Booknotes: Unconditional Surrender

New Arrival:

• Unconditional Surrender: Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War by Curt Fields & Chris Mackowski (Savas Beatie, 2025).

With previous titles addressing the Civil War careers of well-known figures such as W.T. Sherman, G.A. Custer, P.G.T. Beauregard, J.L. Chamberlain, and John Pelham, military biography has become a fairly steadily produced category of books within the Emerging Civil War series' prodigious body of output. The latest is Curt Fields and Chris Mackowski's Unconditional Surrender: Ulysses S. Grant in the Civil War.

Of course, U.S. Grant, being the Union Army's premier military leader, needs no introduction, but, for the uninitiated, the description provides a nice summary of the book's content flow: "Born in a modest clapboard house at Point Pleasant, Ohio, on the banks of the Ohio River, he first made his military mark near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. His successes at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, and eventually Vicksburg earned him the steadfast support of President Abraham Lincoln: “Grant,” he declared, “is my man and I am his the rest of the war!” After saving a Federal army in Chattanooga, he was promoted to lieutenant general and put in command of all Union forces. He made his headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac and oversaw the campaigns against Robert E. Lee, from the Wilderness through the prolonged siege of Petersburg and, finally, Appomattox Court House. His ultimate victory paved the way for two terms in the White House."

After a prologue and brief introduction from co-author Fields in which he answers some of the most common questions he gets as a Grant living historian, the volume jumps right into the Civil War years. Supplemented by seven maps and scores of captioned photographs and period drawings, the narrative covers Grant's Civil War military career from his appointment as colonel of the 21st Illinois in 1861 to his leadership during the climactic 1865 Appomattox Campaign. The epilogue that reviews Grant's legacy, including the development of his famous memoir, also addresses his faults.

An eclectic appendix section is a highlight of many ECW titles. In this case, however, given the sheer breadth of Grant's Civil War accomplishments, it's no surprise that there is little room left for an extensive one, and the single appendix attached to this title revisits the relationship between Grant and wife Julia. A 'Suggested Reading' list rounds out the volume.