Getting to know him better …

… 'American Ulysses' tries to set the record straight on the Civil War general - Chicago Tribune. (Hat tip, G. E. Reutter.)

… in his lifetime he was classed with Washington and Lincoln in the "Trinity of great American leaders." Mark Twain, a skeptic about fame and power if ever there was one, described Grant as, "America's Great Soldier, Honored Statesman, Unselfish Citizen." At his death, the New York Tribune declared that "the foremost man of the nation has closed a career second to no other in the history of the republic." The Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser — in the first capital of the Confederacy that he was so instrumental in defeating — wrote that "no man since George Washington has better illustrated the genius of American institutions or the temper of the American people." The Times of London asserted that "His name shall share with Abraham Lincoln the chief glories of American history in the 19th century," and a memorial service at Westminster Abbey could not contain all those who wished to honor the man then seen as a colossus and paragon.