Unconditional Surrender: U. S. Grant and the Civil War

by Albert Marrin

When the small, stoop-shouldered man in a rumpled uniform and scuffed boots, accompanied by a thirteen-year-old boy, asked for a room at Willard's Hotel in Washington, D.C., he was offered a small room on the top floor. But when the clerk saw the man's signature, suddenly a suite was found for him. The man was Ulysses S. Grant, and President Lincoln recently had appointed him commander in chief of the Union forces. Noted historian Albert Marrin tells how this reluctant soldier became the leader who was able to bring final victory to the Union after years of bloody, wrenching civil war. Along the way he describes how soldiers lived in army camps: their food, their recreation, their thoughts, taken from diaries and letters home, and brings to the reader the experience of war: the fear, the deadly mistakes, the early medical services to the wounded, and always the heroism. Dr. Marrin re-creates the battles of Grant's campaigns and puts them in historical perspective. He makes it clear to his readers why both Abraham Lincoln and the ordinary Yankee soldier were willing to trust the outcome of the war and the future of the country to this unlikely hero.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Civil War History, Civil War

208 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1994

About the author

Albert Marrin is a historian and the author of more than twenty nonfiction books for young people. He has won various awards for his writing, including the 2005 James Madison Book Award and the 2008 National Endowment for Humanities Medal. In 2011, his book Flesh and Blood So Cheap was a National Book Award Finalist. Marrin is the Chairman of the History Department at New York's Yeshiva University.

Reviews

[Alicia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grant is a fascinating character because he was a reluctant hero, someone who graduated West Point in the middle of the pack and didn’t think he’d follow a life of military service until he then became the most famous military leader and also became president.

The book had a dry delivery and I think looking back at we’ve come a long way since 1994 in narrative nonfiction and we’re all the better for it.

[Malfam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marrin is a great historian-- he picks out the most interesting quotations and tidbits from primary sources to give readers a true taste of the Civil War, and he "show, don't tell"s to the max.

With that said, I found many of the battle descriptions and narrative about the movements of the Union and Confederate armies dry-- this book could have used a discerning editor.

Five stars on the biographical details and on descriptions of Ulysses and Julia, Abraham and Mary Todd, and other important men and women of the time. Five stars for allowing children to engage with the complexity of the history and of our heroes. Five stars for not editing out the tough stuff but forcing people to face the cruelty of the past. (Including photos of the dead and plenty of quotations in which the casual racism of the time is on full display in all of its abhorrence.)

But I docked a star because some of the book just will put you right to sleep unless you're a true Civil War buff, and probably won't appeal to the impatient contemporary reader as it comes off too much like textbook, not narrative, history.

[Jeanie Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best biography of U. S. Grant I've read so far. Refutes the popular opinion written in the newspapers of that time. Uses documents for support.

[Clair Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an AMAZING book! He is such an amazing man!

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

My perusal of this book helped me become a fan of the unassuming but decisive General Grant.