Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Ulysses S. Grant (April 27, 1822 – July 23,
1885) was a Union army|Union general in the
American Civil War and the 18th President of the
United States|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 army|Union armies,
and is credited with winning the war.

Although Grant was a successful general, he is
considered by historians to be historical rankings
of U.S. Presidents|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.

==Biography==
Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant in Point
Pleasant, Ohio|Point Pleasant, Clermont County,
Ohio|Clermont County, Ohio, 25 miles (40 km) north
of Cincinnati, Ohio|Cincinnati on the Ohio River,
to Jesse Grant and Hannah Simpson. His father, a
tanning|tanner, and his mother were born in
Pennsylvania. In the fall of 1823 they moved to
the village of Georgetown, Ohio|Georgetown in
Brown County, Ohio, where Grant spent most of his
time until he was 17.

At the age of 17, Grant received a cadetship to
the United States Military Academy at West Point,
New York, through his U.S. Congressman, Thomas L.
Hamer. Hamer erroneously nominated him as Ulysses
Simpson Grant, and although Grant protested the
change, it was difficult to resist the
bureaucracy. Upon graduation, Grant adopted the
form of his new name with middle initial only,
never acknowledging that the "S" stood for
Simpson. He graduated from West Point in 1843,
ranking 21st in a class of 39. At the academy, he
established a reputation as a fearless and expert
horseman. Grant drank distilled liquor and smoked
huge numbers of cigars (one story had it that he
smoked over 10,000 in five years) which may have
contributed to his throat cancer of later life. 

Grant married Julia Boggs Dent (1826–1902)
on August 22, 1848. They had four children:
Frederick Dent Grant, Ulysses S. (Buck) Grant,
Jr., Ellen (Nellie) Grant, and Jesse Root Grant.

==Military career==


===Mexican War===
Grant served in the Mexican-American War under
Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, taking
part in the battles of Battle of Resaca de la
Palma|Resaca de la Palma, Battle of Palo Alto|Palo
Alto, Battle of Monterrey|Monterrey, and Battle of
Veracruz|Veracruz. He was twice brevet
(military)|brevetted for bravery: at Battle of
Molino del Rey|Molino del Rey and Battle of
Chapultepec|Chapultepec. On July 31, 1854, he
resigned from the army. Seven years of civilian
life followed, in which he was a farmer, a real
estate agent in St. Louis, Missouri|St. Louis, and
finally an assistant in the leather shop owned by
his father and brother.

===Western Theater of the Civil War===
On April 24, 1861, ten days after the fall of
Battle of Fort Sumter|Fort Sumter, Captain Grant
arrived in Springfield, Illinois, with a company
of men he had raised. The governor felt that a
West Point man could be put to better use and
appointed him colonel of the 21st Illinois
Infantry (effective June 17, 1861). On August 7,
Grant was appointed a brigadier general of
volunteers.

Grant gave the Union Army its first major victory
of the American Civil War by capturing Battle of
Fort Henry|Fort Henry, Tennessee, on February 6,
1862, followed by Battle of Fort Donelson|Fort
Donelson, where he demanded the famous terms of
"unconditional surrender" and captured a
Confederate army. Later in 1862, he was surprised
by Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston at the Battle of
Shiloh, but with grim determination and timely
reinforcements, Grant turned a serious reverse
into a victory on the second day of battle. In the
campaign to capture the river fortress of
Vicksburg Campaign|Vicksburg, Mississippi, he
spent the winter of 1862–1863|63 conducting
a series of failed attempts to overcome geographic
and logistical obstacles to reaching the city. His
eventual success in the spring and summer of 1863
is considered one of the most masterful in
military history; it split the Confederacy in two,
and it represented the second Confederate army to
surrender to Grant. 

Grant was given command of besieged Union forces
in Battle of Chattanooga III|Chattanooga,
Tennessee, decisively beating Braxton Bragg and
opening an avenue to Atlanta, Georgia, and the
heart of the Confederacy. His willingness to fight
and ability to win impressed President Abraham
Lincoln, who appointed him lieutenant
general—a new rank recently authorized by
the Congress of the United States|U.S. Congress
with Grant in mind—on March 2, 1864. On
March 12, Grant became general-in-chief of all the
armies of the United States.

