biography ulysses s grant

Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant served as U.S. general and commander of the Union armies during the late years of the American Civil War, later becoming the 18th U.S. president.

(1822-1885)

Who Was Ulysses S. Grant?

Ulysses S. Grant was entrusted with the command of all U.S. armies in 1864 and relentlessly pursued the enemy during the Civil War . In 1869, at age 46, Grant became the youngest president in U.S. history. Though Grant was highly scrupulous, his administration was tainted with scandal. After leaving the presidency, he commissioned Mark Twain to publish his best-selling memoirs.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Hiram Ulysses Grant BORN: April 27, 1822 DIED: July 23, 1885 BIRTHPLACE: Point Pleasant, Ohio SPOUSE: Julia Dent (1848-1885) CHILDREN: Frederick, Ulysses Jr., Ellen, Jesse ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus

Early Years

Origins of “u.s.” grant nickname.

His famous moniker, "U.S. Grant," came after he joined the military.

Grant was born Hiram Ulysses and went by Ulysses as a child. However, when he arrived at West Point, he expected to be listed on the sheet of incoming cadets by his birth name and was surprised to learn there was no H.U. Grant on the roll call but a U.S. Grant. The clerical error had been made by the Ohio Congressman who nominated Grant to West Point, who may have accidentally combined Grant’s middle name with his mother’s maiden name, Simpson.

Not wanting to make a fuss as a new arrival at West Point and risk being rejected, Grant agreed to go along with the name change but later joked that the “S” in his name stood for nothing. Fellow soldiers at West Point called the newly christened U.S. Grant “Sam,” a shortened version of Uncle Sam.

Wife and Family

After graduation from West Point, Lieutenant Grant was stationed in St. Louis, Missouri, where he met his future wife, Julia Dent, the sister of Grant’s West Point roommate. Grant proposed marriage in 1844, but both families were unhappy with the match. Grant’s abolitionist father disapproved of the Dents owning enslaved people, and Julia’s father considered Grant a low-paid soldier with little prospect of financial success.

The couple initially kept their engagement secret, but Grant eventually won over Julia’s father, and the pair received permission to marry. Their plans were interrupted by the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, which led to a nearly four-year separation. They finally wed in 1848 and would have four children: Frederick (1850), Ulysses Jr., known as “Buck" (1852), Ellen, known as “Nellie” (1855), and Jesse (1858).

The Grants were a close couple, and the frequent separations early in the marriage due to Grant’s military postings affected them both, particularly Ulysses, whose loneliness and isolation from his family likely exacerbated his drinking. During Grant’s Civil War service, Julia often visited him at army camps, sometimes bringing their children. When Grant became president, she bloomed into a popular first lady, hosting social receptions while remaining a close advisor to her husband, even meeting with cabinet members and politicians.

Early Military Career

During the Mexican-American War , Grant served as a quartermaster, efficiently overseeing the movement of supplies. Serving under General Zachary Taylor and later under General Winfield Scott, he closely observed their military tactics and leadership skills. After getting the opportunity to lead a company into combat, Grant was credited for his bravery under fire. He also developed strong feelings that the war was wrong and that it was being waged only to increase America's territory for the spread of slavery.

In 1852, he was sent to Fort Vancouver, in what is now Washington State. He missed Dent and his two sons—the second of whom he had not yet seen at this time—and thusly became involved in several failed business ventures to get his family to the coast, closer to him.

He began to drink, not unlike other soldiers—and many other Americans—in an era where alcohol consumption rates were much higher than today. Grant’s thin frame and small stature meant he showed the effects of alcohol quicker than many others. Grant developed a reputation for drinking that dogged him throughout his military career. Still, most of these episodes occurred, especially in the early years of his service, when he was separated from his family and sent to ever-more isolated army postings that left him bored and lonely with little else to do.

In the summer of 1853, Grant was promoted to captain and transferred to Fort Humboldt on the Northern California coast, where he had a run-in with the fort's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Buchanan. On July 31, 1854, Grant resigned from the Army amid allegations of heavy drinking and warnings of disciplinary action.

In 1854, Grant moved his family back to Missouri, but the return to civilian life led him to a low point. He tried to farm land given to him by his father-in-law, but this venture proved unsuccessful after a few years. Grant then failed to find success with a real estate venture and was denied employment as an engineer and clerk in St. Louis. To support his family, he was reduced to selling firewood on a St. Louis street. Finally, in 1860, he humbled himself and worked in his father's tannery business as a clerk, supervised by his two younger brothers.

Ulysses S. Grant and Slavery

Like many of his contemporaries, Grant’s involvement with slavery was complicated. An abolitionist father raised him and personally professed his dislike of slavery. But he married the daughter of a slave-holding plantation owner, and the Dent family’s enslaved population often worked alongside Grant at the farm he built on land given to him by his father-in-law. In the late 1850s, he was transferred ownership of an enslaved man, William Jones. In 1859, Grant freed Jones despite severe financial difficulties that might otherwise have led him to sell Jones for a profit.

While Grant’s service in the Civil War was initially inspired by his desire to defend and reunite the Union, he supported Abraham Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed enslaved peoples in Confederate states that had seceded. When the Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, Grant ensured the newly freed formerly enslaved were cared for when they reached Union lines and encouraged Lincoln to allow formerly enslaved men to join the Union Army, which he believed would significantly weaken the Confederate cause.

American Civil War

On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. This rebellion sparked Grant's patriotism, and he volunteered his military service. Again, he was initially rejected for positions, but with the aid of an Illinois congressman, he was appointed a colonel and took command of an unruly 21st Illinois volunteer regiment. Applying lessons he'd learned from his commanders during the Mexican-American War, Grant saw that the regiment was combat-ready by September 1861. By that point, he had been promoted to brigadier general.

When Kentucky's fragile neutrality fell apart in the fall of 1861, Grant and his volunteers took the small town of Paducah, Kentucky, at the mouth of the Tennessee River. In February 1862, in a joint operation with the U.S. Navy, Grant's ground forces applied pressure on Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, taking them both. These battles are the earliest significant Union victories of the American Civil War. After the assault on Fort Donelson, Grant earned the moniker "Unconditional Surrender Grant" and was promoted to major general of volunteers.

READ MORE: How Ulysses S. Grant Earned the Nickname "Unconditional Surrender Grant"

Battle of Shiloh

In April 1862, Grant moved his army cautiously into enemy territory in Tennessee in what would later become known as the Battle of Shiloh (or the Battle of Pittsburg Landing), one of the Civil War's bloodiest battles. Confederate commanders Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard led a surprise attack against Grant's forces, with fierce fighting occurring at an area known as the "Hornets' Nest" during the first wave of assault. Confederate General Johnston was mortally wounded, and his second-in-command, General Beauregard, decided against a night assault on Grant's forces. Reinforcement finally arrived, and Grant defeated the Confederates during the second day of battle.

The Battle of Shiloh proved to be a watershed for the American military and a near disaster for Grant. Though President Abraham Lincoln supported him, Grant faced heavy criticism from members of Congress and the military brass for the high casualties, and for a time, he was demoted. A war department investigation led to his reinstatement.

Vicksburg Siege

The Union war strategy called for taking control of the Mississippi River and cutting the Confederacy in half. In December 1862, Grant moved overland to take Vicksburg —a key fortress city of the Confederacy—but Confederate cavalry raider Nathan Bedford Forest stalled his attack due to getting bogged down in the bayous north of Vicksburg. In his second attempt, Grant cut some, but not all, of his supply lines, moved his men down the western bank of the Mississippi River, and crossed south of Vicksburg. Failing to take the city after several assaults, he settled into a long siege, and Vicksburg finally surrendered on July 4, 1863. Grant was named major general of the regular U.S. Army.

Though Vicksburg marked Grant's most outstanding achievement thus far and a morale boost for the Union, rumors of Grant's heavy drinking followed him through the rest of the Western Campaign. Grant suffered from intense migraine headaches due to stress, which nearly disabled him and only helped to spread rumors of his drinking, as many chalked up his migraines to frequent hangovers. However, his closest associates said that he was sober and polite and displayed deep concentration, even amid a battle. When confronted by these rumors, President Abraham Lincoln was unperturbed, reportedly offering to send a case of Grant’s favorite whisky to other Union generals in the hope of achieving Grant’s stunning military results.

Battle for Chattanooga

In January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, freeing enslaved peoples in the Confederate states that had seceded from the Union.

In October 1863, Grant took command at Chattanooga, Tennessee. The following month, from November 22 to November 25, Union forces routed Confederate troops in Tennessee at the battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, known collectively as the Battle of Chattanooga . The victories forced the Confederates to retreat into Georgia, ending the siege of the vital railroad junction of Chattanooga—and ultimately paving the way for Union General William Tecumseh Sherman 's Atlanta campaign and march to Savannah, Georgia, in 1864.

Union Victory

Grant saw the military objectives of the Civil War differently than most of his predecessors, who believed that capturing territory was most important to winning the war. Grant adamantly believed that taking down the Confederate armies was most important to the war effort and, to that end, set out to track down and destroy General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

In March 1864, Grant was named lieutenant general of the U.S. Army (the first person to achieve this rank since George Washington) and given command of all U.S. armies. He quickly set out to congruent Lee, and from March 1864 until April 1865, Grant doggedly hunted for Lee in the forests of Virginia, all the while inflicting unsustainable casualties on Lee's army.

