'm originally from California, so everytime I went to my local library as a kid I'd think about writers like Jack London and how they got started.

I think in order to get a good view of any famous person you have to read more than one book about that person. I notice that Mark Perry uses words to describe his characters as being "enraged" as with Julia Dent or the way he describes Adam Badeau. He also tends to portray Twain in a bad light.

I didn't like the way he portrayed Julia Dent. In this book she seemed to be angry all the time, but she really wasn't like that at all. And during the war Adam Badeau spent a lot of time with Julia Dent Grant and Mary Todd Lincoln. At one point during the Civil War just before Lincoln was assassinated, Mary Lincoln became jealous when she saw her husband reviewing the troops with General Ord's wife. She was so enraged that she verbly tore into the young woman when she saw her. It took both Adam Badeau and Julia Dent Grant to calm her. Because of this incident Julia Dent Grant avoided being with Mary Lincoln, and when asked to go to Ford's Theater she asked General Grant to decline the invitation and as they say the rest is history. If Grant and Julia had gone to the theater on April 14, 1865 both she and the general could have been murdered by Booth.

But to get back on track, I think Mark Perry tends to describe his charters with negative adjectives, which gives only one view point. I'm sure that Julia Grant was very stressed after she learned of the general's illness and like any wife her main concern was for his health. But there were times in the book where Mark Perry portrayed her as a very negative person, which she really wasn't.

After the general's death, she did a lot to bring the north and south closer together. She attempted to write her memoirs, but publisher's at the time were not interested in her work. There were many times where during the Civil War she acted as a peace-maker between the various generals' wives - no easy task. Later on in her life she became involved in Women's Suffrage, which was something not many Victorian women got involved in.

Mary Lincoln thought it was a disgrace that women wanted to vote. She thought that if women ever got the vote that they would disgrace themselves just as men at the poles did during her own time. Or that they would vote only the way their husbands instructed them to do. Varina Davis thought it was wrong as well to give women the vote. Only Julia Dent Grant felt otherwise.

ANN, that’s precious! YAN KEESE – who knows? As good an explanation of anything else of the word. Thanks for your thoughtfulness in looking it up. No one is disputing are they, so we will accept that definition and wonder!

SCRAWLER, darn! I went to our small Andrew Carnegie Library in my hometown faithfully and had read just about everything that interested me also, but I never became an author!

Is there another way to be an author other than self-taught? Of course, you can take “how-to” courses but one has to confront the blank page at some time or other and who is there to help you?

I just finished the CROWNS OF THORNS AND GLORY book and read of both women’s views on suffrage and women’s rights, but we have to remember the times they lived in. Rarely was there a woman who could make enough money to support herself; consequently one must get married – the men held the jobs and the power and the glory.

I doubt that age will ever come again.

This paragraph (p.102) describes Twain’s views very well and perhaps correctly? I don’t know the “South” or southern attitudes, having never lived in that part of that country, although today with our mobile society I doubt if any differences in attitudes exist anywhere in the country (excluding the recent blues/reds of the election results!):

”At the root of it all (the seeds that had led to the civil war) was the southern tradition of fake gentility, the terrible fraud of propriety that men like ‘General Darnell’ took pride in and which led to their murderous hatreds. Behind it all was the ‘maudlin Middle-Age romanticism’ of Sir Walter Scott, whose books adorned the shelves of southern homes and who ‘made every gentleman in the South a Major or a Colonel or a General or a Judge, before the war, and it was he also that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them.”

WELL! That puts an awful lot of blame on Sir Walter Scott – I don’t believe I’ve read any of his books but I fail to see how one author could have such an influence on a whole region of the country unless those southerners saw something to be gained therein. However…….

I do admire the way Perry meshes the two men at times in his book as on this same page he ends with the conclusions that both Grant and Twain saw the need to go south at different stages of their lives - to free the slaves, to end the war, to go home.

Ella, I too thought maybe Mark Perry was putting too much blame for some of the less desirable traits of Southern character on the romanticism of Sir Walter Scott. At best the Perry judgment was only a personal opinion given without any attempt to document it with contemporary references. Scott was a very popular writer on both sides of the Atlantic; to blame all that was wrong in Southern character on him as Perry has done, seems ludicrous to me.

Ella you are correct in noting that all creative writers are self taught at least to the extent that each individual writer must develop his/her own particular writing style. Colleges and schools can teach grammar and punctuation and even expand vocabulary and teach how others writers worked, but each individual writer must learn, on their own, how to put words together to make their own particular writing. In “A Moveable Feast” we read how Hemingway taught himself to write stories while living in 1920’s Paris. Twain earlier had done the same thing in Nevada and California.

Today, I would distinguish between contemporary novelists who began as English or Journalism (now called Communications) majors with two or three degrees and a dozen years of university teaching or press journalism experience. Even they must work to develop their particular “brand.” Yet in contrast Twain had only minimal frontier schooling and Hemingway had nothing more than a 1915 high school diploma. Yet both managed to get starter jobs on newspapers as news reporters. From there both went on to hone their own particular writing styles and earn eventual success in their chosen trade. Today I don’t think a new high school graduate would stand a chance of getting a newspaper-writing job as Twain and Hemingway did.

I don't know Harold about your contemporary discription of today's writers. I barely got through high school, didn't go to college, and self-taught myself to write by reading everything I could get my hands on. All you really need to write are two things: observation and perspiration. In other words, being able to observe the world around you and be welling to work at your craft. Of course what I've just stated only applies if you want to write fiction. I'm sure you would need several degrees in order to write non-fiction or perhaps a specific ability.

I do blame Sir Walter Scott for romanticing war. Modern Hollywood with movies like "The Fighting Seebees" influenced my husband to go to Vietnam.

The Confederates (and I include memembers of my own family) saw the Civil War as a glorious enterprise. It resembled having a duel in order to avenge the rights of the states as if the South were a woman who had been insulted by those "damn Yankees."

The American Civil War was the first modern war. Using modern tactics. General Grant was considered "a butcher" even by some of his own people in the North because he believed that the only way he could shorten the war and thus save lives was to destroy everything in his path.

Therefore, I would have to agree that: "the South was itself in bondage to its own romantic vision..." just as we were in bondage to our own romantic vision from Hollywood that encouraged young men to fight a glorious war in Vietnam.

Don't get me wrong I believe that we should defend our country, but I just feel we should be realistic about it.

OH, WOW! I loved reading those posts, HAROLD AND SCRAWLER! I love opinions from various indidividuals - I learn something from each of them and I can mull over these ideas in my mind as I go about the ordinariness of life.

Movies influenced your husband, SCRAWLER, even to the extent he volunteered for Vietman! Oh, golly! Did he return all right?

Romantic visions! Certainly, you are correct that realism is not portrayed often in movies or books! Do people want it?

I wonder what television and the Internet is doing to our young people today - perhaps they will grow tired of it? Are they learning anything from it? Anything of value?

