Completed just days before his death and hailed by Mark Twain as "the
most remarkable work of its kind since the Commentaries of Julius
Caesar," this is the now-legendary autobiography of ULYSSES SIMPSON
GRANT, 18th president of the United States and the Union general who led
the North to victory in the Civil War. Though Grant opens with tales of
his boyhood, his education at West Point, and his early military career
in the Mexican-American war of the 1840s, it is Grant's intimate
observations on the conduct of the Civil War, which make up the bulk of
the work, that have made this required reading for history students,
military strategists, and Civil War buffs alike. Grant wrote his
"Personal Memoirs" to secure his family's future. In doing so, the Civil
War's greatest general won himself a unique place in American letters.
His character, sense of purpose, and simple compassion are evident
throughout this deeply moving account, as well as in the letters to his
wife, Julia, included here.