On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered his army, marking the end of the Civil War. The two generals met at a farm near the village of Appomattox Court House, and a peace agreement was signed. In a generous gesture, Grant allowed Lee's men to keep their horses and return to their homes, taking none of them as prisoners of war.

During the post-war reorganization, Grant was promoted to full general and oversaw the military portion of Reconstruction . In 1867, Grant was caught up in a scandal involving Republican Andrew Johnson's fight with the Radical Republican wing of his party. Johnson tried to remove his Secretary of War, who had often sided with the Radical Republican wing over the more robust implementation of Reconstruction in the South and initially tried to replace him, Grant, all without the necessary Congressional approval. During the subsequent uproar, Grant resigned from the position. Still, Johnson’s determination to proceed with his plan with a different appointee made him the first U.S. president to be impeached.

Despite having never been elected to any previous political office, in 1868, Grant ran for president on the Republican ticket and was elected the 18th president of the United States. When he entered the White House the following year, Grant was not only politically inexperienced but also—at the age of 46—the youngest president theretofore.

Grant had many achievements as president, pushing through ratification of the 15th Amendment , creating the forerunner to the National Weather Service and America’s first national park (Yellowstone), instituting the first Civil Service Commission (aimed at replacing the corrupt patronage system that controlled many government jobs), working with Native American leaders to develop a peace plan in the West and naming Eli Parker as the first Native American head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Grant also oversaw the creation of the U.S. Justice Department, using the new department, in part, to help strengthen and enforce laws aimed at curbing the rise of the newly formed Ku Klux Klan.

However, Grant’s administration faced numerous setbacks, including a prolonged economic depression in 1873. Though scrupulously honest, Grant became known for appointing people who were not of good character, and his presidency today is often more remembered for its notable scandals than its successes. In 1869, two Wall Street speculators (whom Grant knew from before becoming president) attempted to corner the gold market and ensnare Grant in their scheme, leading to a financial panic. In 1875, Grant’s private secretary was embroiled in a scandal that intended to deprive the federal government of millions of dollars in revenues from liquor taxes, and even Grant’s brother was later involved in a kickback scheme involving military contracts. By the end of his second term, several members of Grant’s cabinet had been accused of taking bribes. Grant called for proper legal investigations for those involved, and during his final address to Congress in 1876, he discussed his lack of political experience upon entering the office and the resulting issues during his presidency, noting , “Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.”

Final Years and Death

After leaving the White House, Grant's lack of success in civilian life continued once again. He became a partner of the financial firm Grant and Ward only to have his partner, Ferdinand Ward, embezzle investors' money. The firm went bankrupt in 1884, as did Grant. That same year, Grant learned that he had throat cancer, and though his military pension was reinstated, he was strapped for cash.

Grant began selling short magazine articles about his life and then negotiated a contract with a friend, famed novelist Mark Twain , to publish his memoirs. The two-volume set sold 300,000 copies, becoming a classic work of American literature. Ultimately, the work earned Grant's family nearly $450,000.

READ MORE: The Unlikely Friendship of Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant

Grant died on July 23, 1885—just as his memoirs were being published—at 63, in Mount McGregor, New York. He was buried in New York City, with more than 1.5 million attending his funeral. His temporary burial site was greatly expanded and became popularly known as Grant’s Tomb, the largest mausoleum in North America. In 1914, Grant became the face of the U.S. Treasury’s $50 bill, and in 1922, to mark the centennial of his birth, the U.S. Mint released gold dollars and silver half dollars featuring Grant, partly to raise funds to preserve his Ohio birthplace.

Grant’s reputation has seen notable shifts over time. While many of his contemporary Americans lauded him for his Civil War service and liked Grant personally, the scandals surrounding his presidency led him to be ranked among the most unsuccessful presidents in history. Historians and writers began reappraising Grant's legacy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They noted his success in preserving the Union in the post-war years that saw it roiled by debates over the federal government’s role in southern Reconstruction. He has been lauded for his attempted civil service reforms, his vigorous defense of the civil liberties of African Americans, and his policy towards Native Americans (Grant favored giving them American citizenship nearly 50 years before that became a reality). A highly skilled military commander, Grant could not translate those talents to the presidency, with both his personal and political naivete regarding those surrounding him obscuring his notable achievements.

• Whatever may have been my political opinions before, I have but one sentiment now. That is, we have a government, and laws and a flag and they must all be sustained.
• I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.
• [My] failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.
• A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; to suffer; I signify all three.
• It occurred to me at once that [my enemy] had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards.
• I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.
• I never wanted to get out of a place as much as I did to get out of the presidency.
• No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.
• I don't know anything of party politics, and I don't want to.
• I know only two tunes: One of them is 'Yankee Doodle' and the other isn't.
• The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.
• I can't spare this man—he fights.

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Ulysses S. Grant

The 18th President of the United States

The biography for President Grant and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

In 1865, as commanding general, Ulysses S. Grant led the Union Armies to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War. As an American hero, Grant was later elected the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877), working to implement Congressional Reconstruction and to remove the vestiges of slavery.

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.

Learn more about Ulysses S. Grant’s spouse, Julia Dent Grant .

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Ulysses S. Grant

April 27, 1822–July 23, 1885

Ulysses S. Grant was an American military and political leader who rose from humble beginnings to become general-in-chief of Union forces during the Civil War and, afterward, the eighteenth President of the United States.

Ulysses S. Grant rose from humble beginnings to become General-in-Chief of Union forces during the Civil War and, afterward, the eighteenth President of the United States. [ Wikimedia Commons ]

Ulysses S. Grant Biography

Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States, serving two terms from 1869 to 1877. He was a Union general during the American Civil War and was known for his success in leading the North to victory. As president, Grant was committed to rebuilding the country after the war and to protecting the rights of African Americans in the South. However, his presidency was marked by corruption and scandal, particularly within his administration, and he is often criticized for his lack of political experience and poor judgment in choosing advisors.

Quick Facts About Ulysses S. Grant

• Date of Birth: Ulysses S. Grant was born on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio.
• Parents: Grant’s parents were Jesse and Hannah (Simpson) Grant.
• Date of Death: Grant died on July 23, 1885, at age 63, in a cottage on Mount McGregor in Saratoga County, New York.
• Buried: Grant is buried in the General Grant National Memorial, also known as “Grant’s Tomb”, in New York City.
• Nickname: Grant’s nicknames were “Unconditional Surrender Grant,” “Uncle Sam,” and, “U.S. Grant.”

Ulysses Simpson Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio . His parents, Jesse and Hannah (Simpson) Grant, christened Hiram Ulysses Grant. In 1823, his family moved to Georgetown, Ohio. Grant attended public school in Georgetown, and the school of Richeson and Rand at Maysville, Kentucky (1836–1838), and the Presbyterian Academy at Ripley, Ohio (1838–1839). As a youth, Grant also worked at his father’s tannery, although he disliked the job.

U.S. Military Academy Cadet

In 1838, New York Congressman Thomas L. Harvey nominated Grant for an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Grant did not want to attend the academy, but his father insisted. When Grant arrived at West Point in 1839, he discovered Harvey had mistakenly listed his name on the application as Ulysses Simpson Grant. Grant adopted the name Ulysses S. Grant and insisted throughout his life that the initial “S” stood for nothing. While at West Point, he received the nickname, U.S. Grant.

U.S. Army Officer

Grant graduated from West Point on June 23, 1843, ranked twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine cadets. Army officials commissioned Grants as a brevet second lieutenant on July 1, 1843, and ordered him to report to the 4th U.S. Infantry at Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis, Missouri on September 30. While stationed at Jefferson Barracks, Grant often visited the home of his West Point roommate, Frederick Dent, near St. Louis. There he met and fell in love with Dent’s sister, Julia. The couple became secretly engaged in 1844, but they did not marry until August 22, 1848, after Grant returned from the Mexican-American War .

Mexican-American War

In June 1844, the army sent Grant and the 4th Infantry to Natchitoches, Louisiana. In September 1845, they sailed from New Orleans, bound for Corpus Christi, Texas, where a border dispute was brewing between the United States and Mexico. On March 11, 1846, forces serving under General Zachary Taylor invaded the disputed territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, prompting Mexico to declare war on April 23. Grant served as a quartermaster throughout the Mexican-American War, experiencing some combat at Palo Alto , Monterey , Molino del Rey , and San Cosme Garita.

Marriage and Antebellum Service

When the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, Grant returned to St. Louis and married Julia. On November 17, 1848, the army ordered him to Detroit, Michigan. Grant spent the next four years with Julia in Michigan and other more easterly posts, but in 1852, the army ordered west. Grant arrived at Fort Vancouver, Washington on September 20, 1852, unhappy about being separated from his family. With no prospect of reunion in sight, fellow officers reported Grant turned to alcohol to console himself. On September 30, 1853, Grant received notice that the army had promoted him to captain and ordered him to report to Fort Humboldt, California. After another lonely winter, Grant received his official commission as captain on April 11, 1854. He wrote a letter of resignation from the army on the same day. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis , future president of the Confederate States of America, accepted the letter of resignation.

