Biography of Bruce Catton:
Charles Bruce Catton was a well known author/historian who had written some of the most astounding books about the American Civil War during the 1950’s. Catton was born on the 9th of October, 1899, as a boy who grew up in Petoskey, Michigan and died on the 28th of August, 1978. He was a student that attended the Oberlin College, located near Cleveland, who had an amazing talent for storytelling which then introduced him to the world writing and being a journalist. Growing up Catton would hear stories from Men who had actually participated in the war. Catton landed his first job as a News Reporter for the Cleveland news and published his work on the Civil War. Catton started writing when he was 50 and managed to publish 13 books during his lifetime, winning awards such as the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He loved history and enjoyed stories of American adventures that made him spend his years to be an editor for the American Heritage: A magazine of History. He stayed a senior editor until his death and still wrote books on the stories that inspired and interest him the most during his lifetime. (http://clevelandartsprize.org/awardees/bruce_catton.html)
Summary of “Grant and Lee: a study in Contrasts”
Bruce Catton’s “Grant and Lee: a study in Contrasts” talks about a story of two oddly different American Generals that shared a desire to lead their world in their own respective views who never gave up as long as they can still remain standing on their feet lifting their fists up. It started with the Southern states desperate attempt at fighting the ideals that Lee has stood in. These two men were opposites of the tidewater aristocracy. They both stood for democracy, not for leading the human society, but it was because both these men had grown up surrounded by democracy and they both equally had a huge amount of understanding of how it worked. Despite being similar, both of them represented two directly different elements of American Life, each man being a perfect competitor for one another, for their causes, both displaying their strengths and weaknesses from the people that they led.
Robert E. Lee believed that the old concept of aristocracy and chivalry might be a dominant key in American Life. He was from Tidewater Virginia. Surrounded by family, culture, and tradition, Lee liked the idea that all men had equal rights and should have an equal opportunity in life. He fought for his feelings that it was an advantage that the human society had a difference in social structure. He thinks that there should be a leisure class that is supported by the ownership of land, which he believes will result in a society that would bring a class of strong men with the need to participate in the community, making land their source of wealth and influence. Lee was considered a symbol from his fellow soldiers, who were willing to die for him and his ideals. He saw himself in relation to his own region and lived in a society that could accept all but change. He would fight till the “limit of endurance” to defend something that he believes gave life the deepest purpose and meaning, he hung on the Trenches of Petersburg despite having all hope lost.
On the other hand, Ulysses S. Grant, a son of a tanner on the Western Frontier had come up the hard way and only believed in the ways of eternal toughness. He owed no respect to no one, who didn't care about anything for the past but focused mainly on the future. He developed a farm, opened up a shop, and got into the business as a trader who believed that to prosper he would need the community to prosper as well. Grant would fight for the broader concept of society. He was a modern man that was always tied to growth and expansion, waiting for him was a great age of steel and machinery and crowded cities filled with increasing power.
In the end, once the fighting was over, war managed to turn to peace. The result of these two Great American soldiers put all their succeeding generations in debt of their actions. Although they were both being different, they were both similar in a way. Their assembly at the Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, was one of the most influential parts of American History and sparked a whole new chapter to begin.
Analysis of quotation:
Grant had a hard life, he believed that men had to create their own privileges and “No man was born to anything, except perhaps to a chance to show how far he could rise”(Catton). Perhaps this was said because Grant had to work for the position he is in now. He was not born into privilege but he still proved that he gained privilege himself through hard work. This quote holds a deep meaning towards the fact that no matter what background you have, we all started the same way, and we can achieve more than we think we could.
Discussion Quotations:
Catton says that “their society might have privileges, but they would be privileges each man had won for himself.”
Catton states that “men who lived not to gain advantage for themselves, but to meet the solemn obligations which had been laid on them by the very fact that they were privileged.”