Ulysses S. Grant

President of the United States (1869–77)

• Born: April 27, 1822
• Birthplace: Point Pleasant, Ohio
• Died: July 23, 1885
• Place of death: Mount McGregor, New York

Grant was the preeminent military commander of the American Civil War, demonstrating the persistence and strategic genius that brought about the victory of the North. Afterward, a grateful nation twice elected him president, but his administration must be counted a failure.

Early Life

Born Hiram Ulysses Grant, Ulysses S. Grant was the eldest child of Jesse Root Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant. His father had known poverty in his youth, but at the time of his first son’s birth, he had established a prosperous tannery business. In 1823, Jesse moved his business to Georgetown, Ohio, where Grant spent his boyhood. He received his preliminary education at Georgetown, at Maysville Seminary in Maysville, Kentucky, and at the Presbyterian Academy, Ripley, Ohio. He did not show special promise as a student and lived a rather ordinary boyhood. His most outstanding gift turned out to be a special talent with horses, enabling him to manage the most fractious horse. He also developed a strong dislike for work at the tannery and a lifelong fondness for farming.

Jesse Grant secured an appointment for his son to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1839. His son did not want to go but bowed to parental authority. Concerned about the initials on his trunk, H.U.G., he decided to change his name to Ulysses Hiram Grant. Arriving at West Point, Grant had his first skirmish with military bureaucracy. His congressman, evidently confusing Grant with his brother Simpson, had appointed him as Ulysses S. Grant. The army insisted that Ulysses S. Grant, not Ulysses H. or Hiram Ulysses, had been appointed, and eventually Grant surrendered. Grant wrote to a congressman in 1864: “In answer to your letter of a few days ago asking what ’S’ stands for in my name I can only state nothing.”

Grant was graduated in the middle of his class in 1843. While at West Point, he developed a fondness for novels and showed a special talent for mathematics. Appointed a brevet second lieutenant in the Fourth United States Infantry, Grant served with distinction in the Mexican War (1846–48). He fought in the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterrey under the command of Zachary Taylor, Old Rough and Ready. Taylor impressed Grant with his informal attire and lack of military pretension, a style that Grant later adopted. He participated in all major battles leading to the capture of Mexico City and won brevet promotion to first lieutenant for bravery at Molino Del Rey and to captain for his behavior at Chapultepec. Although he fought with distinction, Grant believed that the Mexican War was unjust and later said that he should have resigned his commission rather than participate.

Grant married Julia Dent, the daughter of a St. Louis slaveholding family, on August 22, 1848. He had been introduced to his future wife in 1843 by her brother, a West Point classmate, while stationed at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. The Mexican War, however, interrupted their romance. The Grants had four children: Frederick Dent, Ulysses S. Jr., Ellen Wrenshall, and Jesse Root Jr. A devoted husband and father, Grant centered his life on his family. Indeed, the many surviving letters to his wife during absences caused by a military career provide the most poignant insights into the man.

Ordered to the Pacific coast in 1852 with his regiment, Grant could not afford to take his wife and children. He grew despondent without his family, decided to resign his commission in 1854, and returned to live on his wife’s family land near St. Louis to take up farming. For the remainder of Grant’s life, rumors that he had been forced to resign on account of heavy drinking followed him. The next seven years were difficult for Grant. His attempt at farming did not work out, and he tried other occupations without real success. Finally, in 1860, he moved his family to Galena, Illinois, to work as a clerk in a leather-goods store owned by his father and operated by his two younger brothers.

Grant had never been a strident, political man. His father had been an antislavery advocate, yet Grant married into a slaveholding family. At one time, he owned a slave but gave him his freedom in 1858 at a time when Grant sorely needed money. His wife retained ownership of slaves throughout the Civil War. When news of the firing on Fort Sumter reached Galena, Grant believed that he had an obligation to support the Union. Because of his military experience, he assisted in organizing and escorting a volunteer company to Springfield, Illinois, where he stayed on to assist Governor Richard Yates in mustering in and organizing volunteer troops. Eventually, Yates appointed Grant colonel of the Twenty-First Illinois Volunteers, a disorganized and undisciplined unit. Grant quickly worked the regiment into shape, marched it to Missouri, and learned much about commanding volunteer soldiers.