Civilian Life

In 1854, Grant returned to St. Louis and reunited with his family. As a civilian, he first tried his hand as a farmer on the Dent family land. Appropriately, Grant named his farm “Hardscrabble.” Despite working hard, the farm provided little. From 1858 to 1859, Grant went into the real estate business with his wife’s cousin. During that period, Grant freed his one slave, William Jones, who was given to him by the Dent family. When the real estate venture failed, Grant moved to Galena, Illinois, in May 1860. There, he became a clerk in his father’s leather store.

Civil War Career

After the Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12–13, 1861)touched off the American Civil War, Grant volunteered for military duty. In June, he visited General George McClellan’s headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, but McClellan refused to see him. On June 15, he returned to Galena and accepted an appointment as a colonel in the Illinois militia. On July 31, at the urging of several Illinois congressmen, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln submitted a request to Congress to commission Grant as a brigadier general in the volunteer army, retroactively to May 17, 1861. Congress approved Lincoln’s request on August 9. On September 1, Western Department Commander Major General John C. Frémont selected Grant to command the District of Southeast Missouri, and Grant established his headquarters at Cairo, Illinois.

Grant’s first Civil War action took place in Missouri at the inconclusive Battle of Belmont (November 7, 1861). Grant intended to attack a Confederate force commanded by Brigadier General Gideon J. Pillow , which had invaded Kentucky. As he approached the Confederate forces from Cairo, Grant learned Pillow had crossed the Mississippi River to Belmont, Missouri. Grant attacked there instead and initially drove the Confederates back. The Confederates rallied against Grant’s undisciplined soldiers after being reinforced. The battle ended when the Federals withdrew, with neither side proving much.

Capture of Fort Donelson and Fort Henry

By late 1861, President Lincoln was pressuring Union commanders in the west to invade the South. On December 20, 1861, Major General Henry W. Halleck issued Special Orders, No. 78 (Department of the Missouri) placing Grant in command of the reconfigured District of Cairo.

On January 30, 1862, Halleck reluctantly approved Grant’s request to attack Fort Henry on the eastern bank of the Tennessee River just south of the Tennessee-Kentucky border. Grant left Cairo, Illinois on February 2, with 15,000 soldiers, plus a flotilla of seven gunboats commanded by United States Navy Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote. On February 4 and 5, Grant landed his force in two locations near Fort Henry and prepared for battle.

Confederate Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman realized he had little chance of defending Fort Henry against Grant’s sizable force. On February 5, Tilghman sent most of the occupants of Fort Henry to Fort Donelson, twelve miles to the east, leaving behind only a handful of artillerymen to defend the fort. By February 6, Foote’s flotilla maneuvered into position and began bombarding the fort. Seventy-five minutes later, Tilghman surrendered, ending the Battle of Fort Henry .

Following the surrender of Fort Henry, Grant turned his attention toward investing Fort Donelson, located on a hill on the west bank of the Cumberland River just south of the Tennessee-Kentucky border. Grant marched his army toward the Cumberland River on February 12 and 13. After traversing the twelve-mile span between the two forts, Grant positioned his troops in a semi-circle around the western side of Fort Donelson. On February 14, Foote’s flotilla traveled up the Cumberland River and attempted to reduce the fort with naval gunfire from the eastern side. The bombardment proved ineffective, however, because the Confederates held a higher position. Eventually, the Confederate fire forced Foote’s gunboats to withdraw, setting the stage for a land engagement.

On the morning of February 15, Confederate troops surged out of the fort, attacking the Union right flank. The Federals fell back in an orderly retreat. Grant ordered a counterattack on the left, forcing the Confederates back into a defensive position. By nightfall, the Yankees had reclaimed much of the ground that they had lost in the morning.

During the night, the Confederate commanders determined their situation was hopeless. The Federals awoke the next morning, surprised to see white flags of truce flying over Fort Donelson. The fort’s commander, Simon B. Buckner , requested an armistice and asked Grant for his terms of surrender. Grant replied that,

No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.

Buckner had reason to believe that Grant would be more generous because of their personal relationship in the Union Army before the war. Nevertheless, he capitulated to what he termed Grant’s “ungenerous and unchivalrous terms.” In the battle’s aftermath, “Unconditional Surrender” Grant became an instant celebrity, earning him a promotion to major general of volunteers.

During the Battle of Fort Donelson , Halleck issued General Orders, No. 37 (Department of the Missouri) on February 14, 1862, assigning Grant to command of the newly created District of West Tennessee.

Battle of Shiloh

The fall of forts Henry and Donelson were serious blows to the Confederacy. The losses forced General Albert Sidney Johnston , the commander of Confederate forces in the West, to abandon Kentucky and solidify his position deeper in Tennessee. The fall of the two forts also provided the Federals with two major waterways in the West from which to launch an invasion of the South.

Halleck ordered Grant to march his army south to Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, near the Tennessee-Mississippi border, to await General Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio. Halleck’s intention was to merge the two armies and then move south to cut the Memphis & Charleston Railroad line at Corinth, Mississippi.

By early April, Grant’s army of nearly 50,000 men encamped along the western side of the Tennessee River near Pittsburg Landing. Not believing that Johnston’s army was within striking distance, Grant used the time awaiting Buell’s arrival to drill his troops rather than construct defensive fortifications.

Johnston took advantage of Grant’s laxity. Rather than waiting to confront the combined Union armies at Corinth, Johnston launched a surprise attack on Grant’s exposed soldiers on the morning of April 6, 1862. In the ensuing confusion, many of the federal troops fled in panic. Others re-formed battle lines and mounted some resistance, but the Confederates gradually drove the Yankees back to a defensive position behind Shiloh Church.

As the Confederates pressed their advance, Union soldiers made a stand at a position, since popularized as the “Hornet’s Nest,” near a road now known as the “Sunken Road.” Although the Confederates killed or captured many of the Federals, the Yankees’ seven-hour standoff bought valuable time for Grant to reorganize his men and establish a final defensive line. During the fighting, Union soldiers mortally wounded General Johnston, and General P. G. T. Beauregard assumed command of the Confederate forces.

When the Battle of Shiloh began, Grant was about ten miles downriver at Savannah, Tennessee, nursing a swollen ankle, which had him on crutches, from a horse-fall the day before. Upon hearing the sounds of the battle, Grant rushed to the scene, arriving about 8:30 a.m., and began re-establishing order amongst his troops. As the first day of the battle concluded, the Confederate advance had spent itself, and Grant had set up a defensive line near the river.

Beauregard attempted a final assault during the early evening, which the Federals repulsed. At that point, Beauregard called off the attack. That night, the overly confident Confederate general sent a telegram to Confederate President Jefferson Davis proclaiming “A complete victory.” Beauregard went to bed expecting to drive Grant’s army across the Tennessee River the next day. Grant, however, had established a strong position, and reinforcements from Buell’s army arrived as Beauregard slept.

The size of the two armies engaged at the Battle of Shiloh was about equal on the first day. When Beauregard awoke on the second day, the Yankees had him outnumbered. On the morning of April 7, 1862, to Beauregard’s surprise, Grant and Buell launched a counterattack that drove the Confederates back.

Despite several attempts to counterattack, the Confederates gradually lost the ground that they had captured the previous day. Eventually, Beauregard knew he had lost, and he began an orderly retreat to Corinth. To Buell’s dismay, Grant chose not to pursue the retreating Confederates. Except for a short cavalry encounter at a place called Fallen Timbers on April 8, the Battle of Shiloh had ended.

Relieved of Command

Although the Army of the Tennessee prevailed at the Battle of Shiloh, the Northern press blamed Grant for being surprised by Johnston’s attack. Rumors circulated Grant was drunk as Confederates bayoneted Union soldiers in their tents as they slept. After two weeks of criticism, Halleck reacted. On April 28, 1862, he issued Special Orders, No. 31 (Department of the Mississippi). The dispatch merged the Army of the Tennessee, the Army of the Ohio, and the Army of the Mississippi to form one large army comprising three corps commanded by Halleck. Two days later, Halleck issued Special Field Orders, No. 35, which transferred Major General George H. Thomas from the Army of the Ohio to command the Army of the Tennessee. Although Grant lost his field command, he kept command of the District of West Tennessee. To ease the sting, Halleck nominally “promoted” Grant to his second-in-command.

Siege of Corinth

On April 29, 1862, Halleck dispatched his army from Pittsburg and Hamberg Landings in three wings toward Corinth. It took Halleck’s army one month to traverse the twenty-two miles to Corinth. Cautious by nature and still smarting from the Confederate surprise attack at Shiloh, Halleck insisted his soldiers dig new defensive trenches each time they moved to a new position. By May 25, after traveling only five miles in three weeks, Halleck was close enough to Corinth to shell the Confederate defenses and lay siege to the town.

Inside the town, the Confederates were running out of water, and nearly 20,000 of them suffered from wounds, dysentery, and typhoid. On May 29, Beauregard began evacuating his sick and wounded soldiers and withdrawing his supplies. When Union soldiers approached the Confederate fortifications on the morning of May 30, they found them undefended.

Although it took Halleck over one month to capture Corinth, he did so with very little bloodshed. That fact was not lost upon Halleck’s men, many of whom had taken part in the bloodbath at Shiloh and who expected the same at Corinth.

Grant’s Command Restored

Ten days after his triumph at Corinth, Halleck dismantled the large army he had created. On June 10, 1862, he issued Special Field Orders, No. 90, (Department of the Mississippi) revoking Special Field Orders, No. 31. The directive stated that,

The order dividing the army near Corinth into right wing, center, left wing, and reserve is hereby revoked. Major-Generals Grant, Buell, and Pope will resume the command of their separate army corps, except the division of Major-General Thomas, which, till further orders, will be stationed in Corinth as a part of the Army of the Tennessee.

