4 or 5 years ago I was going to auctions once or twice a month. I was able to bid and mist likely win a bible dedicated to W.Scott. Even though I knew who he was at the time I didn’t put in a bid. It went for short moneyLee was part of the nobility. He had married upwards in the Virginian nobility. He believed in the American version of the landed nobility presiding over a class of unfree laborers. He is comparable to Tolstoy's fictional Andrei Bolkonsky. The system was already obsolete even in Russia by 1814, though it struggled on in Russia until Alexander II, and in the USA based on a cruel racial classification.
The tragedy of Lee was committing to a system which had no place in the modern world. Tolstoy allowed his fictional Bolkonsky to die, but Lee lived to see the old Virginia system wither away as the rest of the US bypassed the south. Grant was from Ohio. Though he did get standard nationalizing training at West Point, relative the east coast patricians, he was a barbarian. And they never let him forget it. Tolstoy's Vasily Denisov is the comparable character. Grant spent time in Missouri, Texas, and Mexico. He traversed Panama twice and spent time in California and Oregon with the other young officers.
Grant was disposable up until Vicksburg. The difference between the US Civil War and Tolstoy's fictional account of the Napoloenic war is that Winfield Scott, the Civil War figure most comparable to Tolstoy's fictional representation of Kutuzov never let Grant's outsider status conceal his ability to manage an operation.
Yet I think my money was well spent on a Slinky that I have been trying to walk down my stairs for 5 years leading me to the edge of madness.
**** do I regret missing that bible.