Grant’s memoirs are generally considered the best memoirs written by a president. His memoirs aren’t your traditional presidential memoirs because he died before he had a chance to write about his presidency. But that doesn’t hurt Grant because the most interesting thing (to me) about President Grant happened to him before he was president (his life as a soldier). So his memoirs describe his life prior to the Civil War through the conclusion of the Civil War. His memoirs aren’t just good for the details he gives, although if that were lacking the book wouldn’t be nearly as good either, it is good for the insights he gives into his views. Here’s an example.
There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor allowed to become so. The whites could not toil without becoming degraded, and those who did were denominated “poor white trash.” The system of labor would have soon exhaused the soil and left the people poor. The non-slavholders would have left the country, and the small slaveholder must have sold out to his more fortunate neighbor. Soon the slaves would have outnumbered the masters, and, not being in sympathy with them, would have risen in their might and exterminated them. The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all it cost.
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (The American Civil War)
