To Rescue the Republic

"From Bret Baier comes a riveting reassessment of Ulysses S. Grant, arguing that the great Civil War commander's battle to save the Union continued to the very end of his presidency when a crisis threatened to fracture the still fragile nation once again"-- Grant's daring and resolve as a general gained the attention of President Lincoln, then desperate for bold leadership. Appointed as Lieutenant General of the Union Army in March 1864, Grant's forces had seized Richmond and forced Robert E. Lee to surrender within a year. After Lincoln's assassination, Grant answered the call-- advancing an agenda of Reconstruction and aggressively countering the Ku Klux Klan. In Grant's final weeks in the White House, the contested presidential election of 1876 produced no clear victory for either Republican Rutherford B. Hayes or Democrat Samuel Tilden. Southern states vowed to revolt if Tilden was not declared the victor. Baier shows how Grant's compromise saved the nation, but tragically condemned the South to another century of civil-rights oppression. -- adapted from jacket

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.