Life’s Work

On August 7, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Grant brigadier general, and Grant established headquarters at Cairo, Illinois, an important staging area for Union movement farther south. On September 6, he occupied Paducah, Kentucky, near the strategic confluence of the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Ohio Rivers. Grant’s first battle followed shortly. He attacked Confederate forces at Belmont, Missouri, with mixed results. He lost control of his troops after initial success and had to retreat when Confederate reinforcements arrived.

Grant gained national prominence in February 1862 when authorized to operate against Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, guarding the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, obvious highways into the Confederate heartland. He moved his small army in conjunction with naval forces and captured Fort Henry on February 6 and immediately moved overland against Fort Donelson, twelve miles away. The Confederates attempted to escape encirclement on February 15 in a brief, but bloody, battle. On February 16, the Confederate commander asked Grant for surrender terms. His response brought him fame: “No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” The Confederates surrendered on Grant’s terms, and Lincoln rewarded him for the first significant Union victory with promotion to major general.

Grant’s next major engagement, the Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, left him under a cloud. Surprised by Rebel forces, Grant suffered heavy losses but managed to rally his army on the first day. The second day, General Grant counterattacked and drove the Confederates from the field. This bloody engagement cast a long shadow, and Grant faced newspaper criticism, with rumors of his heavy drinking appearing in the press. Major General Henry W. Halleck arrived on the scene to take command of Grant’s forces, placing him in a subordinate position with little to do. Grant considered leaving the army. He retained his humor, however, writing to his wife, “We are all well and me as sober as a deacon no matter what is said to the contrary.” Halleck, however, was called to Washington to act as general in chief, and Grant resumed command. Although many had criticized Grant, Lincoln refused to relieve a fighting general, thus setting the stage for Grant’s finest campaign.

Confederate control of the Mississippi River rested on extensive fortifications at Vicksburg, Mississippi, effectively barring midwestern commerce. In the fall and spring of 1862–63, Grant made a number of attempts against this bastion. The overland campaign through northern Mississippi came to grief when Confederate forces destroyed his supply base at Holly Springs, Mississippi, on December 20, 1862. Grant then decided to move down the Mississippi to attack the city. Ultimately, Grant bypassed the city, marching his army down the west bank of the river. At night, he sent steamboats past the batteries to assist in crossing the river from Louisiana into Mississippi. The general then launched a lightning campaign into the interior of the state to destroy Confederate communications before turning back against Vicksburg. Thoroughly confusing his opposition, he won five separate battles and besieged the city on May 19. On July 4, 1863, Grant accepted the surrender of his second Confederate army.

After a brief respite, Grant was given command of all Union forces in the West on October 18 and charged with rescuing Union forces besieged in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In a three-day battle (November 23-25), Grant smashed the Confederate forces and drove them back into Georgia.

In March 1864, Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general and gave him command of all Union armies. Grant left Halleck at Washington as chief of staff to tend to routine matters and established the beginning of a modern military command system. He stayed in the field with the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Major General George G. Meade. Grant made Union armies work in tandem for the first time. Using the telegraph, he managed troop movements across the country, keeping pressure on the Confederacy at all points. The two major efforts consisted of Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, moving against Atlanta, and Meade attacking Confederate forces in Virginia, commanded by the South’s finest general, Robert E. Lee .

The final campaign opened in May 1864, with the Battle of the Wilderness (May 5-6). After a series of bloody engagements, Grant maneuvered Lee into Petersburg, Virginia, where siege operations commenced on June 16. While Grant held Lee at Petersburg, Sherman proceeded to gut the South, capturing Atlanta in September, then marching across Georgia and capturing Savannah in December. Grant then planned for Sherman to march his army up through the Carolinas into Virginia. On March 29, 1865, Grant launched his final campaign. He smashed Confederate lines at Petersburg, then tenaciously pressured the retreating Confederates, and accepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9. Grant’s magnanimous surrender terms attest to his humanity and sensitivity. Seventeen days later, the last major Confederate force surrendered to Sherman and the Civil War ended.

Lincoln’s assassination on April 14 deeply affected Grant, but he believed that President Andrew Johnson would be able to reestablish the Union on an equitable basis. Grant busied himself with the reorganization of the army, threatening French forces operating in Mexico, marshaling forces to fight American Indians, and seeking to avoid political questions. However, he could not avoid the growing antagonism between Johnson and the radical Republicans. Increasing doubts about Johnson’s Reconstruction policy brought the two men into conflict. In the face of growing southern persecution of black people, Grant came to believe that black people had to be protected by the federal government. In 1868, the breach between Johnson and Grant became public, and Grant believed that it was his duty to accept the Republican nomination for president.

