pplpod Episode 59 charts Ulysses S. Grant’s unlikely arc—from quiet West Pointer and Mexican-War veteran to the Union’s indispensable closer and America’s 18th president. We track the wartime ascent: “Unconditional Surrender” at Fort Donelson, the blood baptism of Shiloh, the river-and-rail chess of Vicksburg, and the Chattanooga pivot that set up the Overland Campaign—granting no rest to Lee through Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the siege at Petersburg before Appomattox sealed the terms. Then the presidency: Reconstruction fought in earnest—Enforcement Acts against the Klan, the (later-gutted) Civil Rights Act of 1875, a Native “Peace Policy” with mixed results—alongside storms of the Panic of 1873 and scandals like the Whiskey Ring that shadowed an honest man’s administration. We close with the late-life grace notes: a world tour, financial ruin, and a race against cancer to finish the Personal Memoirs—a masterpiece that restored his family’s future and his place in American letters. Tactics, integrity, controversy, legacy—Grant’s story is stamina turned into statecraft.

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