Mediocre? Won the American Civil War and won two terms as president is mediocre? Phew.
Won the Civil War? All by himself? I guess maybe I’ve read a different history than you did.
And in any case, I gave him credit for pursuing Lee with a dogged determination that eventually wore him down.
And his two terms as president were marked by scandal after scandal. Before obama, arguably the most corrupt adminstration in history. That was not entirely Grant’s fault,of course, but he was hardly a sterling example of a chief executive.
And his repeated failures in civilian life are well documented.
Logistics, fumes of alcohol for Grant’s “strength” and bloody doggedness (not tactical or strategic military skills), and a huge supply of immigrant cannon fodder in the form of Irish and other foreign immigrant conscripts & freedmen looking for northern work, (anyone who could not afford the $300 draft waiver)— this was the source of union advantage, not the latecomer Grant. Grant’s commission on March 10, 1864, as CIC of the union army came very late in the war (the surrender occurred a year and two days from then), which slogged through hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers from this fodder, due to idiotic union generalship (particularly McClellan, who ran against Lincoln) and tactics. There were very few outstanding union commanders— one notably was Winfield Scott Hancock. The sheer logistics alone, outlasting a blockaded region with limited heavy industry, that is what overcame the largely agrarian South, to make way for seizing of titled lands and property, and the “new” South of empty factory mill towns from the cheap labor express. Deo Vindice.
See: Grant’s memoirs, edited by Mark Twain, who rescued him from his poverty and his graft ridden administration- the model for the coming years. (For some timely flavour- “Gangs of New York” , the original book on the Five Points and the Draft riots of NYC in July, 1863 just following the slaughter/debacle for both armies at Gettysburg. Movie, not so much, though Scorcese did a great job on setwork and accuracy of the place).