Two Generals, Still Maneuvering

(NYTimes) - “Grant and Lee in War and Peace,” which opens on Friday at the New-York Historical Society, is a rejiggering of an exhibition mounted last year by the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, where it was called “Lee and Grant.”
The flip-flop in billing is partly a nod to local bias and to the fact that Grant is, after all, buried right here in New York, where he was a bit of a substance abuser and lost a fortune on Wall Street — he was one of us, in other words — while in Richmond they prefer the white-bearded patriarch who seemingly had no faults at all. But the title switch is also a reflection of the way these two generals, implacable opponents on the battlefield, have been linked by posterity in push-me-pull-you fashion, so that the reputation of one can’t go up unless the other’s sinks. Continued

Photo: Library of Congress