I THINK WE CAN ALL ANSWER THAT FIRST QUESTION IN THE HEADING NOW AS WE ARE HALFWAY THROUGH OUR SCHEDULED DISCUSSION

I disagree with Ann's opinion a few posts back - Twain COULD NOT HAVE WRITTEN his books today. I know of only two and have not read either thoroughly but people today would be outraged to see the dialect written by Twain in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

I can overlook a lot in literature that I disagree with but I am thoroughly incensed by these two sentences (probably multipled by hundreds in Twain's books)

"What a splendid moon, Twain said, looking out over the Mississippi one evening.

Laws bless you, honey, came the rejoinder, you ought to see dat moon befo' de waw."

(p.105)

I see nothing humorous about that! The dialect to me is disgustingly reminiscent of ugly dialogue in early movies portraying African-Americans. Shameful!

Any comments about the pictures in the book - anyone?

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI appeared to mixed reviews.(p.105)

I bolded that for a reason - today I picked up a book from my Library that I had reserved after hearing about it somewhere - probably from C-SPAN. It is written by Lance Morrow of TIME Magazine fame (journalism or communications, he's a good writer and has written several nonfiction books.) It is titled EVIL, An Investigation.

And in the Introduction who does he talk about - MARK TWAIN!!! I couldn't believe it! He has quite a bit to say about his books and the true accounts of murders and disembowelment of bodies in that particular book (Life on the Miss.) and then he goes on about HUCK FINN.

I must quote a couple of paragraphs: (this book would make a great discussion!) Shall I propose it sometime next year?

"HUCKLEBERRY FINN is one of the most interesting treatments of the subject of American evil. Huck, who speaks a language close to the dialect of slaves, is the unprotected outcast son of the town drunk, and confronts an entire anthology of American evils-child abuse, for example, in the form of his father's bestial and even murderous drunkenness and rage. Pap Finn sleeps with the town's pigs. He might be the embodiment of some kind of evil, except that he never rises to the standard of intelligent malevolence that classic evil expects of one of its own.

Or the psychotic blood feud in which the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons, aristocratic, civilized folk, kill one another off down the generations, even systematically executing one another's children.

In his treatment of race and racism, Twain addresses not just the evil of slavecatchers or the cruelty of overseers, but, far worse, the vast, smug unknowingness, the evil obliviousness of seemingly innocent people. When Tom gets off the steamboat downriver and he reports that there was an accident on the boat-a boiler exploded-the woman asks, 'Anyone hurt?' Tom answers, 'No, M'am. A couple of n_____ killed' The woman replies, 'Oh, thank heavens, because you know, sometimes people do get hurt."

The theme of an evil kind of innocence-the ignorant innocence of the powerful-runs through the American story and reasserts itself from time to time in a certain obliviousness in, for example, the area of foreign policy."

Whew! My fingers are tiring.. Enough, hope I didn't bore you with that, but I was so surprised to run across it while in the middle of this discussion I had to tell you about it!

later, ella

Certainly I believe that Twain could have written his books in the '50's because we still had many of the same problems. And using the dialect of the times is part of telling your story. We even have lots of that type of talk in Rap which I find offensive but the fans seem to love it. Yes, I do believe that Twain would have survived.

You are right some of Twain's books would be out of date. I read "Tobacco Road" by Erskine Caldwell written in 1932 and I thought it was awful; especially the way the author portrayed the people. But the novel became a bestseller. It dealt with the family of Jeeter Leser, a poor Georgia sharecropper. And to me the book had no real message than to portray the Southern sharecroppers in most dreadful way possible.

But unlike "Huckleberry Finn" I can see no symbolism in it. I think that's why Twain's book are remembered not for the dialect, but rather for what they represented - like the raft being a symbol for "freedom."

Twain's earlier novels I think were better written than his later ones. I think with the deaths of his wife and daughter and his financal problems, he became bitter about the world around him.

One book I read which was published posthumously was the novel "The Mysterious Stranger." In this novel Satan takes human form to undo the ostensibly of the citzens of a sixteenth century Austrian town named Eseldorf. It translates as "Assville." Here the devil leads a priest into corruption and madness, betrays several children, and eventually causes an earthquake that claims the lives of five hundred people, after which he encourages the children to dance heartily. This book has so much symbolism and although it is fiction, it almost makes us believe that if unless we change our ways, Satan will do the same to us.

"As a Tribune Books critic noted, "Twain didn't like human beings much, except as targets for his scorn, indignation or wrath...He sent his prose crackling about the heads of arrogant public officials, inept musicians and singers, vain women, males who did violence to females, smart-talking two-year-olds, editors, officious train conductors, lynchers, book-pirating publishers, nearly all barbers, scientists who deduced too much from too little evidence, swindelers (unless they had style), and, in a ferocious defense of 'family honor' all seducers of women."

"However, Twain also was one of his generation's staunchest defenders of blacks, Native Americans, and the working class: "Twain thought that the white man's debt was endless," according to New Yorker eassaylist Clive James. "He didn't come out on the side of the Union just because it won [the Civil War.] The Southern cause had deepened on repressing a minority, and that made the cause irredeemable." Twain's sympathy for the plight of his coutnry's non-privileged citzenry would would be taken up in many of the short stories and novels."

I think that the fact Twain wrote about the "repressed minority" and the country's "non-privileged citizenry" is what makes him a writer that we should remember and read. We may not agree with the style of his writing, but we have to believe in the message that he was trying to tell us.

The theme of an evil kind of innocence-the ignorant innocence of the powerful-runs through the American story and reasserts itself from time to time in a certain obliviousness in, for example, the area of foreign policy."

As I have said before I have not read Huckleberry y Finn, but based on the reviews and commentary articles that I have read in the course of this discussion, the words quoted above would certainly seem to describe the theme and message of the book. (Are they your words Ella?) Moreover historically the ideal does seem to permeate the American experience, more obvious at times than others.

Could Twain have written Huckleberry Finn today? Yes I think he could have written it with its actual characters and settings as late 1965. I think he could have written a novel with the same overall theme today but the characters would be in a different setting- escaping from their sorted past, carrying their past baggage from more current life experience, and seeking a different type of freedom. Huck would be a poor white boy with a drunken father and a broken home from, a big eastern city. Caught in the gulag of the social welfare system he makes a break for freedom. Jim is a black man from the ghetto. Escaping by auto the pair encounter a new series of modern trials before finding a new freedom in the West.

WHAT FUN WE ARE HAVING WITH OUR DISPARATE VIEWS OF A “TWAIN TODAY!” Thanks for your comments – it’s an interesting subject.

But back to our book and a view of Sherman:

”History has treated Sherman poorly. While one of our greatest generals, he is not fixed in our minds.”

And Perry likens him to Patton – “profane, unforgiving of failure, seemingly unaffected by death…..we are embarrassed by him.”

Interesting, isn’t it? We needed both men at the right place at the right time. Perhaps we need a general of like views in Iraq right now, do you think?

But he and Grant had the same views of war - the purpose of war is to kill and the sooner it is done, the better! And they were great friends too; both having personal demons, depressions at times - Sherman was dismayed when Grant became president expressing his views that there is fundamental dishonesty in politics.

