Robin Neillands
ASIN: B00NWC1U8E
Publisher: Lume Books
Pages: 196
Ulysses S. Grant made famous the expression ‘unconditional surrender’, which is how most of his campaigns ended — for his opponents.A hard-drinking soldier in a hard-drinking army, he led the Union armies to victory, first in the West and then in the East, eventually compelling the main Confederate army under Robert E. Lee to surrender at Appomattox in 1865. Yet at the beginning of the Civil War no one, least of all the man himself, anticipated that Grant would lead the Union forces to victory.Ulysses S. Grant was a failure as a pre-war soldier. His subsequent business career was even worse. His emergence as a successful general and eventual promotion to Commander-in-Chief is a stunning example of how a soldier's peacetime career sometimes gives no indication of how he will perform in a major war.Grant's advance down the Mississippi realized General Scott’s ‘Anaconda’ plan and ...