167. A Poor Boy Becomes a Great Man. Ulysses Simpson Grant was born in 1822, in Ohio, at a place called Point Pleasant. When he was a year old his parents removed to Georgetown, Ohio, and there a few years later he attended school. He was taught little besides reading, writing, and arithmetic. As he grew up he helped his father and mother by hauling wood, plowing, and doing other useful work. He did not like the leather business, his father's occupation, but he found great pleasure in farm work because he was very fond of horses.

Young Grant liked to travel. When the news came that he had been appointed a cadet at the United States Military Academy, he was glad because of the journey to West Point but not because of any other opportunities it offered. He did not like West Point, and studied only to please his father.

After his graduation Grant fought in the Mexican War as lieutenant under General Taylor and later under General Scott. After peace was restored he served in California as a captain, but very soon resigned, and when the Civil War broke out in 1861 he was working as a clerk in his father's store at Galena, Illinois.

168. A Great General. When Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand men startled the country, Grant was made chairman of a meeting at Galena called to raise a company of soldiers. He then went to Springfield, where the governor set him to work drilling soldiers and getting them ready for the war. After a time he became colonel of a regiment. A further promotion followed which made him a brigadier-general in command of several regiments. Later still he rose to be major-general, in command of an army.

Early in the war it was seen that in order to conquer the Confederacy it must be split in two by gaining possession of the Mississippi River. As a part of the great campaign with this end in view, we find Brigadier-General Grant directing the attacks on Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. These places were less than ten miles apart, in western Tennessee.

With the help of Commodore Foote and his gunboats, Grant easily captured Fort Henry. To take Fort Donelson was not so easy. The Confederates tried to break through the right wing of Grant's army. After hard fighting they were driven back, and General Buckner asked what terms Grant would give if they surrendered. To this General Grant replied that he would consider "no terms but an unconditional and immediate surrender ... I propose to move immediately upon your works." This answer has become famous.

The surrender of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson forced the Confederates to move back their line of defense. After winning the two days' battle at Pittsburg Landing, General Grant turned his attention to the Mississippi River. As long as the Mississippi remained open to the southern forces, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas could send food supplies to the Confederates on the east side of the river. This General Grant wanted to stop, so, early in 1863, he moved southward to take Vicksburg. He beat the Confederates in the field and drove them into Vicksburg. The siege of the city lasted seven weeks. No one could slip in or out. Meat and bread grew scarce. The houses were knocked to pieces by cannon balls, and people found shelter in cellars and caves.

On the Fourth of July, 1863, Vicksburg, with Pemberton's army of more than thirty thousand men, surrendered. There was great happiness throughout the North. President Lincoln sent a message of thanks to General Grant, and Congress voted that he be given a medal.

During this campaign in the lower Mississippi country a large Confederate army had marched north from Virginia, across Maryland into Pennsylvania. This army, under General Robert E. Lee, had won its way as far as Gettysburg. Here, at the end of a great three days' battle, the Confederates were decisively beaten; this defeat came on July 3, and on the very next day came the news that far-away Vicksburg had surrendered to Grant. After defeating the Confederates at Murfreesboro, General Rosecrans was in turn defeated at Chickamauga, and then cooped up in the town of Chattanooga by General Bragg. General Grant was sent to rescue the Union army, which he did in the battles of Lookout Mountain, led by Hooker, and Missionary Ridge, led by Sherman.

169. Great Commander of the Union Armies. President Lincoln saw that General Grant was a great soldier. He sent for him to come to Washington and made him lieutenant-general in command of all the armies of the United States.

Grant took command at once. His first great object was to capture Lee's army. The shortest way to Lee's army lay through the "Wilderness," a part of the country lying south of the upper part of the Rapidan, in Virginia, and covered with a thick forest of tangled underbrush. The route was dangerous. But into the "Wilderness" Grant plunged with his great army. General Lee was there with his troops. The fighting began. For a month it was almost constant charging, back and forth, and there were long lists of dead and wounded. Grant moved his army southward and nearer Richmond. Lee met him in the bloody battles of Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor.

Then Grant crossed the James River, south of Richmond, and began the attack on Petersburg. This place was taken in the spring of 1865.

