It was a rough week, but I found enjoyment in my writing. I continued writing about the Battle of Iuka and editing previous chapters in More Than Grit. I was also happy to see a former AP history teacher from high school this past week. I remember teachers like him fondly and with appreciation. We all have teachers who helped or inspired us in some way. He made me a better reader, forcing challenging reading assignments on us daily. However, it helped with my comprehension and later college texts. He was another stepping stone towards my doctorate in history.
I mentioned last week that I finished the series Lincoln Finds a General, and it was an incredible series despite its abrupt end (not to the author's fault). Kenneth Williams was a mathematician at Indiana University. To some historians, it may seem sacrilegious to have a math professor write a history book, let alone a series. However, this mathematician had a knack for history, most likely because of his military experience and founding of the ROTC at Indiana University. As I began reading his series, Lincoln Finds a General, I thought it was explicitly about Ulysses Grant. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was much more than that. This series differs from many other biographies of Grant and his military career. It provides greater nuance to the entire war effort surrounding the politics in Washington and the eastern theater of war. Even as Dr. Williams begins writing about Western theater in his third book, he only incorporates the story of Grant when chronologically necessary.
Williams relied heavily on the ORs, The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies in the War of the Rebellion. In the 1940s and 1950s, in the aftermath of World War II, the Lost Cause dominated the memory of the Civil War. Douglas MacArthur viewed himself much like Lee when writing to Douglas Southall Freeman. George Marshall further admired the Marble Man himself. Therefore, when Williams took on a project, he went into it with a sound mind, unperturbed by this new revisionist history. Throughout his work, he mentioned Grant's failures and added many nuances to the decisi ons of Grant and Rosecrans out west. If unfair criticism is embedded within his work, it could be to "Little Napoleon," George McClellan.
The publisher noted in the last book of the series that Grant found his biographer in Dr. Williams after being unable to complete his series and dying of cancer in the process. Nevertheless, Williams wrote a work that should be addressed among future historians as it reminds them of the various engagements typically left out of secondary works. I can only help but wonder how he would have written about Grant's time out east.
Question of the Week: Who inspired you to learn more about a historical event or topic?
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