Ulysses S. Grant and Related Topics

Clockwise from top: Battle of Gettysburg

Union Captain John Tidball's artillery

Confederate prisoners

ironclad USS Atlanta (1861)

Ruins of Richmond, Virginia

Battle of Franklin

American Civil War

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Civil war in the United States between the Union (states that remained loyal to the federal union, or "the North") and the Confederacy (states that voted to secede, or "the South").

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, aroused public opinion about the evils of slavery. According to legend, when Lincoln was introduced to her at the White House, his first words were, "So this is the little lady who started this Great War."

Frederick Douglass, a former slave, was a leading abolitionist

Marais des Cygnes massacre of anti-slavery Kansans, May 19, 1858

Mathew Brady, Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 1860

The first published imprint of secession, a broadside issued by the Charleston Mercury, December 20, 1860

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America (1861–1865)

Bombardment of the Fort by the Confederates

Rioters attacking a building during the New York anti-draft riots of 1863

Clashes on the rivers were melees of ironclads, cottonclads, gunboats and rams, complicated by naval mines and fire rafts.

Battle between the USS Monitor and USS Merrimack (1855)

General Scott's "Anaconda Plan" 1861. Tightening naval blockade, forcing rebels out of Missouri along the Mississippi River, Kentucky Unionists sit on the fence, idled cotton industry illustrated in Georgia.

Gunline of nine Union ironclads. South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Charleston. Continuous blockade of all major ports was sustained by North's overwhelming war production.

A December 1861 cartoon in Punch magazine in London ridicules American aggressiveness in the Trent Affair. John Bull, at right, warns Uncle Sam, "You do what's right, my son, or I'll blow you out of the water."

County map of Civil War battles by theater and year

"Stonewall" Jackson got his nickname at Bull Run.

The Battle of Antietam, the Civil War's deadliest one-day fight.

Confederate dead overrun at Marye's Heights, reoccupied next day May 4, 1863

By 1863, the Union controlled large portions of the Western Theater, especially areas surrounding the Mississippi River

The Battle of Chickamauga, the highest two-day losses

Nathaniel Lyon secured St. Louis docks and arsenal, led Union forces to expel Missouri Confederate forces and government.

These dead soldiers—from Ewell's May 1864 attack at Spotsylvania—delayed Grant's advance on Richmond in the Overland Campaign.

Map of Confederate territory losses year by year

Burying Union dead on the Antietam battlefield, 1862

Through the supervision of the Freedmen's Bureau, northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.

Beginning in 1961 the U.S. Post Office released commemorative stamps for five famous battles, each issued on the 100th anniversary of the respective battle.

The Battle of Fort Sumter, as depicted by Currier and Ives.

Slave states that seceded before April 15, 1861 Slave states that seceded after April 15, 1861 Union states that permitted slavery (border states) Union states that banned slavery
Territories

US Secession map. The Union vs. the Confederacy.
Union states
Union territories not permitting slavery
Border Union states, permitting slavery (One of these states, West Virginia was created in 1863)
Confederate states
Union territories that permitted slavery (claimed by Confederacy) at the start of the war, but where slavery was outlawed by the U.S. in 1862

Abolition of slavery in the various states of the United States over time:Abolition of slavery during or shortly after the American Revolution
The Northwest Ordinance, 1787
Gradual emancipation in New York (starting 1799, completed 1827) and New Jersey (starting 1804, completed by Thirteenth Amendment, 1865)
The Missouri Compromise, 1821
Effective abolition of slavery by Mexican or joint US/British authority
Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1861
Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1862
Emancipation Proclamation as originally issued, January 1, 1863
Subsequent operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863
Abolition of slavery by state action during the Civil War
Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1864
Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865
Thirteenth Amendment to the US constitution, December 18, 1865
Territory incorporated into the US after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment

Oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and, among other promises, to "abide by and faithfully support all acts of Congress passed during the . . . rebellion having reference to slaves . . . ," signed by former Confederate officer Samuel M. Kennard on June 27, 1865

Western successes led to General Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864.