Although Beauregard’s army escaped to fight another day, the Northern press and the Lincoln administration celebrated the Union victory. On July 11, President Lincoln summoned Halleck to Washington and placed him in charge of all federal armies, hoping he might duplicate his success on a larger stage. Before departing, Halleck issued Special Orders, No. 161 (Department of the Mississippi), which expanded Grant’s responsibilities as commander of the District of West Tennessee, to “include the Districts of Cairo and Mississippi; that part of the State of Mississippi occupied by our troops, and that part of Alabama which may be occupied by the troops of his particular command, including the forces heretofore known as the Army of the Mississippi.” For the next few months, Grant deployed his troops to secure Union inroads made into Tennessee and Mississippi earlier in the year.

On October 16, 1862, the War Department issued General Orders No. 159 , creating the Department of Tennessee and placing Grant in command of the new department. Although still not officially designated the Army of the Tennessee, the informal handle for Grant’s forces was now more closely aligned with the actual name of his command.

Vicksburg Campaign

With two of the three main rivers connecting the North and South in the Western Theater under Union control, Grant turned his attention to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Known as “The Gibraltar of the Confederacy” because of its location on a high bluff overlooking a horseshoe-shaped bend on the Mississippi River, Vicksburg was key to controlling traffic on the Mississippi River. Grant resolved to capture the river fortress and split the Confederacy in two, denying its supplies from the Far West.

The bluff upon which the city sits made Vicksburg nearly impossible to assault from the river. To the north, nearly impenetrable swamps and bayous protected the city. To the east, a ring of forts mounting 172 guns shielded the city from an overland assault. The land on the Louisiana side of the river, opposite Vicksburg, was rough, etched with poor roads and many streams.

After several failed attempts to assault the city, from December 1862 through April 1863, Grant settled on a bold plan to march his army down the west side of the Mississippi, cross the river south of Vicksburg, and attack the fortress from the south and the east. In late March, federal engineers undertook the arduous task of building roads and bridges through swamps in Louisiana, so that Grant could march his army south.

By late April, Grant’s army crossed the river south of Vicksburg, back into Mississippi. On May 14, 1863, Grant captured the Mississippi capital at Jackson and gained control of the railroad into Vicksburg, denying the Confederate defenders in the river fortress supplies or reinforcements.

The Federals then converged on Vicksburg and the trapped Confederate army. After two failed attempts to assault Vicksburg on May 19 and 22, Grant besieged the city . The Confederate Army, along with Vicksburg’s civilians, held out for six weeks, but on July 4, 1863, the Confederate commander, Lieutenant Commander John C. Pemberton surrendered his army and the city .

Major General in the Regular Army

Grant’s victory propelled him to new heights. Three days after Pemberton surrendered, Halleck wrote to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton , “I respectfully recommend the following appointments: Major Gen Ulysses S. Grant. Vols. to be Major Genl in the U.S. Army, to date from July 4th, the capture of Vicksburg.” On the same day, Stanton approved Halleck’s recommendation, and Halleck telegraphed Grant, “It gives me great pleasure to inform you that you have been appointed a Major Genl in the Regular Army, to rank from July 4th, the date of your capture of Vicksburg.” On July 18, 1863, Grant wrote to Brigadier General Lorenzo Thomas, Adjutant General of the Army, “I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of notice of my appointment as Maj. General in the Army of the United States and my acceptance of the same.”

General Order Number 11

Although a great Union victory, the Vicksburg Campaign was not without some controversy for Grant. Exasperated by black-market trade between Northern merchants and Confederates, Grant issued his ill-conceived General Order Number 11, on December 17, 1862, expelling all Jews from the Department of the Tennessee. The order created such a protest throughout the North that President Lincoln rescinded it on January 4, 1863.

Also, that spring several Union generals engaged in a smear campaign, accusing Grant of being a drunkard. When Lincoln reviewed the allegations he purportedly said, “If it [drink] makes fighting men like Grant, then find out what he drinks, and send my other commanders a case!” Despite the humor, Lincoln took the allegations seriously enough to send Charles Anderson Dana to keep a watchful eye on Grant. It was during this time that Grant’s friend and adviser, John Aaron Rawlins, reportedly devoted himself to helping Grant maintain his sobriety.

Chattanooga Campaign

On October 16, 1863, the War Department issued General Orders, No. 337 merging the departments of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee under Grant’s command. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton directed Grant to move as soon as possible to Chattanooga, Tennessee to assist the Army of the Cumberland , which was under siege by General Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. Grant quickly ordered Major General William T. Sherman to transport the Army of the Tennessee from Mississippi to Chattanooga to reinforce the Army of the Cumberland. Grant himself arrived in Chattanooga on October 23, 1863, and took personal command of all forces within the city.

Upon his arrival, Grant set about establishing a new supply line into Chattanooga, known as the “Cracker Line.” The Cracker Line reduced the distance of the existing supply line into the city by half. On October 30, 1863, the first supplies began arriving in Chattanooga over the new route, and conditions within the city immediately improved.

While awaiting Sherman’s arrival, Grant began preparing for offensive operations to drive the Confederates away from Chattanooga and relieve the city. Sherman’s army began arriving at Chattanooga on November 20, and on November 23, the offensive moved into action. On November 23, about 14,000 federal soldiers left their defensive works and overran the 600 Confederate defenders of a hill between Chattanooga and Seminary Ridge, known as Orchard Knob. The Union soldiers fortified the hill, and Orchard Knob served as Grant’s headquarters for the rest of the breakout. The next day, about 10,000 Union forces under the command of Major General Joseph Hooker captured Lookout Mountain , a strategic position overlooking Chattanooga.

On November 25, a large-scale federal assault on Missionary Ridge forced Bragg to retreat into northern Georgia. The successful breakout ended the siege and gave the Union uncontested control of Chattanooga, the “Gateway to the Lower South.”

After lifting the siege at Chattanooga, Grant sent Sherman north to help end General James Longstreet’s siege of Major General Ambrose Burnside’s forces in Knoxville, Tennessee. Faced with Sherman’s advancing army, Longstreet withdrew from the Knoxville area on December 3 and 4, giving the Union complete control over Tennessee.

Lieutenant General in Command of U.S. Armies

On February 29, 1864, President Lincoln signed legislation restoring the rank of lieutenant general in the United States Army. The next day, Lincoln submitted Grant’s nomination, and Congress confirmed it on March 2. On March 3, Grant traveled to Washington to receive his commission. On March 10, Lincoln issued an executive order announcing

Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. Army, is assigned to the command of the armies of the United States

On March 17, 1864, Grant issued General Orders, Number 12, taking command of the armies. Grant brought with him a reputation for the doggedness that Lincoln was seeking. Unlike previous Union generals, Grant was tenacious.

War in the East: the Overland Campaign

Upon his arrival in Washington, Grant drafted a plan to get the various Union armies in the field to act in concert. He also devised his Overland Campaign to invade east-central Virginia and destroy Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia . Grant instructed General George Meade , who commanded the Army of the Potomac, “Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also.” Grant realized that with the superior resources he had at his disposal, Lee would lose a war of attrition, as long Grant persistently engaged him.

On May 4, 1864, Grant launched the Overland Campaign when the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers. Although Meade nominally commanded the Army of the Potomac, as General-in-Chief of the Armies, Grant accompanied the army in the field so he could supervise overall campaign operations.

Throughout the month of May, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia slugged it out in a series of battles including the Wilderness (May 5-7), Spotsylvania Court House (May 8-21), North Anna (May 23-26), Totopotomoy Creek (May 29-30) and Cold Harbor (May 31-June 12, 1864). Although the Confederates inflicted high casualties on the Federals during those battles, Grant continued his strategy of moving south and east to Lee’s right and then re-engaging the Confederate forces. Grant’s moves forced Lee to re-position his lines continually to defend Richmond.

The Overland Campaign was a strategic success for the North. By pounding at the Army of Northern Virginia, Grant hindered Southern efforts to send reinforcements to halt the scorched earth campaigns of Philip Sheridan in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and William T. Sherman in Georgia. In addition, although the Federals suffered higher casualties (39,000 to 31,500) than the South, the Confederacy could not replace their losses as readily as the North. Finally, Grant tied down the Army of Northern Virginia, limiting Lee’s options for the rest of the war.

Despite the strategic success of the Overland Campaign, it was not without its critics. High casualty rates and horrific battle conditions shocked war-weary Northerners. Some began referring to Grant as a butcher, whose strategy of winning by attrition exacted too high of a toll in human life. The mounting losses provided ammunition for Peace Democrats intent on defeating Lincoln in his reelection bid in 1864. Many critics fell silent by the autumn, however, as Grant’s strategy aided Sheridan’s and Sherman’s successful campaigns, thus securing the president’s re-election and enhancing prospects for restoring the Union.

Richmond Campaign and Surrender at Appomattox Court House

The battles of the Overland Campaign had forced Lee to leave Petersburg, Virginia—an important supply center near Richmond— unprotected. In early June 1864, Grant changed his strategy. Instead of pursuing the Army of Northern Virginia, Grant attacked Petersburg and cut off supplies to Lee’s army and the Confederate government in Richmond.

