As a southerner I was brought up with a latent emnity for General Ulysses S. Grant. For the last two years I've been teaching "U.S. History until 1900" and I've shown Ken Burn's Civil War as the penultimate event in the class. I've learned to see Grant as the general the Union needed to win the war. He achieved all three land-war objectives for the Union (Central Tennessee, Vicksburg, & Richmond) and knew it must be a war of attrition. His leadership skills have become the subject of a book & recently in Slate, Chris Suellentrop reconsiders Grant's Presidency as well.