A reluctant candidate, Grant easily defeated his Democratic opponent. His military background, however, had left him with a distaste for the hurly-burly of politics, and his two-term presidency (March 4, 1869, to March 4, 1877) had many problems. Already convinced of the need to protect black people, Grant sought in vain to advance civil rights for them. With the Force Acts (1870–71), he succeeded in breaking up the first Ku Klux Klan, but by 1876, conservative southerners had regained control and reasserted their dominance. The economic depression that took hold in the Panic of 1873 had done much to divert public attention away from the cause of Reconstruction.

In foreign policy, Grant did much to normalize relations with Great Britain with the Treaty of Washington in May 1871, which settled the Alabama claims arising out of the Civil War. He also successfully prevented war with Spain over American support for the Cuban uprising of 1868. His stubbornness and persistence, which had served him so well in war, however, proved to be an embarrassment in his unsuccessful attempts to annex Santo Domingo (later the Dominican Republic). He had hoped that the island would serve as a strategic naval base and as leverage for blacks who were facing ongoing racial violence and oppression in the American South.

Grant made a number of unfortunate appointments to federal office, and official corruption even reached into the White House with the Whiskey Ring Scandal. Although Grant was not personally involved, these scandals tainted his second term. Plagued by corruption and politics, Grant resisted attempts to draft him for a third term in 1876.

After completing his presidential terms, Grant made a two-year journey around the world, indulging a passion for travel that he had developed early in his life. This triumphant tour brought him worldwide renown. Restless after returning to the United States, he unsuccessfully sought a third term in 1880. He then moved to New York City to pursue business interests in connection with his son Jesse and became a silent partner in Grant and Ward. Ferdinand Ward turned out to be a swindler, and in 1884, Grant found himself penniless. To support his family, Grant started writing his Civil War memoirs for a magazine. When his friend Mark Twain learned how poorly he was being paid for his articles, he was outraged. Twain was starting his own publishing firm at that time and offered Grant a generous book contract.

Around that same time, Grant—who had long been a heavy smoker—learned that he had contracted cancer of the throat. He completed his memoirs only days before his death, on July 23, 1885. His tomb in New York was made into a monument to which visitors flocked for years after. The two-volume work that was made from his writings has become a literary classic and is recognized as one of the best military memoirs ever written. It also enriched his widow, to whom Mark Twain made the largest royalty payments in history, up to that time.

Significance

Grant’s boyhood had been ordinary, showing nothing of the extraordinary man he would become. He had not sought a military career and did not like things military. He detested military parades, disliked military dress, and rarely carried a weapon. He left the army in 1854 and suffered through seven years of disappointment. The outbreak of Civil War, for all its national trauma, rescued Grant from a life of obscurity.

This seemingly common man turned out to have a genius for war unmatched by his contemporaries. Grant perhaps had an advantage in that he had time to learn gradually the art of war. Grant made mistakes, learned from them, and never repeated them. He grew into the responsibilities of higher command. He also understood volunteer soldiers and their motivations for fighting.

Grant’s military writings are extraordinary. His instructions are clear, brief, and to the point. Subordinates made mistakes, but not because of ambiguity of instruction. Grant became the finest general that the Civil War produced, indeed, the greatest American military figure of the nineteenth century.

The Grant presidency had many shortcomings. Not a politician, Grant never really understood presidential power and its uses. He believed that Congress decided policy and the president executed it. Had Grant viewed the presidency in the same manner that he perceived military command, his two terms might have been far different. Some commentators view his and Johnson's presidencies as having allowed the legislative branch to gain power at the expense of the executive, a situation that would not be altered until the early twentieth century.

Vilified decades later for his Reconstruction policies in the South and the corruption of his administration, Grant's presidential legacy only began to be rehabilitated in the 1990s.

Bibliography

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Grant, Ulysses S. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Ed. John Y. Simon. 32 vols. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1967–2012. Print.

Grant, Ulysses. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. 2 vols. New York: Webster, 1885–86. Print.

Hardy, William E. "South of the Border: Ulysses S. Grant and the French Intervention." Civil War Hist. 54.1 (2008): 63 –86. Print.

Korda, Michael. Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero. New York: Atlas, 2004. Print.

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Waugh, Joan, ed. "Ulysses S. Grant: Foreign Affairs." American Presidents. Miller Center of Public Affairs, U of Virginia, 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.

Young, John Russell. Around the World with General Grant. 2 vols. New York: American News, 1879. Print.