Grant: The Making of a Legendary Military Leader

As general of the Union army and president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant faced problems as grave and demanding as any in the life of the nation: civil war, an ultimately thwarted project of Reconstruction, the early years of the sordid Gilded Age, and the battle for African American rights and freedom. But in life and in death, the general’s standing has been gradually diminished by false conceptions and harsh criticism, from rumors of his alcoholism to his reputation as a cutthroat, abrasive leader.

Focusing on his greatest military achievement in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Grant offers fresh insight into a man whose life was marked by the extremes of achievement and tragedy, from the heights of Civil War success to the depths of public ire and extreme poverty. Renowned Civil War historian James Lee McDonough shows how Grant overcame military and civilian havoc, the perils of vast enemy territory, increasing political pressure from Washington, and a seemingly unending series of setbacks to reopen the Mississippi River at Vicksburg. Alongside the Union victory and a Civil War campaign without parallel, McDonough depicts America during and after its bloody internecine conflict: from the bitter, unprecedented military and political battles over the future of our nation to the long quest for freedom for millions of people who were formerly enslaved.

McDonough presents Grant as a highly capable, flawed general who met the challenges of his army and his country—and many of the challenges of his life—as well as might have been expected of any American commander. Grant is a riveting portrait of one of our nation’s most legendary leaders, through the lens of one of the Civil War’s most decisive campaigns.