General Ulysses S. Grant

Union Army Commander:

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his father’s leather store in Galena, Illinois. He was appointed by the Governor to command an unruly volunteer regiment. Grant whipped it into shape and by September 1861 he had risen to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers.

In 1865, as commanding general, Ulysses S. Grant led the Union Armies to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, General Robert E. Lee surrendered. Grant wrote out terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials. As an American hero, Grant was later elected the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877), working to implement Congressional Reconstruction and to remove the last vestiges of slavery.