On June 15, 1864, Union forces overran Petersburg’s outer defenses. On June 16, the Federals renewed their attack, but Lee’s army reinforced the Confederate defenders on June 18. Unable to break through the Confederate defenses, Grant settled into a siege that lasted over nine months.

With his army weakened by desertions, disease, and hunger, Lee abandoned Petersburg and Richmond by late March 1865. On April 3, 1865, both cities surrendered to federal control. For the next few days, Grant pursued the Army of Northern Virginia until Lee capitulated at Appomattox Court House, Virginia on April 9, 1865 , marking the third time an entire Confederate army surrendered to Grant.

Grant’s terms of surrender were generous. None of Lee’s soldiers would be imprisoned or prosecuted for treason. In addition, Grant allowed Lee’s officers to keep their sidearms and personal baggage. Grant also allowed soldiers with horses or mules to take them home to help with the spring planting. Finally, Grant supplied rations for Lee’s starving army.

Lee’s surrender to Grant did not end the American Civil War, but it doomed the Confederacy. As news of the surrender spread, other Southern armies laid down their arms. By May 13, 1865, the fighting stopped, and the war was over.

Post-war Life

Following the Civil War, Grant remained in the United States Army. On July 25, 1866, Congress enacted legislation reviving the grade of General of the Army. On the same day, President Andrew Johnson appointed Grant to the post.

Grant also became involved in the conflicts between the United States Congress and the President. Johnson sought a lenient policy towards Southern states that had seceded from the Union, while a majority in Congress wanted a harsher approach. Congress repudiated Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction, but the president retaliated by firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. By doing so, Johnson did not follow the recently passed Tenure of Office Act. That act stated that the president could not fire any officeholder that had received Senate approval before being hired until the Senate approved a successor. Johnson violated this act by firing Stanton and replacing him with Grant. Grant quickly resigned from the office, preferring to remove himself from the dispute.

President Grant

In 1868, the Democratic Party chose Horatio Seymour as its presidential candidate. Seymour, a former governor of New York, supported states’ rights and opposed equal rights for African Americans. The Republican Party selected Grant, a defender of equal opportunities for blacks and a supporter of a strong federal government. On Election Day, 53% of American voters selected Grant. He easily won the Electoral College vote, capturing twenty-six of the thirty-four states, to become the 18th President of the United States. Grant sought reelection in 1872 and easily won again, receiving fifty-six percent of the popular vote.

Political scandals marred Grant’s presidency. Several leaders and cabinet members engaged in corrupt activities. Grant remained above the controversy, but many Americans faulted him for his political appointments and his inability to control his cabinet.

In the South, the nation seemed far from healing its war wounds. Violence increased between whites and the African-American population. A growing number of Republicans lost their enthusiasm for Radical Reconstruction policies and encouraged Grant to withdraw federal troops from the South.

In 1873, an economic depression further alienated the American people from Grant . Thousands of businesses closed over the next five years, causing rampant unemployment. Because of Grant’s declining popularity, the Republican Party nominated Rutherford B. Hayes as president, even though Grant desired to seek a third term. Grant also sought the party’s candidacy in 1880, but the Republicans selected James Garfield instead.

See Gilded Age Politics for more on Grant’s Presidency.

On May 17, 1877, Grant and his family embarked on a trip around the world that lasted over two and one-half years. During the trip, huge crowds in many countries wildly received and honored Grant. When he returned home in December 1879, Grant settled in New York City. At his son’s urging, Grant became a silent partner in the brokerage firm of Grant and Ward. In May 1884, he discovered that Ferdinand Ward had swindled him of his life savings and left him $150,000 in debt. Determined to repay his debts and provide for his family, Grant began writing articles about his military life for The Century Magazine during the summer. In November of the same year, doctors informed Grant that he had throat cancer.

Grant’s cancer diagnosis presented the general with one last test of the mettle that had served him so well in the Civil War. On February 27, 1885, Grant signed a contract with his friend Mark Twain to publish his memoirs. Sales of the work provided financial resources to support Grant’s family after his death.

On March 4, 1885, President Chester A. Arthur signed legislation to restore Grant to the rank of General of the Army, providing Grant’s family with a much-needed pension. Throughout the spring, Grant endured overwhelming pain as he dictated his memoirs. Incredibly, by May 23, 1885, the first volume of the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant went to press. By then, Grant could no longer speak.

In June, Grant moved to the cooler climate of Mount McGregor in eastern New York State. Wracked with pain, Grant used pencils to scribble the second volume of his memoirs on paper tablets for Frederick, his oldest son, and Adam Badeau, a former staff member, to transcribe. Grant completed the second volume on July 19, 1885. Four days later, he died, surrounded by his family. Grant’s memoirs became an immediate bestseller and ensured that Grant’s wife, Julia, would be financially secure for the rest of her life.

Grant’s family held funeral services at Mount McGregor on August 4, 1885. They then publicly displayed his coffin at Albany, New York, and the City Hall in New York City, before interring Grant’s remains in Riverside Park in New York. On April 27, 1891, workers broke ground for the construction of Grant’s Tomb. Officials dedicated the tomb on April 27, 1897, the 75th anniversary of Grant’s birthday.

Grant’s legacy remains mixed. To be sure, corruption and his poor judgment of character tarnished his presidency. Critics have made much about Grant’s struggles with alcohol, although there is no evidence that drinking had any detrimental effects on his combat performance. Some have even questioned Grant’s military leadership, suggesting that he succeeded on the battlefield because he enjoyed overwhelming advantages in men and materiel. Such assertions, however, diminish Grant’s inspired campaigns at Vicksburg and Chattanooga. They also overlook the fact that Grant succeeded where other Union generals who enjoyed the same advantages failed. Despite his personal aversion to blood and distaste for the savagery of battle, Grant’s doggedness and determination drove him to victories that eluded others, and eventually restored the Union.

• Written by Harry Searles

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Ulysses S. Grant

On April 27, 1822, Ulysses S. Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio. Grant’s father, Jesse, was a tanner and an abolitionist. Grant received an education from several private schools and later attended the United States Military Academy at West Point. After graduating in the middle of his class, Grant was stationed in Missouri where he visited with his former classmate and friend, Fred Dent. During the visit, Grant met Fred’s sister, Julia, and fell in love with her. In 1848, they married and would go on to raise four children together.

After the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, Grant fought under General Zachary Taylor before resigning from the military in 1854. Julia, Ulysses, and their children moved back to her father’s plantation, White Haven, in Missouri. Grant became a plantation manager, overseeing the enslaved and free laborers while working alongside them. While there are no known documents or letters related to a bill of sale, Grant did emancipate a man named William Jones in 1859. According to the signed manumission, Jones was “purchased by me [Grant] of Frederick Dent.” Jones is the only known enslaved individual who was owned by Grant—though his decision to free William rather than sell him, especially as he struggled financially, suggests that Grant had personal discomfort with slave ownership. Julia, however, had no qualms about using enslaved labor within her household and she considered those owned by her father Frederick Dent as her own. Click here to learn more about the enslaved households of President Ulysses Grant.

At the onset of the Civil War, the Grants were living in Illinois after the family suffered more financial setbacks in Missouri. Ulysses was working in his father's leather store in Galena when Governor John Wood appointed him commander of an unruly volunteer regiment. By September 1861, Grant had instilled order and discipline within the unit and was rewarded with a promotion to brigadier general of the volunteer force.

In his new position, Grant captured Fort Henry and attacked Fort Donelson. When the Confederate commander asked for Grant’s terms, he replied, "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted." The Confederates surrendered, and President Abraham Lincoln promoted Grant to major general of volunteers. A few months later, Grant secured a hard-fought victory at the Battle of Shiloh, one of the bloodiest battles in the Western Theater. The casualties concerned some officials enough to call for Grant’s removal. President Lincoln defended Grant by saying, "I can't spare this man, he fights."

Grant then turned his attention to Vicksburg—its location on the banks of the Mississippi River made it a key city for moving troops and supplies. On July 4, 1863, Confederate troops surrendered to Grant after a two-month siege, even though many had considered the fort at Vicksburg impregnable. Grant then followed this success by capturing Chattanooga and its important railroad depot, pushing Confederates back into Georgia. In March 1864, Lincoln appointed Grant general-in-chief. Grant’s success can be credited to his military strategies and maneuvers, which made him remarkably different from his predecessors. He engaged the enemy in all theatres, drawing them into the open while exhausting their resources. His tactical planning and pursuit of General Robert E. Lee’s forces brought the war to a close on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House. With Lincoln’s approval, General Grant offered generous terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials and executions.

During the years immediately following the war, General Ulysses S. Grant criticized President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction plan and aligned himself with Radical Republicans. In the 1868 election, Grant, a military hero and symbol of the Union victory, won in a landslide.

President Grant sent federal troops to the South to enforce civil rights legislation and protect African Americans from civil and political violence. With the assistance of Congress, Grant created the Department of Justice and instructed Attorney General Amos T. Akerman to suppress the newly formed Ku Klux Klan’s efforts to disenfranchise and terrorize black communities.