Can you be honest and a politician? To be successful you have to please all those friends who contribute money and time; and please congressional leaders and please the party and on and on. Who and why do people want the job? Plenty do, though.

These words of Grant (p.130) resonate with tones of LBJ’s decision not to run for reelection – “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” Aren’t those the same words LBJ used? Had he read them from a memoir of Grant? Or was it a coincidence.

In reading of the efforts to give Grant a pension I was curious and spent a bit of time looking for present day former presidents’ retirement pensions or benefits at the Google site and gave up. Couldn't find anything. I know he receives office expenses, including a secretary, and also has Secret service agents, but what dollar amount does he receive? Anyone know?

And something else I fail to understand in this book is how many times Grant seems near death, can’t talk, can’t swallow, and yet somehow he recovers and continues on – is Perry padding the book to make a good story? I know, I know, there are quotes from sources that talk about his remarkable strength of character and how his writing of the memoirs gave him a reason for continuing to live, but the disease was progressing……

I thought the “Twins of Genius” tour described in the book was hilarious; I would have loved to have been in the audience and it is true (as readers we know it to be true) that if a book is deemed scandalous, trashy, vulgar, etc. the sales of it improve. How Twain must have loved every criticism of Huckleberry Finn.

Later, eg

The other day I quoted General Sherman's thought on Texas weather indicating his preference favoring Hell. Here is another Sherman quote. It seems he was urged to seek the Republican Nomination for President in 1884. The general was not interested and rejected the nomination with the statement: "If nominated, I will not run. If elected I will not serve.” Click Here for this and other Sherman quotes. I note my “Rent out Texas and live in Hell” quote is not included.

James Blaine received the 1884 Republican nomination but was defeated by Cleveland, the Democrat candidate as our book indicates. Click Here.

Another witty political quote rejecting a presidential nomination is. “I do not choose to run.” I associate this quote to Calvin College’s rejection of a second term. I could not confirm this on the Web and in fact there is web evidence lndicating he never said it. Curiously the phrase is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt’s saying in 1946 that she was not interested in running for Governor of NY or for the Senate.Click Here.

Ops, maybe I wasn't paying attention. This site says it was General Phil H. Sheridan who choose Hell in preference to Texas. Click Here. Scroll down about 27 quotes for the Sherdian gem.

This writer obviously hasn't spent much time in the South where Sherman is pretty much blamed for all the horror that occurred in Georgia. There is much written about his burning of that state and the horrible other things like rape and pillaging that happened while he was doing it. This is the basic Southerner's view of the man and he always mentioned whenever the chance arises. On saying that, I do remember that they also give him credid for NOT burning Marietta and Madison due to a woman in both towns. I forget what that was all about but I will look it up in my history book.

It was burned by Sherman (at least the downtown area was a conflagration). The city was named after T.T.Cobb's wife, Mary, in the 1840's and the surrounding Cobb county was named after T.T.Cobb.

And here's a new article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution about Sherman and his march to the sea. ShermanStill Burns Atlanta According to this article, he wasn't as bad as the South considers. Very well researched article which really caught my interest since I heard so much to the contrary while I lived there. Quite an eye opener! The last paragraph of the article tells about Madison and its six myths about Sherman.

Ann, Mark Perry too notes the less than favorable reputation that history has attached to Sherman. Perry compares his treatment to Patton another General more concerned with winning victory than battle causalities to his own men or enemy women and children civilians. In Sherman’s case I know post Civil War Southern propaganda emphasized this position. Perry cites dialog between Sherman and a Southern civilian woman, in which Sherman emerges as the jacked booted conqueror taking food from the mouths of women and children. This story stands out in marked contrast to the polite position of General Lee in a similar dialog I remember reading between Lee and a Pennsylvania woman during the 1863 probe north that ended with Gettysburg battle. This picture of Sherman was still being projected in 1995 in Atlanta when I visited the large auditorium size diorama depicting the Battle of Atlanta. There General Sherman and his staff on horseback were pictured viewing the battle from afar unconcerned about the human suffering below.

I think General Sherman had he wanted it might well have had the 1884 Republican nomination for President of the United States. Considering how close that election was, Sherman would probably have won to become the second Union General to become President of the US.

It just goes to show ya', I believe what any tour guide tells me and I went on lots of tours in Georgia plus, as the article states, the southerners still believe the "evil villian myth" about Sherman. We toured battlefields, small towns, the Confederama, Stone Mountain and all their museums. In Kennesaw, where the General locomotive is enscounced in a small museum, there is a disgusting little "shop of horrors" with many of the myths supported plus backing for the KKK and ownership of guns and lots of newspapers backing Nazism. I think if I remember the name of it, its "The Civil War Souveniers and Herb Shop". The owner is a kook who has long chestnut hair, dresses in leather with a gunbelt at his waist and a holster on his anke, each having a rather shiny real gun. And, of course, he rides a Harley Davidson!

I am way off the topic which I am really enjoying.

I have not read any of the accountings of the life of Julia Grant so was pleased to read the post in here from Scrawler. She was surely to be admired.

And, I am warming to Twain as he helps to get the both books written and published. He is a good friend to the Grant family but especially the former president.

I find it really gruesome that the reporters and other civilians rally around the Grant home awaiting his death. But, then, I also remember the US reporters and other civilians did the same thing outside Eisenhower's hospital awaiting his death. And, I think the populations really loved both of these men. Grant, more for his winning of the war and although Eisenhower was certainly in that same ball park, he was also enjoyed a more successful presidency, IMHO.

And Sherman didn't ravage or burn Savannah, either.

"Among the curious documents which came into the possession of the [United States] Government was one which was written after the assassiantion [of Abraham Lincoln]. It was dated at Washington. It was in cipher and found floating in the water of Morehead City, North Carolina, by a Mr. Charles Duell. The enevelope was addressed "John W. Wise." The letter was as follows:

Washington, April the 15, '65. Dear John:

I am happy to inform you that Pet has done his work well. He is safe and old Abe is in hell. Now, sir, all eyes are on you.

You must bring Sherman - Grant is in the hands of old Gray ere this. Red Shoes showed lack of nerve in Seward's case, but fell back in good order. Johnson must come. Old Crook has him in charge.

Mind well that brother's oath, and you will have no difficulty; all will be safe and enjoy the fruit of our labors.

We had a large meeting last night. All were bent in carrying out the programme to the letter. The rails are laid for safe exit. Old ------ always behind lost the pop at City Point.

Now, I say again, the lives of our brave officers, and the life of the South depend upon carrying the programme into effect. No. Two [number 2(?)]will give you this. It's ordered no more letters shall be sent by mail. When you write, sign no real name, and send by some of our friends who are coming home. We want you to write us how the news was received there. We receive great encouragement from all quarters. I hope there will be not getting weak in the knees. I was in Baltimore yesterday. Pet has not got there yet. Your folks are well and have heard from you. Don't lose your nerve. C.B.

