John Reeves, Soldier of Destiny

History as seen through the eyes of preeminent authors.

Produced in partnership with New-York Historical Society

John Reeves, Soldier of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, and the Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant

Moderated by Gunja SenGupta

John Reeves is the author of A Fire in the Wilderness and The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee. He has taught European and American history at Lehman College, Bronx Community College, and Southbank University in London. John received an MA in European History from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His articles on Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant have been featured in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and on the History News Network. He’s also been interviewed on the Civil War by NPR’s All Things Considered, the BBC, and The History Channel.

Gunja SenGupta is a Professor of History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author, most recently (with Awam Amkpa) of Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves: America and the Indian Ocean in the Age of Abolition and Empire (University of California Press, 2023), which won a 2024 Bentley Book Prize from the World History Association (WHA), as well as a Paul E. Lovejoy Book Prize from the Journal of Global Slavery. Her other books include For God and Mammon: Evangelicals and Entrepreneurs, Masters and Slaves in Territorial Kansas (University of Georgia Press, 1996); and From Slavery to Poverty: The Racial Origins of Welfare in New York, 1840-1918 (New York University Press, 2009). Her articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and literary magazines like the American Historical Review, Journal of Negro (now African American) History, Civil War History, Kansas History, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, and Transition Magazine. Her work has been funded by fellowships and grants awarded by Mrs. Giles Whiting, Wolfe, Tow and Mellon foundations among others, as well  most recently by CUNY’s Mellon-funded Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI-CUNY).