Grant, Ulysses S.

(b. April 27, 1822; d. July 23, 1885) General; eighteenth president of the United States (1869–1877).

Ulysses S. Grant was born at Point Pleasant, Ohio, and became an officer in the U.S. Army after graduating from West Point in 1843. He was appointed by Abraham Lincoln in 1864 as commander in chief of the Union armies, and served as president of the United States from 1868 to 1876.

Grant's father was a tanner, an occupation his son was loath to take up. He was eager for a West Point education, and his father was also enthusiastic about it, especially after he showed some promise in mathematics and an interest in engineering during his early education. Civil engineers were in great demand, and Jesse Grant petitioned his congressman, Thomas Hamer, on his son's behalf.

At first, West Point was a disappointment. Grant found himself unexpectedly on the losing end of a class battle. He was an outsider. His parents were working people, and his classmates' were not—and they let him know it. Only later, living in such close proximity to his fellow cadets and under the difficult regimen of military orders, did Grant begin to revel in the camaraderie of the place and soften toward army life.

Grant graduated from West Point in 1843 and fought in the war with Mexico (1846–1848). He took part in most of the important battles, gaining valuable experience as an officer and serving with many of the men who would later become his allies and enemies. On leave in August 1848, Grant married Julia Dent, the sister of his West Point roommate.

But trouble followed. Separated from his wife and children by his military assignment and terribly lonely, Grant indulged his latent thirst for alcohol, and he soon attracted the unfavorable notice of his commanding officer. The details of what happened next are murky, but Grant resigned his commission in 1854. He was working in his father's leather shop in Galena, Illinois, when the nation's regional tensions over slavery exploded and the Civil War began.

A soldier at heart, Grant volunteered to serve in the Union army and was commissioned colonel of the 21st Illinois Volunteers. In 1861, he was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers and reassigned to Cairo, Illinois, a small river town in the southernmost part of the state. Not longer after, Grant engineered the first notable Union victories of the war, the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, in Tennessee. For this, President Lincoln made him a major general of the volunteer forces with which he served.

More victories followed. While other generals demurred, Grant favored direct action, even at the cost of greater casualties. In him, the North had found a commander willing to fight an ugly war on its own terms. In 1862 and 1863, after repeated frustrations, Grant employed ground forces and Union gunboats to take Vicksburg, Mississippi, by siege, cutting the Confederacy in half. In 1864, President Lincoln made him commander in chief of the Union armies and an act of Congress raised him to the rank of lieutenant general, a long-dormant rank.

So positioned, Grant was free to prosecute the war on his own terms. He surrounded himself with brilliant generals such as William Sherman, George Thomas, and Philip Sheridan. With considerable strategic skill, he directed the bloody and brutal wilderness campaign against the forces of Robert E. Lee. In 1865, he contrived to cut Lee's army off at Appomattox, Virginia, effectively ending the war. A year later, Grant was named full general.

In the chaos and divisiveness that followed the Civil War, the country turned to Grant for leadership. As it had once with George Washington and Andrew Jackson, the nation looked to its wartime leader to guide it through a difficult peace. Grant was perfect for the part. No American since George Washington had risen to such high rank within the military. Grant had defeated the Confederacy and rescued the Union. He was a hero. Grant served as secretary of war under President Andrew Johnson in 1867 and in 1868 was elected president.

Grant served two turbulent terms as president. His inexperience in politics was troublesome enough, but his tendency to remain doggedly loyal to his friends, regardless of their misdeeds, and his tendency to trust and admire the wealthy proved disastrous and aggravated an already difficult national moment. Scandals blossomed. Grant's friends deceived him for their own gain and escaped unscathed through Grant's tireless beneficence. In the legislature, the demands of big business ruled the day. Worse, much of the country was bitterly divided, in large part over Grant's decision to pursue the harsh Reconstruction plan advocated by Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln's political opponents within the Republican Party. It was the disastrous continuation of a disastrous policy. A former combatant, Grant was all too-willing to view the conquered South as enemy territory, its inhabitants as adversaries. Still, much of the trouble with, indeed the ultimate failure of, Grant's reconstruction policies can be explained by the president's inability to act decisively in the face of rapidly developing circumstances. A see-saw policy of determination and resolution followed by apparent timidity and uncertainty served only to increase the nation's sense of confusion. Grant would strike hard in one instance, waver the next. To many observers in the North, Grant's reconstruction seemed feckless and ill-planned; to many enduring it in the South, it seemed reckless, arbitrary, even malicious. There, a great and abiding bitterness took shape and spread. It is unclear, as of this writing, if the wound created by that bitterness has entirely healed.

At the end of his second term, Grant retired to New York. Bankrupted by ill-advised business investments, he set about writing his memoirs to provide for his family. He died on July 23, 1885, of throat cancer. Among the mourners who attended his funeral were thousands of the

soldiers he had led so brilliantly during his nation's moment of greatest need.

Reconstruction.

Carpenter, John. Ulysses S. Grant. New York: Twayne, 1970.

Scaturro, Frank. President Grant Reconsidered. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998.

Simpson, Brooks D. Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

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