In the spring of 1861, a thirty-nine-year-old leather tanner from Galena, Illinois, walked into a military recruiting office and asked for a job. His name was Ulysses S. Grant. The Union had plenty of generals that year, men with prestigious educations, important families, and the confidence of the establishment.
Grant had none of those things. He was given command of a single regiment of untrained volunteers, and his first assignment was to march them north from Illinois. A soldier who saw him arrive at the camp wrote, “He don’t look as if he knew enough to find cows if you gave him hay. ” By 1865, that same soldier would surrender unconditionally to him.
Grant had attended West Point and graduated in the middle of his class. In the Mexican-American War, he proved brave, even reckless at times, but he was unimpressed with the conflict itself. In his memoirs, he later called it an unjust war fought for the wrong reasons. In 1854, Grant resigned from the army.
He tried business during the California gold rush, when fortunes were being made on all sides, and managed to fail. He lost money, made bad decisions, and fell into debt. By 1860, he was working as a clerk in his father’s leather goods store. When the war came, Grant did not wait for a commission.
He walked into a recruiting office and asked to help train volunteers. At first, nobody wanted him. Political generals with connections received the good assignments. Grant received the undisciplined rabble of the 21st Illinois Infantry, a unit so chaotic that soldiers were routinely drunk and dangerous to themselves and each other.
His task was simple: turn them into soldiers. He instituted strict, unforgiving discipline. No one could leave camp without a pass. He punished deserters, held daily drills, and was fair, never asking his men to do anything he would not do himself.
Within weeks, the 21st Illinois went from a mob of rowdy volunteers to a functioning military unit. Grant was promoted to colonel. His new assignment was to command the district of Cairo, a position on the Mississippi River. The river was vital to Union strategy.
Whoever controlled it controlled the war in the west. Grant’s early movements were modest. That changed when he met the enemy. In the fall of 1861, Grant led his first expedition in pursuit of a Confederate colonel named Thomas Harris operating in northern Missouri.
Grant had never commanded men under fire, and as he approached the position where he expected to find Confederate forces, his heart pounded. In his memoirs, he later recorded the moment with honesty. “My heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat,” he wrote. But he kept advancing.
When they reached the hill, the Confederate camp was empty. Harris had fled at the first sign of Union approach. The Confederates had been as afraid as Grant was. In that moment, Grant realized that the enemy had as much reason to fear his forces as he had had to fear theirs.
Fear was universal, but Grant was willing to advance despite it. In February 1862, Grant was promoted to major general and given command of the Army of the Tennessee, with a mission to break Confederate control of the western rivers. His first targets were Fort Henry and Fort Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. The assault on Fort Donelson was brutal.
Grant’s men climbed hills under fire and attacked entrenched positions, but they advanced. When the Confederate commander, General Simon Buckner, requested terms of surrender, Grant’s response was simple and absolute: unconditional surrender. Over twenty-one thousand Confederate soldiers laid down their weapons. The Union had its first major victory.
Three months later, Confederate forces under Albert Sidney Johnston attacked Grant’s army at Shiloh, catching them partially unprepared. The first day was catastrophic. Grant’s forces were nearly driven back into the Tennessee River, and his men were panicking and dying by the hundreds. Many officers called for retreat or surrender.
Grant ignored all of it. He repositioned his lines, rallied his officers, and organized a counterattack for the next day. When reinforcements arrived that night, Grant attacked on April 7 and drove the Confederates back across the ground they had gained the day before. It was a Union victory, but an ugly one: nearly twenty-four thousand casualties in two days, the bloodiest battle the continent had ever seen.
The northern press called him a butcher. Politically connected generals demanded his removal. Lincoln refused, understanding that in a war of survival, a general who was not willing to fight was worse than a general who made mistakes. Grant’s next target was Vicksburg, Mississippi, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River.
The city sat on high bluffs and was strongly fortified. Grant decided to cross the river south of the city, abandon his supply lines, and march inland to attack Vicksburg from behind. His chief of staff, William Sherman, told him the plan was too risky. Grant listened respectfully, then did it anyway.
