On this episode of Our American Stories, before he led the Union Army to victory in the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant was a man who seemed to be going nowhere. He graduated near the bottom of his class at West Point, struggled on remote frontier posts, and left the Army under a cloud of rumors about drinking. Back home, he failed in business and worked in his father’s leather goods store, with little to suggest he would one day change the course of American history.

Then came the Civil War.

Dr. John F. Marszalek and Eddie Rangel of the Grant Presidential Library in Starkville, Mississippi, share the story of how Ulysses S. Grant rose to command the Union Army and secure victory in America’s bloodiest conflict.

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