A MAGIA DA RECONCILIAÇÃO

Robert Lee e Ulisses Grant assinam em Appomatox o fim da Guerra Civil americana .

"No president has come near to rivaling Lincoln as a writer. It's customary to salute Ulysses Grant's "Personal Memoirs" as the greatest book ever written by a president; it has a somber grandeur and dispassion, but Grant on the Civil War is, on the whole, less vivid than his comrade-in-arms William T. Sherman, who brings the reader into the noise and stink of battle as Grant does not. The colossal reputation of "Personal Memoirs" owes much to the half-dozen pages, in chapter 67, where Grant accepts Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and renders it as a dignified reunion of old friends ("The conversation grew so pleasant that I almost forgot the object of our meeting"). The symbolism of that moment, as the Confederacy and the Union come together in a scene of almost dreamlike concord, is so deeply affecting that it elevates the whole book far above its otherwise gruff, soldierly prose. The battles (Chattanooga, Spottsylvania, Franklin, Nashville...) blur and fade; what we remember is Grant and Lee comfortably reminiscing about their shared past and thereby pointing the way forward for a nation at peace."

(Jonatham Raban,"All the President's Literature" in The WSJ 9-1-2009)