In today’s Mewsing, we spotlight the two generals whose biographies inspired Rebecca to make our original two clay Civil War cats thirty years ago. While we have spotlighted the cats before, today we take the time to look at the men behind them.

Hiram Ulysses Grant was born on April 27, 1822 to Jesse Root Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant. Jesse preferred the name Ulysses, so that is what he called his son, rather than Hiram.

Even at a young age, Ulysses was fearless. When he was less than two years old, a neighbor fired a pistol next to the boy’s head, just to see what would happen. Unfazed, Ulysses reached for the firearm instead. When he was five years old, a pony tried to buck him off, but he clung to its mane until it stopped bucking.

In 1839, at his father’s insistence, Ulysses attended the United States Military Academy at West Point. He found he had been registered under the name “Ulysses S. Grant” because the Congressman who nominated him had submitted his name incorrectly. The register could not be changed, and so as long as he wore the Army’s uniform, he would be Ulysses S. Grant.

In 1844, just before he left for the Mexican War, he and Julia Dent became engaged. Four years later, a few months after the war ended, Ulysses married Julia. Over the next ten years, they added three sons and a daughter to their family.

The Grants were not rich; at times they were dirt poor. But Ulysses was a compassionate man who would help anyone in need. And he was determined. Once, a man’s mule was seized to satisfy a court judgement. Ulysses knew the man was poor and needed the mule, so he bought it at auction for fifty dollars and gave it back to the original owner. But the mule was seized again because technically it had not changed owners. Ulysses went back to the auction and bought it again, this time for five dollars, and gave it to the man. The mule was seized again! Ulysses bought it a third time, and told the man to take it to another county and trade it for another mule. If that didn’t work, Ulysses said, “I am going to have that old mule even if I have to buy it once a week all summer!”

Such determination would continue to hold a prominent place in his character during the Civil War.

In 1862, Grant—by then a brigadier general—laid siege to Fort Donelson. After failing to break out, the Confederates asked for a cease-fire. Grant replied, “No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” The next day, Fort Donelson surrendered, and U. S. Grant gained the nickname “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. As soon as President Lincoln heard of the surrender, he promoted Grant to major general. Later that year, after the bloody battle of Shiloh, people at home wanted Grant replaced. Lincoln responded, “I can’t spare this man. He fights.”

In November, Grant began his campaign to take the fort at Vicksburg. After a siege that lasted for months, Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, 1863, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River and splitting the Confederacy in half.

The next year, Congress passed a bill to create the rank of lieutenant general. On March 9, Lincoln formally gave Grant his commission. Only one other man in the nation’s history had carried that rank: George Washington.

Grant remained in the east with Gen. George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. Now general-in-chief of all the Union armies, Grant knew the way to win the war was to pressure the Confederates on all sides, to never give their armies time to regroup, and to press them into submission quickly.

On May 5, 1864, the battle of the Wilderness began. Towards the end of the second day, things looked bleak for the Union army. Panicked officers came to Grant, telling him the army was falling apart. He calmly whittled a stick until one officer exclaimed, “I know Lee’s methods well by past experience. He will throw his whole army between us and the Rapidan, and cut us off completely from our communications.”

Grant’s patience snapped and he replied, “I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do!”

On the evening of May 7, the Union army pulled out, but they did not retreat north, as the soldiers expected. Instead Grant pressed southward, around Lee’s army.

Throughout May, the Union army repeatedly hammered Lee’s line, but failed to break it. Still, Grant pressed southward instead of retreating. After the bloody battle of Cold Harbor, people at home began calling him “Butcher Grant.” But he did not want thousands of men to die. Once he said that sometimes he could hardly bring himself to give the order for battle because of the death and misery that would follow. The high death toll was the inescapable cost for continuing to press Lee’s army, and pushing onward to end the war.

Mid-June 1864 saw the armies settling into the siege of Petersburg, on the outskirts of Richmond. Finally, in April 1865, the Confederates pulled out of Richmond and Petersburg, and four days later, the Union army nearly surrounded Lee’s at Appomattox Court House. After a failed last attempt to break through the Union line, Lee met Grant in the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s house and surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant gave him generous terms; when Lee pointed out that many of his men owned their horses, Grant said that any man who claimed to own a horse or mule could take it with him to work his farm. He also ordered rations to be given to the starving Confederates.

Grant went to Washington to meet with Lincoln, and on the 14^th of April the president invited Ulysses and Julia to join him and Mary at Ford’s Theater. The Grants declined because they had plans to visit their children in school in New Jersey (and Julia couldn’t stand Mary Lincoln). When the Grants reached Philadelphia at midnight, they were shocked to hear that President Lincoln had been shot and was not expected to live.

In 1868, the Republican Party nominated Grant for president, even though he did not want it. When he received the news of his election, he sadly told Julia, “I am afraid I am elected.”

One of the first things President Grant did was to push for a Panama Canal, built by American engineers and under American control. His terrible experience in 1851, while crossing Panama on the way to California with his regiment, had convinced him of a canal’s necessity.

