in a last great battle. Abandoned parapets, tents, and cannons add to the eerie landscape. “There was not a soul to be seen, not even an animal in the streets,” Grant will later write. “There was absolutely no one there.”
The five-foot-eight General Grant, an introspective man whom Abraham Lincoln calls “the quietest little man” he’s ever met, has Petersburg completely to himself. He lights a cigar and basks in the still morning air, surrounded by the ruined city that eluded him for 293 miserable days.
He is Lee’s exact opposite: dark-haired and sloppy in dress. His friends call him Sam. “He had,” noted a friend from West Point, “a total absence of elegance.” But like Marse Robert, Grant possesses a savant’s aptitude for warfare—indeed, he is capable of little else. When the Civil War began he was a washed-up, barely employed West Point graduate who had been forced out of military service, done in by lonely western outposts and an inability to hold his liquor. It was only through luck and connections that Grant secured a commission in an Illinois regiment. But it was tactical brilliance, courage under fire, and steadfast leadership that saw him rise to the top.
General Grant, “Sam” to his friends
The one and only time he met Lee was during the Mexican War. Robert E. Lee was already a highly decorated war hero, while Grant was a lieutenant and company quartermaster. He despised being in charge of supplies, but it taught him invaluable lessons about logistics and the way an army could live off the land through foraging when cut off from its supply column. It was after one such scrounge in the Mexican countryside that the young Grant returned to headquarters in a dirty, unbuttoned uniform. The regal Lee, Virginian gentleman, was appalled when he caught sight of Grant and loudly chastised him for his appearance. It was an embarrassing rebuke, one the thin-skinned, deeply competitive Grant would never forget.
Lee isn’t the only Confederate general Grant knows from the Mexican War. James “Pete” Longstreet, now galloping toward Amelia Court House, is a close friend who served as Grant’s best man at his wedding. At Monterrey, Grant rode into battle alongside future Confederate president Jefferson Davis. There are scores of others. And while he’d known many at West Point, it was in Mexico that Grant learned how they fought under fire—their strengths, weaknesses, tendencies. As with the nuggets of information he’d learned as a quartermaster, Grant tucked these observations away and then made keen tactical use of them during the Civil War—just as he is doing right now, sitting alone in Petersburg, thinking of how to defeat Robert E. Lee once and for all.
Grant lights another cigar—a habit that will eventually kill him—and continues his wait for Lincoln. He hopes to hear about the battle for Richmond before the president arrives. Capturing Lee’s army is of the utmost importance, but both men also believe that a Confederacy without a capital is a doomsday scenario for the rebels. Delivering the news that Richmond has fallen will be a delightful way to kick off their meeting.
The sound of horseshoes on cobblestones echoes down the quiet street. It’s Lincoln. Once again the president has courted peril by traveling with just his eleven-year-old son, a lone bodyguard, and a handful of governmental officials. Lincoln knows that, historically, assassination is common during the final days of any war. The victors are jubilant, but the vanquished are furious, more than capable of venting their rage on the man they hold responsible for their defeat.
A single musket shot during that horseback ride from City Point could have ended Lincoln’s life. Despite his profound anxieties about all other aspects of the nation’s future, Lincoln chooses to shrug off the risk. At the edge of Petersburg he trots past “the houses of negroes,” in the words of one Union colonel, “and here and there a squalid family of poor whites”—but no one else. No one, at least, with enough guts to shoot the president. And while the former slaves grin broadly, the whites gaze down with “an air of lazy dislike,” disgusted that this tall, bearded man is once again their president.
Stepping down off his horse, Lincoln walks through the main gate of the house Grant has chosen for their meeting. He takes the walkway in long, eager strides, a smile suddenly stretching across his face, his deep fatigue vanishing at the sight of his favorite general. When he shakes Grant’s hand in congratulation, it is with