THE SOLDIER PRESIDENT
Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War, and the Struggle for ReconstructionBy Harriet Jane Lockwood
Length5h 38m
About this audiobook
Ulysses S. Grant biography — Civil War general, Reconstruction president, and the untold civil rights story of America's most rehabilitated commander.
In the spring of 1861, Grant was thirty-nine and going nowhere — a former Army officer clerking in his father's leather goods store in Galena, Illinois, supervised by younger brothers. Then Fort Sumter happened. Within four years he would win the Civil War. Within eight he would be president. And in his final months, dying of throat cancer, he would race against death to complete the military memoir Mark Twain called the finest in the English language.
This is the full arc of Ulysses S. Grant — Civil War general, Reconstruction president, and the most consequential civil rights champion in American history before the mid-twentieth century. Harriet Jane Lockwood follows Grant across twenty-four chapters: from the Mexican War bayonet charge at Monterrey through the 47-day siege of Vicksburg to the McLean farmhouse at Appomattox, where Lee arrived in full dress uniform and Grant in muddy field clothes without his sword.
Inside this Civil War and Reconstruction history:
• The Vicksburg campaign — 200 miles, five battles in seventeen days, the garrison eating mules and rats before 29,000 men surrendered on July 4, 1863 (Chapter 5)
• Appomattox's generous terms — why Grant paroled Lee's survivors rather than imprison them, and how Lincoln shaped those terms aboard the River Queen (Chapter 8)
• The Fifteenth Amendment — Grant celebrating ratification as "the greatest civil change" since the nation's founding (Chapter 9)
• Destroying the Ku Klux Klan — habeas corpus suspended in nine South Carolina counties, 500+ federal indictments, and the campaign historian Allen Trelease called the destruction of the first Klan as an organized force (Chapter 10)
• Black Friday and the Whiskey Ring — Jay Gould's gold corner of 1869 and Treasury Secretary Bristow's undercover investigation (Chapters 13, 15)
• Grant rehabilitated — the twenty-first-century reassessment, and the civil rights legacy deferred ninety years until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Chapter 24)
The man who fought the Klan, ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, and paroled 29,000 Confederate soldiers was neither the butcher his critics claimed nor the naive figurehead his scandals implied — but a president whose achievements were ultimately defeated by forces stronger than any single administration could overcome.
For readers of Ron Chernow's GRANT and James McPherson's BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM.
Audiobook details
GenreHistory, Biography and Memoir
Length5 hrs 38 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJun 1, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
2Prologue: The Man from Galena
3PART ONE: THE MAKING OF A GENERAL (1822-1861)
4Chapter 1: West Point and the Mexican War — Grant's Military Education
5Chapter 2: The Difficult Years — Failure in Business and the Return to the Army
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapter 3: Fort Donelson — Unconditional Surrender and the Name That Stuck
7Chapter 4: Shiloh — Victory at Terrible Cost
8PART TWO: THE PATH TO VICTORY (1862-1865)
9Chapter 5: Vicksburg — The Siege That Split the Confederacy
10Chapter 6: Commanding All the Union Armies — Lincoln's Choice, 1864
11Chapter 7: The Overland Campaign — Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and the War of Attrition
12Chapter 8: Appomattox — Lee Surrenders and Grant's Generous Terms
13PART THREE: THE PRESIDENCY — RECONSTRUCTION (1869-1876)
14Chapter 9: The Fifteenth Amendment — Grant and the Fight for Black Voting Rights
15Chapter 10: The Ku Klux Klan — Grant's Enforcement Acts and the Attack on White Supremacy
16Chapter 11: The Battle for the South — Republicans, Freedmen, and the Reconstruction Governments
17Chapter 12: The 1872 Election — Liberal Republicans, Reform, and Grant's Second Term
18PART FOUR: CORRUPTION AND CONTROVERSY
19Chapter 13: Black Friday — Jay Gould, James Fisk, and the Gold Corner of 1869
20Chapter 14: The Credit Mobilier Scandal — Congress, the Railroads, and the Corruption
21Chapter 15: The Whiskey Ring — Treasury Officials and the Grant Administration's Shame
22Chapter 16: Grant's Legacy of Corruption — What Was His Responsibility?
23PART FIVE: AFTER THE PRESIDENCY
24Chapter 17: The World Tour — Grant's Global Journey and International Fame
25Chapter 18: Financial Ruin — The Grant and Ward Failure and Bankruptcy
26Chapter 19: The Memoirs — Racing Against Cancer to Write the Greatest Military Autobiography
27Chapter 20: Death and Redemption — July 23, 1885, and the Nation's Mourning
28PART SIX: LEGACIES
29Chapter 21: Grant's Military Legacy — Strategies That Won the Civil War
30Chapter 22: Reconstruction Reassessed — Grant as Civil Rights President
31Chapter 23: The Grant Tomb — Memorialization and the Long Decline of His Reputation
32Chapter 24: Grant Rehabilitated — The Twenty-First-Century Reassessment
33Epilogue: Grant's Long Shadow
34Acknowledgments
35Selected Bibliography
36About the Author
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