Grant’s Cottage Revisited

Reviewing Elizabeth D. Samet's The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

We can never “know” history.  Even that which we experience personally is seen through the filters of our upbringing, our teachings, and our self-derived points of view.  Perhaps this is why so many secretly envy the classical educations of the past, wherein students were buried in the actual words of those who lived, or lived close by, the various stories of mankind.  Certainly, this training in Western culture is rife with its own prejudices; we can only fantasize about the losses of more worldly knowledge and views that vaporized in the library of Alexandria.  Almost all we learn now is derived, not original; we depend on the viewpoints and editorializing of historians and what were formerly called journalists for some comprehension of past and present events.  Social media has “dissocialized” our personal experiences.

Opportunity to learn about history more directly remains always available, awaiting personal effort.  Sometimes that effort is incidental to other intentions.  Recent…