Although personally a man of unquestioned honesty, Grant’s reputation suffered from those around him. The president was often seen with two of his friends, speculators Jay Gould and James Fisk. When Grant discovered their scheme to corner the market in gold, he authorized Secretary of the Treasury George Boutwell to sell enough gold to undermine their plans. The speculation had already damaged the American economy, however, and Grant took the blame for his poor judgment in associates. Some Republican reformers seized on the scandal, accused the administration of corruption, and nominated Horace Greeley for president. The general's allies in the Republican Party were able to fend off these attacks and Grant was reelected with an overwhelming majority of the vote in 1872. However, scandal continued to follow his administration, most notably in 1875 with the discovery of the Whiskey Ring. This was an extensive network of distillers, intermediaries, and government officials who engaged in bribery and extortion to avoid federal taxes on liquor. President Grant’s private secretary, Orville E. Babcock, was indicted as part of the investigation but later acquitted when Grant testified on his behalf.

After retiring from the presidency, Grant’s long history of financial struggles continued. He joined a financial firm, which went bankrupt, and then learned he was suffering from throat cancer in late 1884. He worked furiously to write his memoirs to pay off his debts and provide for his family. These memoirs, completed just before he died on July 23, 1885, earned nearly $450,000. Grant’s autobiography was lauded for its lucid prose and compelling story. Grant argued that the Mexican-American War and the expansion of slavery ultimately drove the country toward civil war. It is still regarded as one of the best first-hand accounts of the Civil War.

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Ulysses S. Grant: Life in Brief

Ulysses S. Grant is best known as the Union general who led the United States to victory over the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. As a two-term President, he is typically dismissed as weak and ineffective; historians have often ranked Grant's presidency near the bottom in American history. Recently, however, scholars have begun to reexamine and reassess his presidential tenure; recent rankings have reflected a significant rise. Every President presents historians with some contradictions, but Grant might do so more than most. He was quiet and soft-spoken but able to inspire great bravery from his soldiers on the battlefield. He was an honorable man who was unable or unwilling to see dishonor in others. He disdained politics but rose to the country's highest political office. He was no great orator, but he possessed a coherent political philosophy mirrored in Lincoln's Republican Party that won the war, freed the enslaved people, and saved the Republic. Grant presided over a powerful if unstable economy unleashing productive capacities only dreamed of before the Civil War. A great supporter of the transcontinental railroads, Grant oversaw the completion of the one running from Sacramento, California, to Omaha, Nebraska, in 1869 in his first year in office. Overall, Grant's intentions were honorable, and he made efforts that few had attempted before him, especially in the areas of African American rights, Native American policy, and civil service reform. He also executed a successful foreign policy and was responsible for improving Anglo-American relations.

Ulysses Grant was born in Ohio, the first of six children. He was small, sensitive, quiet, and well-known for his talent with horses. He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York and excelled in mathematics, writing, drawing, and horsemanship. After graduating, he was assigned to an infantry company in Missouri. His company soon moved south to prepare for the conflict brewing with Mexico over disputed Texas territory. From 1846 to 1848, Grant fought in the Mexican War and was twice cited for bravery. After the war, Grant moved to various Army postings in Detroit, New York, and the Pacific Northwest. He resigned suddenly from the Army in 1854 and returned to the Midwest to be with his family. Grant then attempted a variety of jobs, including farming and insurance sales, before finding work in his family's leather goods store in Galena, Illinois. Through these difficult times, he relied on his wife, Julia Dent Grant. The two were a devoted couple and adoring parents to their four children.

Civil War Hero

When the American Civil War began in 1861, experienced officers like Grant were in short supply. The Illinois governor assigned him to make a disciplined fighting unit out of the rebellious Twenty-First Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Lieutenant Colonel Grant drilled the men, instituted badly needed discipline, and soon earned the respect of the volunteers. The Army noted his efforts and promoted him to brigadier general. Grant garnered attention as he led his troops to fight and win battles in the Western Theater. He captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee, forced the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and defeated a larger Southern force at Chattanooga, Tennessee. In the last year of the war, he was both praised and criticized for his willingness to fight and sustain a high number of casualties. Grant helped end the bloody Civil War when he directed the Union forces to lay siege to General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in Petersburg, a small city south of Richmond, Virginia, forcing its surrender in April 1865. At that point, General Grant was the most revered man in the Union.

Lincoln's tragic assassination at the end of the Civil War was followed by the ineffective leadership of President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee. Johnson urged a moderate approach to Reconstruction that would not punish the South or protect the rights of the newly freed slaves beyond emancipation. Radical Republicans wanted to ensure the civil and political rights of African Americans. In the election of 1868, postwar social and economic policies were the major campaign issues. The Republicans backed Grant, who concluded his acceptance speech with "Let us have peace." The popular general won the election to become the nation's eighteenth President.

Coming into office, President Grant alienated party stalwarts by rejecting party politics. When he appointed his cabinet, he did not turn to Republican leaders for their advice. Instead, he chose people he thought he could trust and to whom he could delegate responsibility. This strategy led to some good cabinet appointments but also to a number of dubious ones. Grant was also loyal out of all proportion to anyone who had helped him or worked with him. As a result, he was sometimes unwilling to remove ineffective people, and some areas of his administration suffered from incompetence and corruption.

In his first inaugural address, Grant spoke of his desire for the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which sought to grant citizens the right to vote regardless of race or previous servitude. He lobbied hard to get the amendment passed, angering many Southern whites in the process. He also, on occasion, sent in the military to protect African Americans from newly formed terrorist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, which tried to prevent blacks from participating in society. Grant incurred the wrath of citizens who blamed him for the economic woes that plagued the nation in the aftermath of the war. In 1872, however, Grant won reelection by a landslide.

During his second term, a depression in Europe spread to the United States, resulting in high unemployment. Like so many Presidents before and after Grant, scandals tended to divert attention from the administration's policy agenda. Although Grant was never personally implicated in any of the scandals, he did not disassociate himself from the members of his administration who were guilty. His inability to clean up his administration tarnished his reputation in the eyes of the American public. In 1875, he announced that he would not seek a third term. The Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes to be their standard-bearer in the 1876 election. After his presidency, Grant found himself in economic difficulties and dying of throat cancer. He lost his money in a financial scandal, yet he was determined to provide for his family after his death. After Century Magazine approached him to write articles about his Civil War experiences, Grant discovered that he enjoyed the process and decided to compile his memoirs. He approached this last battle as he had all others—with grim and dogged determination. His final days were spent on his porch with pencil and paper in hand, wrapped in blankets and in fearsome pain, slowly scrawling out his life's epic tale. He completed the book just days before his death. It was hugely successful and provided for his family's financial security.

Professor of History University of California, Los Angeles

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Grant’s presidency

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Grant entered the White House on March 4, 1869, politically inexperienced and, at age 46, the youngest man theretofore elected president. His appointments to office were uneven in quality but sometimes refreshing. Notably, Grant named Ely S. Parker, a Seneca Indian who had served with him as a staff officer, commissioner of Indian affairs, and Grant’s wife persuaded him to appoint Hamilton Fish secretary of state. Strong-willed and forthright, Julia Grant also later claimed credit for helping to persuade her husband to veto the Finance Bill, but she did not often involve herself in presidential decisions. She daringly—for that time—supported women’s rights and considered Susan B. Anthony to be a friend. As a result, it is said, Anthony supported Grant when he ran for reelection in 1872, rather than the first woman candidate for the presidency, Victoria Claflin Woodhull of the Equal Rights Party, a splinter group that had bolted from the National Woman Suffrage Association convention .

Julia was not beautiful—she had a cast in her left eye and squinted—but Grant was attracted to her liveliness, and his devotion to her was unbounded. Photography was just becoming part of the political scene when Julia rose to prominence as first lady , and, self-conscious about her looks, she contemplated having surgery to correct her eyes. Grant vetoed the idea, saying he loved her as she was. Consequently, almost all pictures of her were taken in profile.

The Grants had four children. Their daughter, Nellie, became a national darling, and when she was married in the White House in 1874, the public was entranced by the details of the wedding. The executive mansion was also the home for both the president’s father and his father-in-law, whose squabbling with each other was general knowledge and aroused considerable public amusement. Because the Gilded Age was at hand, Americans did not seem to mind that the Grants enjoyed ostentatious living. They redecorated the White House lavishly and entertained accordingly, with state dinners sometimes consisting of 29 courses complemented by nine French wines.

On March 18, 1869, Grant signed his first law, pledging to redeem in gold the greenback currency issued during the Civil War, thus placing himself with the financial conservatives of the day. He appointed the first Civil Service Commission, but after initially backing its recommendations, he abandoned his support for the group when faced with congressional intransigence. Grant was more persistent but equally unsuccessful when the Senate narrowly rejected a treaty of annexation with the Dominican Republic (which Grant had been persuaded would be of strategic importance to the building of a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans). His negotiation of the Treaty of Washington provided for the settlement by international tribunal of American claims against Great Britain arising from the wartime activities of the British-built Confederate raider Alabama , whose sale had violated Britain’s declared neutrality.

Grant easily won reelection in 1872 , defeating Horace Greeley , the editor of the New York Tribune and the candidate for the coalition formed by Democrats and Liberal Republicans, by nearly 800,000 votes in the popular election and capturing 286 of 366 electoral votes. During the campaign, newspapers discovered that prominent Republican politicians were involved in the Crédit Mobilier of America , a shady corporation designed to siphon profits of the Union Pacific Railroad . More scandal followed in 1875, when Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin Helm Bristow exposed the operation of the “ Whiskey Ring ,” which had the aid of high-placed officials in defrauding the government of tax revenues. When the evidence touched the president’s private secretary, Orville E. Babcock, Grant regretted his earlier statement, “Let no guilty man escape.” Grant blundered in accepting the hurried resignation of Secretary of War William W. Belknap , who was impeached on charges of accepting bribes; because he was no longer a government official, Belknap escaped conviction . Discouraged and sickened, Grant closed his second term by assuring Congress, “Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.”

