Ulysses S. Grant — The General

In March 1864 Ulysses S. Grant was made lieutenant general — the first full holder of the rank since Washington — and given command of every Union army. He pitched his headquarters beside the Army of the Potomac in Virginia, where Lee was, and left Meade to run it under his eye.

On May 4 he crossed the Rapidan into the Wilderness. Six weeks of continuous fighting followed — the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor — with losses the North had never seen. After each one Grant did not fall back. He moved left, and south.

The portrait shows him as his soldiers saw him: slouch hat, a private's coat with the straps sewn on, a cigar, mud to the knee. He proposed to fight it out on this line if it took all summer. It took eleven months.

He does not pose. One hand is jammed in a trouser pocket, the other holds a cigar, and the hat brim throws half his face into shadow. The coat is plain and worn; the only rank on it is the three-star strap at each shoulder. Mud climbs the trousers almost to the knee.

Behind him the headquarters goes on without him — a covered wagon, horses, staff officers at a table under a fly. In a picture of browns and grays, the cigar's ember is the brightest thing.