I agree with Brett's take. The story is continually interrupted with comments from military historians which, IMO, hurt the flow of the presentation. Overall, pretty decent program on a General and President not generally recognized much for his service in the history of the US.
That is an interesting question, how he was/is remembered.
A few things rendered Grant's memory not as prominent as it might have been.
1. The North won the war without really breaking much of a sweat and northerners just went back to what they were doing beforehand. The Confederacy had universal white male conscription. The Union had a lottery. They did not need every white man in the army. The war just was not remembered with the same intensity in the North that it was in the South.
2. His administration was horribly corrupt. This pervasive corruption started during the war, but it became rampant afterwards and reached a climax under his administration. It was a carnival of corruption. Grant, to my knowledge, was never implicated, but it happened all around him.
3. "Grant the Butcher" was a real issue. In May 1864, Lee had around 64,000 men in the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant suffered 66,000 casualties (KWC) in May and June 1864 alone. And it could have been worse if Lee had not pulled the artillery out of the linear the Muleshoe on the morning of May 12th, when Grant tried one of the stupidest tactics in American history, packing 20,000 men, 200 men across the front and 100 men deep. If the Confederate artillery had been there when Grant launched that attack, Union casualties could have been horrendous, maybe bad enough to get Grant fired. Grant's attack against the center of the ANV at Cold Harbor in June 1864, cost him 7,000 killed and wounded. Grant refused to ask for a truce so he could recover the wounded because the side asking for the truce is seen as the loser. Union wounded baked in the summer sun for days until Grant swallowed his pride on the third day and asked for truce. By then, most of the wounded were dead.
That said, Grant had in spades what Clausewitz called "
genie" ("will" is probably the best translation), but he was not without his shortcomings.
