Ulysses S. Grant
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.
