"Ulysses S. Grant is commonly remembered as a general of fierce determination and strategic vision - the military leader who turned the tide of the Civil War and led the Union armies to victory, and who showed magnanimity and vision at Appomattox. His presidency is another matter. Here, the most common word used to characterize it is "scandal." Grant is routinely portrayed as a man out of his depth in the world of politics, whose eight years in office...

"Pulitzer Prize-winner and biographer of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and John D. Rockefeller, Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most complicated generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant's life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and inept businessman, fond of drinking to excess; or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil...

"A stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil-when Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government in an attempt to dismantle the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as "the first organized terrorist movement in American history," rose from the ashes of the Civil War. At its peak in the early 1870s, the Klan boasted many tens of thousands of members,...

Beginning with a searing indictment of slavery, this first episode dramatically evokes the causes of the war, from the Cotton Kingdom of the South to the northern abolitionists who opposed it. Here are the burning questions of Union and States’ rights, John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the firing on Fort Sumter and the jubilant rush to arms on both sides. Along the way the series’ major figures are introduced:...

Ken Burns' Emmy Award-winning documentary brings to life America's most destructive and defining conflict. The Civil War is the saga of celebrated generals and ordinary soldiers, a heroic and transcendent president and a country that had to divide itself in two in order to become one. "Valley of the shadow of death, 1864: It's a chess game between two masters. The Union's General Grant and the Confederacy's General Lee are a study in contrasts as...

Ken Burns' Emmy Award-winning documentary brings to life America's most destructive and defining conflict. The Civil War is the saga of celebrated generals and ordinary soldiers, a heroic and transcendent president and a country that had to divide itself in two in order to become one. "Simply murder, 1863: Their names are etched forever in history - Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Vicksburg - some of the Civil War's stormiest battlegrounds. While...

1865, war is all hell (Episode 8): "Sherman's legendary 'March to the Sea' portends the war's end, searing the heartlands of Georgia and the Carolinas. Key southern cities fall under General Grant's command, and General Lee's troops have nowhere left to flee. In the stillness of the Appomattox Court House, Lee's dramatic surrender to Grant finally unfolds. As the news echoes through Washington, a plan for the South's revenge is hatched in the angry...