Grant, Ulysses S., 1822-1885

Ulysses S. Grant was a Union general during the Civil War and president of the United States during Reconstruction.

Born on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio, Grant’s original name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. Hiram was an ode to his maternal grandfather, but Grant preferred his middle name Ulysses. He attended various private schools and then received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He was mistakenly enrolled under the name Ulysses S. Grant. Grant kept the moniker. Because it was often written as “U. S. Grant,” he gained the nickname “Uncle Sam,” or “Sam,” by fellow cadets.

Grant was an average student but excelled in horse riding. He graduated in 1843 and was commissioned as an officer in the Fourth Infantry Regiment in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1844, he met Julia Dent, the sister of a West Point classmate and soon became engaged, before he was moved to a new post. From 1846 to 1848, Grant served in the Mexican-American War seeing action in many different battles and receiving two brevet (honorary) promotions for bravery. Upon returning from the war, in 1848, Grant married Julia. The couple eventually had four children.

After the Mexican-American War, Grant carried out various army assignments, including some in California and the far west. He generally performed well, and was recognized as being a caring and considerate officer. However, in 1854, Grant began to show problems with alcohol, and after warnings by his superior officer, he resigned his military commission in July that year. He returned to his wife in St. Louis, unemployed and with little money. For the next several years, Grant struggled to make money to support his growing family. He tried and failed at farming, real estate sales, and local government service. His father-in-law gifted him a slave, a 35-year old farmhand named William Jones. Despite Grant’s financial despair, he chose to free Jones in 1859, rather than use him for labor or profit from his sale. Grant instead sold personal items, like a gold watch and at one point sold firewood on street corners in St. Louis. Finally, in 1860, he joined his father’s successful leather goods business, operated by his younger brothers in Galena, Illinois, and became financially stable.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Grant volunteered for military service. With his military background, he was made colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Infantry Regiment, and by July 1861 had been promoted to brigadier general. Showing great aptitude within the rapidly growing Union Army, Grant received another promotion in September 1861 as commander of the District of Southeast Missouri.

Grant fought his first major battle at Belmont, Missouri, in November 1861. While largely a draw, it gave Grant valuable field command experience. Only three months later, he carried out a highly successful campaign against Confederate troops at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee. His capture of both positions led to northern newspapers calling him “Unconditional Surrender” Grant and elevated his status in the Union, during a time when other federal armies had faced several defeats.

Grant was nearly defeated by a large Confederate army in southwestern Tennessee in April 1862, but rallied his force and counterattacked the next day, winning the Battle of Shiloh. The casualty rate shocked many in the north, but President Abraham Lincoln recognized that Grant did not quit in the face of adversity or hardship and endorsed him for higher command. In late 1862 and into 1863, Grant carried out an effort to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, and help secure the Mississippi River for Union forces. Hindered by Confederate forces, terrain, and the elements, Grant’s army suffered through a long and tiring campaign. Yet, his tenacity and creativity, backed by a superior number of soldiers and competent subordinates like William Tecumseh Sherman, ensured victory. Grant outmaneuvered his opponents, raided Mississippi’s capital city of Jackson, and then besieged a Confederate army in Vicksburg, capturing the city on July 4, 1863, and electrifying northern morale—especially as it occurred a day after a separate Union army defeated Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Grant followed his success in Mississippi by defeating Confederate forces that had surrounded a Union army in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and in 1864 was promoted to lieutenant general and made general-in-chief of the United States Army. He relocated to Virginia and over the next year carried out a bloody advance on the Confederate capital of Richmond. While Robert E. Lee effectively blocked Grant’s initial assaults in northern Virginia, Grant proved undaunted by battlefield defeats. He understood that Union armies could replenish the loss of men and supplies more easily than the Confederacy, and that each massive engagement wore down the Army of Northern Virginia. Indeed, Lee did his best to hold back Grant’s massive army, but in 1865, after months of grueling fighting, and a long siege of Petersburg, the Confederate army was forced to abandon Richmond and retreat to the southwest. Grant’s army cut off Lee’s army, forcing the south’s most famous general to surrender in April 1865 at Appomattox Court House. While several other Confederate armies across the south did not surrender until days or weeks later, Grant’s victory in Virginia effectively signaled the end of the Civil War.

Grant remained in the army immediately after the war, working closely with President Andrew Johnson after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. However, Grant soon split from Johnson on Reconstruction and other policy matters. He was nominated by the Republican Party for president in 1868 and won, entering the White House in 1869. Grant was an honest and empathetic leader, but his administration was marred by corruption. Those controversies overshadowed some of his successes as the nation’s chief executive including greater protections for Black southerners during Reconstruction, signing the Fifteenth Amendment (which protected African American voting rights), greater protection of Native American lands, establishing Yellowstone as a national park, and advocating for civil service reform.

After serving two terms as president, Grant and his wife went on a two-year world tour. The couple settled in New York City afterwards, when Grant again suffered financial loss due to an investment scam. He developed throat cancer and spent his final months writing his personal memoir. Grant finished writing only a few days before passing away, on July 23, 1885. His memoir was a financial success, providing his widow a large amount of money for retirement, and is largely recognized as one of the best autobiographies in the English language. Grant is buried in the General Grant National Memorial (also known as Grant’s Tomb) in New York City, New York.

(Wikipedia; White House; American Battlefield Trust; National Park Service)

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