Ulysses S. Grant

            
             Eighteenth president of the United States of America, he was born at Point Pleasant, Ohio and died at New York; he graduated at West Point Military Academy, and participated to some point in the Mexican-American war. Retired from the army after this war in 1854, he went bankrupt. Shortly after Fort Summer, Grant enlisted as a colonel in an Illinois militia regiment. Within two months, he was a brigadier general.
             Ulysses S. Grant clearly had a military education that helped him to be successful as a person during war times but he understood that as a civilian he was not that successful. Instead of seeing the Civil war as a catastrophe, he saw it as the opportunity of his life, and rose as the military leader that the country needed for that specific difficult era in the United States history.
             In the western theater Ulysses S. Grant rose to prominence. Grant's military genius consisted of an ability to see beyond individual battles to larger goals. In 1862, he realized that the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers were the paths to the successful invasion of Tennessee, which was a confederated state. A premature confederated invasion of Kentucky allowed him to bring his forces into that state without arousing opposition. He was responsible for the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson.
             Despite Grant's grasp of strategy, his army was almost destroyed at Shiloh Church in Tennessee. In the Eastern theater at Gettysburg the fate of the war was decided, although it was a General Meade victory over General Lee's army. Lincoln was dissatisfied with General Meade, who had failed to finish off Lee's demoralized, exhausted army. His disappointment soon faded with news of Grant's great victory on July 4 at Vicksburg, Mississippi, completing the Union's western campaign to gain control of the Mississippi river and divide the South. Grant's success illustrated the boldness and flexibility that Lincoln sought in a commander.