His plan to attack Mobile, Alabama, foundered but his successor in the West, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, focused unrelenting attention on the Confederate army defending northern Georgia, resulting eventually in the capture of Atlanta in September 1864. In fact, his unique contribution to the Union war effort became his ability to launch simultaneous offensives in multiple areas in order to keep the pressure on the Confederate armies across the map.

That is not to say that Grant ignored other theaters of the war. president Abraham Lincoln demurred, stating, “I can’t spare this man he fights.” Halleck, and renewed whispers about excess drinking.

Grant suffered severe criticism for his lapse at Shiloh, the jealousy of his superior officer, Major General Henry W. Floyd, who fled before receiving Grant’s famous demand for unconditional surrender.) Two months later, Grant endured a catastrophic surprise attack along the Tennessee River near Shiloh Church, only to redeem his defeat the next day in what was the bloodiest battle in American history up to that point. (That victory came at the expense of the Confederate commander, former Virginia governor John B. In February 1862, he captured two Confederate strongholds, Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, opening vast stretches of the Confederacy to Union occupation and giving the North its first significant battlefield victory. Grant received promotion to brigadier general in August 1861 and took command at Cairo, Illinois, at the southern tip of his adopted state. His success at this humble level of command launched an unprecedented rise in military responsibility. The need for trained officers, coupled with the patronage of the local congressman, secured him the colonelcy of the 21st Illinois Infantry, a rough- and-tumble outfit that Grant polished into efficiency. For the next seven years Grant pursued a variety of professional endeavors, none of which brought him notable success, though his reputation as an abject failure has been magnified.Īt the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was living in Galena, Illinois, where he clerked in his father’s store. He resigned his commission in 1854 and repaired to Missouri. (In 1848, he married Julia Boggs Dent, the daughter of a Missouri slave owner and a distant relative of Confederate general James Longstreet.) Like most other military officers, Grant sought solace in the bottle, although his ability to handle alcohol proved far below the norm. Assigned to isolated posts, he languished, missing his wife and growing family. Grant served with distinction in the Mexican War (1846–1848), in contrast to his record during the rest of his antebellum military career.

Ulysses s grant memoirs