author
Samuel Gibbs French
1818–1910
A career soldier who fought in the Mexican-American War and later became a Confederate general, he left behind a memoir that spans war, politics, and personal remembrance. His writing offers a firsthand window into 19th-century America at moments of deep conflict and change.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in New Jersey in 1818, Samuel Gibbs French graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1843 and served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War, where he was seriously wounded at Buena Vista. After resigning from the army, he became a planter in Mississippi before returning to military service during the Civil War.
French is best remembered as a major general in the Confederate Army, serving in the western theater and taking part in major campaigns around places including Vicksburg. Late in life, he turned his experiences into a book, Two Wars: An Autobiography of General Samuel G. French, published in 1901.
For listeners interested in memoir, military history, or the voices of people who lived through turbulent times, his work is valuable less for polish than for perspective. It preserves the reflections of a man who saw both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War firsthand, and who wrote with the long view of someone looking back over nearly a century of life.