GREELEY, Horace. The American Conflict.
A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-’64: Its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to Exhibit Especially Its Moral and Political Phases, with the Drift and Progress of American Opinion Respecting Human Slavery, From 1776 to the Close of the War for the Union. Hartford: Published by O.D. Case & Company; Chicago: Geo. & C.W. Sherwood, 1865.
[together with]
The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-’65… Hartford: Published by O.D. Case & Company, 1867.
Two volumes, thick 8vo.; three-quarter brown morocco stamped in gilt; six spine compartments; five raised bands; edges gilt; hinges cracked; spines chipped, tips rubbed.
First editions. Sabin 28482. Laid into volume two is a note from the publisher in Hartford, dated March 1, 1867: “General U.S. Grant, Washington D.C. We take the liberty to send you with this a copy of the second and concluding volume of the American Conflict. Should you be willing to give us your views of Mr. Greeley’s History complete as a record of the events it chronicles we shall be pleased to have you do so & esteem it a great favor. Yours Respectfully, O.D. Case & Co.,” with Jesse R. Grant’s library stamp on the front pastedown.
The publishers solicited this work from Greeley shortly after Gettysburg and the New York City draft riots. The first volume sold well, largely on the strength of Greeley’s reputation as a leading abolitionist. That reputation was diminished during the war, however, by the editor’s frequent flip-flops. Little evidence of the editors’ doubts about the administration’s strategy appeared in the second volume of The American Conflict. “Gen. Grant’s qualifications for this momentous trust were not universally conceded,” Greeley wrote. “There was one point, however, wherein his fitness for chief command was decided if not preeminent: and that was an utter disbelief in the efficacy of any rosewater treatment of the Rebellion….No love-taps, in his view, would ever persuade the rebel chiefs to return to loyalty, so long as their military power should remain essentially unbroken; and he had no conception of any mode of breaking that power save by strong armies in bloody battles.”
Greeley claimed that Grant’s strategy aimed “to overpower and crush by brute force—by the employment of overwhelming numbers—and by a lavish expenditure of blood. Doubtless,” he continued in patronizing tones, “a great military genius, such as appears once in two or three centuries, might have achieved them at a smaller cost; as a timid, hesitating, purposeless commander would have failed to achieve them at all. The merit which may be fairly claimed for Grant is that of resolutely undertaking a very difficult and formidable task, and executing it to the best of his ability—at all events, doing it.”
By the time volume two was published in 1867, Grant was a national hero, and Greeley was tottering towards disgrace. While 125,000 copies of his first volume had been sold (netting $10,000 for the author), public outrage over Greeley’s role in Jefferson Davis’s release caused many to cancel their subscriptions to the second. There is no record of how Grant responded to all this, or to the publisher’s request for his take on the book. By the time the General and the editor squared off in their almost farcical mismatch of 1872, Greeley had lost most of the public esteem that sustained his career between 1841 and 1861, and Grant, in spite of his first-term blunders, never felt challenged by such an electoral novice.