The letter was undoubtedly written by some party who was connected with the Conspiracy, whose identity up to the present time stands unrevealed.

A vast amount of testimony was taken by the [Military] Commission which had no relation to the prisoners on trial, but which was introduced for the purpose of showing the animus of the Southern rebellion." ("A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and of the Conspiracy of 1865" by Louis J. Weichmann)

Perhaps you will recognize the name of Louis J. Weichmann. He was the chief witness against Mary Surratt. He wrote this 500 page book because after Mrs. Surratt went to her death there were many who blamed him. He tried to put things right by giving his side of the story.

At the time of Lincoln's assassiantion the United States Government tried in vain to connect his death with the Confederacy. There were many plots swirling around at the time and this letter is just one of the documents that indicate that many of the generals and especially Andrew Johnson might have had a hand in his death. At the time many also blamed Edwin M. Stanton, Secreatary of War as being part of the plot as well.

I don't see any motive that either General Grant, General Sherman and Edwin Stanton could have hand in assassinating Lincoln in that none of these men wanted his job, but what about Johnson? He would have been someone who coveted the presidency.

At any rate this letter puts Sherman in yet another unfavorable light.

What great posts to read! I'm not going to say another word about Sherman, how about any of you? A controversial man certainly!!

Had any of you remembered that Chester Arthur was a president until the book mentioned his name? Hahahahaaa But what a decent honorable thing for him to do for President Grant - making it possible for Grant to be reinstated in the Army so that he could receive the retirement that he deserved.

Two "firsts" for the USA in this instance. The only time a clerk in the Senate was allowed to scale a ladder and turn back a clock so that the Senate could vote on the bill reinstating Grant.

The other first is the fact that Grant was named a Lieutenant General which had been held only once before - by George Washington.

HAROLD, do you know the equivalency of that rank today?

What an honor and it was well deserved as Grant had won 17 battles, opened up the Mississippi River and cleared Tennessee.

The "forgettable President Arthur" as his last act in office directed that a telegram be sent to Grant informing him of his reinstatement and the sum of $13,500 annually.

Quite a story for the historians.

SCRAWLER, your post was fascinating - will there ever be a satisfactory end to either Lincoln's or Kennedy's assassinations? Will the public ever be satisfied with explanations?

Last note on Sherman: I have the letters of my Grandfather's brother who was in Sherman's army marching to Georgia. I am not proud of them. They give no details, but it is obvious that he did quite a bit of burning and looting, and was proud of it.

I recently read a history of Europe in the 14th century. Such burning, looting, and violence on the march was then taken for granted, even when the army was going through friendly territory just to get somewhere. It was the way the soldiers were paid. But 500 years later we should have been more "civilized".

Ella, as I remember the US Army flag rank positions the top is General of the Armies (5-Stars), General (4 Stars), Lieutenant General (3-stars), Major General (2-stars), and Brigadier General (1- star). There appears to have been two higher ranks added since Grant’s time.

Ella, Chester Arthur became President when Garfield was assassinated. Mark Perry gives us several pages of details concerning the medical history that followed his shooting. Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881 just 4 months into his term. He lingered for another two months before he finally died on Sept 19 during which time the nation was effectively without a President. Garfield was incidentally the second Civil war General to become President although unlike Grant he was not WestPoint and had no prewar regular army service.

Chester Arthur, the Vice President then became President and served the remaining 3 ½ years of the term. Arthur previously had been something of a political hack with a strong record supporting the political spoils system. To the victor belonged the spoils so just about every federal job was up for grabs when an administration changed. In a dramatic political metamorphous as President Author signed the Civil Service Act that ended the spoils system in favor for a permanent civil service corps independent of politics. Another significant event of the Arthur administration was the first immigration control bill which he signed.

For a short biographical Sketch Click Here

Ann, do you remember seeing the huge Battle of Atlanta diorama I mentioned? They claim it is the Worlds largest diorama display and they may well be right on this one. It is the size of a gymnasium with the visitors in grandstand seating in the center. The seats rotate to take the visitors through the various stages of the battle on display along the outer radius of the building.

At one point the narrator calls attention th the illuminated body of a dead Yankee officer sprawled across the dead body of his horse. She points to the face and ask if we recognize the face. No one had an answer. She points to the thin moustache on the upper lip. "Where have you seen this face" she persists. We give up and she tells us. Its Earl Flynn. Continuing she elaborates, “when he and the Gone With The Wind Cast was here for the premier in 1937 they brought the cast here on a vip tour. When asked what they thought of our diorama Flynn replied, But where am I, I don’t see my self here." Well an embarrassed management was quick to apologize with the assurance that the oversight would surely be corrected. Within days they had made Flynn a fallen Yankee whose body lay across his dead horse. That’s pretty well the way I remember my visit today. Click Here for more on the diorama.

Scrawler thank you for your report of the Lincoln assassination plot. The 1865 event probably was not as well investigated as the 1963 Kennedy tragedy was. Both of these events have left a trail of conspiracy theories for subsequent generations to wonder about.

Perhaps the Garfield assassination was clearer. One killer, one shot one motive. I have not heard rumors of conspiracies or other unpunished accomplices associated with this event.

I do remember the diorama of the battle of Atlanta. Its now called the Cyclorama which I misidentified as the Confederama and I visited it with my mom and brother in 1985. Very impressive and I loved the story aboutd Errol Flynn which our guide told us also. Do you remember that at one time in its history, it fell into disrepair and the city of Indianapolis purchased it(for what purpose, I don't remember) and I believe that it was moved to Indy and then back to Atlanta where the restoration took place? I loved reading your link but will return to see if I am recollecting correctly.

Here's another link that tells the history of the Cyclorama painting which was evidently done in Milwaukee and the taken to other cities which included Indianapolis where they had financial troubles. Eventually the painting was brought to Atlanta. This is a good history of how the painting was made by Wehner's in-house painters. I found the story of the painting of interest. It was done by German immigrants who had no knowledge of the battle of Atlanta but had much experience in doing cycloramas in Germany. Cyclorama

One last note about the assassination plot. "CB" could have been Colonel Layette Baker. He was working for Edwin Stanton under the War Department as head of security which later became the Secret Service. Baker hated Lincoln with a passion and there were several times when lets say he "didn't go out of his way" to protect him. Another thought that was interesting was that if the government had this letter, they also knew about Johnson and his schemes. So why didn't they use it against him. Or for that matter why didn't they use it against General Grant or General Sherman. Could it be that the government didn't believe the letter and was just using it to get a connection between conspiracy prisoners and the Confederacy. Or can we really be sure that the letter exsisted at all. Perhaps Louis J. Weichmann really made it up or perhaps the government manufactured it. So as you say Ella we may never know what really happened.

Twain's style of writing and speaking was governed by his ear. As a speaker he learned to fit his rhythms and his diction, his tempo and his pauses to listening audiences. His lectures appear to have been written to the sound of his own words. Speaking he sometimes verged upon burlesue. He was able with his smiling face and voice to make his listeners understand that he too was on the edge of danger.

