Ulysses Simpson Grant, having led the Northern armies to victory in the Civil War, was elected eighteenth president of the United States.
Background
Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, on April 27, 1822. His father, Jesse Root Grant, was descended from undistinguished Puritan forebears who had immigrated to Massachusetts in the early 17th century. His mother, Hannah Simpson Grant, was a typical hard-working and pious frontier woman. He was sent to his father's farm, where he drove the wood teams and plowed the ground.
Education
From the time he was 6 until he was nearly 17, young Grant regularly attended school, first in Georgetown, Ohio and later at nearby academies.
Since he had no interest in joining his father in his business, his father decided to send him to the United States Military Academy. There his name was erroneously listed as “Ulysses S. Grant”, and he decided to continue with this name.
He was not interested in military life and was lax in his studies. Grant ranked 21st in a class of 39 when he graduated from West Point in 1843, but he had distinguished himself in horsemanship and showed such considerable ability in mathematics that he imagined himself as a teacher of the subject at the academy. Bored by the military curriculum, he took great interest in the required art courses and spent much leisure time reading classic novels. However, he did perform well in subjects like mathematics and geology and gained a reputation as a skilled and fearless horseman. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1843.
When he graduated in 1843, he accepted an infantry commission. Although not in sympathy with American objectives in the war with Mexico in 1846, he fought courageously under Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, emerging from the conflict as a captain.
Warned by his commanding officer, Grant resigned from the Army in July 1854. He borrowed money for transportation to St. Louis, Missouri, where he joined his family and tried a series of occupations without much success: farmer, realtor, candidate for county engineer, and customs house clerk. He was working as a store clerk at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861.
The governor of Illinois appointed him colonel of the 21st Illinois Volunteers in June 1861. Grant took his regiment to Missouri, where, to his surprise, he was promoted to brigadier general.
Grant persuaded his superiors to authorize an attack on Ft. Henry on the Tennessee River and Ft. Donelson on the Cumberland in order to gain Union control of these two important rivers. Preceded by gunboats, Grant's 17, 000 troops marched out of Cairo, Illinois, on February 2, 1862. After Ft. Henry surrendered, the soldiers took Ft. Donelson. One of the first important Northern victories of the war, the capture of Ft. Donelson won Grant promotion to major general.
Grant next concentrated 38, 000 men at Pittsburgh Landing (Shiloh) on the Tennessee River, preparing for an offensive. He unwisely neglected to prepare for a possible Confederate counteroffensive. At dawn on April 6, 1862, the Confederate attack surprised the sleeping Union soldiers. Grant did his best to prevent a rout, and at the end of the day Union lines still held, but the Confederates were in command of most of the field. The next day the Union Army counterattacked with 25, 000 fresh troops, who had arrived during the night, and drove the Southerners into full retreat. The North had triumphed in one of the bloodiest battles of the war, but Grant was criticized for his carelessness.
Grant set out to recoup his reputation and secure Union control of the Mississippi River by taking the rebel stronghold at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Several attempts were frustrated; in the North criticism of Grant was growing and there were reports that he had begun drinking heavily. But in April 1863 Grant embarked on a bold scheme to take Vicksburg. While he marched his 20, 000 men past the fortress on the opposite (west) bank, an ironclad fleet sailed by the batteries. The flotilla rendezvoused with Grant below the fort and transported the troops across the river. In one of the most brilliant gambles of the war, Grant cut himself off from his base in the midst of enemy territory with numerically inferior forces. The gamble paid off. Grant drove one Confederate Army from the city of Jackson, then turned and defeated a second force at Champion's Hill, forcing the rebels to withdraw to Vicksburg on May 20. Union troops laid siege to Vicksburg, and on July 4 the garrison surrendered. Ten days later the last Confederate outpost on the Mississippi fell. Thus, the Confederacy was cut in two. Coming at the same time as the Northern victory at Gettysburg, this was the turning point of the war.
Grant was given command of the Western Department, and in the fall of 1863 he took command of the Union Army pinned down at Chattanooga after its defeat in the Battle of Chickamauga. In a series of battles on November 23, 24, and 25, the rejuvenated Northern troops dislodged the besieging Confederates, the most spirited infantry charge of the war climaxing the encounter. It was a great victory; Congress created the rank of lieutenant general for Grant, who was placed in command of all the armies of the Union.
In the spring of 1864 the Union armies launched a coordinated offensive designed to bring the war to an end. However, Lee brilliantly staved off Grant's stronger Army of the Potomac in a series of battles in Virginia. Union forces suffered fearful losses, especially at Cold Harbor, while war weariness and criticism of Grant as a "butcher" mounted in the North.
