Ulysses S. Grant

(1822–1885) is the big hero of the Civil War. As a general, he fought a series of battles and was promoted to the rank of major general after forcing the surrender of a large Confederate army. After a number of successful battles, during which Grant earned a reputation as an aggressive commander, Lincoln made him commander of all of the Union Armies in 1863. As general-in-chief, Grant confronted Lee in a series of very high casualty battles in 1864 that ended by bottling up Lee at Petersburg, outside the Confederate capital of Richmond captured by the Union Army in April 1865. Lee surrendered his depleted forces to Grant. As the eighteenth President of the US (1869–1877), Grant led the Radical Republicans in their effort to eliminate all vestiges of Confederate nationalism and slavery; he effectively destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in 1871.