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Chapter 1 - Three Civil Wars
England was an uncomfortable place to live in during the reign of Charles the First. Almost from the moment that that ill-fated monarch ascended the throne he began quarreling with Parliament; and when he decided to dismiss its members and make himself the supreme ruler of the land, he practically forced his subjects into a revolution.
Twelve feverish years followed-years of discontent, indignation and passion-which arrayed the Cavaliers, who supported the King, against the Roundheads, who upheld Parliament, and finally flung them at each other's throats to drench the soil of England with their blood.
Meanwhile, the gathering storm of civil war caused many a resident of the British Isles to seek peace and security across the seas, and among those who turned toward America were Mathew Grant and Richard Lee. It is not probable that either of these men had ever heard of the other, for they came from widely separated parts of the kingdom and were even more effectually divided by the walls of caste. There is no positive proof that Mathew Grant (whose people probably came from Scotland) was a Roundhead, but he was a man of humble origin who would naturally have favored the Parliamentary or popular party, while Richard Lee, whose ancestors had fought at Hastings and in the Crusades, is known to have been an ardent Cavalier, devoted to the King. But whether their opinions on politics differed or agreed, it was apparently the conflict between the King and Parliament that drove them from England. In any event they arrived in America at almost the same moment; Grant reaching Massachusetts in 1630, the year after King Charles dismissed his Parliament, and Lee visiting Virginia about this time to prepare for his permanent residence in the Dominion which began when actual hostilities opened in the mother land.
The trails of Grant and Lee, therefore, first approach each other from out of the smoke of a civil war. This is a strangely significant fact, but it might be regarded merely as a curious coincidence were it not for other and stranger events which seem to suggest that the hand of Fate was guiding the destinies of these two men.
Mathew Grant originally settled in Massachusetts but he soon moved to Connecticut, where he became clerk of the town of Windsor and official surveyor of the whole colony-a position which he held for many years. Meanwhile Richard Lee became the Colonial Secretary and a member of the King's Privy Council in Virginia, and thenceforward the name of his family is closely associated with the history of that colony.
Lee bore the title of colonel, but it was to statesmanship and not to military achievements that he and his early descendants owed their fame; while the family of Grant, the surveyor, sought glory at the cannon's mouth, two of its members fighting and dying for their country as officers in the French and Indian war of 1756. In that very year, however, a military genius was born to the Virginia family in the person of Harry Lee, whose brilliant cavalry exploits were to make him known to history as "Light Horse Harry." But before his great career began, the house of Grant was represented in the Revolution, for Captain Noah Grant of Connecticut drew his sword in defense of the colonies at the outbreak of hostilities, taking part in the battle of Bunker Hill; and from that time forward he and "Light Horse Harry" served in the Continental army under Washington until Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown.
Here the trails of the two families, AGAIN DRAWN TOGETHER BY A CIVIL STRIFE, merge for an historic moment and then cross; that of the Grants turning toward the West, and that of the Lees keeping within the confines of Virginia.
It was in 1799 that Captain Noah Grant migrated to Ohio, and during the same year Henry Lee delivered the memorial address upon the death of Washington, coining the immortal phrase "first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
Ulysses Grant, the Commander of the Union forces in the Civil War, was the grandson of Captain Grant, who served with "Light Horse Harry" Lee during the Revolution; and Robert Lee, the Confederate General, was "Light Horse Harry's" son.
Thus, for the THIRD time in two and a half centuries, a civil conflict between men of the English-speaking race blazed the trails of Grant and Lee.
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Chapter 1 - Three Civil Wars
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Chapter 2 - Washington and Lee
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Chapter 3 - Lee at West Point
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Chapter 4 - The Boyhood of Grant
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Chapter 5 - Grant at West Point
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Chapter 6 - Lieutenant Grant Under Fire
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Chapter 7 - Captain Lee at the Front
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Chapter 8 - Colonel Lee After the Mexican War
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Chapter 9 - Captain Grant in a Hard Fight
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Chapter 10 - Grant's Difficulties in Securing a Command
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Chapter 11 - Lee at the Parting of the Ways
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Chapter 12 - Opening Moves
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Chapter 13 - Grant's First Success
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Chapter 14 - The Battle of Shiloh
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Chapter 15 - Lee in the Saddle
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Chapter 16 - A Game of Strategy
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Chapter 17 - Lee and the Invasion of Maryland
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Chapter 18 - The Battle of Antietam or Sharpsburg
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Chapter 19 - Lee against Burnside and Hooker
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Chapter 20 - In the Hour of Triumph
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Chapter 21 - Grant at Vicksburg
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Chapter 22 - The Battle of Gettysburg
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Chapter 23 - In the Face of Disaster
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Chapter 24 - The Rescue of Two Armies
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Chapter 25 - Lieutenant-General Grant
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Chapter 26 - A Duel to the Death
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Chapter 27 - Check and Countercheck
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Chapter 28 - The Beginning of the End
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Chapter 29 - At Bay
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Chapter 30 - The Surrender
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Chapter 31 - Lee's Years of Peace
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Chapter 32 - The Head of the Nation
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