Unconditional Surrender

His friends called him “Sam.” His wife called him “Ulyss.” His initials suggested a name evocative of one of his most important battlefield successes: “‘Unconditional Surrender’ Grant.”

Ulysses S. Grant didn’t think he’d even have an opportunity to get into the war, yet, by the time it ended, he commanded every soldier serving in the United States Army. Along the way he racked up impressive victories, learned from valuable mistakes, broke the back of the Confederacy, survived the backbiting of his immediate superior, and earned the respect and support of the president. “Grant is my man and I am his the rest of the war!” exclaimed Abraham Lincoln after the particularly vital victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Grant came from humble beginnings along the Ohio River, made a military name for himself near that river’s confluence with the Mississippi, and went on to use “the Father of Waters” to split the Confederacy in two. That effort set him on the road to Chattanooga, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, the long siege of Petersburg, and Appomattox Court House in some of the war’s most intense and infamous battles. In less than three years, the non-descript and unimpressive colonel of a regiment of Illinois volunteers rose to become the highest-ranking officer in the army and the first permanent lieutenant general since George Washington. His ultimate victory set him on a path to two terms in the White House—a far cry from that small clapboard house in which he was born.

His meteoric rise from obscurity made Ulysses S. Grant the ultimate man of irony. Unassuming. Unpretentious. Unwilling to retreat. “There will be no turning back,” he once famously declared.

Unconditional Surrender allows readers to walk in Grant’s footsteps with Dr. Curt Fields, the nation’s foremost Ulysses S. Grant living historian. Fields has offered a first-person portrayal of Grant since February 2010. Distilled within these pages are years of extensive study that offer an ideal introduction to the “dust-covered man” from the West who won the Civil War and saved the United States.