Our ‘American Ulysses,’ President Grant (Tom Ashbrook, On Point)

At nearly 40, Ulysses S. Grant thought himself a failure, a nobody. By the end of the Civil War, he was an American hero – the rumpled, cigar-smoking general who accepted Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. “I can’t spare this man,” Abraham Lincoln had said.“He fights.” By 1869, Ulysses S. Grant was president of the United States. Jim Crow–era historians were tough on Grant. A new biography sees moral courage. This hour On Point, Ulysses s. Grant – "American Ulysses." — Tom Ashbrook
Interview:
http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2016/11/01/ulysses-s-grant-biography-new-civil-war