| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Grant's Secret Service: The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox. By William B. Feis. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. xiv, 330 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-8032-2005-7.)

"The art of war is simple enough," Ulysses S. Grant wrote. "Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on" (p. 268). Seen today, this tenet seems easy enough, yet the Union and Confederate armies in 1861 lacked any intelligence system; thus, finding the enemy in order to attack him proved a great challenge. Many Civil War commanders, most notably George B. McClellan, were seized by inaction when faced with these uncertainties.

Grant, in contrast, not only utilized intelligence but also took decisive action. But his record of incorporating intelligence into his campaign planning is mixed, as William B. Feis notes in Grant's Secret Service. Feis takes us from Grant's first service in Missouri as a regimental commander in the summer of 1861; there, Grant learned what he considered to be an important lesson after the enemy had retreated as his troops approached. "From that experience to the close of war," Grant commented, "I never forgot that [the enemy] had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his" (p. 14).

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