The ruins of Richmond, Virginia, the former Confederate capital, after the American Civil War; newly-freed African Americans voting for the first time in 1867; office of the Freedmen's Bureau in Memphis, Tennessee; Memphis riots of 1866

Reconstruction era

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Period in American history following the American Civil War ; it lasted from 1865 to 1877 and marked a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States.

The Southern economy had been ruined by the war. Charleston, South Carolina: Broad Street, 1865

The distribution of wealth per capita in 1872, illustrating the disparity between North and South in that period

A political cartoon of Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, 1865, entitled "The Rail Splitter At Work Repairing the Union". The caption reads (Johnson): "Take it quietly Uncle Abe and I will draw it closer than ever." (Lincoln): "A few more stitches Andy and the good old Union will be mended."

Monument in honor of the Grand Army of the Republic, organized after the war

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (1861–1865)

Celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation in Massachusetts, 1862

Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.

Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States (1865–1869)

An October 24th, 1874 Harper's Magazine editorial cartoon by Thomas Nast denouncing KKK and White League murders of innocent Blacks

The debate over Reconstruction and the Freedmen's Bureau was nationwide. This 1866 Pennsylvania election poster alleged that the bureau kept the Negro in idleness at the expense of the hardworking white taxpayer. A racist caricature of an African American is depicted.

1868 Republican cartoon identifies Democratic candidates Seymour and Blair (right) with KKK violence and with Confederate soldiers (left).

"This is a white man's government", Thomas Nast's caricature of the forces arraigned against Grant and Reconstruction in the 1868 election. Atop a black Union veteran reaching for a ballot box: the New York City Irish; Confederate and Klansman Nathan Bedford Forrest; and big-money Democratic Party chairman August Belmont, a burning freedmen's school in the background. Harper's Weekly, September 5, 1868.

Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States (1869–1877)

Grant's Attorney General Amos T. Akerman prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan, believing that the strong arm of the federal Justice Department could pacify the South.

Eastman Johnson's 1863 painting The Lord is My Shepherd, of a man reading the Bible

Atlanta's rail yard and roundhouse in ruins shortly after the end of the Civil War

$20 banknote with portrait of Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch

Winslow Homer's 1876 painting A Visit from the Old Mistress

A Republican Form of Government and No Domestic Violence, by Thomas Nast, a political cartoon about the Wheeler Compromise in Louisiana, published in Harper's Weekly, March 6, 1875

White Leaguers attacking the New Orleans integrated police force and state militia, Battle of Liberty Place, 1874

Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States (1877–1881)

A poster for the 1939 epic film Gone with the Wind, which is set during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras

Map of the five Reconstruction military districts
First Military District
Second Military District
Third Military District
Fourth Military District
Fifth Military District

Elected in 1868, Republican President Ulysses S. Grant supported congressional Reconstruction and enforced the protection of African Americans in the South via the Enforcement Acts recently passed by Congress.

Photograph by Mathew Brady of Sherman at Washington, D.C., in May 1865. The black ribbon of mourning on his left arm is for President Abraham Lincoln.

William Tecumseh Sherman

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American soldier, businessman, educator, and author.

California Registered Historic Landmark plaque at the location in Jackson Square, San Francisco, of the branch of the Bank of Lucas, Turner & Co. that Sherman directed from 1853 to 1857

Two cannons on display in front of the Military Science building at Louisiana State University, which were used at the Battle of Fort Sumter and procured by Sherman for the university after the U.S. Civil War.

Portrait by Mathew Brady, c. undefined 1864

Oil portrait of Sherman by George P. A. Healy, 1866

Engraving depicting Admiral Porter's flotilla of gunships and transports arriving below Vicksburg on April 16, 1863. General Sherman is rowing out to the flagship, the USS Benton, in a yawl.

