General Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was the Union general who led his army through the closing days of the American Civil War and later became the eighteenth president of the United States. He reported to President Abraham Lincoln that the fighting was nearly won. At Appomattox, Grant met Confederate General Robert E. Lee to receive the surrender that effectively ended the war. The meeting was conducted with courtesy rather than celebration over a defeated enemy. As weary Confederate soldiers laid down their arms, Grant's conduct helped set a tone of dignity at a moment filled with grief and uncertainty. His place in Jimmy Barclay's Imagination Station journey shows leadership at the point when battlefield victory needed to become peace between people who had fought one another.