With Grant at Fort Donelson, Shiloh and Vicksburg and an appreciation of General U. S. Grant — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Soldier's View of Command

The catalog lists Grant as a subject, and the book includes an appreciation of him, but the excerpts reveal that Crummer's view of Grant is filtered through the ranks. He recalls seeing Grant two or three times before Fort Donelson and thinking he looked like a fighter. At Vicksburg, Crummer speculates that Grant would not have ordered the May 22 charge had he known the strength of the enemy's entrenchments. This is not a strategic analysis but a soldier's inference. The appreciation section, which occupies the final pages, is separate from the campaign narratives. The book's title promises an appreciation, but the body of the text shows Grant as a distant figure whose decisions are felt rather than explained.

Details of the May 22 Charge at Vicksburg

The most detailed excerpt describes the assault on Vicksburg on May 22, 1863. Crummer provides a precise sequence: the regiment marched in columns of four through a cut in the Jackson road, then deployed to the left along a slope. Major Cowan gave the command to double quick and fell at the first volley. Crummer, as first sergeant, kept at the head of the regiment until enough space was given to form line under the brow of the hill. He notes that by flattening oneself like a hard tack, one was safe from musketry. The order to charge was given by the ranking captain, and the men were mowed down in bunches. This account is notable for its specific geography—the White House or Shirley House, the ravine, the 200-yard open space—and for the absence of any broader tactical context.

Camp Life and Material Conditions

Interspersed with battle scenes are details of daily life. Crummer mentions that few men had a second shirt, and knapsacks were rarely carried by the war's end. He includes an anecdote about an Irishman who refused a knapsack because if he went on dress parade with his clothes in it, the colonel would put him in the guard house. On May 21, 1863, the men were furnished with a good square meal of hard tack, sow bacon, beans, and coffee, which they considered a luxury after a month of hardship. These details ground the narrative in the material reality of a Union soldier, contrasting with the catalog's broader subject headings of battles and generalship.

Crummer's account is best read as a personal record rather than a history of the campaigns. The excerpts show a writer who values specific moments—a conversation in the dark, the feel of a hard tack, the fall of a major—over grand narrative. Readers interested in the daily texture of a soldier's experience during the western theater will find this memoir useful, especially for the Vicksburg assault. The appreciation of Grant, though promised, appears to be a separate section and should not be assumed to color the earlier chapters.

In all my years among these shelves, I've noticed a quiet kinship between that old soldier's account of Grant and Pushed and the Return Push — Text and Context. Both speak of men enduring, of ground gained and lost and gained again, each page worn soft by remembering. There's a steady heartbeat in them, a plain honesty I've come to treasure.