E.C. Middleton Portraits of Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. by Grant, Ulysses S. and William T. Sherman - 1864

Cincinnati: E.C. Middleton, 1864. Ulysses S. Grant joined the Union Army when the Civil War broke out in 1861 and rose to prominence after winning several early Union victories on the Western Theater. In 1863 he led the Vicksburg campaign, which gained control of the Mississippi River. President Abraham Lincoln promoted him to lieutenant general after his victory at Chattanooga. William Tecumseh Sherman also served as a general in the Union Army, achieving recognition for his command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the scorched earth policies that he implemented against the Confederate States. He forged a close partnership with Grant and served with him in 1862 and 1863 in the battles of forts Henry and Donelson, the Battle of Shiloh, the campaigns that led to the fall of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, and the Chattanooga campaign, which culminated with the routing of the Confederate armies in the state of Tennessee. In 1864, Sherman succeeded Grant as the Union commander in the Western Theater. He led the capture of the strategic city of Atlanta, a military success that contributed to the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln. Sherman's subsequent march through Georgia and the Carolinas involved little fighting but large-scale destruction of cotton plantations and other infrastructure, a systematic policy intended to undermine the ability and willingness of the Confederacy to continue fighting. Sherman accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida in April 1865, but the terms that he negotiated were considered too generous by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who ordered General Grant to modify them. When Grant became president of the United States in March 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army.