"Whip the Rebellion": Ulysses S. Grant's Rise to Command.

"Whip the Rebellion": Ulysses S. Grant's Rise to Command. By George Walsh. (New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2005. Pp. 480. Paper, $15.95, ISBN 0-7653-0527-5; cloth, $25.95, ISBN 0-765-30526-7.)

George Walsh, a journalist and former editor at Macmillan Publishers, has written a sweeping historical narrative of Ulysses S. Grant's rise to commanding general of the Union armies. Written for the general public, "Whip the Rebellion": Ulysses S. Grant's Rise to Command captures the drama, intrigue, glory, honor, sacrifice, and heroism of Grant's military career. Walsh, like others who write for a popular audience, tries to balance current historical scholarship with the need to generalize and dramatize. A talented writer, Walsh is more successful in making the drama of history come alive than he is in interpreting the latest historical research for the general reader.

Walsh traces Grant's rise to command from the beginning campaigns against Forts Henry and Donelson in 1862 through the desperate Battle of Shiloh, the brilliant campaign against Vicksburg, the relief of the siege at Chattanooga, and the final long bloody campaign against Robert E. Lee from the Wilderness to Appomattox. Although inexcusably hampered by the lack of maps, Walsh's lively narrative carries the reader through the battles and campaigns without the romanticism that often plagues popular history.

Part of the energy for this narrative comes from Walsh's forceful contention that Grant's unique abilities were responsible for winning the war. "What he knew best," Walsh argues, "was how to wage war--relentlessly and with irresistible force" (p. 9). Using as a foil the somewhat dated view that Grant was barely an adequate general who won only because he had all the advantages of superior manpower and material, Walsh contends that Grant's relentless creed of "Whip the Rebellion" is what made him an exceptional general.

While Walsh's narrative of Grant's campaigns is rich with detail and drama, his portrait of Grant's character is more limited. Walsh paints Grant as modest, unselfish, and dedicated, a man who went about his business with quiet confidence, in contrast to most other union generals, particularly Henry Wager Halleck and John McClernand, who are portrayed as arrogant, timid, jealous, ambitious, and selfish. While Walsh acknowledges that Grant made mistakes, most failings are dismissed. For example, Grant's two-day drinking bout in June 1863 is excused as a result of "inactivity," an incident "luckily that did no harm to him or to his command" (p. 195). As for battlefield mistakes, Walsh typically finds Grant not responsible, but if this excuse is unavailable, such as at Cold Harbor, Walsh simply deflects criticism by declaring that "Meade would have to share the blame" with Grant (p. 284).

Besides the near deification of Grant, Walsh's picture is limited because he fails to explore some of the more controversial questions surrounding Grant's rise to command. For example, Walsh does not carefully examine the issues of whether Grant or Lincoln was responsible for designing the grand strategy for winning the war or of how the politically unsophisticated Grant was astute enough to maneuver around congressional and presidential interferences. An exploration of these and other questions in the Civil War literature would have allowed Walsh to present a more multidimensional understanding of Grant.

Walsh's talent in depicting the drama of Grant's rise to command makes for a compelling story. Unfortunately, "Whip the Rebellion" fails to balance a lively narrative with an equally compelling picture of Grant based on current scholarship.

STEPHEN HANSEN

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville