Grants Final Victory

In a masterful narrative, a prominent historian brings to life the last year of General Grant's life--a tragic, poignant, and inspiring story.

Publisher Description

"We were as brothers," William Tecumseh Sherman said, describing his relationship to Ulysses S. Grant. They were incontestably two of the most important figures in the Civil War, but until now there has been no book about their victorious partnership and the deep friendship that made it possible. They were prewar failures--Grant, forced to resign from the Regular Army because of his drinking, and Sherman, who held four different jobs, including a beloved position at a military academy in the South, during the four years before the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter. But heeding the call to save the Union each struggled past political hurdles to join the war effort. And taking each other's measure at the Battle of Shiloh, ten months into the war, they began their unique collaboration. Often together under fire on the war's great battlefields, they smoked cigars as they gave orders and learned from their mistakes as well as from their shrewd decisions. They shared the demands of family life and the heartache of loss, including the tragic death of Shermans's favorite son. They supported each other in the face of mudslinging criticism by the press and politicians. Their growing mutual admiration and trust, which President Lincoln increasingly relied upon, would set the stage for the crucial final year of the war. While Grant battled with Lee in the campaigns that ended at Appomattox Court House, Sherman first marched through Georgia to Atlanta, and then continued with his epic March to the Sea. Not only did Grant and Sherman come to think alike, but, even though their headquarters at that time were hundreds of miles apart, they were in virtually daily communication strategizing the final moves of the war and planning how to win the peace that would follow. Moving and elegantly written, Grant and Sherman is an historical page turner: a gripping portrait of two men, whose friendship, forged on the battlefield, would win the Civil War.

Author Eric Metaxas has given Craig von Buseck's previous work glowing commendations: "Hats off to Craig von Buseck for his tremendous research and work!" Victor! will not disappoint; this inspiring biography contains tremendous research that offers an unexpected inspirational story about love and perseverance from one of America's greatest heroes. In some ways, everything in our world seems out of control, but turmoil has been a part of the evolution of our nation since its founding. America has endured extremely dark periods in its history--the Revolution, World War II, and perhaps the darkest time of all, the Civil War. But in darkness, leaders emerge to shine a light of hope to guide the people into the future. During the dark days of the American Civil War, one leader--Ulysses S. Grant--emerged to guide the nation to victory, then to the beginnings of reconciliation. As Lieutenant General, he defeated the rebellion. As Chief of the Army, he provided a stabilizing presence during the Andrew Johnson impeachment. As Presidential candidate, he spoke for every American in his slogan: "Let Us Have Peace." But there is one story of Grant's heroism that is rarely told. Perhaps the most dramatic season in Grant's life came in his final two years. After leaving the White House he lost all his money in a massive Ponzi scheme. Then only a few months later he received the devastating news that he was dying of throat cancer. Dr. Craig von Buseck uncovers the inspiring and intimate side of this historical legend while providing an in-depth look at the last two years of Grant's life. Often glossed over in other biographies, the tale told in Victor! focuses on these events. It reveals the driving force behind the winning strategy in his final battle-- the campaign to restore his family's fortune, to ensure his wife is cared for after his death, and to write his memoirs to remind the world that the Civil War was about slavery and a new birth of freedom. Frederick Douglass, eulogized Grant as "a man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point. In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior." Victor! gives a glimpse into the life and character of this man that evoked such a tribute from the greatest African-American mind of the 19th Century. Victor! offers a unique narrative approach allowing readers to hear the voice of a dying General Grant as he writes his memoirs and takes readers back in time to key turning points in the War Between the States--Vicksburg, The Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and ultimately, Appomattox. As Grant is constantly jarred back to the present pain, exhaustion, and sadness as he slowly dies of cancer, readers will be inspired by his courage and tenacity to persevere in adversary to achieve victory in the struggles of their own lives.

The remarkable story of how one of America’s greatest military heroes became a literary legend. The former general in chief of the Union armies during the Civil War . . . the two-term president of the United States . . . the beloved ambassador of American goodwill around the globe . . . the respected New York financier—Ulysses S. Grant—was dying. The hardscrabble man who regularly smoked twenty cigars a day had developed terminal throat cancer. Thus began Grant’s final battle—a race against his own failing health to complete his personal memoirs in an attempt to secure his family’s financial security. But the project evolved into something far more: an effort to secure the very meaning of the Civil War itself and how it would be remembered. In this maelstrom of woe, Grant refused to surrender. Putting pen to paper, the hero of Appomattox embarked on his final campaign: an effort to write his memoirs before he died. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant would cement his place as not only one of America’s greatest heroes but also as one of its most sublime literary voices. Authors Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White have recounted Grant’s battlefield exploits as historians at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, and Mackowski, as an academic, has studied Grant’s literary career. Their familiarity with the former president as a general and as a writer bring Grant’s Last Battle to life with new insight, told with the engaging prose that has become the hallmark of the Emerging Civil War Series.

A fictionalized account of an alternate American Civil War recounts events following the capture of Vicksburg by General Ulysses S. Grant and traces the northern army's journey to Gettysburg.

Faced with failing health and financial ruin, the Civil War's greatest general and former president wrote his personal memoirs to secure his family's future - and won himself a unique place in American letters. Devoted almost entirely to his life as a soldier, Grant's Memoirs traces the trajectory of his extraordinary career - from West Point cadet to general-in-chief of all Union armies. For their directness and clarity, his writings on war are without rival in American literature, and his autobiography deserves a place among the very best in the genre.

“Engaging, entertaining, educational, and eclectic, this collection of brief essays . . . provides hope for the future of accessible Civil War history.” —A. Wilson Greene, author of A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg With the election looming in the fall, President Abraham Lincoln needed to break the deadlock. To do so, he promoted Ulysses S. Grant—the man who’d 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 Southern adversary and assumed a wait-and-see attitude: “Grant,” they reasoned, “has never met Bobby Lee yet.” By the spring of 1864, Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, had come to embody the Confederate cause. Grant knew as much and decided to take the field with the Potomac army. He ordered his subordinates to forgo efforts to capture Richmond in favor of annihilating Lee’s command. Grant’s directive to Meade was straightforward: “Where Lee goes, there you will go also.” Lee and Grant would come to symbolize the armies they led when the spring 1864 campaign began in northern Virginia in the Wilderness on May 5. What followed was a desperate. bloody death match that ran through the long siege of Richmond and Petersburg before finally ending at Appomattox Court House eleven months later—but at what cost along the way? This book recounts some of the most famous episodes and compelling human dramas from the marquee matchup of the Civil War. These expanded and revised essays also commemorate a decade of Emerging Civil War, a “best of” collection on the Overland Campaign, the siege of Petersburg, and the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.

Grant was the most famous person in America, considered by most citizens to be equal in stature to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Yet today his monuments are rarely visited, his military reputation is overshadowed by that of Robert E. Lee, and his presidency is permanently mired at the bottom of historical rankings. In an insightful blen...