The Merit of Philip H. Sheridan’s Memoir Campaign

Hoping to capitalize on the success of Grant’s memoir, Mark Twain approached Philip H. Sheridan to ask him to write his memoir as well. But by 1888, the Civil War memory market was becoming saturated with generals’ books, and Twain’s assistant at Charles L. Webster and Company warned that sales of Sheridan’s book would never equal those of Grant’s, despite Sheridan’s wide popularity at the time. Nevertheless, Sheridan wrote an excellent memoir in which he created a persona who was frank about his shortcomings, among them his tendency toward insubordination, and about his strengths, among them his ability to inspire soldiers under his command. In his accounts of his Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 and his part in the final Appomattox Campaign of April 1865, Sheridan’s narrative invites discussion of the role of contingency and moral luck in his successful career. Drawing on the thinking of philosopher Thomas Nagel, the discussion considers the relation between Sheridan’s brand of high-speed maneuver warfare and his moral luck.