Like Bret Harte, Mark Twain, introuced himself to the world as "a curiosity from the Far West." But because he had such a range of interest to fall back on like "Prince and Pauper" and "A Tramp Abroad" he didn't have to confine himself to the Mississippi stories for his lectures.

Speaking seems to be a lost art these days. I've on occasion gone to one or two lectures of authors, but didn't find them to be as interesting as the stories they have wrote.

How about the rest of you are there any speakers you have heard that you enjoyed listening to?

Today marks the beginning of the third and last week of our discussion of this interesting little book. The discussion is now open for discussion of Chapters 6, 7, 8, and the Epilogue.

Also I see no problem with catch-up comment on any of the preceding chapters. Toward the end of the week I will ask each of you who have posted on this board for your short summary opinion on the Book and the discussion. Do be thinking about your summary, but let’s defer such posts until I call for them on Friday.

Through out this book there are several mentions of peer authors then prominent in American letters, some of whom are rarely if ever heard of today. One of these was George Washington Cables. Am I alone among you participating in this discussion who HAS NEVER HEARD OF THIS MAN? Yet he must have been quite well know as an author in the post Civil War America; he seems every bit Twain’s equal at the time of the “Twins of Genius” reading tour.

As I said truthfully, I had never heard of this George Washington Cables before this book. Now I find him also unknown to the Google search engine. This facility does not find him on search strings George Washington Cable, George W. Cable, or G. W. Cable. They hit on George Washington, the George Washington Bridge, George W. Bush, Cable TV companies, and the Pianist George Cables, but no 19th century author by that name.

Other contemporary 19th Century authors mentioned in the book include William Dean Howell and Henry James. Both of these are know to Google today. The Howell name sounds to me a vaguely familiar, and of course Henry James is still well read and is arguably better regarded today than Mark Twain.

SCRAWLER asked:

"Speaking seems to be a lost art these days. I've on occasion gone to one or two lectures of authors, but didn't find them to be as interesting as the stories they have wrote.

How about the rest of you are there any speakers you have heard that you enjoyed"

I would love to go to hear speakers! Of course, we hear them all the time on TV - particularly on weekends on the two C-SPANS, and I often turn that on which is very enlightening. So we do not have to travel to hear speakers and authors, as the public had to do in Twain's day. A good thing for him they had to as his tours brought in revenue - what do you suppose he charged the public for a lecture?

I remember just two occasions actually. When Nixon was president my sister and I were fascinated with Henry Kissinger and as he was touring the country on a lecture tour, we did hear him speak but I can't remember the content; no doubt foreign policy. The impression my memory has retained is that in a large auditorium these impressive figures seem so small on the stage; whereas on TV there is not this sensation.

Another lecture I heard was at our Public Library - our main one downtown - and I heard Stephen Birmingham, the author, speak of his books on Jewish immigrants coming to this country. Have you read any of them?

I think there are three books, but I would have to look them up to be sure - fascinating stories, and Birmingham was an interesting lecturer and individual, informing the audience of his connection to these wealthy eastern Jewish families.

His mother was quite ambitious for him and, although rather poor, she was determined to send him to a private school where he could make friends with the rich and famous. He did, and a couple of the Jewish friends he made gave him access later in life to their life stories.

HAROLD, you mentioned the Garfield assassination, interesting reading about that wasn't it? Of course, his life could have been spared today, seems terrible to read about his treatments.

Twain was astonished that Grant wanted his comments on his writing? I would have, wouldn't you? Twain was an important and established author of the day and why wouldn't Grant want his opinion.

I made a mistake this morning when I said G.W. Cable was unknown to Google. Perhaps I miss-spelled the last name as Cables. In any case the string, "George Washington Cable," now gets 4 hits, numbers 5,6,8, and 10 in the first 10 hits and many more later. Cable is at least findable from Google.

I re-ran the Google search to see if maybe it would hit my post this morning on this senior’s net board. This happened in the case of a couple of the lesser know Paris expatriates in the Movable Feast discussion. For two of them the only hits on their name were their mention on our discussion.

Ella did you note the quaint language Twain used to express his surprise that Grant would be interested in his opinions of his (Grant’s) writing. Twain said, "I was as much surprised as Columbus's cook would have been to learn Columbus wanted his (the cooks) opinion on how well his navigating was progressing." How is that for a simile?

My school, Trinity University in San Antonio has long had a Distinguished Lecturers Series. I use to attend these when I first retired but have dropped off the last few years since it is a 40 mile drive at night on the interstate. Over the past several years I have avoided night driving. Henry Kissinger spoke there many years ago and I also remember an appearance by Margaret Thatcher about 1991 after she retired as PM.

Today Curious Minds starts on new topic and I hope everyone will join us for little while and tell us what they think of a "Teaching Tuneup". Do We Need A Teaching Tuneup?

I used to attend the local Authors' Luncheon at our largest department store and that's where I met "Malichi Martin" who was quite interesting talking about his newest title about the church and the pope. His books were all fiction but certainly of much interest the Catholics of that time.

I have always enjoyed the C-SPAN Brian Lamb series of author interviews. Not all of the authors are as entertaining as Mark Twain but there are some very good speakers who use humor when talking of the their newest offerings if they warrant such an appraisal. And some of them are really boring and dry also.

There were some very good one man/woman shows that toured the country in the past decades. Hal Holbrooke's Mark Twain was much loved and there's that gal from Martin&Rowan's old TV show who toured with a story of her life, I believe.

Herold asks if anyone knows about him. I may be the only one you ever meet who has read something by him. But he was an extremely important literary figure in Twain's day, not for his writing, but because he was the editor of the most prestigeous literary magazine of the day, and hence decided who got published and who didn't.

He was an extremely effete Easterner (in the piece I read, he was lamenting that humans actually had to eat like animals, instead of being able to live on spirit) who was absolutely fascinated with Twain (his polar opposite, presumably) and published and promoted him. Without Howells, I don't know if Twain would have become a successful writer.

Howell's own writing I feel, justly deserves it's lack of popularity. It has all of Henry James' faults with none of his genius. But Twain and Howells illustrate something important that was happening in US literature at that time: the contrast between the settled East, where the intelligensia did their best to imitate England and be as English as they could, and the "raw" west, where authors were developing a truly American voice.

Twain often seems crude to us now, but he was really trying to depict the life and people he knew with all their warts and pimples as accurately as he could, and as such, gives us a feel for these people that I think is invaluable.

"On March 1, "The New York Times" - then, as now, the most prestigious paper in New York City and, in many ways, the newspaper of record for the nation - sprayed a black-bordered headline across its front page: GRANT IS DYING. New York's other newspapers followed suit: SINKING INTO THE GRAVE, GEN. GRANT'S FRIENDS GAVE UP HOPE, DYING SLOWLY FROM CANCER. By the evening of March 2, the "Tribune, Times, World, Sun, Post, Journal, Daily News, and Brooklyn Eagle" all had reporters standing on 66th Street, peering into Grant's second-floor study window. Within days they were joined by reporters from Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Washington. Within another week reporters from half a dozen news services and journalists from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and St. Louis had come to New York to join what the reporters were already calling "the death watch." On any single day, the reporters who camped across the street from Grant's home were inevitably joined by a crowd of curious onlookers."