Map of the Battles for Chattanooga, 1863

Map of Sherman's campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas, 1864–1865

Sherman on horseback at Federal Fort No. 7, after the Atlanta Campaign, September 1864

Green–Meldrim House, which served as Sherman's headquarters after his capture of Savannah in December 1864

The Burning of Columbia, South Carolina (1865) by William Waud for Harper's Weekly

From left to right, Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, and Porter meet on board the River Queen on March 27, 1865, near City Point, Virginia. The 1868 oil painting The Peacemakers by G. P. A. Healy is in the White House collection.

Sherman with Howard, Logan, Hazen, Davis, Slocum, and Mower, photographed by Mathew Brady, May 1865

Portrait by Mathew Brady or Levin C. Handy, between 1865 and 1880

Photograph by G. N. Barnard of Sherman's troops destroying a railroad in Atlanta, 1864

An 1868 engraving by Alexander Hay Ritchie depicting the March to the Sea

Map of Sherman's advance from Atlanta to Goldsboro

Cover of sheet music for a song celebrating the March to the Sea (1865)

Sherman (third from left) and other Indian Peace Commissioners in council with native chiefs and headmen, at the signing of the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868

Portrait of Sherman in the frontispiece of the second edition of his Memoirs (1886). The engraving is based on a photograph taken ca. 1885 by Napoleon Sarony.

Shoulder strap insignia, introduced by Sherman in 1872 for his use as General of the Army

Sherman in his later years, in civilian evening clothes

William Tecumseh Sherman monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1902, located at Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan, New York, incorporates a statue of Nike titled Victory

He recovered by forging a close partnership with General Ulysses S. Grant.

Western theater of the American Civil War

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The Western Theater of the American Civil War encompassed major military operations in the states of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee, as well as Louisiana east of the Mississippi River.

Western Theater map at The Photographic History of the Civil War

From Belmont (November 1861) to Shiloh (April 1862)

From Corinth (May 1862) to Perryville (October 1862)

Operations against Vicksburg and Grant's Bayou Operations

From Vicksburg (December 1862 – July 1863) to Chickamauga (September 1863)

Battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga Campaign

Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee had early successes in Kentucky and western Tennessee in 1861 and 1862, capturing the important strategic locations of forts Henry and Donelson.

Robert E. Lee

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Confederate general who served the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War, during which he was appointed the overall commander of the Confederate States Army.

Lee at age 31 in 1838, as a Lieutenant of Engineers in the U.S. Army

Robert E. Lee, around age 38, and his son William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, around age 8, c.1845

Robert E. Lee around age 43, when he was a brevet lieutenant-colonel of engineers, c. 1850

Lee mounted on Traveller (September 1866)

Battle of Gettysburg, by Thure de Thulstrup

Lee with son Custis (left) and aide Walter H. Taylor (right) by Brady, April 16, 1865

General Lee and his Confederate officers in their first meeting since Appomattox, August 1869.

Oath of amnesty submitted by Robert E. Lee in 1865

Robert E. Lee, oil on canvas, Edward Calledon Bruce, 1865. Virginia Historical Society

Robert Edward Lee in art at the Battle of Chancellorsville in a stained glass window of the Washington National Cathedral

Facade view of Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial — at Arlington National Cemetery, in Virginia, pictured in 2006

Unveiling of the Equestrian Statue of Robert E. Lee, May 29, 1890, Richmond, Virginia

The removal of Lee's statue from a monument in New Orleans

Stained glass of Lee's life in the National Cathedral

Robert E. Lee, National Statuary Hall, Washington, D.C. Edward Virginius Valentine, sculptor, 1909

Robert E Lee, Virginia Monument, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Frederick William Sievers, sculptor, 1917

Robert E. Lee Monument by Mercié, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia, 1890

Statue of Lee at the Confederate War Memorial, Dallas, 1896

University Chapel on the campus of Washington and Lee University

He led his army in the minor and inconclusive Bristoe Campaign that fall before General Ulysses S. Grant took command of Union armies in the spring of 1864.

