Lee and Grant
By William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton

Notes, illustrations, index, 352 pp., 2007. Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, in association with D Giles Ltd., London, 162-164 Upper Richmond Rd., London SW 15 2SL, UK. Distributed in the US and Canada by Antique Collectors Club Ltd., Eastworks, 116 Pleasant St., Suite 60B, Easthampton, MA 01027, $65 plus shipping.

Reviewer: John F. Marszalek
John F. Marszalek is Giles Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Mississippi State University and author of numerous books including Sherman, A Soldier’s Passion for Order (1993), republished in a new paperback edition by Southern Illinois University Press in the fall of 2007.

Review:
This book augments the joint exhibit venture of the Virginia Historical Society and the New York Historical Society, on display at the two institutions in 2007 and 2008. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee emerged from the war into later history as the two most significant military figures in the nation’s tragic civil war. These two museums decided to cooperate in order to study the two men jointly.

This heavy tome (both in number of pages and weight), is of coffee table size and is filled with photographs of individuals and objects and a narrative which is readable and informative.

The authors have previously collaborated on earlier projects, so their writing styles and insights mesh well and present the reader with the opportunity to take a fresh look at who Lee and Grant really were.

Rasmussen and Tilton widely use quotations from both men in order, they say, to give the reader a chance to understand the generals, as much as possible, in their own words

Each chapter takes a portion of the life of both men and discusses how their lives compared. In order to place Grant and Lee into a proper perspective, they devote only one chapter to the Civil War itself, while giving a chapter each to mythology, how the two men decided to enter the Civil War, their early lives and military careers, the Mexican War, the 1850s, the Reconstruction era, their last years and deaths.

Perhaps the most surprising fact to Civil War buffs who read this book will be the similarities between Lee and Grant which the authors summarize on pages 327-328.

Both men had a “seeming reticence” which kept others at a distance. They both “valued home and family above all else, both listened to advice but rarely took it, both tended to give a good deal of responsibility to subordinates, both held politicians largely responsible for the onset of hostilities.”

“What made each of them great,” the authors conclude, “was an adherence to a personal code of honor.” In each case, the generals were their own “toughest critic.” Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant were complex individuals who faced each other and themselves in the harsh civil war. To mythologize either or both is to do injustice to their true historical meaning.

This is not a book that breaks new ground on either man, but it does provide a valuable overview of where each stands in modern historiography.