Ulysses Grant was no obscure boy from an anonymous village. Decades before Ulysses' birth, those monitoring the new nation's heartbeat diagnosed slavery as fatal. Blacks and whites, males and females, northerners and southerners gathered in Ulysses' neighborhood with a fierce commitment to slavery's demise, often rooted in scripture. Ulysses Underground uncovers their deep laid plan for freedom, later called the Underground Railroad, with ties to the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and the Grant family. The challenge throughout Ulysses' childhood was how to end slavery without severing the United States. G. L. Corum's ground breaking research uncovers the 70 year antebellum effort to allow those of African descent the full benefits of a democracy, the conflict between those pushing overtly and covertly to end slavery, as well as Ulysses' place in the crux of it. Using dozens of letters, more than 50 illustrations, and 12 maps, Ulysses Underground unfurls America's best history.