In the space of two weeks, his army crossed the river, defeated and separated two Confederate forces, marched deeper into Mississippi, and encircled Vicksburg. Confederate commanders could not react fast enough. They were used to war moving at a measured pace: advance, entrench, wait for supplies. Grant understood that speed was more valuable than perfection.
The siege lasted forty-seven days. When it became clear that no relief force could reach them, the Confederate commander, John Pemberton, surrendered. On July 4, 1863, Vicksburg fell, and the entire Mississippi River was in Union hands, cutting the Confederacy in half. In the fall of 1863, a federal force under General William Rosecrans was trapped in Chattanooga, Tennessee, cut off and starving, facing Confederate lines that seemed unbreakable.
Lincoln sent for Grant. Grant arrived and immediately reorganized the supply lines, opening a route that allowed supplies to reach the trapped soldiers. Then he planned his assault. The Confederates held Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, positions that seemed impregnable.
Grant attacked anyway. In a moment that shocked both sides, his men charged up Missionary Ridge and drove the Confederates off the summit. Chattanooga was secured, and the gateway to the Deep South was open. In March 1864, Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general, the first man to hold that rank since George Washington, and gave him command of all Union armies.
Grant moved east to face Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. For the next year, he fought Lee in a series of bloody battles: the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, Petersburg. The northern press crucified him.
Anti-war elements called him a murderer. Democratic politicians demanded his replacement. Lincoln held firm. Grant’s key insight was that the Confederacy could not win a war of attrition.
The North had twenty-two million people; the South had nine million, of whom three and a half million were slaves who were not contributing to the war effort. Therefore, the only way the Union could lose was if it stopped fighting. Grant coordinated operations on all fronts. He had Sherman marching through Georgia while he fought Lee in Virginia, keeping the Confederacy under pressure everywhere simultaneously so they could never shift forces to threatened areas.
It was modern warfare, total war, and the Confederacy had no answer for it. General James Longstreet, Lee’s most trusted lieutenant, wrote in despair, “That man will fight us every day and every hour till the end of the war. ” General Joseph Johnston wrote that Grant’s strategy was to hammer continuously with superior numbers until they yielded. By April 1865, Lee’s army was starving, exhausted, and outnumbered five to one.
Grant had it surrounded at Appomattox Court House. Lee had no choice but to surrender. When Grant entered the room where Lee waited, he wore a simple blue uniform, no ceremonial sword, just a soldier meeting another soldier. As Lee’s men surrendered, Grant offered terms that were extraordinarily generous: the Confederates could keep their horses for plowing, keep their sidearms, and would not be prosecuted for treason.
When his own men began to fire a salute at the news, Grant ordered it stopped. The war was effectively over. Confederate generals feared Grant for four reasons. First, he had learned that the enemy was just as afraid as he was, and instead of being paralyzed by fear, he advanced anyway.
Sherman once explained it this way: “I am a damned sight smarter man than Grant. I know a great deal more about war than he does, but he beats me because he don’t care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight, and it scares me like hell. ” Second, Grant understood logistics as an offensive weapon; by controlling supply lines, he could control enemy movements and starve them out. Third, Grant understood that speed prevented coordination, and he attacked everywhere simultaneously before the Confederacy could respond.
Fourth, Grant understood that the North could not lose if it did not stop fighting. After the war, Grant was celebrated as the man who saved the Union and was eventually elected president, but his presidency was far less successful than his generalship. He was too trusting of men who wanted to use him. In his final years, he lost most of his money, was sick with cancer, and was broke, so he wrote his memoirs to provide for his family.
He died in 1885, having completed them just days before his death. General Joseph Johnston later said, “I had no idea of the resources of Grant for offensive operations until that campaign at Vicksburg. He won my admiration. ” Longstreet called him “a man of strong determination, iron will, clear head, and a readiness to assume responsibility.
” What made Confederate generals fear Grant was not his brilliance. It was his clarity. He saw the war plainly, understood what had to be done, and was willing to do it regardless of cost, criticism, or fear. In this way, he was not merely a brilliant general.
He was an inevitable one.