Grant, Ulysses S(impson)

Grant, Ulysses S[impson] (1822–85), 18th President of the U.S. (1869–77), was reared on an Ohio farm, attended West Point, served in the Mexican War, and then retired to enter business. Early in the Civil War he was made a major general, following a successful campaign in western Kentucky. In July 1863, by a joint land and river campaign, he captured Vicksburg and Port Hudson, splitting the Confederacy in two, and after his successful Tennessee campaigns Lincoln made him commander in chief of the Union forces. Grant himself led the Army of the Potomac against Lee in the Wilderness campaign, the siege of Petersburg, and the subsequent strategy that led to Lee's surrender at Appomattox. His personal popularity, and his stand with the radical Republicans against President Johnson, caused his presidential nomination, and after his election he authorized punitive Reconstruction policies in the South, keeping alive sectional hatred. His cabinet appointments were misguided, and he was duped by disreputable financiers and politicians, so that serious scandals involved some of the highest in his administration. Nevertheless he was reelected. Upon retirement, Grant invested his funds in a private banking house in which his son Buck was a partner. The other partner, Ferdinand Ward, absconded with the firm's assets in 1884, causing Grant to seek financial recovery by writing his Personal Memoirs (2 vols., 1885–86), cited by Edmund Wilson as the best autobiography written by an American and without question ranking high among the world's historical military accounts—direct in style and unassuming in manner. Biographies of Grant include those by Hamlin Garland and W.E. Woodward. Matthew Arnold wrote a critical appraisal in his Civilization in the United States; studies of his military career include works by Bruce Catton.