Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822, in Ohio, and died on July 23, 1885. He served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877, and before that, as the Commanding General of the Union Army, he led the North to victory in the American Civil War in 1865.

Grant graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1843 and fought well in the Mexican-American War, but by 1854 he was back in civilian life and broke. When the Civil War started in 1861, he joined the Union Army. He gained fame after winning battles in the western theater in 1862. The next year, his Vicksburg campaign gave the Union control of the Mississippi River, a major strategic blow to the Confederacy. After his victory at Chattanooga, President Abraham Lincoln promoted him to lieutenant general and put him in charge of all Union armies. Grant then fought Robert E. Lee in the Overland Campaign, which ended when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson promoted him to General of the Army. Grant split with Johnson over Reconstruction. A war hero who felt a sense of duty, he was nominated unanimously by the Republican Party and elected president in 1868.

As president, Grant steadied the post-war economy, backed Reconstruction and the Fifteenth Amendment, and went after the Ku Klux Klan. An effective civil rights leader, he signed a law creating the U.S. Department of Justice and worked with Radical Republicans to protect African Americans. In 1871, he set up the first Civil Service Commission. He won reelection in 1872, but his second term was plagued by executive scandals. His response to the Panic of 1873 failed to stop the Long Depression, which helped Democrats win the House in 1874. Grant’s Native American policy aimed to assimilate Indians into Anglo-American culture. Abroad, he peacefully settled the Alabama Claims against Britain, but the Senate rejected his plan to annex Santo Domingo. During the disputed 1876 election, he helped Congress approve a compromise.

After leaving office in 1877, Grant took a world tour, the first president to circle the globe. In 1880, he failed to get the Republican nomination for a third term. Dying of throat cancer in 1885, he wrote his memoirs, which were published after his death and became a major critical and financial success. At his death, he was the most popular American and was seen as a symbol of national unity. Because of the pseudohistorical and negationist Lost Cause mythology spread by Confederate sympathizers around the turn of the 20th century, historical assessments and rankings of Grant’s presidency suffered badly before starting to recover in the 21st century.

**Early life and education**

Grant’s father, Jesse Root Grant, was a Whig and a strong abolitionist. He married Hannah Simpson on June 24, 1821, and their first child, Hiram Ulysses Grant, was born on April 27, 1822. Jesse named the boy after his own father-in-law, but always called him Ulysses. In 1823, the family moved to Georgetown, Ohio, where five more children were born: Simpson, Clara, Orvil, Jennie, and Mary. At age five, Ulysses started at a subscription school and later attended two private schools. In the winter of 1836–1837, he was a student at Maysville Seminary, and in the fall of 1838, he attended John Rankin’s academy.

As a youth, Grant was unusually good at riding and managing horses; his father gave him work driving supply wagons and transporting people. Unlike his siblings, he wasn’t required to attend church by his Methodist parents. For the rest of his life, he prayed privately and never officially joined any denomination. To others, including his own son, he seemed agnostic. Grant was mostly apolitical before the war but wrote, “If I had ever had any political sympathies they would have been with the Whigs. I was raised in that school.”

**Early military career and personal life**

**West Point and first assignment**

At Jesse Grant’s request, Representative Thomas L. Hamer nominated Ulysses to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in spring 1839. Grant was accepted on July 1. Not knowing Grant, Hamer changed his name, so Grant was enlisted as “U. S. Grant.” Because those initials also stood for “Uncle Sam,” his army colleagues called him “Sam.”

At first, Grant was indifferent to military life, but within a year he reconsidered leaving the academy and later wrote that “on the whole I like this place very much.” He was known as the “most proficient” horseman. To escape military routine, he studied under Romantic artist Robert Walter Weir and produced nine surviving artworks. He spent more time reading library books than his academic texts. On Sundays, cadets had to march to church services, which Grant disliked. Quiet by nature, he made a few close friends among fellow cadets, including Frederick Tracy Dent and James Longstreet. He was inspired by Commandant Captain Charles Ferguson Smith and by General Winfield Scott, who visited the academy. Grant later wrote of military life, “there is much to dislike, but more to like.”

Grant graduated on June 30, 1843, ranked 21st out of 39 in his class, and was promoted the next day to brevet second lieutenant. He planned to resign his commission after four years. He would later write that among the happiest days of his life were the day he left the presidency and the day he left the academy. Despite his excellent horsemanship, he wasn’t assigned to the cavalry but to the 4th Infantry.