Grant vs. Lee Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War (Chris Mackowski, Dan Welch - CH)

Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War Edited by Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch With the presidential election looming in the fall, President Abraham Lincoln needed to break the deadlock. To do so, he promoted Ulysses S. Grant—the man who had 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, the 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 forego efforts to capture the capital of