Two Wars: An Autobiography of General Samuel G. Frenchmexican War; War Between the States, a Diary; Reconstruction Period, His Experience; Incidents, Reminiscences, Etc.

Two Wars is the remarkable memoir of a man who lived through the two defining conflicts of nineteenth-century America, serving in both. Samuel Gibbs French fought as a Union officer in the Mexican-American War, then became a Confederate general during the Civil War. This positions him as one of the few Americans who experienced the nation's expansion and its brutal rupture from opposite sides of the uniform. Written in 1901, the memoir blends military history with intimate family lore, tracing French's New Jersey childhood, his West Point years, and his long career as a soldier. But what elevates this beyond a standard campaign memoir is its haunting later section: French witnessed the Confederacy's collapse and lived through Reconstruction, grappling with what it meant to have fought for a lost cause. The prose carries the weight of someone writing from the far side of American tragedy, looking back at the nation he helped tear apart. For readers interested in the Civil War era, military history, or the psychology of men who served contradictory loyalties, this offers a first-person perspective found nowhere else.