Though General Ulysses S. Grant would have many detractors, President Lincoln would never be among them.

After enduring a virtually endless parade of temperamental, overmatched, ambitious and/or arrogant commanders, Grant's straightforward, realistic and self-deprecating manner must have seemed like an answer from heaven to the beleaguered president. Grant and his soldiers would pay a heavy price in casualties for his aggressiveness, but it became clear to Lincoln that his approach was the only tactic for which Robert E. Lee did not have an effective answer, one which would reduce the outcome of the war to a matter of time.

Grant, whose later Memoirs are considered by many to be the finest autobiography ever written by an American, had a direct, no-nonsense style of writing honed during years of writing military dispatches. He famously described the central problem facing a military commander:

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can. And keep moving on.

Neither a boaster nor a careless writer, Grant doggedly followed his own advice, eventually grinding Lee's army down to the  skeleton force that surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865 after a final, hopeless escape dash from the outskirts of Richmond.