On March 30, 1870, he signed the 15^th Amendment into law, giving African-Americans the right to vote.

In 1872, Grant won election to a second term, to his chagrin. Toward the end of that term, he told Julia, “After I leave this place, I never want to see it again.” He managed to avoid nomination for a third term and later told a friend, “I was never as happy in my life as the day I left the White House. I felt like a boy getting out of school.”

In February 1885, Grant learned he had advanced throat cancer, with only a few months to live. He had been considering writing his memoirs, and now he wrote or dictated as much as he could. One day he dictated 10,000 words! He finished his memoirs a couple of weeks before his death on July 23, 1885.

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Robert Edward Lee was born on January 19, 1807, the son of the Revolutionary War general “Light Horse Harry” Lee. Accepted into West Point when he was seventeen, Robert graduated near the top of his class. He served as an engineer in the Mexican War, and then as Superintendent of West Point from 1852-55. In 1859, when the abolitionist John Brown led a raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Col. Lee was sent with marines to arrest him.

As war loomed, Lee opposed secession, and wrote, “I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for [the Union’s] preservation.” At the same time, he believed he had a higher duty to his state. If Virginia seceded, he said, “I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people.” On April 19, 1861, he learned that Virginia had seceded. The next day he resigned from the United States army.

In May 1862, Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia. As he led the army to victory after victory over the next two years, and as the men learned how much he cared for his soldiers, instead of “Granny Lee,” his men affectionately dubbed him “Marse Robert.”

After the defeat at Gettysburg in July 1863, Lee accepted full responsibility. Even as he met the survivors of Pickett’s Charge on July 3, he told them, “It is all my fault.” As the army retreated the next day, he told Gen. Longstreet, “It’s all my fault. I thought my men were invincible.” When he returned to Virginia, he offered to resign, but President Davis knew Lee was still the best choice for commander of the army.

The defeat at Gettysburg and the increasing hardship as supplies dwindled in the Confederacy did not dampen the soldiers’ love for Lee. In April 1864, Longstreet’s corps returned from a temporary assignment in Tennessee. When the men saw Lee, they “hung around him and seemed satisfied to lay their hands on his gray horse or to touch the bridle, or the stirrup, or the old General’s leg—anything that Lee had was sacred to us fellows who had just come back. And the General—he could not help from breaking down…tears traced down his cheeks…”

Lee always thought of his men. At Christmastime,1864, he was invited to dinner. During the meal, the hostess noticed he had not eaten his turkey, and she asked if he did not like it. He replied that he was saving it and hoped he could take it with him to give to an ill staff officer. The hostess then set aside some turkey so Lee could eat his.

Lee’s concern for others did not stop at his own men. Despite the raging war, he saw the Union soldiers as fellow men, not merely enemies to be destroyed, and he consistently referred to them as “those people” instead of “Yankees” or pejoratively. Once, when an officer said he wished all the Yankees were dead, Lee asked, “How can you say that, General? Now, I wish they were all at home attending to their own business, and leaving us to do the same.”

During the siege of Petersburg, a Union prisoner complained to Lee that a Confederate had stolen his hat. The general told him to point out the man and when he did, Lee had the Confederate return the hat. One of the other prisoners wrote, “I wondered at him taking any notice of a prisoner in the midst of battle. It showed what a heart he had for them.”

Another time, a general said they should warn Grant to stop destroying their supplies, or else they would not feed the Union soldiers they captured. Lee replied, “The prisoners that we have here, General, are my prisoners; they are not General Grant’s prisoners, and as long as I have any rations at all I shall divide them with my prisoners.”

The end came at last on April 9, 1865. Gen. Gordon’s infantry and Gen. Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry attempted unsuccessfully to break the Union line. Finally, Gordon sent the message, “Tell General Lee I have fought my Corps to a frazzle, and I fear I can do nothing unless I am heavily supported by Longstreet’s Corps.”

Lee listened to the report, then said, “Then there is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.” Knowing his duty did not make the decision any easier. As he looked toward the Union line, he mused, “How easily I could be rid of this, and be at rest! I have only to ride along the line and all will be over! But it is our duty to live.”

So, dressed in his finest uniform and a red sash, Lee rode to Appomattox Court House to surrender. When it was over and he returned to his lines, his men crowded around him, cheering him. Gradually the cheer died away as they saw their general’s face and then they began to ask, “General, are we surrendered?”

Choking down tears, Lee replied, “Men, we have fought the war together, and I have done the best I could for you. You will all be paroled and go to your homes until exchanged.” Then, almost inaudibly, “Good-bye.”

Lee reached Richmond on April 15. He at once began encouraging reconciliation and urging his fellow southerners to accept their defeat and to work to rebuild the devastated South. Knowing that many would follow his example, he applied for a pardon. Because he was the commanding general, he was never pardoned, but many of his soldiers were. On September 28, 1870, Lee walked home in the rain from a church meeting. That night he fell ill. He died two weeks later on October 12. His last words were the command given when an army broke camp: “Strike the tent.”