The appalling casualty rates of the Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign made some in the North fear that Grant was a callous “butcher,” more insensitive to the value of his soldiers’ lives than Lee (whose losses were equally high). Had the public been privy to the letters Grant wrote to his family, however, it would have seen a thoughtful, caring man, who remembered to send his wife a requested lock of hair and routinely sent kisses to his wife and children.