That Grant was the greatest American of all time is indisputable. Short (5’7″ on tiptoes), quiet, unassuming (he generally wore a private’s blouse in the field), well-read (he loved novels and enjoyed an evening in the theater although he begged off Lincon’s fatal visit to Ford’s Theater just days after Appomattox), a master horseman (as he showed in action during the Mexican War), he won the War Between the States for the Union and in so doing effectively freed the slaves. As a two-term president (1869-77) following the disastrous Andrew Johnson administration, he oversaw Reconstruction, re-organized the military, established the first National Park (Yellowstone), and destroyed the original incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. During his post-presidency, he toured the globe as the most famous man alive. But his wartime habit of chain-smoking cigars caught up with him and, suffering greatly from inoperable mouth and throat cancer, he died on July 23, 1885, just days after finishing his memoirs.

In my 2020 bestseller, Last Stands, I wrote about his victory at Shiloh, early in the war, and made this assessment:

Events can make the man, and Grant is perhaps the best example. What would have been his fate had the war not occurred when and where it did? He had resigned from the Army in semi-disgrace, dogged by accusations of alcoholism. He made a hash of his business affairs (and would continue to do so throughout this life, especially in his post-presidency), and came to rely on the kindness of a grateful nation to keep the wolf from the door. (Presidents did not get pensions in those days.) He might even have sold off his memoirs piecemeal as works-for-hire journalism had not his friend Mark Twain made him an exceptionally attractive publishing offer, including a 70 percent royalty, that kept Grant’s widow, Julia, in style for the rest of her life. It also resulted in the finest wartime memoir since Caesar’s Commentaries, rivaled later only by Winston Churchill’s six-volume series, The Second World War.