by Dr. Craig Von Buseck @CraigVonBuseck
Military memoirs were the rage in the decades following the Civil War. Some were credible, making a helpful contribution to the history of the war, like the memoirs of William Tecumseh Sherman, James Longstreet, or Philip Sheridan. But many were self-serving vanity pieces that minimized the faults of the commander, embellished his accomplishments, and took potshots at political enemies.
Raised by his Methodist mother, Hannah Grant, to carry himself in humility, Ulysses S. Grant found many of these memoirs distasteful. So when his friend, Mark Twain, tried to convince Grant to write his memoirs for his new publishing house, Charles Webster and Company, the general rebuffed him like he did every other attempt by publishers to secure his book.
