After the Federal victory, many Americans hailed Grant as the man who saved the Union.

But Grant was magnanimous in victory.

Multiple times during the war he honored the dignity of his defeated adversaries, most famously at Appomattox, where he did not require Lee to hand over his sword, as usually required. Grant also allowed Confederate officers to keep their sidearms and horses.

Lee appreciated Grant’s actions, remarking: “This will have the best possible effect upon the men … it will be very gratifying, and will do much toward conciliating our people.”

But after the war, the conciliatory feelings vanished.

Southern partisans constructed the narrative of the “Lost Cause.” It held that the root of the Civil War was not slavery, but the rights of states to control their own destinies. It further held that the Union victory had nothing to do with Confederate character or leadership, but rather the Union’s sheer numbers and superior resources.

In this Lost Cause narrative, Grant was seen as a bumbling butcher devoid of any meaningful strategic vision, who succeeded only by mercilessly throwing more soldiers at his enemy. It also revived the old rumors of his excessive drinking.

In this storyline, Grant’s foil was always the courtly gentleman, Robert E. Lee. The hagiography of Lee demanded Grant’s inferiority.

By the early 20th century, the Lost Cause was no longer isolated in the South and had spread across America. Crowds flocked to see the racist anti-Reconstruction “Birth of a Nation” in movie theaters, and during the World War I rush to build military bases, the Army named 10 of them after Confederate generals.

Grant served as president from 1869 to 1877 during a time when white Southerners proved hostile toward federal Reconstruction measures that sought equal rights for recently freed enslaved people.

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