Ulysses S. Grant: Essays and Documents (Occasional Publications (Ulysses S. Grant Association).)

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An occasional publication of the Ulysses S. Grant Association that serves to supplement The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant by providing both interpretations of Grant and source material impossible or inappropriate to include in the volumes. This volume also provides an appropriate vehicle for the Association editors to use the recently developed computer-assisted text-processing methods.

The entire manuscript was stored and edited on magnetic computer tape at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Mnemonic coding of the final tape was accomplished with definitions developed by Southern Illinois University Press, reducing the typesetter’s function to making minor adjustments in his programs to accept the tape.

These six articles and documents cover a wide range of topics. Richard N. Current and E. B. Long call for a reappraisal of Grant, with Current examining Grant’s role as a leader of a nation only nominally at peace and Long focusing on the controversies surrounding his generalship. Charles G. Ellington traces Grant’s journey across the Isthmus of Panama in 1852, which left him with a lifelong desire to build a transcontinental canal. Horatio E. Wirtz examines Grant’s little-known role as a mediator in a dispute between China and Japan over the Ryukyu Islands. John M. Hoffman presents an unpublished account of the battle of Chattanooga from the journal of Quartermaster General M. C. Meigs. David L. Wilson and John Y. Simon make available a memoir by Grant’s personal cipher clerk and telegrapher, Samuel H. Beckwith.