It is for this very reason that I am glad I am not rich and famous. It is interesting that the "media" seems to act much the same today as it did during Grant's time. Anything to sell a newspaper. I don't know about you but I don't want to know "everything" about our celebrities and politicians. I sometimes see the media as "vultures flying overhead just waiting for the person to die". Don't you think that writers have a responsibilty to treat both life and death with as much dignity as they can?

Thanks, JOANK, for the remarks on William Dean Howell – as Harold stated, I have a vague memory of reading something about him somewhere – some biography or other and history owes him much for bringing Twain along and publishing his books

Our author describes him as opening up a new chapter in American letters defining “realism.” He once said – “let fiction cease to lie about life. Let it portray men and women as they are, actuated by the motive and the passions in the measure we all know.”

Portray men and women as they are! Hmmmm.

I would imagine that most authors take a bit from this person and that person to flesh out their characters wouldn’t you? But I don’t read much fiction beyond a good “mystery” now and then when I can find one that suits.

AMEN, SCRAWLER! When I am ill I don’t want a single person around; let me be alone to be miserable! I can’t imagine a crowd around at all, but your quoting that paragraph from the book and reading it again made me think of Ronald Reagan and how gracefully he handled the crowd from his hospital window. Remember him joking saying he forgot to duck! Smiling!

I have just finished a book about the mothers of recent presidents (by Bonnie Angelo) – the wealthy three - FDR, the Bushes, Kennedy – and the presidents from poor families – Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Ford. Interesting book – and have just started another.

An autobiography by P.D. James titled “TIME TO BE ERNEST” which she wrote at the age of 77 for fear of senility setting in and, as she said, why shouldn’t I write my own life instead of waiting for other authors to write my biography. I wonder if she is still living.

Rambling here aren’t I?

Of all the remarks about Grant’s memoirs in this book I think this section would be the most interesting (p.194):

”he had planned to end his memoirs not only with a personal note on the meaning of the war, but with a section that focused on the importance of Lincoln (and his relationship with him), the capture of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, the last operations of the Union Army after Appomattox, etc.”

All the little plums and spices as Twain described the end of the book.

I suspect this will be the wettest year for South Texas of the last century and a half during which rainfall records have been kept. It has rained again here every day since last weekend. A real deluge came last night cutting the satellite TV reception dead off right in the middle of the Spurs/NY NBA game. This morning I am cut off from the outside world by the creek running like a river. I think I could get out by the longer route in the other direction around Seguin. Yet I have no need to leave my high (but not so dry) hill.

Regarding Twain and Grant I too thought the media attitude toward the very ill ex President quite ghoulish, even worse than what it would be today. They did not follow Presidents Regan’s Alzheimer illness on a day-by-day basis during his last months as they did Grant’s. Also the deaths of high profile people such as Frank Sanatra and Princess Diana were only reported after the fact, after they had died, though in Diana’s case there followed several days of funeral and memorial coverage.

I remember some of the high profile deathbed reports in the middle of the 20th century. Particularly I remember the two deaths of General Pershing. He died in 1948 at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington and the blow-by-blow coverage up to the breathing of his last breath was recorded in the print and radio media. This was a final re-run of a Pershing Illness a few years before in the form of a near terminal bout with pneumonia from which the old General made a last minute unexpected recovery.

Other ghoulish mid-century media deathbed reports concerned the deaths of the two Babes- the lady golfer, Babe Dickerson Zaharias, and the baseball legend, Babe Ruth. Ruth died of a cancer similar to General Grant’s. The press coverage of these high profile passings seemed particularly evasive of the principal’s privacy. I suppose the potential still remains for such press spectaculars, but I do note the media in recent years has shown a tad bit more respect for the privacy of these well know people.

I don't know that reading about a famous person dying in the newspaper or listening to it on the radio brings it home so graphically as seeing it on TV in living color. Of course now every thing has to be in "tiny sound bytes" to fit between commercials, so they flash by like so many bits and pieces.

In the chapter "He was just a man" Hattie shows up at Twain's doorstep and asks him to come with her to see her husband's work.

"The apartment was scattered with Gerhardt's work - an assortment of paintings, sketches, busts, and full sculptures of his wife, Hattie, including his most recent work of her naked from the the waist up. Twain was impressed by the sculpture, but not only because the winsome Mrs. Gerhardt was apparently quite well endowed.

"Well, sir, it was perfectly charming," Twain wrote to Howells, "this girl's innocence & purity - exhibing her naked self, as it were, to a stranger & alone, & never once dreaming there was the slightest indelicacy about the matter. And there wasn't; but it will be many a long day before I run across another woman who can do the like & show no trace of self-consciousness."

Considering this was the Victorian Age I thought this was an interesting paragraph. Twain's remark to Howell: "...& never once dreaming there was the slightest indelicacy about the matter" perhaps shows that times were changing. That among at least artists and authors displaying a naked woman was acceptable.

I thought Karl Gerhardt himself was an interesting character. "Grant, meanwhile, was magically transforming a lump of clay into a bust of Grant, an image that, it would later be said, was the "most nearly correct likeness of the general...Meeting Grant was a transforming experience for Gerhardt; he found in Grant, he believed, a reflection of his own genius-as well as a means of achieving the public acclaim he believed was his due."

I can't help but think that somehow Hattie and Karl used both Twain and Grant in order to get what they wanted.

I think Twain was right when he said: "One marked feature of General Grant's character is his exceeding gentleness, goodness, sweetness..." I'm not sure that I'd describe Twain the same way, but he was generous to his "human hobbies" almost to a fault.

Stay dry, HAROLD. I remember all those people that you named in your last post, certainly we are of the same era!

And SCRAWLER, your statement about two people who used Grant and Twain reminded me of this remark in the book made by one of the owners of the Balmoral Hotel which was near the house that Grant was loaned in northern NY state:

” I thought if we could get him (Grant) to come here to Mt. McGregor, and if he should die there, it might make the place a national shrine-and incidentally a success.”

GEE! Let’s just think of our own profits in this life and give little thought to others.

Grant, of course, knew he was near the end and is contemplating whether it will be hemorrhage, by strangulation or just by exhaustion.

We have no choice in this matter do we?

Would Grant have ever had anything written about him or by him, had there not been the Civil War?

For that matter, would the same be true of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower? Perhaps George W?

War presidents are remembered, whether or not they deserve to be is another matter.

Ella, I partially agree. We certainly remember the wartime presidents in our lifetime. But looking back how many of us can name the President in power during the Mexican War or even the War of 1812 and the Spanish-American War. I might name the last two, but even though the Mexican War President was mentioned in the book, I'd be guessing if asked to name him right now.

Click Here for a detailed article on Karl Gerhardt and his close relationship to Twain and his family and Grant.

