American Experience (PBS Documentaries)

A 2002 Biography Documentary, narrated by Liev Schreiber, broadcasted as part of PBS American Experience. Click on CC for optional English subtitles. As a general, he had fought to preserve the Union. As president, he helped to oversee the transformation from union to nation. As a former president, he was the embodiment of the very idea of national union, and of America's entry onto the world stage. As a dying general, he was the symbol of the nation's greatest and most traumatic war. The story of Ulysses S. Grant's life, from his first days on the Ohio frontier to his last days out-writing death in the Adirondacks, is an endlessly fascinating one. The greatest hero of the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant was a brilliant military strategist whose ruthlessness in battle won him the nickname "Unconditional Surrender". His victory at Vicksburg, which irrevocably changed the course of the war, won him the admiration of the North and the undying respect of Abraham Lincoln. The story of Grant's record in the White House is less triumphant. For two terms, as his presidency was rocked by scandal and economic depression, Grant struggled to define the meaning of the war he had fought so hard to win, and the Union he had fought to preserve. While not overlooking Grant's many failings, this film reappraises Grant's career, from his pre-Civil War days as a failed soldier haunted by rumours of drunkenness, to his last hours, when he raced to finish his war memoirs as he was dying of cancer. Part 2: https://rumble.com/v733tvs-ulysses-s.-grant-warrior-president-part-2.html

Click on CC for optional English subtitles.