General Lee told the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, that he could hold Richmond no longer. He tried to get his army away, but the men were weak from hard fighting, and Sheridan, with his cavalry, was too quick for him.

General Grant wrote to General Lee suggesting that he surrender, and thus prevent the loss of more lives. Lee agreed, and the papers were signed April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House. No more generous terms were ever given than those granted to Lee and his men.

After the war was over General Grant served for a time in the cabinet of President Johnson, who had become president at Lincoln's death.

170. President of the United States. In 1868 Grant was elected President of the United States. He was elected again in 1872. Late in life he made a tour of the world, and everywhere was received with great honor.

He died July 23, 1885, at Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, New York. His body rests in Riverside Park, New York City, where a magnificent monument has been built to his memory.

171. The Great General of the Confederacy. Robert E. Lee was born in Virginia in 1807. He went to school at Alexandria, where George Washington once lived, and became a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

In the war with Mexico Lee earned honor and fame. He rose rapidly in rank. Starting as captain, he became major, lieutenant-colonel, and then colonel. When the Mexican War was over, he took charge of the Military Academy at West Point. After three years, he decided to give up the work at West Point and go West to fight the Indians.

About this time the people began to insist that, in the United States, slavery must be given up. Even the army officers and men quarreled about it. Lee believed in the Union and did not want the South to leave it. But when Virginia followed other slave states out of the Union and into the Confederacy, Lee went with his native state.

When the war began, Lee, as general, had command of the Virginia troops. After the battle of Fair Oaks, in which General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded, General Lee took charge of the army defending Richmond.

172. Lee Fights Battle after Battle. Lee at once attacked the Union army which was trying to take Richmond. In a seven days' battle he forced McClellan, the Union general, to retreat. He then struck the army of Pope a fatal blow and marched with his victorious soldiers into Maryland. A great battle was fought at Antietam (1862) and Lee returned to Virginia. He won two great victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. In the latter battle he lost Stonewall Jackson, his best general. After this, his army rested and ranks filled, General Lee moved rapidly through Maryland and into Pennsylvania. The North became alarmed, but a great Union army was already hurrying to meet the Confederate forces.

The two armies met at Gettysburg, and there for three days was fought the greatest battle of the Civil War. On the last day General Pickett made his famous charge. Fifteen thousand southern soldiers charged across the valley—more than a mile wide—right up to the muzzles of the Union guns. But the help they expected from another direction did not arrive, and they had to retreat. Lee's army was defeated. More than fifty thousand men—including the killed, wounded, and missing on both sides—were lost at Gettysburg.

173. Facing a Powerful Army. General Lee then went back across the Potomac, never to invade the North again. From then onward, little was done until, in 1864, General Grant took command of all the Union forces. Then followed three great battles—the "Wilderness," so called because it was fought in a thick forest of tangled underbrush lying in Virginia just south of the upper portion of the Rapidan; Spottsylvania, fought near the Spottsylvania courthouse a little farther southward, and Cold Harbor, fought a few miles northeast of Richmond.

General Lee's troops were wearing out. There were no more men to take the places of those killed and wounded. Food and clothing became scarce, and other supplies were hard to get. General Lee was now made commander in chief over all the Confederate armies. He immediately put Joseph E. Johnston back in command of his old army in the West, but it was too late.

Lee decided in 1865 that Richmond must be given up. He wanted to take his army to Danville, Virginia, on the way to join the army of General Joseph E. Johnston, in North Carolina, but at Appomattox his troops met General Sheridan's cavalry.

174. The Confederacy Was Lost. General Lee received a letter from General Grant asking him to surrender. The two generals met at a farmhouse and agreed upon terms. Grant gave the officers and men permission to take their horses home "to do their spring plowing."

The next morning Lee, surrounded by his sorrowing men, mounted his horse, Traveler, and rode slowly away to his home in Richmond. The other Confederate armies surrendered one by one.

After the war General Lee was elected president of Washington College at Lexington, Virginia, now Washington and Lee University. He greatly enjoyed his work of building up the young manhood of the South. He died at Lexington in 1870. A monument to the memory of this great man has been erected at Richmond, and another at Lexington.

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