At the time of his death, Ulysses S. Grant was the most famous person in America, considered by most citizens to be equal in stature to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Yet today his monuments are rarely visited, his military reputation is overshadowed by that of Robert E. Lee, and his presidency is permanently mired at the bottom of historical rankings. In an insightful blend of biography and cultural history, Joan Waugh traces Grant's shifting national and international reputation, illuminating the role of memory in our understanding of American history. She captures a sense of what led nineteenth-century Americans to overlook Grant's obvious faults and hold him up as a critically important symbol of national reconciliation and unity. Waugh further shows that Grant's reputation and place in public memory closely parallel the rise and fall of the northern version of the Civil War story — in which the United States was the clear, morally superior victor and Grant was the emblem of that victory. After the failure of Reconstruction, the dominant Union myths about the war gave way to a southern version that emphasized a more sentimental remembrance of the honor and courage of both sides and ennobled the "Lost Cause." By the 1920s, Grant's reputation had plummeted. Most Americans today are unaware of how revered Grant was in his lifetime. Joan Waugh uncovers the reasons behind the rise and fall of his renown, underscoring as well the fluctuating memory of the Civil War itself.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian is a comprehensive, multi-theater, war-long comparison of the command skills of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Unlike most analyses, Bonekemper's work clarifies the impact both generals had on the outcome of the Civil War - namely, the assistance that Lee provided to Grant by Lee's excessive casualties in Virginia, the consequent drain of Confederate resources from Grant's battlefronts, and Lee's refusal and delay of reinforcements to the combat areas where Grant was operating." "Building on detailed accounts of both generals' major campaigns and battles, this book provides a detailed comparison of the primary military and personal traits of the two men. That analysis supports the preface discussion and the chapter-by-chapter conclusions that Grant did what the North needed to do to win the war: be aggressive, eliminate enemy armies, and do so with minimal casualties (154,000), while Lee was too offensive for the undermanned Confederacy, suffered intolerable casualties (209,000), and allowed his obsession with the Commonwealth of Virginia to obscure the broader interests of the Confederacy. In addition, readers will find interest in the 18 highly detailed and revealing battle maps, as well as in a comprehensive set of appendices that describes the casualties incurred by each army, battle by battle."--BOOK JACKET.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 421-430) and index.

"Generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant are without a doubt two of the most important, and heavily published about, figures in nineteenth-century American history. Their often controversial characters, lives and careers are intrinsically linked with the American Civil War, and subsequent written histories on both individuals have frequently been shaped by the positions and roles both took up during that conflict." "However, curiously, despite the enormous amount of published material on the Civil War, including individual biographies of Lee and Grant, there is almost nothing that has been published which looks at these two figures together and which compares them over an extended period of time. This new, illustrated book is the first to combine fascinating images and written narrative text. Together with the accompanying touring exhibition, it provides a major re-assessment of the lives, careers, and historical impact of Lee and Grant. It also charts the development of historical thought and popular attitudes towards both figures in the years since the outbreak of the Civil War."--BOOK JACKET.

In the study of field fortifications in the Civil War that began withField Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War, Hess turns to the 1864 Overland campaign to cover battles from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor. Drawing on meticulous research in primary sources and careful examination of trench remnants at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor, and Bermuda Hundred, Hess describes Union and Confederate earthworks and how Grant and Lee used them in this new era of field entrenchments.

"Prior to the battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, Union Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant had yet to win a battle and barely clung to command of his army. His commander was already seeking to replace him when, just days before this campaign, Grant was officially charged with chronic drunkenness. Grant's Confederate opponent, an obscure lieutenant colonel named Nathan Bedford Forrest, was similarly untested in battle. Politically, the two men could not have been more different. Forrest had made himself rich before the war trading slaves, while Grant had freed the only slave he ever owned. But the two had something in common: a desperate, unrelenting desire for victory at any cost." "Ill-clad Union and Confederate soldiers endured horrific combat in rain, snow, and sleet. Blood ran thick on both sides; wounded soldiers froze to death on the battlefields. After ten days, Grant won the victory he needed to keep his army and, ultimately, to save the Union itself. It was a turning point for Forrest as well. He had fought bravely but was undone by his superiors: a quarter of history's most flawed generals led the Confederate command. Nonetheless, Forrest emerged from these battles with fifteen bullet marks on his coat and an aura of iron. Forrest was beginning to win the renown that would later account him the continent's greatest horse soldier and one of its most wily, ruthless raiders." "The Fort Henry and Fort Donelson battles forever changed the course of the Civil War - and American history. Grant's dogged aggressiveness opened Tennessee to the Union armies and gashed a wound in Dixie from which the Confederacy would never recover. And, most importantly, Grant saved and launched the career of the individual on whom Federal triumph in the Civil War most depended: himself."--BOOK JACKET.

"Based on close readings of newspapers, a wide range of party documents, and other primary sources, Slap analyzes the election to confront one of the major questions in American political history: how, and why, did Reconstruction come to an end? His focus on the unintended consequences of Liberal Republican politics is a provocative contribution to this important debate."--BOOK JACKET.