The Training Ground: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War, 1846-1848
Why You'll Love This
Before Grant and Lee were enemies at Appomattox, they were brothers-in-arms fighting side by side in Mexico — and that forgotten war made them both.
- Great if you want: Civil War context told through the soldiers' earlier, formative years
- The experience: Propulsive and cinematic — reads more like narrative adventure than dry history
- The writing: Dugard builds real figures like characters, keeping biography feeling like a thriller
- Skip if: You want deep scholarly analysis over fast-moving narrative history
About This Book
Before Grant and Lee became the defining opponents of the Civil War, they were something far stranger and more poignant: comrades in arms. In the late 1840s, a remarkable cluster of young officers—Grant, Lee, Sherman, Jefferson Davis, and others who would reshape American history—fought side by side in Mexico, learning war together on foreign soil. Martin Dugard brings that overlooked conflict back to life, revealing how the battlefields of Vera Cruz and Monterrey quietly scripted the tragedy of the 1860s. The stakes feel almost unbearable once you recognize what these friendships would eventually cost.
Dugard writes with the momentum of a thriller and the rigor of a historian, keeping the pages turning through sieges and forced marches without sacrificing accuracy or nuance. What sets this book apart is its structural ambition: by tracking multiple figures simultaneously, Dugard lets readers watch the same young men developing the tactical instincts and personal grudges that would define their later careers. The irony accumulates steadily, lending even straightforward battle sequences a layer of dramatic weight that purely chronological military history rarely achieves.