===General-in-chief and strategy for victory===

Grant's fighting style was what one fellow general
called "that of a bulldog". Although a master of
combat by out-maneuvering his opponent (such as at
Vicksburg and in the Overland Campaign against
Robert E. Lee), Grant was not afraid to order
direct assaults or tight sieges against
Confederate forces, often when the Confederates
were themselves launching offensives against him.
Once an offensive or a siege began, Grant refused
to stop the attack until the enemy surrendered or
was driven from the field. Such tactics often
resulted in heavy casualties for Grant's men, but
they wore down the Confederate forces
proportionately even more and inflicted
irreplaceable losses. Grant has been described as
a "butcher" for his strategy, particularly in
1864, but he was able to achieve objectives that
his predecessor generals had not, even though they
suffered similar casualties over time.

In March 1864, Grant put Major General William T.
Sherman in immediate command of all forces in the
West and moved his headquarters to Virginia where
he turned his attention to the long-frustrated
Union effort to destroy the army of Lee; his
secondary objective was to capture the Confederate
capital of Richmond, Virginia, but Grant knew that
the latter would happen automatically once the
former was accomplished. He devised a coordinated
strategy that would strike at the heart of the
Confederacy from multiple directions: Grant,
George G. Meade, and Benjamin Franklin Butler
(politician)|Benjamin Franklin Butler against Lee
near Richmond; Franz Sigel in the Shenandoah
Valley; Sherman to invade Georgia (U.S.
state)|Georgia, defeat Joseph E. Johnston, and
capture Atlanta; George Crook and William W.
Averell to operate against railroad supply lines
in West Virginia; Nathaniel Prentiss
Banks|Nathaniel Banks to capture Mobile,
Alabama|Mobile, Alabama. Grant was the first
general to attempt such a coordinated strategy in
the war and the first to understand the concepts
of total war, in which the destruction of an
enemy's economic infrastructure that supplied its
armies was as important as tactical victories on
the battlefield.

===Overland Campaign, Petersburg, and
Appomattox===

The Overland Campaign pitted Grant against Lee,
starting in May 1864. Despite heavy losses, the
Army of the Potomac kept up a relentless pursuit
of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Grant battled
Lee to a draw in the Battle of the Wilderness, had
no more than a draw at the Battle of Spotsylvania
Court House, and lost with horrible casualties at
the Battle of Cold Harbor. Unfortunately for
Grant's coordinated strategy, only Sherman's
advance into Georgia was making progress. All of
the other generals were imposed upon Grant for
political reasons, and they bogged down without
much success.

Despite the heavy losses, Grant did not retreat as
his predecessors had done following their
setbacks. Finally, he slipped his troops across
the James River (Virginia)|James River, fooling
Lee. Failing to capture the rail junctions at
Petersburg, Virginia, Grant settled in to a
nine-month Siege of Petersburg|siege of Lee's army
in the city. He dispatched Philip Sheridan to the
Valley Campaigns of 1864|Shenandoah Valley to
defeat the army of Jubal A. Early and destroy the
farms supplying Lee. Grant's relentless pressure
finally forced Lee to evacuate Richmond and
surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9,
1865. Grant offered generous terms that did much
to ease the tensions between the armies and
preserve some semblance of Southern pride, which
would be needed to reconcile the warring sides.
Within a few weeks, the American Civil War was
effectively over, although minor actions would
continue until Kirby Smith surrendered his forces
in the Trans-Mississippi Department on June 2,
1865. 

Immediately after Lee's surrender, Grant had the
sad honor of serving as a pallbearer at the
funeral of his greatest champion, Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln had been quoted after the massive losses
at Shiloh, "I can't spare this general. He
fights." It was a two-word description that
completely caught the essence of Ulysses S. Grant.

After the war, Congress authorized Grant the newly
created rank of General of the Army (the
equivalent of a four-star, "full" general rank in
the modern Army). He was appointed as such by
President Andrew Johnson on July 25, 1866.

==Presidency==
Grant was the 18th President of the United States
and served two terms from March 4, 1869, to March
3, 1877. He was chosen as the United States
Republican Party|Republican presidential candidate
at the Republican National Convention in Chicago,
Illinois on May 20, 1868, with no real opposition.
In U.S. presidential election, 1868|the general
election that year, he won with a majority of
3,012,833 out of a total of 5,716,082 votes cast. 

Grant's presidency was plagued with scandals, such
as the Sanborn Incident at the United States
Treasury|Treasury and problems with U.S. Attorney
Cyrus I. Scofield. The most famous scandal was the
Whiskey Ring fraud in which over $3 million in
taxes were taken from the federal government.
Orville E. Babcock, the private secretary to the
President, was indicted as a member of the ring
and escaped conviction only because of a
presidential pardon. After the Whiskey Ring,
Grant's Secretary of War, William W. Belknap, was
involved in an investigation that revealed that he
had taken bribes in exchange for the sale of
Native American trading posts.

