I have heard Grant's Memoirs praised as far back as I can remember and have never had the slightest interest in reading this slovenly drunk's recollections of how he helped to invent industrialized total war, so preparing the way for the mechanized military mass slaughter of the 20th century. The fact that, as President, this sodden star-spangled sad sack nominally oversaw the most corrupt administration in US history is a mere footnote to his depredations in intensifying the scale and horror of war *and* in keeping the dickheads of Dixie conjoined to the (relatively) civilized folk of the North. As I said long ago on the list, it was insane for the North to fight to hold onto the South, then and now a hopelessly backward region peopled by poorly educated, violence-prone, anti-labor, religious loonies. The US today has a savage, reactionary, simple-minded popular and political culture in large part because of Grant & Co.'s triumphantly counterproductive efforts to keep the benighted South forever affixed to the long-suffering North.
Carl
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