S. citizens.
Despite all of the destruction and chaos that had crippled the South as a result of the war and his surrender to Grant, Lee was considered "the symbol of everything for which (the Confederate soldiers) had been willing to die." Thus, "if the Lost Cause," being the loss of the Old South and its aristocratic/slavery system, "sanctified by so much heroism and so many deaths, had a living justification," it was Robert E. Lee (Catton, 2003, 632).
In contrast, Ulysses S. Grant "was everything Lee was not," for instead of being raised in a rather well-to-do family with close and important ties to a number of wealthy and prominent Southern political figures and leaders, Grant, the son of a skin tanner of the Western American frontier, had been raised "the hard way" and symbolized the "eternal toughness" and sinewy fiber" of the great mountain men, those who had fled civilization for a life of roughness and struggle in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains and beyond (Catton, 2003, 632). Grant was also what one might call a non-conformist, for he felt that he was his own man and owed nothing to no one, much unlike Lee who came from a family background filled with reverence and admiration for all things southern and a deep respect for the Southern way of life with its laid-back indifference to the plight of the black man and woman. But like Lee, Grant was also a firm detractor of the institution of slavery in the South and felt that...
Both were undoubtedly great soldiers and military geniuses and always faced the enemy with great resolution and an air of defiance and superiority. As Catton tells us, Grant and Lee possessed "great virtue and utter tenacity," meaning that they firmly believed in their individual causes and would do anything to accomplish them. They also were daring and extremely resourceful which is supported by Lee's "dazzling campaigns of Second Manassas and Chancellorsville" and Grant's turbulent and deadly victory for the Union at Vicksburg (2003, 634).
But one of the most important similarities between Grant and Lee was their ability to face defeat honorably and to recognize that neither side, being the Union and the Confederacy, came out the victor after the war, due to the continuing struggles of African-Americans and the devastating consequences of Reconstruction. Yet all in all, Grant and Lee have much in common, especially related to their determination to bring peace to America even though it meant the lost of thousands of lives and the rending apart of the foundation of American democracy.
References
Catton, Bruce. (2003). "Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts." Bannon: A Writer's Workshop: Crafting Paragraphs, Building Essays. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 631-34.
