15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
Like Lincoln, Grant was from what was considered to be the West; Galena, Illinois. He graduated from West Point in 1843 only to be drummed out of the army eleven years later due to his propensity for alcohol. He made his way to St. Louis, Missouri and worked pedaling lumber and logs throughout the city. He was often faced with the humbling experience of encountering military officers and former colleagues while pushing carts of logs throughout the streets of St. Louis.<ref>Charles Bracelen Flood, ''Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won The Civil War'' (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 7-9.</ref> Grant met this challenge admirably and was unashamed of taking any necessary measure to support his family. By all accounts, he was considered a "regular guy" who did not blend into the social network shared by the West Point elite. Daniel Frost, a classmate of Grant’s from the Point, stated that Grant possessed a “total absence of elegance.”<ref>Flood, 10.</ref>Elegance did not win wars. Courage, foresight, and determination won wars, and that is what Lincoln found in Grant.
<dh-ad/>
== A Vicious War==
== Conclusion ==
As Abraham Lincoln so eloquently stated in his Gettysburg Address, November 1863, “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom- and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” <ref>Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address”, November 1863, The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (Washington, D. C.: American Memory Project, [2000-02]), http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/alhome.html.</ref>Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman acted as the war mandated. They had all known failure in their lives, which was perhaps one reason they were empathetic to their defeated Southern counterparts. Generous, if not compassionate terms of surrender were offered to Lee and his army by Grant on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. General Sherman was also gentle in peace when he accepted General Joseph Johnston’s surrender in Raleigh, North Carolina on April 26, 1865; 11 days after the death of Abraham Lincoln. Lee and Johnston both defied orders from Jefferson Davis to continue a guerilla war. Unlike Davis, these Southern generals were honorable soldiers who knew the cause was lost and had no intention of inflicting more casualties on an already devastated nation. They knew the horrors of war and were eager to proceed in peace. All of these men were prepared to carry out President Lincoln’s wish to “achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.”<ref>Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1865, National Archives, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=38.</ref>
<div class="portal" style="width:85%;">
==Related DailyHistory.org Articles==
*[[Were Members of the Underground Railroad Criminals?]]
</div>
==References==<references/> [[Category:Wikis]] [[Category:Civil War]] [[Category:Military History]][[Category:19th Century History]] [[Category:US United States History]]
{{Contributors}}
{{Mediawiki:Civil War}}