Scandals have become the best-remembered feature of the Grant administration, obscuring its more positive aspects. Grant supported both amnesty for Confederate leaders and civil rights for the formerly enslaved. He worked for ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and went to Capitol Hill to win passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, although he was largely ineffective in enforcing the civil rights laws and other tenets of Reconstruction . His 1874 veto of a bill to increase the amount of legal tender diminished the currency crisis during the next quarter century, and he received praise two years later for his graceful handling of the controversial election of 1876 , when both Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Jones Tilden claimed election to the presidency.

After leaving office, Ulysses and Julia Grant set forth on a round-the-world trip in May 1877. Grant’s reputation as the man who had saved the American Union having preceded him, he was greeted everywhere as a conquering hero. In Great Britain he and his wife were feted by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle ; they also met Benjamin Disraeli . In Germany they were greeted by Otto von Bismarck ; and in Japan they shook hands with the emperor. Americans were delighted with these reports from overseas. The Grants themselves were left pondering their good fortune.

In 1879 Grant found that a faction of the Republican Party was eager to nominate him for a third term. Although he did nothing to encourage support, he received more than 300 votes in each of the 36 ballots of the 1880 convention, which finally nominated James A. Garfield . In 1881 Grant bought a house in New York City and began to take an interest in the investment firm of Grant and Ward, in which his son Ulysses, Jr., was a partner. Grant put his capital at the disposal of the firm and encouraged others to follow. In 1884 the firm collapsed, swindled by Ferdinand Ward. This impoverished the entire Grant family and tarnished Grant’s reputation.

In 1884 Grant began to write reminiscences of his campaigns for the Century Magazine and found this work so congenial that he began his memoirs. Despite excruciating throat pain, later diagnosed as cancer, he signed a contract with his friend Mark Twain to publish the memoirs and resolved grimly to complete them before he died. (For an account of Grant’s experience writing his memoirs, see Sidebar: Translating Thought into Action: Grant’s Personal Memoirs .) In June 1885 the Grant family moved to a cottage in Mount McGregor, New York , in the Adirondack Mountains , and a month later Grant died there. A funeral cortege seven miles long accompanied his coffin to a temporary vault in New York City’s Riverside Park. In 1897, on the 75th anniversary of his birth, his remains were removed to a magnificent neoclassical granite tomb at Riverside Drive on Morningside Heights in Manhattan . The project, supervised by the Grant Monument Association, was paid for by almost 100,000 contributions. A million people turned out for the dedication proceedings, with Pres. William McKinley among the dignitaries in attendance .

Grant’s Tomb , designed by the architect John Duncan , is one of the largest mausoleums in the world, 150 feet (45 meters) high, with a domed rotunda and allegorical relief figures representing episodes in Grant’s life. Two figures representing victory and peace support a granite block containing Grant’s epitaph, his own words, “Let us have peace.” The center crypt contains two sarcophagi. Julia Grant, who lived until 1902, was interred beside her husband, as they had planned. It was said that the idea of a single burial place for the both of them stemmed from Grant’s visit to the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain.

Grant completed his memoirs shortly before his death. Written with modesty and restraint, exhibiting equanimity , candor , and a surprisingly good sense of humor, they retain high rank among military autobiographies.

The table provides a list of cabinet members in the administration of Pres. Ulysses S. Grant.

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Ulysses S. Grant

General Grant and his family . Prints and Photographs Division , Library of Congress. Digital ID # pga 02649

Perhaps no Union general contributed more to the defeat of the Confederacy than Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885). Born into a middle-class family at Point Pleasant, Ohio, Grant was an 1843 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. In 1848, he married Julia Dent, who often traveled with Grant throughout his military career. Despite his distinguished service during the Mexican War, Grant’s career in the U.S. Army began to decline. He resigned his commission in 1854. Following seven unsuccessful years as a civilian, Grant reentered the army at the outbreak of the Civil War as a colonel in the 21st Illinois Infantry. From this modest command, Grant quickly rose in rank following his contributions to a string of Union victories in the West, including Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and the battles involved in breaking the Confederate siege of Union forces in Chattanooga, notably Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. In March 1864, President Lincoln elevated Grant to the newly revived rank of lieutenant-general and placed him in supreme command of all Union forces. Making his headquarters in the East with the Army of the Potomac, Grant coordinated the actions of all Union forces. At the same time, he relentlessly pursued General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in a series of fierce confrontations at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, and Cold Harbor. Grant was subjected to a torrent of criticism for the high rate of Union casualties sustained in these battles. Criticism turned to celebration, however, after his aggressive strategy of attrition culminated in the fall of Petersburg and Richmond and the surrender of Lee’s badly depleted forces at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. Widely regarded by the public as the savior of the Union, Ulysses S. Grant was elected president of the United States in 1868. Although his administration was marked by corruption, he easily won a second term in 1872. Battling throat cancer in his final years, Grant completed his memoirs just days prior to his death. First published in 1885-1886 as The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant , the general's personal account of his military career remains among the most highly regarded military memoirs.

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Ulysses S. Grant

MILITARY (1822–1885); POINT PLEASANT, OHIO

Fresh off his victory as commander of the Union armies during the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) became President of the United States in March 1869. While his time in office wasn’t without controversy, Grant has taken his place among the most fascinating of the country’s leaders. Today, you can find him on the $50 bill and the $1 coin that was issued in 2011. For more on Grant, including the mystery of his middle name, keep reading.

1. Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War victories are legendary.

Ulysses Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, on April 27, 1822, to parents Jesse and Hannah Grant. He was raised in Georgetown, Ohio, and eventually passed on an opportunity to follow his father into the tannery, or leather, business. Instead, he opted to join the United States Military Academy at West Point at the age of 17. After graduating, he wed Julia Dent and served during the Mexican-American War, before resigning from the military in 1854.

But it was the Civil War that made Grant’s name. He returned to the army when the war broke out, starting as commander of the 21st Illinois Volunteers on his way to eventually becoming Commanding General of the United States Army. During the war, Grant earned several major victories on behalf of the Union:

• Grant led the charge in the Battle of Fort Henry in Tennessee in February 1862, scoring the first major Union win in the war.
• Grant also took Fort Donelson that same month, each time forcing Confederates to surrender. Both are credited as being two crucial victories for the Union, allowing them to take control of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.
• Grant conquered the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee in April 1862, said to be among the most violent of the conflict. After two days of fighting and the fatal wounding of Confederate commander Albert Sidney Johnston, the Union beat back Confederate forces.
• In Vicksburg, Mississippi, Grant cut off supplies to Confederates and laid siege to their key city, overwhelming them and breaking their forces into smaller groups. They surrendered on July 4, 1863.
• In November 1863, Grant led Union forces in the Battle of Chattanooga in Tennessee, which included Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Enemy forces retreated to Georgia, leaving a key railroad junction under Union control.
• Now serving as a  lieutenant general of the entire U.S. Army, Grant spent 1864 and 1865 advancing on General Robert E. Lee’s men in Virginia. Losing men rapidly, Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, ending the war.

2. Ulysses S. Grant had no formal middle name.

The “S” in Ulysses S. Grant has long invited questions about his middle name. If you don’t recall ever hearing it, that’s because he doesn’t actually have one. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. When he enlisted in the U.S. Military Academy, a paperwork error had him listed as “Ulysses S. Grant.” Rather than get tied up in the confusion, Grant simply accepted the change in his name. The “S” would later come in handy, as his Civil War victories led to people nicknaming him “U.S. Grant” and “Unconditional Surrender Grant.”

3. Ulysses S. Grant was said to be unflappable.

Part of what made Grant such an effective military leader was a seeming sense of impermeability. Grant was said to be very steady and not easily excited. One Union officer who knew him wrote that Grant “habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall, and was about to do it.” Once, Grant was sitting for a photographer when the photographer’s assistant fell through a skylight. Glass shards fell right next to Grant, who remained sitting, not moving an inch.

4. As president, Ulysses S. Grant was not necessarily the most qualified.

Following his contributions to winning the Civil War, Grant had unmatched support among Union states and Republicans. When then-President Andrew Johnson was impeached following a controversy over the inappropriate firing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Grant was elected to office in 1868. But his history was in military service, not politics, and some felt Grant was lost in the role as a world leader. He was said to look to Congress for guidance, as well as numerous military servicemen he brought to the White House.

Even so, Grant still implemented positive changes while in office. He signed the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, granting black men the right to vote, and supported improved government relations with Native Americans. And in 1872, he signed legislation that named Yellowstone the country’s first national park.

5. Ulysses S. Grant's presidency was not without controversy.

While Grant was never personally involved in any of the wrongdoing while in office, he had a knack for being associated with impropriety. Early on, gold speculators James Fisk and Jay Gould tried to manipulate the market by influencing the government, causing a mass panic on September 24, 1869, that came to be known as Black Friday. Because Grant knew Fisk and Gould personally, the president came under scrutiny. Later, in 1875, Grant’s private secretary, Orville Babcock, was involved in the Whiskey Ring, a network of alcohol distributors that conspired to avoid paying the government liquor tax revenue. Despite these gaffes, Grant was a proponent of civil service reform and established a civil service commission to examine the fair hiring and termination of workers. (Congress, unfortunately, withheld funding .)

