October 23, 1863. Chattanooga, TN. After a grueling four-day journey General Ulysses S. Grant arrived at Union headquarters. He had injured his leg and had to be helped off his horse. Once again, he was dogged by rumors that he had been drinking. He listened silently as his officers described a bleak situation. The Union Army was surrounded. Men and horses faced starvation. A Confederate victory seemed inevitable. Grant thanked his men, and began to write his orders...

He is the face on the fifty-dollar bill. It is his statue that millions of Americans have seen in front of the U.S. Capitol. He is a well-known name to those with even a nodding familiarity with United States history, but he is relegated by most of us to the background, not the foreground of U.S. history. This was not always the case. In the 19th century, Ulysses S. Grant was universally recognized as one of the country's greatest men and one of the most famous Americans of his time.

Before the Civil War, Grant had been a nobody, he had failed in everything he had ever attempted. As a general he was called incompetent, a butcher and a drunk, but he would win every campaign he ever fought and won the battles that had to be won. His plain, Midwestern ways would captivate the American people. Twice a grateful nation elected the hero of the Civil War, President. But his years in the White House, marked by racial violence and scandal would threaten to destroy all he had accomplished.

Ulysses S. Grant was, first and foremost, the greatest hero of the Civil War. He was a brilliant military strategist whose hard-nosed fighting style won and earned him the nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant and the admiration of the Northern public. He was the author of the great Union victory at Vicksburg, which etched his name in military history and irrevocably altered the course of the war. He was Abraham Lincoln's favorite general, and was elevated to an exalted military rank held previously only by George Washington. He was a leader for whom thousands of Union soldiers were willing to fight and die, and for whom thousands did. Perhaps most memorably, he was the general who took Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, and the author of its generous terms.

Grant also became President of the United States during one of the most tumultuous moments in its history for two terms. He struggled to define the meaning of the war he had fought so hard to win, and the union he had fought to preserve. As President, he confronted scandal and economic depression. He sought ways to re-establish national unity and sectional harmony after the bloodiest and most divisive conflict in United States history. Most important to us today, he confronted fundamental questions about the role of African Americans within the nation. He was, in sum, a pivotal figure at a pivotal time.

Few figures have ever held a such a firm grip on the American imagination. Grant was a man whose rise from obscurity made him a hero to millions who could see themselves in him. An ordinary man who faced and met extraordinary challenges, his successes and failures seemed to encapsulate the national character. He was so popular with the American public that, despite his two scandal-ridden terms as president, he was nearly nominated to run for a third term.

As a general, he had fought to preserve the Union. As President, he helped to oversee the transformation from union to nation. As a former president, he was the embodiment of the very idea of national union, and of America's entry onto the world stage. As a dying general, he was the symbol of the nation's greatest and most traumatic war, and whose dignity, honor, patriotism and endurance helped save the United States from falling apart. The story of Ulysses S. Grant's life, from his first days on the Ohio frontier to his finest hour at Appomattox accepting Robert E. Lee's surrender, to his last days out-writing death in the Adirondacks, is an endlessly fascinating one. It is also, as one historian puts it, "a story central to understanding the American experience."