The former general in chief of the Union armies during the Civil War . . . the two-term president of the United States . . . the beloved ambassador of American goodwill around the globe . . . the respected New York financier Ulysses S. Grant was dying. The hardscrabble man who regularly smoked 20 cigars a day had developed terminal throat cancer. Thus began Grant s final battle a race against his own failing health to complete his Personal Memoirs in an attempt to secure his family s financial future. But the project evolved into something far more: an effort to secure the very meaning of the...

It has been called Robert E. Lee's supreme moment: riding into the Chancellorsville clearing...the mansion itself aflame in the background...his gunpowder-smeared soldiers crowding around him, hats off, cheering wildly.After one of the most audacious gambits of the war, Lee and his men had defeated a foe more than two and half times their size. The Federal commander, "Fighting Joe" Hooker, had boasted days earlier that his plans were perfect -- yet his army had crumbled, and Hooker himself had literally been knocked senseless.History would remember the battle of Chancellorsville as "Lee's...

July 1, 1863, had gone poorly for the Union army's XI Corps. Shattered in battle north of the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, the battered and embarrassed unit ended the day hunkered at the crest of a cemetery-topped hill south of the village. Reinforcements fortified the position, which extended eastward to include another key piece of high ground, Culp's Hill. The Federal line also extended southward down Cemetery Ridge, forming what eventually became a long fishhook. July 2 saw a massive Confederate attack against the southernmost part of the line. As the Southern juggernaut rolled...