I think Scrawler is right when she said Twain was generous to a fault. He literally financed Gerthard’s art training in Paris for several years before Twain Introduced him to Grant to do the bust of Grant. No wonder Twain was always short of money.

Gerhardt was at the Mt Mc Gregor house when Grant died and made a death mask that later became the source of controversy. The article can be read in 20 minutes or less and is well worth the time for the detail it provides.

Click Here for information on the Paige Typesetter that did so much to assure that Twain would not die a rich man. Had Twain been born a century later his search for a real typesetter might have been realized. He could have bought Microsoft stock (in 1980) and died rich.

In your opinion, which president was the most important to you. I'd have to say JFK was the most important in my life. The day he was assassinated was the same day I went to work for a small insurance company. With my little white pill box hat and white gloves and navy blue suit I was already to work at my first "real" job, having graduated from high school in June. I can remember my boss explaining my duties when somebody came in screaming that the president had been shot. We all marched over to the TV store next to us and watched the news on their color TV. All around me there were women crying. By noon a very large crowd had formed in front of the store and when Walter Conkrite announced he had died I can remember that it felt like my life had been changed forever.

In the chapter "The Me in Me" Perry writes: "Over the years that followed, Twain returned to mull over this relationship in his notebooks and autobiography. He spent hundreds of hours and thousands of words summarizing is feelings for the man and attempting to plumb the meaning of their relationship. His greatest homage to Grant, a man he could never bring himself to call "Sam" - no matter how close they had become - may will have already been penned, however, in the opening words of "Huckleberry Finn." This "Notice" was not a dedication. Indeed, it was more of an afterthought, having been written after the book was completed. In it, Twain recognized the central role of Jim by calling his story a "narrative" - akin to the slave narratives that had told of innumerable flights of freedom. And in the next line, Twain came as close as he was ever to come in recognizing how Grant had helped him finish this book.

NOTICE Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR Per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDANCE.

Twain never unwrapped the riddle of this passage, nor did he ever hint as who "G.G." might be. But the "G.G." of "Huckleberry Finn" can only refer to Twain's true "chief of ordance" and his good friend, a man he always referred to out of respect as "General Grant."

I love this "notice." This notice is a fine tribute from Twain to his friend General Grant. But it also suggests profoundly to the reader that we should stop analyzing his books and just read them. And that to me anyway is the most important reason for reading books.

Emily Dickinson said it best in her poem:

There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry - This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll - How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul -

Thanks, Harold, for those articles – GOOD GRIEF! When I think of the evolution of that printing machine I am amazed, I am awed! Not too long ago – well, maybe 15 years ago, time does go by swiftly, we were taken on a tour of the latest in printing equipment at the new Cleveland Plain Dealer printing plant, Cleveland, Ohio. Everything was so clean, you could have eaten off the floor and none of us understood any of it – it was huge machinery painted different colors, nothing in sight that resembled a machine at all.

HAROLD, true that we don’t remember those wars, those smaller wars fought so many years ago and who was president during that time! Who was president during the Vietnam War – which we do remember? Would you say it was Kennedy, LBJ or Nixon, all of which had a hand in it?

SCRAWLER, I loved that stanza of the poem by Dickinson and I must get a book of Emily’s poetry. “No frigate like a book to take us Lands Away….” Loved that, thank you.

Favorite president? Oh, golly, there are have been so many I could not name a favorite – I couldn’t top your story anyway. Your first day on a new job with a pill box hat!!!! OH!!! We always wore hats and gloves when I was young, how sloppy young people look today and when did you last see a woman in a dress or a suit? Possibly in church?

The question in the quotation in the heading from Page 218 has an answer on the same page – Sam Grant answered it himself when he confided to an aide while looking at thousands of former slaves – “I don’t know these people.”

But our author, regardless of that statement, believes that”Grant….wrote the single most important work of nonfiction in our literature” (p.235) Seems somewhat contradictory that you can write about a war and not understand the purpose of it, but maybe I’m missing the point.

I do agree with our author when he says that American nonfiction is our nation’s most lasting and important gift to the world. Americans love nonfiction-we are a nation consumed by politics and history. (p.235).

Well, I intended to be out here in the office making posts to our discussion board, but as I was bolting down the Subway sandwich I had picked up on my way back from San Antonio, “Tora, Tora, Tora” came on the History channel and It lasted a full three hours. I’ll just answer some questions from today’s posts, and try to get out early tomorrow to see if I can come up with something semi profound.

Ella for my money I would have to say it was all three of the Presidents you named, JFK, LBJ and Nixon. JFK started things rolling, LBJ made the commitment complete and ran into big trouble, and Nixon expanded the commitment before the final withdrawal was negotiated. Ford was President when North Viet Nam forces `finally occupied Saigon. Ten years ago when I was doing volunteer work at the San Antonio Museum of Art, one of my co-workers was a lady who had been a secretary at the US embassy. She was one of the last Embassy staff evacuated from the roof by navy helicopter when the Viet Cong finally entered the city.

I don’t have any particular favorite president. I can respect them all. It is a hard job and any president’s term seldom materializes as he intended. I think LBJ is a case on point. He would have much preferred his administration center on domestic problems but the Cold War and foreign policy, particularly Viet Nam got in the way; so today he is most remembered for the sour involvements in Viet Nam. Yet his administration did manage to accomplish much on the domestic front that cannot entirely be forgotten.

Some of our early US Presidents prior to Grant are remembered as military commanders prior to their election to the office. Three who come to mind are Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Zachary Taylor. Of these Washington and Jackson were not really career military officers. Both had only occasional active military background prior to the one crowing occasion in which they distinguished themselves in military command.

Taylor, on the other hand, had many years of command experience on the Indian frontier prior to the Mexican War and his victories at Buena Vista and Monterey. Yet he too was very much a Southern farmer though as President he vigorously fought a secession movement in 1850. He served as President only 16 month as he died just five days after eating cherries and milk at a July 4, 1850 celebration. Despite his strong stand against the South’s demand to extend the Mason Dixon line to the pacific, his successor approved the Missouri Compromise just a few weeks after his death.

I look at Grant as the first modern professional soldier General elected because of his military fame. There have only been two, Grant and Eisenhower. In the 20th Century history has not judged either administration real favorably. Grant’s administration is viewed negatively because of the several high profile corruption incidents during his watch. Though I suspect this overall negative projection was at least partially the result of Southern intent to discredit him for their defeat, it did contribute to a negative view of Generals turned politician.

Eisenhower of course made it in 1952. Leading the Western alliance opposition to Communist expansion marked his administration, but at the end of his administration the West found itself far behind Russia in development of new military technology base on rocket missile systems. I think the American people remain suspicious of Generals turning politician; they soundly rejected the primary candidacy of the ex-NATO commander in his 2004 bid for the Presidency.

I enjoyed reading "Grant and Twain" and especially discussing it with you folks. I thought it was a wonderful discussion. I don't think I've ever met a "discussion group here at Senior Net that I didn't like" and you folks were great.