Although there is no evidence that Grant himself
profited from corruption among his subordinates,
he did not take a firm stance against malefactors
and failed to react strongly even after their
guilt was established. He was weak in his
selection of subordinates. He alienated party
leaders by giving many posts to his friends and
political contributors, rather than listen to
their recommendations. His failure to establish
adequate political allies was a factor in the
scandals getting out of control.

Despite all the scandals, Grant's administration
presided over significant events in U.S. history.
The most tumultuous was the continuing process of
Reconstruction. He favored a limited number of
troops to be stationed in the
South—sufficient numbers to protect rights
of southern blacks and suppress the violent
tactics of the Ku Klux Klan; not so many that
would harbor resentment in the general population.
In 1869 and 1871, Grant signed bills promoting
voting rights and prosecuting Klan leaders. The
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution, establishing voting rights, was
ratified in (1870).

A number of government agencies were instituted
during the Grant administration:
* United States Department of Justice | Department
of Justice (1870)
* United States Postal Service | Post Office
Department (1872)
* Office of the United States Solicitor General |
Solicitor General (1870)
* "Advisory Board on Civil Service" (1871); after
it expired in 1873, it became the role model for
the "Civil Service Commission" instituted in 1883
by President Chester A. Arthur, a Grant faithful.
(Today it is known as the Office of Personnel
Management.) 
* Office of the Surgeon General of the United
States | Surgeon General (1871)

In 1876, Colorado was admitted into the Union. In
foreign affairs the greatest achievement of the
Grant administration was the Treaty of Washington
negotiated by Grant's best appointment, Secretary
of State Hamilton Fish, in 1871. In 1876 Grant
helped to calm the nation over the Rutherford B.
Hayes|Hayes-Samuel J. Tilden|Tilden U.S.
presidential election, 1876|election controversy
by appointing a federal commission that helped to
settle the election.

Grant was known to visit the Willard Hotel to
escape the stress of the White House. He referred
to the people who approached him in the lobby as
"those damn lobbyists," possibly giving rise to
the modern term lobbyist.

===Cabinet===

{| cellpadding="1" cellspacing="4"
style="margin:3px; border:3px solid #000000;"
align="left"
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="left"|OFFICE||align="left"|NAME||align="le
ft"|TERM
|-
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="left"|President of the United
States|President||align="left" |Ulysses S.
Grant||align="left"|1869–1877
|-
|align="left"|Vice President of the United
States|Vice President||align="left"|Schuyler
Colfax||align="left"|1869–1873
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Henry
Wilson||align="left"|1873–1875
|-
!bgcolor="#000000" colspan="3"|
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of
State|Secretary of State||align="left"|Elihu B.
Washburne||align="left"|1869
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Hamilton
Fish||align="left"|1869–1877
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of the
Treasury|Secretary of the
Treasury||align="left"|George S.
Boutwell||align="left"|1869–1873
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|William
Richardson||align="left"|1873–1874
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Benjamin
Bristow||align="left"|1874–1876
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Lot M.
Morrill||align="left"|1876–1877
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of
War|Secretary of War||align="left"|John A.
Rawlins||align="left"|1869
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|William T.
Sherman||align="left"|1869
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|William W.
Belknap||align="left"|1869–1876
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Alphonso
Taft||align="left"|1876
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|James D.
Cameron||align="left"|1876–1877
|-
|align="left"|Attorney General of the United
States|Attorney General||align="left"|Ebenezer R.
Hoar||align="left"|1869–1870
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Amos T.
Akerman||align="left"|1870–1871
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|George H.
Williams||align="left"|1871–1875
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Edwards
Pierrepont||align="left"|1875–1876
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Alphonso
Taft||align="left"|1876–1877
|-
|align="left"|Postmaster General of the United
States|Postmaster General||align="left"|John A. J.
Creswell||align="left"|1869–1874
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|James Marshall
(Postmaster General)|James W.
Marshall||align="left"|1874
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Marshall
Jewell||align="left"|1874–1876
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|James N.
Tyner||align="left"|1876–1877
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of the
Navy|Secretary of the Navy||align="left"|Adolph E.
Borie||align="left"|1869
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|George M.
Robeson||align="left"|1869–1877
|-
|align="left"|United States Secretary of the
Interior|Secretary of the
Interior||align="left"|Jacob D.
Cox||align="left"|1869–1870
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Columbus
Delano||align="left"|1870–1875
|-
|align="left"| ||align="left"|Zachariah
Chandler||align="left"|1875–1877
|}



