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Grant was respected during his lifetime both in the North and South and he achieved a worldwide reputation. Yet Grant governed during the contentious period of Reconstruction of the South, struggling to preserve the Reconstruction and taking an unpopular stand in favor of the legal and voting rights of former slaves. Lee, the slovenly dressed, cigar-chomping Grant offered generous terms to his nemesis at the surrender of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Virginia, in April 1865-allowing Confederate soldiers to return home after swearing allegiance to the United States.Īs president, many historians consider him less successful: he led an Administration plagued by scandal, although Grant was not personally tainted by charges of corruption. Forever contrasted with aristocratic Confederate General Robert E. Trusted by Lincoln, who suffered through a series of inept and insubordinate generals, Grant shared the president's hatred of slavery, his determination to preserve the Union, and, importantly, his commitment to reconcile North and South without punitive measures after the fratricidal war. But Grant turned aside these appeals and affirmed his commitment to President Abraham Lincoln's leadership and military objectives.
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Called to Washington to assume command of the Union armies after his spectacular campaign at Vicksburg in 1863, Grant was hailed as a hero and urged to run for president in the 1864 election. Grant's tenacity in war was matched by his discretion and magnanimity in victory. His strategy of remorseless engagement with the enemy led to staggering losses, which gave the advantage to the superior war-making capacity of the North, yet Grant was severely criticized for the human cost of the war. Fuller as "the greatest general of his age and one of the greatest strategists of any age." He won many important battles in the western theater, including Vicksburg and Shiloh, and is credited with defeating the Confederacy through a campaign of attrition. Grant has been described by military historian J. Grant (Ap– July 23, 1885) was the commanding general of the combined Union armies during the American Civil War and the eighteenth President of the United States.