Grant vs Lee: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War

With the presidential election looming in the fall, President Abraham Lincoln needed to break the deadlock. To do so, he promoted Ulysses S. Grant—the man who had strung together victory after victory in the Western Theater, including the capture of two entire Confederate armies. The unassuming “dust-covered man” was now in command of all the Union armies, and he came east to lead them.

The unlucky soldiers of George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac had developed a grudging respect for their S...