Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for this link to a review of Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865 by Brooks D. Simpson. The reputation of Grant, both as General and as President, is rising. Sympathizers of the Lost Cause had managed to trash it pretty well. Grant's success as a General was remarkable and influenced military thinking far more than Lee. As a President, he stood staunchly against racism. It was only after Grant left office and the Union army withdrew from the South that the Klan and Jim Crow laws bore down on blacks.
If a detached observer were told that the Union's eastern command fell short of its goal under six commanders, only to succeed under the seventh, that seventh commander's success would appear anything but the inevitable result of a numerical superiority that his predecessors had also enjoyed.