The Generals' Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today (Civil War America)

Pay with

About The Generals' Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can

Product Description In December 1885, under the watchful eye of Mark Twain, the publishing firm of Charles L. Webster and Company released the first volume of the  Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. With a second volume published in March 1886, Grant's memoirs became a popular sensation. Seeking to capitalize on Grant's success and interest in earlier reminiscences by Joseph E. Johnston, William T. Sherman, and Richard Taylor, other Civil War generals such as George B. McClellan and Philip H. Sheridan soon followed suit. Some hewed more closely to Grant's model than others, and their points of similarity and divergence left readers increasingly fascinated with the history and meaning of the nation's great conflict. The writings also dovetailed with a rising desire to see the full sweep of American history chronicled, as its citizens looked to the start of a new century. Professional historians engaged with the memoirs as an important foundation for this work.   In this insightful book, Stephen Cushman considers Civil War generals' memoirs as both historical and literary works, revealing how they remain vital to understanding the interaction of memory, imagination, and the writing of American history. Cushman shows how market forces shaped the production of the memoirs and, therefore, memories of the war itself; how audiences have engaged with the works to create ideas of history that fit with time and circumstance; and what these texts tell us about current conflicts over the history and meanings of the Civil War. Review Cushman brings to bear his exceptional skill in textual analysis in this book that deconstructs, and even reconstructs, the methods and meanings of American Civil War memoirs...Cushman puts Mark Twain at the center of all this: publisher and promoter Twain used his marketing savvy and writing skills to help Grant (among others) shape their memoirs, to good effect...A fascinating tour de force of scholarship.-- Library Journal Review In this brilliant book, Stephen Cushman is a perceptive scout ahead of us, spying what we've missed and teaching us to read the generals' thoughts."—Jason Phillips, author of Looming Civil War: How Nineteenth-Century Americans Imagined the Future About the Author Stephen Cushman is Robert C. Taylor Professor of English at the University of Virginia.