=== Supreme Court appointments ===
Grant appointed the following Justices to the
Supreme Court of the United States:

* William Strong (judge)|William Strong –
1870
* Joseph P. Bradley – 1870
* Ward Hunt – 1873
* Morrison Remick Waite (Chief Justice of the
United States|Chief Justice) – 1874

=== States Admitted to the Union ===
* Colorado – August 1, 1876

==Later life==
After the end of his second term, Grant spent two
years traveling around the world. He visited City
of Sunderland|Sunderland, where he opened the
first free municipal public library in England.
Grant also visited Japan. In the Shibakoen section
of Tokyo, a tree still stands that Grant planted
during his stay.

In 1879, the Meiji period|Meiji government of
Japan announced the annexation of the Ryukyu
Islands. China objected, and Grant was asked to
arbitrate the matter. He decided that Japan's
claim to the islands was stronger and ruled in
Japan's favor.

In 1883, Grant was elected the eighth president of
the National Rifle Association.

In 1881, Grant placed almost all of his financial
assets into an investment banking partnership with
Ferdinand Ward, as suggested by Grant's son Buck
(Ulysses, Jr.), who was having success on Wall
Street. Ward was known as the "Young Napoleon I of
France|Napoleon of corporate finance|Finance."
Perhaps Grant should have taken that name
seriously; as with the other Young Napoleon,
George B. McClellan, failure was in the wings. In
this case, Ward swindled Grant in 1884, bankrupted
the company, Grant and Ward, and fled. And to make
matters worse, Grant found out at the same time
that he was suffering from throat cancer. Grant
and his family were left destitute (this was
before the era in which retired U.S. Presidents
were given pensions).

The author Mark Twain had admired some magazine
articles Grant had written about the war and
offered to publish Grant's memoirs. Grant was now
at this time terminally ill and fought to finish
his memoirs in the hope they would provide
financially for his family after his death.
Although wracked with pain and almost unable to
speak at the end, he finished them just a few days
before his death. The memoirs succeeded in
providing a comfortable income for his wife and
children, selling over 300,000 copies and earning
the Grant family over $450,000 ($9,500,000 in
consumer price index|2005 dollars). Twain called
the memoirs "the most remarkable work of its kind
since the Commentaries of Julius Caesar," and they
are widely regarded as among the finest memoirs
ever written.

Ulysses S. Grant died at 8:06 a.m. on Thursday
July 23, 1885, at Wilton, New York|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.

== Memorials and trivia==


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. American
fifty dollar bill|$50 bill.

There is a U.S. Grant Bridge over the Ohio River
at Portsmouth, Ohio.

Grant's nicknames included: The Hero of
Appomattox, "Unconditional Surrender" Grant, Sam
Grant (originating at West Point, from "U. S."
Grant suggesting "Uncle Sam"), and, in his youth,
Ulys, Lyss and Useless.

Counties of the United States|Counties in nine
U.S. states are named after Grant: Grant County,
Arkansas; Grant County, Kansas; Grant County,
Minnesota; Grant County, Nebraska; Grant County,
New Mexico; Grant County, North Dakota; Grant
County, Oklahoma; Grant County, Washington; and
Grant County, West Virginia.

== See also ==
* U.S. presidential election, 1868
* U.S. presidential election, 1872
* History of the United States (1865-1918)|History
of the United States (1865–1918)

==References==
*Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War
High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001,
ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
*J. F. C. Fuller | Fuller, Maj. Gen. J. F. C.,
Grant and Lee, A Study in Personality and
Generalship, Indiana University Press, 1957, ISBN
0-253-13400-5.
*Smith, Jean Edward, Grant, Simon and Shuster,
2001, ISBN 0-684-84927-5.

== External links ==

*http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/
grant1.htm First Inaugural Address
*http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/
grant2.htm Second Inaugural Address
*Full text of http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/4367
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, (1885) from
Project Gutenberg
*http://www.mscomm.com/~ulysses/page160.html Grant
and Slavery
*http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/ug18
.html White House Biography

start box
succession box|title=Commander of the Army of the
Tennessee| before=(none)|after=William T.
Sherman|years=1862-1863
succession box|title=Commander of Union Armies in
the West| before=(none)|after=William T.
Sherman|years=1863-1864
succession box|title=Commanding General of the
United States Army|before=Henry W.
Halleck|after=William T. Sherman|years=1864-1869
succession box|title=United States Republican
Party|Republican Party President of the United
States|Presidential :