Three Years with Grant

"Three Years with Grant is one of the great books of the Civil War."-Bruce Catton. "A superb reporter, insatiably curious, physically courageous, keenly perceptive, Cadwallader was relentless in his pursuit of the news. . . . The vignettes on Lincoln and Sheridan are especially graphic, while the surrender at Appomattox is handled with great sensitivity. Sidelights on the civilian's response to war and occupation add depth to the portrait."-American Historical Review. "The beginnings of American war reporting of the modern kind have never been as vividly shown."-San Francisco Chronicle. Sylvanus Cadwallader, a war correspondent for the Chicago Times and later for the New York Herald, was attached to General Grant's headquarters from 1862 to 1865. He enjoyed rare access to personalities (Lincoln, Sheridan, and Lee) and events (Vicksburg, Chattanooga, City Point, and Potomac), and he makes them come alive here. Cadwallader also includes information about his own role in constraining and concealing Grant's drinking. Through his pages the real Grant emerges. The manuscript of Three Years with Grant was edited and annotated by Lincoln biographer Benjamin P. Thomas and first published nearly a century after the Civil War. Brooks D. Simpson is the author of Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868 and other books. He is an associate professor of American history at Arizona State University.