Campaigning with Grant [Paperback]

Horace Porter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1991

From April 1864 to the end of the war, Horace Porter served on Ulysses S. Grant's staff. He was with Grant during the Battle of the Wilderness, Cold Harbor and during the Petersburg Campaign and was present at McLean's House during the final surrender by Robert E. Lee. During the whole time, Porter kept extensive notes regarding Grant's conversations and activities supplemented by his own observations. Porter brings to his recollections not only a soldier's practiced eye, but a writer's intelligence as well. His portrait of Grant is incisive, readable and among the best records that have survived the war. The reader catches a glimpse of Grant as soldier and hears in his own words the tactical evaluations taht led to many of the war's most crucial decisions. Porter's accounts are stirring, down-to-earth and bring to life many events during our country's most memorable conflict.

Product Details

• Paperback: 546 pages
• Publisher: Mallard Press; 1ST edition (1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792456041
• ISBN-13: 978-0792456049
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,657,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The next-best-thing to Grant's "Memoirs", December 8, 1998

By 

Ned Leonard ([e-mail]) (Arlington, Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Campaigning with Grant (Collector's library of the Civil War) (Leather Bound)

I read Grant's "Memoirs" on the recommendation of a cigar-chomping friend. It was a revelation. I began reading with ambivalence about Grant. By the time I was finished, he became a hero for me, for entirely unexpected reasons -- the clarity of his writing, for one; his modesty and straight-forward manner, for two others. I followed it with other volumes about Grant (including Bruce Catton's set) but it wasn't until another friend whom I discovered shared my feelings for Grant's genius recommended Horace Porter's "Campaigning with Grant" that I discovered an equally satisfying successor. Horace Porter's "Campaigning With Grant" is the next best thing to Grant's "Memoirs." Again, the clarity of writing, the descriptions of Grant's decision-making process, the anecdotes from the Wilderness Campaign on through the sieges of Richmond and Petersburg, and on to Appomatox come as a revelation -- at least, in part, when you realize this is one of those "source documents" all the great historians of the era have relied upon.

Apparently Porter assisted Grant in writing his "Memoirs" although there is not much (if any) dispute that Grant wrote them himself. While this may explain some of the similarity in style and substance, it probably says more about "like minds" than anything else. No matter. This is well worth the read and very rewarding.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece!, April 23, 1998

By 

Candace Scott (Lake Arrowhead, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Campaigning With Grant (Civil War Library) (Hardcover)

If you had to read one book about U.S. Grant as a man this is it. Horace Porter knew Grant quite well and thought he book was written in 1896, it still retains a vibrancy and modernity to it. Porter wrote the book in an almost conversational style which is entertaining and interesting. Do you want to know how much Grant weighed or how tall he was? What kinds of foods he liked? How about a description of him necking with his wife in full view of Lincoln and his staff officers? Look no further than between the covers of this remarkable book. I guarantee you won't be able to put it down!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More Contemporary The One May Think!, July 10, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Campaigning With Grant (A Da Capo paperback) (Paperback)

This book is a true classic. And it has a great advantage which many books of the 19th century do not have. It is readable. In fact it is a very good read indeed. Many of the 1860's to 1890's books about (or by) Civil War figures read more like 300 page obituaries than real memoirs or good history. "Campaigning With Grant" does not. It is a work of relatively unstilted language written by a literate man about a man he came to know quite well. As such it is a charming combination of history and personal memoir. Much of what we know of Grant the human being during the war comes from this book. Scott Brundage