Grant, Ulysses S.

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Grant, Ulysses S. 1822-1885

Born as Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822, at Point Pleasant, Ohio, the son of Jesse Root and Hannah Simpson Grant, Grant grew up in nearby Georgetown. In 1839 he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating in the middle of his class in 1843; it was at this time that he became Ulysses S. Grant, a result of a West Point clerical error. During the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), he saw action in several battles, despite the fact that he served as quartermaster and commissary officer for his regiment. Marrying Julia Dent in 1848, he found peacetime military service frustrating professionally and personally, and resigned his commission as captain in 1854. Over the next seven years, Grant struggled to provide for his family, which eventually included four children. A combination of bad luck, uncertain health, and the impact of the economic panic of 1857 left him impoverished before he took a position at his father’s general store in Galena, Illinois, in 1860. With the outbreak of the Civil War (1861–1865) the following year, he offered his services, eventually securing a colonel’s commission; before long he found himself a brigadier general, courtesy of the influence of his hometown congressman.

In 1861 Grant led U.S. forces southward into Kentucky and Missouri, securing Paducah in September. The following year, forces under his command, aided by a gunboat flotilla, captured Fort Henry (February 6, 1862) and Fort Donelson (February 16, 1862), along with some twelve thousand Confederate soldiers. Two months later, he fended off a Confederate attack at Shiloh, Tennessee (April 6–7, 1862), although the high losses he suffered and his lack of preparedness brought him under heavy criticism.

Late in the fall of 1862, after fending off several Confederate efforts to retake western Tennessee, Grant began planning to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, the major remaining Confederate stronghold along the Mississippi River. After several abortive efforts, he took the city on July 4, 1863, following a campaign of marching and fighting that kept superior enemy forces off balance. The victory secured his hold on an important command: In November he scored another triumph at Chattanooga, Tennessee, a victory that paved the way for President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) to elevate him to overall command of the armies of the United States in 1864. In less than fourteen months from assuming command, Grant devised the grand strategy and coordinated the campaigns that led to the collapse of the Confederacy. He took charge of the forces opposing the Confederacy’s leading general, Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), and in some six weeks of bloody campaigning forced Lee back to defend the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Holding Lee in check while other Union armies triumphed (as did Lincoln in his reelection bid), Grant pushed Lee out of Richmond at the beginning of April, tracked him down, and forced him to surrender what remained of his army on April 9, 1865.

Immediately after the war, Grant urged reconciliation between North and South, but he quickly came to oppose white supremacist violence and to support recognizing black civil and eventually political rights. His popularity as a war hero made him an ideal presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 1868: His triumph came in the first election in which black Americans voted in large numbers, enough to secure Grant’s majority in the popular vote. Having run for the presidency in the belief that only he could stave off a Democratic resurgence and preserve the fruits of military victory, Grant unsuccessfully attempted to balance sectional reconciliation with federal protection of black equality before the law.

During Grant’s first term, the former Confederate states completed their return to civil government, while the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment appeared to safeguard black voting. His efforts to subdue terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan enjoyed initial success, although eventually a combination of white supremacist persistence, eroding public support, adverse court decisions, and inadequate institutional foundations led to the recapture of the former Confederate states by the Democratic Party. Although Grant oversaw the establishment of a stable deflationary monetary policy and a peaceful settlement of outstanding issues with Great Britain, his efforts to build a political base through patronage to help him pass his agenda, especially the attempted annexation of the Dominican Republic, only spurred greater opposition within his own party. Eventually, these opponents formed the short-lived Liberal Republican movement, which unsuccessfully tried to thwart Grant’s bid for reelection in 1872.

The onset of economic depression and the revelation of corruption within the administration marred Grant’s second term, as did the collapse of his peace policy toward Native Americans. Leaving office in 1877 after playing a critical role in resolving the disputed election of 1876, Grant took a trip around the world, returning to fail in a bid for the 1880 Republican presidential nomination. Moving to Wall Street, Grant tried his hand at business once more, only to be impoverished when he became the victim of a swindler. Soon thereafter, he learned he had throat cancer. In order to provide for his family, Grant commenced writing his autobiography, completing the manuscript, widely praised as a masterpiece, only days before his death at Mount MacGregor, New York, on July 23, 1885. He was buried in New York City; in 1897 his remains were reinterred in a massive tomb overlooking the Hudson River.

As a general, Grant displayed a doggedness and aggressiveness that sometimes overshadowed his ability to plan and conduct major campaigns and coordinate his forces, skills not evident in his predecessors in high command. Critics claim that he was a blundering bloody butcher, but the indictment does not stand up under examination. He also displayed a shrewd willingness to cooperate with his civil superiors and came to embrace both emancipation and the waging of hard war as keys to victory. As such, he has been cited as a model for military leadership and business management, something of an irony given his failures in business. Assessments of his presidency as a flat failure have given way to a more balanced view that takes into account the difficult problems Grant faced and gives him due credit for his successes and for exhibiting some political skill.

SEE ALSO Ku Klux Klan; Lee, Robert E.; Lincoln, Abraham; Mexican-American War; Native Americans; Presidency, The; Reconstruction Era (U.S.); Republican Party; Slavery; Terrorism; U.S. Civil War