Lee moved into entrenchments at Petersburg, Virginia, and Grant settled down there for a long siege. Meanwhile, General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta and began his march through Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, cutting what remained of the Confederacy into pieces. In the spring of 1865 Lee fell back to Appomattox, where on April 9 he met Grant in the courthouse to receive the generous terms of surrender.
After Lincoln's death Grant was the North's foremost war hero. Both sides in the Reconstruction controversy, between President Andrew Johnson and congressional Republicans, jockeyed for his support. A tour of the South in 1865 convinced Grant that the "mass of thinking men" there accepted defeat and were willing to return to the Union without rancor. But the increasing defiance of former Confederates in 1866, their persecution of those who were freed (200, 000 African Americans had fought for the Union, and Grant believed they had contributed heavily to Northern victory), and harassment of Unionist officials and occupation troops gradually pushed Grant toward support of the punitive Reconstruction policy of the Republicans. He accepted the Republican presidential nomination in 1868, won the election, and took office on March 4, 1869.
Grant's presidency was an unhappy aftermath to his military success. Nevertheless, in 1877 he was still a hero, and on a trip abroad after his presidency he was feted in European capitals.
In 1880 Grant again allowed himself to be a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination but fell barely short of success in the convention. Retiring to private life, he made ill-advised investments that led to bankruptcy in 1884. While slowly dying of cancer of the throat, he set to work on his military memoirs to provide an income for his wife and relatives after his death. Through months of terrible pain his courage and determination sustained him as he wrote in longhand the story of his army career. The reticent, uncommunicative general revealed a genius for this kind of writing, and his two-volume Personal Memoirs is one of the great classics of military literature. The memoirs earned $450, 000 for his heirs, but the hero of Appomattox died on July 23, 1885, at Mount McGregor before he knew of his literary triumph.
Twice elected president, Grant led the Republicans in their effort to remove the vestiges of Confederate nationalism and slavery, protect African-American citizenship, and support economic prosperity.
Grant's presidency marked a radical reform in Indian policy while he promised in his inaugural address to work toward "the proper treatment of the original occupants of this land the Indians. " His Peace Policy aimed to replace entrepreneurs serving as Indian agents with missionaries and aimed to protect Indians on reservations and educate them in farming.
Views
This was a war Grant did believe in, and he offered his services.
Quotations:
"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other. "
"In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins. "
"I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. "
"The most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticized. "
"There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party. "
"Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives. "
"The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity. "
Confederate general Simon B. Buckner, one of Grant's West Point classmates (and the man who, much earlier, had loaned the impecunious captain the money to rejoin his family), requested an armistice. Grant's reply became famous: "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works."
As he wrote in his Personal Memoirs, he felt “sad and depressed…at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought.”
Personality
He rarely communicated his thinking; he was the epitome of the strong, silent type. But Grant had deep resources of character, a quietly forceful personality that won the respect and confidence of subordinates, and a decisiveness and bulldog tenacity that served him well in planning and carrying out military operations.
In subsequent years Captain "Sam" Grant served at a variety of bleak army posts. Lonely for his wife and son, the taciturn, unhappy captain began drinking.
Physical Characteristics:
A reticent man, unimpressive in physical appearance, he gave few clues to the reasons for his success.
Quotes from others about the person
"What worried Adams was not the commonplace; it was, as usual, his own education. Grant fretted and irritated him, like the Terebratula, as a defiance of first principles. He had no right to exist. He should have been extinct for ages. The idea that, as society grew older, it grew one-sided, upset evolution, and made of education a fraud. That, two thousand years after Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, a man like Grant should be called and should actually and truly be the highest product of the most advanced evolution, made evolution ludicrous. One must be as commonplace as Grant's own commonplaces to maintain such an absurdity. The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin. "
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, (1907), ch. XVII President Grant.
"I like that young man. There is something noble in him. His air and the expression of his face convince me that he has a noble heart, and that he will be a great man someday. "
Ellen Wrenshall-Dent, as quoted in the St. Louis Republican (24 July 1885).
"Ulysses S. Grant, the most illustrious warrior and statesman of modern times, the captain whose invincible sword saved the republic from dismemberment, made liberty the law of the land. A man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point. In him, the negro found a protector, the Indian, a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior. "
Frederick Douglass, as quoted in "U. S. Grant was the great hero of the Civil War but lost favor with historians" (24 April 2014), by Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post.
Urged to replace Grant, President Abraham Lincoln refused, saying: "I can't spare this man he fights."
Interests
He developed a fondness for horses almost amounting to a passion and a liking for outdoor life that in after years stood him in good stead.
Connections
He fell in love with his friend’s sister, Julia Dent, in 1844 and became engaged to her. The couple got married on August 22, 1848, amid opposition from both sets of parents. They faced many adversities in their marriage but remained steadfast in their love and commitment to each other till the very end. They were blessed with four children.