Flag of the United States from 1863 until 1865 (35 states/stars)

Union Army

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The land force that fought to preserve the Union of the collective states.

Recruiting poster for the 1st Battalion New York Mounted Rifles

General George B. McClellan with staff and dignitaries (from left to right): Gen. George W. Morell, Lt. Col. A.V. Colburn, Gen. McClellan, Lt. Col. N.B. Sweitzer, Prince de Joinville (son of King Louis Philippe of France), and on the very right – the prince's nephew, Count de Paris

The champions of the Union – 1861 lithograph by Currier & Ives

Officers of the 3rd Massachusetts Heavy Artillery Regiment, Washington, D.C. (1865)

Non-commissioned officers of the 93rd New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment

The 26th U.S. Colored Volunteer Infantry on parade, Camp William Penn, Pennsylvania, 1865

Twenty-year-old German immigrant John Haag of Company B, 26th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment (August 1862)

Portrait of an African American Union soldier at Benton Barracks

Kady Brownell, a vivandière from Rhode Island

In addition, almost 200 West Point graduates who had previously left the Army, including Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Braxton Bragg, returned to service at the outbreak of the war.

Radical Republicans

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The Radical Republicans (later also known as "Stalwarts" ) were a faction of American politicians within the Republican Party from the founding of the Republican Party in 1854 (before the American Civil War) until the end of Reconstruction in the Compromise of 1877.

Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury

Henry Winter Davis, one of the authors of the Wade–Davis Manifesto opposing Lincoln's "ten percent" reconstruction plan

Edwin McMasters Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, whom Johnson tried to remove from office

"Grant's Last Outrage in Louisiana" art in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper of January 23, 1875

They included John A. Logan of Illinois, Edwin Stanton of Ohio, Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, Ulysses S. Grant of Illinois and Vice President Andrew Johnson; Johnson would break with the Radicals after he became president.

Philip Sheridan

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Career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War.

Brevet Second Lieutenant Philip Sheridan, engraving by H. B. Hall

Rienzi, stuffed and on display at the National Museum of American History

Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan and his generals in front of Sheridan's tent, 1864. Left to right: Henry E. Davies, David McM. Gregg, Sheridan, Wesley Merritt, Alfred Torbert, and James H. Wilson.

Sheridan's Ride, chromolithograph by Thure de Thulstrup

Lee's retreat in the Appomattox Campaign, April 3–9, 1865

Sheridan portrait by Mathew Brady or Levin C. Handy

General Sheridan stands by his dispatches by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, v. 19, no. 944 (January 30, 1875), p. 89.

A cartoon from Harper's Weekly of December 21, 1878, features Philip Sheridan and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz

Sheridan's headstone at Arlington National Cemetery. The inscription faces Washington, D.C.

Sheridan memorialized on the 1890 $10 Treasury note, and one of 53 people depicted on United States banknotes

Generals Sherman, Grant and Sheridan, Issue of 1937

Equestrian statue of Philip Sheridan in the center of Sheridan Circle in Washington, D.C.

Sheridan's Richmond Raid, including the Battles of Yellow Tavern and Meadow Bridge

Routes of Federal and Confederate cavalry to Trevilian Station, June 7–10, 1864

Sheridan's return to the Army of the Potomac from his Trevilian Station raid, including the Battle of Saint Mary's Church

His career was noted for his rapid rise to major general and his close association with General-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant, who transferred Sheridan from command of an infantry division in the Western Theater to lead the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac in the East.

Overland Campaign

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Series of battles fought in Virginia during May and June 1864, in the American Civil War.

Union staff meeting at Massaponax Baptist Church on May 21, 1864. Grant has his back to the smaller tree with Charles Anderson Dana to his left, while Meade is seated at the far left.

Movements in the Overland Campaign, May 27–29, 1864, following the Battle of North Anna

Movement to Totopotomoy, May 25–28, 1864, following the Battle of North Anna

Movements in the Overland Campaign, May 29, and actions May 30, 1864

Battle of Totopotomoy Creek, May 30, 1864

Positions of the armies on the afternoon of June 1, 1864

Cold Harbor, Virginia. African Americans collecting bones of soldiers killed in the battle. Photo by John Reekie, April 1865.

