Grant's Secret Service: The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox - Hardcover

"In this intelligent, informed, and copiously detailed account, Feis (history, Buena Vista Univ.) counters the common view that Ulysses Grant disdained military intelligence and fought on intuition alone by showing that Grant slowly acquired respect for and reliance on intelligence as the complexity and range of war widened and as intelligence gathering improved. . . .Feis’s book offers the first full-dress study of military intelligence and Grant’s command. It also provides an essential primer on the ways intelligence was gathered and assessed during the war."—Library Journal.

"The art of war is simple enough," said Ulysses S. Grant. "Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can and keep moving on." Much has been written on Grant and his pursuit of the latter two prescriptions; William B. Feis offers us the first scholarly examination of Grant's first principle, the often vexing question of just where his enemy was and what he was doing. In the western theater, Grant was successful despite limited intelligence resources; his victories there stemmed in part from his ability to analyze his opponents and anticipate their actions. In the absence of intelligence data, Grant's initiative, determination, and drive carried him to success. In the East, however, to overcome Lee's advantages of strategic and operational mobility coupled with his own initiative, Grant had to adapt and became more reliant on intelligence to provide information about Confederate movements and intentions.

Feis makes the new and provocative argument that Grant's use of the Army of the Potomac's Bureau of Military Information played a significant role in Lee's defeat. Grant's Secret Service articulately rebuts accusations by Grant's detractors that his battlefield successes involved little more than the bludgeoning of an undermanned and outgunned opponent.

William B. Feis is an assistant professor of history at Buena Vista University. He has published several essays and articles, including work in North & South Magazine and Civil War History.

"In this intelligent, informed, and copiously detailed account, Feis (history, Buena Vista Univ.) counters the common view that Ulysses Grant disdained military intelligence and fought on intuition alone by showing that Grant slowly acquired respect for and reliance on intelligence as the complexity and range of war widened and as intelligence gathering improved. . . . Feis’s book offers the first full-dress study of military intelligence and Grant’s command. It also provides an essential primer on the ways intelligence was gathered and assessed during the war."—Library Journal.

"[A] magisterial analysis of Ulysses Grant's acquisition and use of military intelligence from his first days in command to the end of the war in Virginia. . . . Feis makes comprehensive use of archival and published sources to show how Grant tried to 'keep himself posted.'"—Publishers Weekly.

William B. Feis offers us the first scholarly examination of the use of military intelligence under Ulysses S. Grant’s command during the Civil War. Feis makes the new and provocative argument that Grant’s use of the Army of the Potomac’s Bureau of Military Information played a significant role in Lee’s defeat. Feis’s work articulately rebuts accusations by Grant’s detractors that his battlefield successes involved little more than the bludgeoning of an undermanned and outgunned opponent.