In his Autobiography Mark Twain writes that Grant’s book compares favorably with Caesar’s Commentaries in “clarity of statement, direct-ness, simplicity, unpretentiousness, manifest truthfulness, fairness and justice toward friend and foe alike, soldierly candor and frankness and soldierly avoidance of flowery speech.” In an address to the annual reunion of the Army and Navy Club of Connecticut in 1887, where he savages Arnold’s criticism of Grant, Mark Twain declares of the Memoirs: “Their style is at least flawless and no man can improve upon it.” Grant has put into the Memoirs “a something which will still bring to American ears, as long as America shall last, the roll of his vanished drums and the tread of his marching hosts.”
is not to the English imagination the hero of the American Civil War the hero is Lee.” Yet in his praise Arnold is compelled to admit that his initial reaction to Grant’s Memoirs was conditioned by the fact that, “the central figure. He much preferred to be compared with Napoleon’s conqueror. Such praise would have pleased Grant, for he disliked the frequent comparisons made between Napoleon (whom he felt to be great but unprincipled) and himself. Thing to be done under the circumstances, and doing it never flurried, never vacillating, but also not stubborn. Wholly free from show, parade, and pomposity sensible and sagacious scanning closely the situation, seeing things as they actually were, then making up his mind as to the right He admits to a mistaken impression that the General was “a strong, resolute, business-like man, who by possession of unlimited resources in men and money, and by the unsparing use of them, had been enabled to wear down and exhaust the strength of the South.” Although this misimpression is still a commonplace in the late twentieth century, Arnold is convinced after perusing the Memoirs that it is most fair to compare Grant with the Duke of Wellington. Although Arnold indulges in some grammatical quibbles and miscellaneous snide remarks on Americans in general, he pays great tribute to Grant. As usual, Twain was amusing and a bit unfair.
In a famous exchange, Mark Twain attacked Matthew Arnold for imagined slights made upon Grant’s Memoirs in Arnold’s two-part article in Murray’s Magazine of 1886.
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