The book in general was well written. I especially liked the fact that Mark Perry drew from both General Grant and Mark Twain. Twain didn't just publish Grant's memoirs, he became a close personal friend. In reading this book we see a side of Grant that we don't normally remember. He had great courage throughout the war, but I think he had greater courage in writing his memoirs while suffering from cancer.

I think Mark Perry also shows Twain in a different light than what we normally see him. I'd have to agree that Twain is "a respected and celebrated icon of American literature." In many ways like Varina Davis and Julia Grant, Twain helped both the South and North to heal through his writings. Although he was noted as a "humorist" I can see in his writings a serious note and a message for all people.

On the other hand I was disappointed in that the author used such negative adjectives to describe many of the central people such as Julia Grant or Adam Badeau. It we only read this one book we'd perhaps get a negative view of Mrs. Grant and Mr. Badeau as well as some of the others portrayed.

That's why it is important to read more than one book especially about famous people. Authors sometimes slant their writing in order to deliver a specific message.

For example the popular theory in Grant not attending Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865 with Lincoln was that their wives had a "spat" and Julia Grant didn't want to go and wanted to see her children and grandchildren for the holidays. On the other hand I have read several books that say that Edwin Stanton didn't want Lincoln to go to the theater that night and asked Grant to decline the invitation in the hopes that the president would change his mind. We may never know what really happened, but by reading several books on the same subject we can form our own opinions about what happened.

It has been a great discussion and I hope that we can all get together very soon.

Hey, you guys, how about your comment on the following so far overlooked issues:

1. The events leading to Grant’s choosing Webster (Twain’s Nephew) as publisher of the Memoirs. Why was Webster chosen? Perry seems to picture the Century proposal as unfair to Grant, yet the men behind Century (Smith, Johnson, Gilder, etc) became the giants of New York publishing. They exhibited no ill will when they did not get the contract and went on to other great achievements.

2. Grant’s Relapse at the end of March 1885. Press accounts seemed to question the competence of the team of physicians treating Grant. What do you think of their handling of his case? What do you think of the physician’s approval of Grant smoking a Cigar after his recovery? Was Grant’s trip to Saratoga wise?

3. Another Character- John Philips Newman. How did Grant react to this evangelist? What were his motives in coming from California to minister to Grant?

4. The controversy over allegation that the writings were not Grant’s, but a compilation drawn from the dying Grant by Fred, Badeau, Dawson, and others. It is not unusual for a writer’s book to undergo editing by a professional during which spelling and grammar corrections, and maybe even organizational changes are made. Was more than this possible under the circumstances of Grant’s condition?

5. Twain’s life experience after the publication of Huckleberry Finn and the death of Grant. Were not some of those later writing ideals (like Tom Sawyer and Huck out West) a bit ridiculous (or were they just desperate)?

6. Your opinion of this Mark Perry Book. Was it a good discussion book? What were its strong points and its weak points? Why was there not more activity?

Her message 141 is exactly what I hoped for under question 6. Please let's have a reply from every one who has participated. and also questions 1 through 5.

Thank you Scrawler for your well written assessment of the book!

Yuck, I hate to try and remember that post. Let seeeeeeeeee!

My first comment was bout the "Century" contents as it reminded me of all the magazines like "The Atlantic Monthly", Life, National Geographic. This must have been the forerunner to these wonderful magazines. So, saying that, I wanted to also mention the fact that the magazine had a photographic article on the Lost City of Petra. I just received a notice from the Cincinnati Art Museum where they have a new exhibit on Petra with many artifacts. This is on loan from the Smithsonian, I think. Anyway, a worthwhile exhibit to see. We studied Petra a tiny bit while discussing Bruce Feiler's book, "Walking the Bible" back in January.

As to the book, I learned many new and certainly different facts about Twain and Grant. Too bad that all my info on Grant history emphasized his problems with alcohol and the scams of his presidency. I warmed to Twain who worked so hard to see that Grant's memoirs were published in a timely fashion and who had the foresight to send Gerhardt, the sculptor, to Paris for studying.

I agree with Scrawler that reading and enjoying instead of ferreting out all the meanings of Twain's books is the place to be.

Ella, thanks for bringing this book to our attention.

And Harold, I am so sorry that I have nothing more pithy to say. I did enjoy this book and because of it brought from the library today, the PBS U.S. Grant movie that Scrawler mentioned. Plus another book entitled, "Best Little Stories From the Civil War" by C. Brian Kelly, which has a whole chapter devoted to Varina Howell Davis.

Here's good site of the history and pictures of "Petra". I love these photos!

Petra site

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU WHO PARTICIPATED IN THIS DISCUSSION – I ENJOYED IT AND I THINK WE ALL ENJOYED OUR CONGREGATING HERE FOR THIS LESSON IN HISTORY!

For some reason which I cannot define I did not get a favorable impression of Twain in this book, but must agree heartily with SCRAWLER in her comments of Grant– “ He had great courage throughout the war, but I think he had greater courage in writing his memoirs while suffering from cancer.

The book, although enjoyable reading, lacks some depth perhaps because there are so few lessons to be learned, other than the last years of two old men and how they came to their friendship.

But we all brought to the table interesting points that enlightened our discussion – a sentence here and there, e.g., Dr. Shrady, (Grant’s doctor) although believing there was no such thing as germs, successfully lobbied the New York legislature to pass a law requiring that doctors be tested and licensed – and that was in the 20th century – our century. We should be grateful for that!

HAROLD, thanks for being such a good discussion leader and I’m sorry I do not the time to engage in answering those questions you proposed in Post #142, but one thing we can forever remember is WE KNOW WHO IS BURIED IN GRANT’S TOMB!!!

Ella I see you too remember the post WW II Radio comedy shows like the Goon Show. I think that was its name. These shows featured crazy slapstick comedy sometimes simulating a quiz show asking contestants dumb but obvious questions they could never answer. A good example that I actually remember was, "Whose buried in Grants Tomb?"

Yesterday afternoon in the Laundromat while waiting for my laundry, I re-read the last chapter and the Epilogue. The truth is it was sort of sad with everybody dead in the end and quite a few bankrupt to boot. It must have been particularly hard on Twain with his many later writing projects essentially failures. Also apparently the business failure involving the typesetter machine must have been devastating.

I suppose it is not uncommon for writers to develop and peak sometimes many years before their end. The 1884 – 85 years, when Twain was near 50 years old, seems to have been his most productive period both as a writer and a business man. It was in these years in which he completed and published Huckleberry Finn that he peaked as a writer. At the same time his Publishing Company was releasing the Grant Memoirs that surpassed all previous sales records. Those multi hundred thousand dollar checks Twain paid to Julia Grant during the first year of publication were records for all previous English language books. Grant’s intent to provide for Julia after his death was certainly fulfilled.

But it was Grants Doctor, John Douglas, that seems to have really fell on hard times. Perry does not give us the details leaving me to wonder what bad extra-medical business venture did him in. In any case his wife had to take in boarders and Twain tells us the Doctor died in penury (not just poor, but extreme poverty)