A Just and Righteous Cause: Benjamin H. Grierson’s

5fish

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It was published 100 years after his death...

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General Benjamin H. Grierson is most widely known as the brilliant cavalryman whose actions in the Civil War's Mississippi Valley campaign facilitated Ulysses S. Grant's capture of Vicksburg. There is, however, much more to this key Union officer than a successful raid into Confederate-held Mississippi. In A Just and Righteous Cause: Benjamin H. Grierson's Civil War Memoir, edited by Bruce J. Dinges and Shirley A. Leckie, Grierson tells his story in forceful, direct, and highly engaging prose.

A Just and Righteous Cause paints a vivid picture of Grierson's prewar and Civil War career, touching on his antislavery views, Republican Party principles, and military strategy and tactics. His story begins with his parents' immigration to the United States and follows his childhood, youth, and career as a musician; the early years of his arriage; his business failures prior to becoming a cavalry officer in an Illinois regiment; his experiences in battle; and his Reconstruction appointment. Grierson also provides intimate accounts of his relationships with such prominent politicians and Union leaders as Abraham Lincoln, Richard Yates, Andrew Johnson, William T. Sherman, Ulysses S.

Grant, John C. Fré mont, and Benjamin Prentiss.

Because Grierson wrote the memoir mainly with his family as the intended audience, he manages to avoid the self-promotion that plagues many of his contemporaries' chronicles. His reliance on military records and correspondence, along with family letters, lends an immediacy rarely found in military memoirs. His reminiscences also add fuel to a reemerging debate on soldiers' motivations for enlisting— in Grierson's case, patriotism and ideology— and shed new light on the Western theater of the Civil War, which has seen a recent surge in interest among Civil War enthusiasts.

A non-West Point officer, Grierson owed his developing career to his independent studies of the military and his connections to political figures in his home state of Illinois and later to important Union leaders. Dinges and Leckie provide a helpful introduction, which gives background on the memoir and places Grierson's career into historical context. Aided by fourteen photos and two maps, as well as the editors' superb annotations, A Just and Righteous Cause is a valuable addition to Civil War history.

Google online copy....

https://books.google.com/books?id=3...a0KHZ7cAn4Q6AEwB3oECAAQSQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
 

Matt McKeon

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It was published 100 years after his death...

View attachment 6519


General Benjamin H. Grierson is most widely known as the brilliant cavalryman whose actions in the Civil War's Mississippi Valley campaign facilitated Ulysses S. Grant's capture of Vicksburg. There is, however, much more to this key Union officer than a successful raid into Confederate-held Mississippi. In A Just and Righteous Cause: Benjamin H. Grierson's Civil War Memoir, edited by Bruce J. Dinges and Shirley A. Leckie, Grierson tells his story in forceful, direct, and highly engaging prose.

A Just and Righteous Cause paints a vivid picture of Grierson's prewar and Civil War career, touching on his antislavery views, Republican Party principles, and military strategy and tactics. His story begins with his parents' immigration to the United States and follows his childhood, youth, and career as a musician; the early years of his arriage; his business failures prior to becoming a cavalry officer in an Illinois regiment; his experiences in battle; and his Reconstruction appointment. Grierson also provides intimate accounts of his relationships with such prominent politicians and Union leaders as Abraham Lincoln, Richard Yates, Andrew Johnson, William T. Sherman, Ulysses S.

Grant, John C. Fré mont, and Benjamin Prentiss.

Because Grierson wrote the memoir mainly with his family as the intended audience, he manages to avoid the self-promotion that plagues many of his contemporaries' chronicles. His reliance on military records and correspondence, along with family letters, lends an immediacy rarely found in military memoirs. His reminiscences also add fuel to a reemerging debate on soldiers' motivations for enlisting— in Grierson's case, patriotism and ideology— and shed new light on the Western theater of the Civil War, which has seen a recent surge in interest among Civil War enthusiasts.

A non-West Point officer, Grierson owed his developing career to his independent studies of the military and his connections to political figures in his home state of Illinois and later to important Union leaders. Dinges and Leckie provide a helpful introduction, which gives background on the memoir and places Grierson's career into historical context. Aided by fourteen photos and two maps, as well as the editors' superb annotations, A Just and Righteous Cause is a valuable addition to Civil War history.


Google online copy....

https://books.google.com/books?id=3...a0KHZ7cAn4Q6AEwB3oECAAQSQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Thanks for posting this. I understand he was originally a band director.
 

5fish

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Thanks for posting this. I understand he was originally a band director.
He was...

He eventually became a great cavalry commander. In 1851, he became a music teacher and band leader in Jacksonville, Illinois. He married Alice Kirk of Youngstown, Ohio on September 24, 1854. The couple had seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood.
 

5fish

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Grierson House is on the national register...


The Benjamin Henry Grierson House is a historic house located at 852 East State Street in Jacksonville, Illinois. Built circa 1850, the house was the home of U.S. Army general Benjamin Grierson from 1850 until his death. Grierson was a music teacher, band leader, and mercantile businessman in Jacksonville, Illinois, from 1850 until 1861, when he joined the Union Army after the outbreak of the Civil War. During the war, Grierson led the eponymous Grierson's Raid, a mission which cut Confederate supply lines and diverted Confederate forces during the Vicksburg Campaign. After the war, Grierson served as colonel of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, one of the original Buffalo Soldier regiments of African-American cavalry. Grierson was appointed brigadier general in 1890 and retired from the Army in the same year; his house in Jacksonville served as his permanent address for his entire time in the Army.[2] The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 20, 1980.[1]
 

5fish

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General Grierson had 20-plus years with the famous 10th Color cavalry regiment... Buffalo Soldiers...


The 10th Cavalry was one of the original six regiments of the regular army set aside for black enlisted men. These were authorized by Congress in the act of July 28, 1866 reorganizing the army for post-Civil War service, mainly against native peoples in the West. Colonel Benjamin Grierson, a music teacher with no pre-Civil War military experience, was the 10th’s first commander. Grierson distinguished himself by leading a daring cavalry raid into Mississippi during General Grant’s Vicksburg campaign of 1863. The regiment was organized at Fort Leavenworth and later Fort Riley, Kansas, with the last company assembled and in the field by October 1867. It served under Grierson for more than twenty years, until his promotion to be brigadier general in November 1888.
 
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