Grant, Ulysses S.

Grant, Ulysses S. (1822–1885), Civil War general and eighteenth president of the United States.Grant was born at Point Pleasant, Ohio, the son of a tanner, Jesse Root Grant, and Hannah Simpson Grant. In 1839, he received a congressional appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Disliking military education, Grant was a mediocre student, but mathematical aptitude secured his graduation in 1843. Appointed brevet second lieutenant and assigned to Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, Missouri, he met Julia Dent, whom he married in 1848. Military events interrupted Grant's planned return to West Point to teach mathematics. Mexican War service under Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott brought him promotion to brevet captain. Assigned to the Pacific Coast in 1852, Grant served in 1854 at isolated and dreary Fort Humboldt, California, under an oppressive commanding officer. Lacking funds to bring his wife and two sons to join him, he resigned from the army. Rumors that heavy drinking was involved dogged Grant thereafter.

Intent on farming, he settled on land in St. Louis County owned by his father‐in‐law. Grant's farm failed during the 1857 depression and, unable to find employment in St. Louis, he moved to Galena, Illinois, to work in his father's leather‐goods store.

When the Civil War erupted in April 1861, Grant accompanied volunteers to Springfield, Illinois, and assisted Governor Richard Yates in mustering troops. In June, Yates appointed Grant to command an Illinois regiment. Colonel Grant marched to Missouri, then was appointed brigadier general.

Stationed at Cairo, Illinois, in September 1861, Grant countered Confederate violations of Kentucky neutrality by occupying vital Paducah. In his first battle, at Belmont, Missouri (7 November 1861), he displayed characteristic aggressiveness. The Confederates’ unconditional surrender of Fort Donelson, Tennessee, in February 1862, the war's first major Union victory, cracked the Confederate western defense line and yielded some fifteen thousand prisoners. Surprised at Shiloh on the Tennessee River (6 April 1862), Grant responded to a disastrous battle with a counterattack the next day that redeemed Union fortunes. Surviving a winter of frustration, Grant launched lightning thrusts against Vicksburg, a Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi; this campaign was considered his military masterpiece. Under siege, Vicksburg surrendered on 4 July 1863, and Grant rose to supreme command in the West. Another major victory, at Chattanooga, Tennessee (23–25November 1863), brought a summons from President Abraham Lincoln in March 1864 to assume overall command. Grant's spring campaign of attrition against Robert E. Lee cost horrendous casualties before Grant besieged the Confederates south of Richmond. On 9 April 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Virginia.

Grant continued to command the U.S. Army during Reconstruction, eventually breaking with President Andrew Johnson and becoming a reluctant Republican party presidential nominee in 1868. He was elected with a narrow popular majority over Democrat Horatio Seymour, the governor of New York. A nonmilitary general, Grant intended to govern as a nonpolitical president. In his first term, he protected freedmen's civil rights, stabilized the currency, reformed Indian policy, and negotiated with Great Britain to settle Civil War grievances. Congress refused to annex Santo Domingo, Grant's pet project. Embarrassment arose in 1869 when his relatives became entangled in gold speculation that led to a financial crisis known as Black Friday. A further scandal implicated Vice President Schuyler Colfax in a scheme to defraud investors in the Union Pacific Railroad.

Nonetheless, Grant won a second term in 1872 with a decisive victory over Horace Greeley (1811–1872), editor of the New York Tribune and the candidate of the Democrats united with reform‐minded Liberal Republicans. The country then slid into depression, Republicans continued to retreat from Reconstruction, and more government scandals burgeoned, including a scheme involving Grant's private secretary. Although Grant's personal reputation for integrity survived, his judgment was questioned.

Out of office, Grant embarked upon a lengthy world tour. The leaders of a Republican faction known as Stalwarts fought fruitlessly for his nomination in 1880. Settled in New York City, Grant was enticed into a fraudulent investment firm dominated by the swindler Ferdinand Ward. Bankrupt, suffering from inoperable throat cancer, and determined to leave his family financially secure, Grant heroically completed his highly regarded Personal Memoirs before his death.
See also Depressions, Economic; Gilded Age; Military Service Academies; Shiloh, Battle of; Vicksburg, Siege of.

Bibliography

Bruce Catton , Grant Moves South, 1960.
John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 22 vols., 1967–.
Bruce Catton , Grant Takes Command, 1970.
William S. McFeely , Grant, 1981.
Geoffrey Perret , Ulysses S. Grant, 1997.
Brooks D. Simpson , Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822–1865, 2000.

John Y. Simon