Ulysses S. Grant - Bio from the White House
Late in the administration of Andrew Johnson, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant quarreled with the President and aligned himself with the Radical Republicans. He was, as the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, their logical candidate for President in 1868.
When he was elected, the American people hoped for an end to turmoil. Grant provided neither vigor nor reform. Looking to Congress for direction, he seemed bewildered. One visitor to the White House noted "a puzzled pathos, as of a man with a problem before him of which he does not understand the terms."
Born in 1822, Grant was the son of an Ohio tanner. He went to West Point rather against his will and graduated in the middle of his class. In the Mexican War he fought under Gen. Zachary Taylor.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his father's leather store in Galena, Illinois. He was appointed by the Governor to command an unruly volunteer regiment. Grant whipped it into shape and by September 1861 he had risen to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers.
He sought to win control of the Mississippi Valley. In February 1862 he took Fort Henry and attacked Fort Donelson. When the Confederate commander asked for terms, Grant replied, "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted." The Confederates surrendered, and President Lincoln promoted Grant to major general of volunteers
At Shiloh in April, Grant fought one of the bloodiest battles in the West and came out less well. President Lincoln fended off demands for his removal by saying, "I can't spare this man--he fights."
For his next major objective, Grant maneuvered and fought skillfully to win Vicksburg, the key city on the Mississippi, and thus cut the Confederacy in two. Then he broke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga.
Lincoln appointed him General-in-Chief in March 1864. Grant directed Sherman to drive through the South while he himself, with the Army of the Potomac, pinned down Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered. Grant wrote out magnanimous terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials.
As President, Grant presided over the Government much as he had run the Army. Indeed he brought part of his Army staff to the White House.
Although a man of scrupulous honesty, Grant as President accepted handsome presents from admirers. Worse, he allowed himself to be seen with two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk. When Grant realized their scheme to corner the market in gold, he authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to sell enough gold to wreck their plans, but the speculation had already wrought havoc with business.
During his campaign for re-election in 1872, Grant was attacked by Liberal Republican reformers. He called them "narrow-headed men," their eyes so close together that "they can look out of the same gimlet hole without winking." The General's friends in the Republican Party came to be known proudly as "the Old Guard."
Grant allowed Radical Reconstruction to run its course in the South, bolstering it at times with military force.
After retiring from the Presidency, Grant became a partner in a financial firm, which went bankrupt. About that time he learned that he had cancer of the throat. He started writing his recollections to pay off his debts and provide for his family, racing against death to produce a memoir that ultimately earned nearly $450,000. Soon after completing the last page, in 1885, he died.
How easy to change identities:
MAY 29, 1839. Ulysses arrived at West Point and discovered that the congressman who appointed him, in doubt about his name, had used his middle name first and had used his mother's maiden name (Simpson) for a middle name. Officers insisted that Ulysses S. Grant had been appointed to West Point, Ulysses Hiram Grant had not. In time, Ulysses accepted U. S. Grant as his true name, insisting that his middle initial stood for "nothing." His family and Ohio friends continued to call him Ulysses; the other cadets nicknamed him "Uncle Sam" for his initials, soon shortened it to "Sam."
Even a pome for General Grant by America's famous poet, Walt Whitman
Death of General Grant.
As one by one withdraw the lofty actors,
From that great play on history's stage eterne,
That lurid, partial act of war and peace--of old and new contending,
Fought out through wrath, fears, dark dismays, and many a long suspense;
All past--and since, in countless graves receding, mellowing,
Victor's and vanquish'd--Lincoln's and Lee's--now thou with them,
Man of the mighty days--and equal to the days!
Thou from the prairies!--tangled and many-vein'd and hard has been thy part,
To admiration has it been enacted!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Ulysses S. Grant
Order: 18th President
Vice President: Schuyler Colfax (1869–1873); Henry Wilson (1873–1875)
Term of office: March 4, 1869 – March 4, 1877
Preceded by: Andrew Johnson
Succeeded by: Rutherford B. Hayes
Date of birth: April 27, 1822
Place of birth: Point Pleasant, Ohio
Date of death: July 23, 1885
Place of death: Mount McGregor, New York
First Lady: Julia Grant
Political party: Republican
Ulysses S. Grant (April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was a Union general in the American Civil War and the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877).
Grant has been described by military historian J. F. C. Fuller as "the greatest general of his age and one of the greatest strategists of any age." He won many important battles, rose to become general-in-chief of all Union armies, and is credited with winning the war.
Although Grant was a successful general, he is considered by historians to be one of America's least successful presidents, who led an administration plagued by scandal and corruption. They agree that Grant was not personally corrupt; it was his subordinates in the executive branch who were at fault. He is instead mostly criticized for not taking a strong stance against the corruption, and not acting to stop it.
More recent treatments have emphasized the accomplishments of his administration, including his struggle to preserve Reconstruction. His support for the legal rights of blacks to vote and hold public office were unpopular at the time, but have gained him more respect in modern times.
In World War II, the British Army produced an armored vehicle known as the Grant tank (a version of the American M3 model, which was ironically nicknamed the "Lee").
Grant's portrait appears on the U.S. $50 bill.
And of course, the old joke: "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?"
Ulysses S. Grant died at 8:06 a.m. on Thursday July 23, 1885, at Mount McGregor, Saratoga County, New York. His body lies in New York City, beside that of his wife, in Grant's Tomb, the largest mausoleum in North America.
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