Crossing the James River, 12–16 June 1864.

Sheridan's return to the Army of the Potomac from his Trevilian Station raid

5 a.m., May 6. Hancock attacks Hill on the Plank Road

6–10 a.m., May 6. Longstreet counterattacks

11 a.m., May 6. Longstreet attacks Hancock's flank from the railroad bed

Movements on May 7, 1864; cavalry actions inset

Positions and movements on the Union flanks, May 9

Movements, May 17, final Union attacks, May 18

Actions on May 23: Hancock attacks "Henagan's Redoubt", A.P. Hill attempts to repulse Warren's beachhead

Actions on May 24: Ledlie attacks Ox Ford, Hancock attempts to advance against the eastern leg of the inverted "V"

Stalemate: Union and Confederate positions May 25–26

Overland Campaign, from the Wilderness to crossing the James River
Confederate
Union

Start of the Overland Campaign, May 4, 1864: Movement into the Wilderness.
Confederate
Union

Attacks on the Laurel Hill line, May 8
Confederate
Union

The Overland Campaign from the Wilderness to the North Anna River, May 5–26, 1864
Confederate
Union

Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all Union armies, directed the actions of the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, and other forces against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

The "Dictator" siege mortar at Petersburg. In the foreground, the figure on the right is Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt, chief of artillery of the Army of the Potomac.

Siege of Petersburg

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Series of battles around Petersburg, Virginia, fought from June 9, 1864, to March 25, 1865, during the American Civil War.

Fredericksburg, Virginia; May 1863. Soldiers in the trenches. Trench warfare would appear again more infamously in World War I

Siege of Petersburg, assaults on June 15–18

Siege of Petersburg, movements against the railroads and A.P. Hill's counterattack, June 21–22

"Dictator" siege mortar on the U.S. Military Railroad at Petersburg

Siege of Petersburg, Battle of the Crater, July 30

Sketch of the explosion seen from the Union line.

Second Battle of Deep Bottom, August 14–20

Siege of Petersburg, capture of the Weldon Railroad, August 18–19

Siege of Petersburg, actions on October 27

Siege of Petersburg, actions preceding Five Forks

Grant's final assaults and Lee's retreat (start of the Appomattox Campaign)

<center>Brig. Gen. James H. Wilson</center>

<center>Brig. Gen. August Kautz</center>

Fascine Trench Breastworks, Petersburg, Va. – NARA – 524792. Although identified as Confederate Trenches this is actually Union Fort Sedgwick aka "Fort Hell" which was opposite Fort Mahone aka "Fort Damnation"<ref>Civil War talk Forum</ref>

Union Army 9th Corps attacking Fort Mahone aka "Fort Damanation" sketch by Alfred Ward.

Confederate artilleryman killed during the final Union assault against the trenches at Petersburg. Photo by Thomas C. Roche, April 3, 1865.<ref>Frassanito, p. 360.</ref><ref>See website Petersburg Project on location of Many of the Roche photographs at Petersburg April 1865</ref> Although prints of this picture list it as being taken at Ft Mahone, historians at the "Petersburg Project" believe it was taken at Confederate Battery 25<ref>Dead Artilleryman comments Petersburg Project</ref>

Smoke is still rising from the ruins of Richmond, Virginia after surrendering on April 3, 1865 following the Union victory at the siege of Petersburg. Union cavalry mounts with carbines visible are hitched in the foreground.

Richmond–Petersburg Theater, fall 1864
Confederate
Union

The campaign consisted of nine months of trench warfare in which Union forces commanded by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assaulted Petersburg unsuccessfully and then constructed trench lines that eventually extended over 30 mi from the eastern outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, to around the eastern and southern outskirts of Petersburg.

A report on Ulysses S. Grant

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