Campaigning with Grant (Collector's Library of the Civil War)

xviii, 546 pp. Blue boards with gilt title on spine and front board. All edges gilt. Marbled endpapers. "“…we naturally expected to meet a well-equipped soldier, but hardly anybody was prepared to find one who had the grasp, the promptness of decision, and the general administrative capacity which he displayed at the very start…” Horace Porter first met Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the autumn of 1863, when he was on the staff of Gen. George H. Thomas, commander of the Army of the Cumberland. In the November Porter received orders, posting him to Washington and away from the field, but Thomas and his fellow staff officers turned to Grant to assist in his return. After five months in the capital, Grant’s intercession proved successful and Porter joined his staff in April 1864, setting in motion wheels that would go far beyond the present conflict. Porter spent the remainder of the war at Grant’s side, uniquely placing him to witness a master of the formidable game from the crossing of the Rapidan to Appomattox Court House. Encompassing Porter’s fifteen months as an aide to the General-in-Chief, ‘Campaigning with Grant’ recounts the daily acts of the man in the field, his traits, his habits and his motives, bringing the reader an unparalleled familiarity with Grant. Horace Porter (1837-1921) was a Union soldier and diplomat. Graduating from West Point in 1860, he was commissioned into the U.S. Army the following year. Initially serving as an ordnance officer, he spent the final year of the conflict on the staff of Ulysses S. Grant and later served as his personal secretary in the White House. From 1897 to 1905 he was the U.S. Ambassador to France."