In the latter stages of the Civil War, the responsibility of winning the war for the North was given to Ulysses S. Grant.
Grant graduated from the West Point military academy and served during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). He retired from the army in 1854, but when the Civil War broke out in 1861, he rejoined it.
In 1862 he took control of Kentucky and most of Tennessee, and led the Union forces in victory at Shiloh, thereby gaining a reputation as an aggressive commander. In July 1863, after a series of coordinated battles, Grant defeated the Confederate armies and conquered Vicksburg, thus granting control of the Mississippi River to the Union and dividing the Confederation into two. Following his victories in the Chattanooga campaign, Lincoln promoted him to Commanding General in March 1864. From this responsibility, Grant confronted Robert E. Lee in several bloody battles and trapped his enemy's forces in his defense of Richmond, the Confederate capital. In other war theaters, Grant also coordinated a series of successful campaigns that eventually led to Lee's surrender at Appomattox, effectively ending the war. Historians have praised Grant's military genius and his strategies are studied in war history books, although a minority argues that he won by brute force rather than by his superior strategy.
