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
Among the historic inventory of the United States Army’s artillery weapons, few pieces have enjoyed a more predominant role or reputation than the Model 1857 12-pounder gun-howitzer, which became a mainstay of the Federal artillery during the Civil War. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
A signal rocket set off by Confederate pickets streaked skyward in the damp early morning of February 4, 1862. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Not long after Union Flag Officer David Farragut of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron received the surrender of New Orleans on April 29, 1862, he began pondering his next move. 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
During the Civil War, the strategic importance of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was readily apparent to both the Union and the Confederacy. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
Safe behind its ocean barriers, the United States paid scant attention to the wars that raged abroad during the early 19th century, taking little notice of the lessons that might have been learned from the European experience with mass killing. 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
The citizens of Vicksburg would scarcely remember a more beautiful evening. The sky on April 16, 1863, was cloudless, and as the ruddy glow of twilight faded, the vast expanse was speckled with stars. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
The guide shook uncontrollably when the gray-clad general pointed his pistol at him in the backwoods of central Georgia on the evening of July 21, 1864. Read more
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
Mr. Morris is the author of seven well-received books on 19th Century American history and literature. He has served as a consultant for A&E, the History Channel, and edited a three-book series for Purdue University Press on American Civil War and post-Civil War history, journalism and literature. 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
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
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had no military experience and discarded most of Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott’s so-called Anaconda Plan, which critics deemed too conservative. Read more
Ulysses S. Grant
The American Civil War was the tragic culmination of divergent perspectives on the proper conduct of the government of the United States and socio-economic issues that had been frequently at the forefront of American political life for decades. Read more
