Ulysses S. Grant - Bibliography

For a brief, incisive, and highly readable biography of Grant, nothing surpasses Bruce Catton, U. S. Grant and the American Military Tradition (Boston, 1954). Lloyd Lewis began a multivolume biography but died after completing Captain Sam Grant (Boston, 1950), which covers Grant's life to the outbreak of the Civil War. Catton carried this superb biography through the Civil War in Grant Moves South (Boston, 1960) and Grant Takes Command (Boston, 1969).

The only major study of Grant focusing on the presidency is William B. Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant: Politician (New York, 1935), now outdated. Two popular biographies of Grant that cover the presidency are W. E. Woodward, Meet General Grant (New York, 1928), and William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York, 1981). Both Woodward and McFeely portray Grant as a symbol of his America. Woodward writes as a neo-Confederate, and McFeely as a modern liberal; both dislike Grant. A biography that goes to the opposite extreme in defending Grant is Louis A. Coolidge, Ulysses S. Grant (Boston and New York, 1917). Brooks D. Simpson, Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), also takes a uniformly favorable view of Grant. A better-balanced account is available in John A. Carpenter, Ulysses S. Grant (New York, 1970). Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant: His Life and Character (New York, 1898), incorporates information from interviews with people who knew Grant.

Grant told his own story in Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York, 1885–1886), which stops at the end of the Civil War. This important and readable literary classic served as the point of departure for chapter 4 of Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War (New York, 1962). A comprehensive edition of Grant's own writings is John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill., 1967–), of which twenty-four volumes have been published to date, with chronological coverage through October 1870. Mrs. Grant's charming autobiography is available in Simon, ed., The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York, 1975).

Allan Nevins, Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration (New York, 1936), a detailed account enriched with numerous extracts from Fish's diary, remains indispensable for both foreign and domestic policy. An anecdotal account by Grant's secretary Adam Badeau, Grant in Peace (Hartford, Conn., 1887), not wholly reliable, contains information unavailable elsewhere. Southern policy receives detailed analysis in William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869–1877 (Baton Rouge, La., 1979). Indian policy has evoked a copious literature, notably Robert H. Keller, Jr., American Protestantism and United States Indian Policy, 1869–1882 (Lincoln, Nebr., 1983). Standard books for approaching crucial issues include Ari Hoogenboom, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865–1883 (Urbana, Ill., 1961), and Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879 (Princeton, N.J., 1964).

Recent works include Geoffrey Perret, Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier and President (New York, 1997), and Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York, 2001).