I finished volume one, having learned a few things I didn’t know. I enjoyed Grant’s direct, detailed style, without the usual flowery to-do of the 1880s. No wonder the memoir is considered a classic.
Hand grenades, for instance. I seem to remember a reference to them before, in one of the many books I’ve read by or about Civil War participants. But Grant tells me they were used by the Confederates in defense of Vicksburg. This site shows one at the bottom of the page, with a paper streamer designed to make it land on the percussion cap in the front to fire it. The Union had them, also.
Exploding musket-balls, now, I never heard of those. "…the wound was terrible," writes Grant who says Union troops also encountered them at Vicksburg. Various Web sites show the ex-Confederates denied using them, but accused the Union of doing so. It’s hard to imagine how to make one.
One of Grant’s interesting points: The South had a great advantage at the beginning of the war in that they had close to forty percent of the Nation’s trained soldiers. And because they had no standing army, those soldiers had to find service with their own state units, meaning "The whole loaf was leavened." The Union’s trained soldiers were largely concentrated in the regular army alone.
Good book. I recommend it. On to volume two.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
