General Ulysses S. Grant was commander of all U.S. Army forces in the field during the American Civil War from the spring of 1864 until the conclusion of the conflict. He was appointed to command after successes in the Western Theater and accepted the surrender of Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Ulysses S. Grant spent most of his time as overall commander in the field with General George Meade’s Union Army of the Potomac. After the war, Grant was elected to two terms as President of the United States. Ulysses S. Grant died in 1885 at the age of 63.
Ulysses S. Grant
Recently detached from the Army of Tennessee, the Arkansas troops of Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Churchill’s division had not yet met their new commander when the division came under fire at Richmond, Kentucky, on August 30, 1862. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Despite costing the Union Army 55,000 men in five weeks of hard marching and grueling combat, Lt. Gen. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
The continued presence of a handpicked French puppet emperor in Mexico, which had so worried the Lincoln administration during the Civil War, remained a sore point with American political and military leaders after the Union victory in 1865. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Confederate President Jefferson Davis considered his old West Point classmate Albert Sidney Johnston “the greatest soldier, the ablest man, civil or military, Confederate or Union, then living,” and it is safe to say that no other general in either army began the Civil War with a more glittering—or fleeting—reputation. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Union Colonel Benjamin Grierson stuck his left foot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. Orders were quickly given, and soon a column of 1,700 blue-jacketed troopers of Grierson’s 1st Brigade, along with a battery of artillery, trampled southeast from La Grange, Tennessee, in the early dawn of April 17, 1863. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
“Every war will astonish you,” American general Dwight D. Eisenhower said after World War II. As the leader of the Allied forces that successfully landed on D-Day and marched into Berlin 11 months later, Eisenhower obviously knew what he was talking about. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
On March 8, 1864, a rainy Tuesday, President and Mrs. Lincoln held a reception at the White House in Washington. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Four hundred Confederate sailors and marines, their small arms loaded and ready, awaited their orders. Some men had their cutlasses within easy reach. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
The June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Union General William T. Sherman, not the easiest man to please, always held Colonel Benjamin Grierson in high regard. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Union General Benjamin Butler was baffled. Every night a picket guard went to an outpost 1½ miles from Fort Monroe, Virginia. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Lieutenant Colonel Horace Porter, personal aide to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, maneuvered his mount past ammunition wagons, ambulances, stragglers, and prisoners jamming the muddy roads leading back to headquarters from Five Forks, Virginia, on the evening of April 1, 1865. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Dripping wet Union soldiers stepped out of the North Anna River’s Jericho Ford on May 22, 1864, setting foot in Hanover County, Virginia. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Reports of a massive enemy force crossing the James River to assail the paper-thin Confederate lines defending Richmond reached Lt. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Men have been reporting their wars almost as long as they have fighting them. The first prehistoric cave drawings depicted hunters bringing down wild animals, and spoken accounts of battles, large and small, formed the starting point for the oral tradition of history. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
By the end of the winter campaign of 1861-1862, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had shattered the Confederate defenses in northwest Tennessee with a combined land and water attack on Forts Henry and Donelson, forcing General Albert Sidney Johnston to abandon his bastion at Nashville and retreat southward. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
In the summer of 1864, after six weeks of virtually constant combat in the Wilderness area of northern Virginia, the Union and Confederate armies of Ulysses S. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
“We have been badly used up,” a sergeant in the 5th New York Volunteer Cavalry Regiment complained in a letter to his wife on May 8, 1864, four days before J.E.B. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
In 1864, the Civil War was raging across the United States. At the epicenter of the seemingly stalemated conflict was the vital Confederate stronghold at Petersburg, Va. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
We can never know what frantic thoughts raced through George Armstrong Custer’s mind in the last hour of his life. Read more
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