6. Ulysses S. Grant toured the world.

Following his two terms as president, Grant, his wife Julia, and their youngest son, Jesse, decided to embark upon an ambitious world tour that would take two and a half years. Departing from Philadelphia in 1877, the Grant family traveled with New York Herald reporter John Russell Young. The first stop was England, where they visited Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. Though cordial, the Queen was famously irritated that Jesse, 19, had come along, describing him as a "very ill-mannered young Yankee." The Grants also made their way through Western Europe, then to Egypt, Greece, Rome, Russia, Austria, Germany, Burma, Singapore, and Vietnam, before returning to America on December 16, 1879.

7. Ulysses S. Grant got help from Mark Twain for his memoirs.

Following his two terms as president, Grant decided to start a career in investment banking, but the firm he was involved in wound up being disreputable. Turns out, his partner, Ferdinand Ward, was embezzling money from his clients and partners, including Grant and his son Buck. Broke and newly diagnosed with throat cancer, Grant turned to his sole remaining source for funds—writing his memoirs.

When he was going to sign a publishing deal that would award him 10 percent royalties, his friend Mark Twain, who Grant had grown close to after several meetings during and after his presidency, was appalled. Twain offered to publish the memoirs at Charles L. Webster & Co., the publishing house he established in 1884. The new royalty rate would be 20 percent, and Twain gave Grant $1000 for living expenses (the former president wouldn't accept a bigger advance out of fear that his book would lose money for Twain).

Twain supervised Grant's writing, and on July 20, 1885, the memoirs were finally finished. Grant died just three days later. When The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant was released that December, it was a resounding success and acted as a kind of inheritance for his widow, Julia. She earned $450,000 in royalties from sales of the book.

Famous Ulysses S. Grant Quotes

• “Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace.”
• “Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.”
• “I don't underrate the value of military knowledge, but if men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail.”
• “In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins.”
• “To maintain peace in the future it is necessary to be prepared for war.”

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7 Reasons Ulysses S. Grant Was One of America’s Most Brilliant Military Leaders

By: Elizabeth D. Samet

Updated: September 8, 2023 | Original: May 13, 2020

In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant went to Washington, D.C., to receive his commission from Abraham Lincoln as lieutenant-general in command of all the Union armies. After several years of frustration with a parade of unsuitable commanders, the president had finally found the man who would defeat Robert E. Lee ’s Army of Northern Virginia and thus effectively end the Civil War .

The choice was surprising to many who had known Grant in former days. Ten years before, in April 1854, Captain Grant had submitted his resignation under a cloud.

In one of history’s unexpected developments, the military profession Grant “had always disliked,” in the words of his biographer Bruce Catton, ultimately “turned out to be the calling made for him.” How did an ambivalent soldier who had been away from the army for several years—and who had drifted during that interval from one civilian occupation to another in search of elusive success—end up leading a vast force to victory and saving the Union?

Grant’s predecessors in command of the Union Army were far more accomplished in military art and science. Winfield Scott , whose experience dated back to the War of 1812, had led the army since 1841. George B. McClellan , who replaced the aging Scott early in the Civil War, was an able administrator who organized the Army of the Potomac. In the 1850s, McClellan had studied the Crimean War at first hand as a member of an official delegation of American observers. Henry W. Halleck, the author of Elements of Military Art & Science , was regarded as a master theoretician.

Yet McClellan and Halleck both proved reluctant to take decisive action in the field. After the Battle of Shiloh, it took the latter almost a month to advance 20 miles south to attack the vital Confederate railroad junction at Corinth , Mississippi.

Lincoln grew so frustrated with McClellan’s inaction that he responded to the general’s October 1862 request for more horses with an exasperated telegram: “I have just read your despatch about sore tongued and fatiegued [sic] horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigue anything?”

By contrast, Grant had never been an enthusiastic student of military art and science. Even his fiercely loyal lieutenant William T. Sherman doubted Grant’s “knowledge of grand strategy, and of books of science and history.”

He told his friend precisely that in a March 1864 letter, in which he also concluded that Grant’s triumph owed in large measure to his fundamental “common-sense” and to his “chief characteristic,” an unshakeable “faith” in victory. That faith was justified by a serendipitous combination of qualities that enabled Grant to become one of the most extraordinary military leaders in American history.

He Didn’t Let Up

Grant didn’t go in much for doctrine, but he brought a relentlessly aggressive approach to warfare. He always favored activity and forward movement to standing still. Even in victory, he would be frustrated by subordinates’ failure to pursue the retreating enemy.

In his memoirs, he records an incident that reveals his philosophy. In 1863, Union General William Rosecrans refused an order to advance to meet an enemy force while Grant was laying siege to Vicksburg, the key to controlling the Mississippi River, because Rosecrans claimed that doing so would violate the “military maxim ‘not to fight two decisive battles at the same time.’” Grant was singularly unimpressed: “If true,” he observes, “the maxim was not applicable in this case. It would be bad to be defeated in two decisive battles fought the same day, but it would not be bad to win them.”

When, in the summer of 1864, Grant informed the cautious Halleck, back in Washington, of his refusal to disengage Lee and withdraw troops to quell draft resistance in the North, Lincoln responded in language that encapsulated Grant’s tenacious approach: “I have seen your despatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog gripe [sic], and chew & choke, as much as possible.”

He Was Fearless

Sherman told his fellow officer James Harrison Wilson, “I am a damned sight smarter man than Grant; I know a great deal more about war, military history, strategy, and grand tactics than he does; I know more about organization, supply, and administration and about everything else than he does; but I’ll tell you where he beats me and where he beats the world. He don’t care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares me like hell!”

Grant’s refusal to be paralyzed by imagining what the enemy was doing owed to an epiphany early in the war when he was leading a regiment for the first time, in pursuit of Confederate Colonel Thomas Harris in Missouri.

“As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris’ camp, and possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat,” Grant recalls in his memoirs.

But when he had the good fortune to find the camp abandoned, Grant’s “heart resumed its place.” He learned the vital lesson that his adversary “had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him... From that event to the close of the war, I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I always felt more or less anxiety.”

He Brushed Off Setbacks

In April 1862, during the bloody two-day Battle of Shiloh , Grant did not share his colleagues’ bleak view. Sherman was demoralized by the first day’s fighting, while Don Carlos Buell , who arrived with reinforcements in the midst of the battle, advised retreat. Grant refused: “The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on in front,” he asserts in his memoirs.

By the next day, he continues, “We had now become the attacking party. The enemy was driven back all day, as we had been the day before, until finally he beat a precipitate retreat.”

In May 1864, after fighting to a costly stalemate in his first battle with Robert E. Lee, at the Wilderness , in Virginia, Grant surprised and delighted the Union Army of the Potomac by not retreating, as they had done so many times before under different commanders.

“Most of us thought…that the next day we should recross the river,” a captain in a Massachusetts regiment remembered, “but when the order came, ‘By the left flank, march!’ we found that Grant was not made that way, and we must continue the fight.”

Sherman likewise celebrated Grant’s decision: “When Grant cried ‘Forward!’ after the battle of the Wilderness, I said: ‘This is the grandest act of his life; now I feel that the rebellion will be crushed.’ I wrote him, saying it was a bold order to give, and...it showed the mettle of which he was made.”

He Believed in Success—But Didn’t Romanticize the Means to Achieving It

What Sherman called Grant’s “simple faith in success” proved infectious. His confidence and determination made others believe in themselves as well: “when you have completed your best preparations, you go into battle without hesitation...no doubts, no reserve,” Sherman wrote to Grant. “I tell you that it was this that made us act with confidence. I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come—if alive.”

But Grant was no mystic, nor was he reckless. His confidence was rooted in an unswerving sense of purpose, an unflappable nature, an ability to delegate responsibility as opposed to micromanaging, and knowledge gained by cool and careful observation over the years.

In the Mexican War , he studied two commanders in action: Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor , whose nicknames—“Old Fuss and Feathers” and “Old Rough and Ready”—encapsulate their antithetical styles. From Taylor, who always “put his meaning so plainly there could be no mistaking it,” Grant learned the importance of clear and direct communication.

It was in Mexico, while serving as regimental quartermaster and involving himself in as many battles as he could, that Grant had learned the decidedly unromantic aspects of war: the ingenuity required to feed and supply an army, the hazards of poor camp sanitation, the value of different kinds of expertise and the unequivocal brutality of combat.

In the last year of the Civil War, as casualties mounted and the horrors of trench warfare accumulated in the Battles of Cold Harbor and Petersburg , Grant remained fixed in his purpose to destroy Lee’s army.

He Synthesized Information Quickly

In addition to being a gifted writer, Grant was an expert listener—“at his best,” one staff officer suggested, in “sudden emergencies.” Faced with a new situation, as he was on arriving in the besieged city of Chattanooga in late 1863, Grant sat “as silent as the sphinx” while officers delivered their reports, according to an eyewitness. Then, after firing “whole volleys of questions,” he proceeded to write out a series of dispatches.

The biographer William McFeely explains the significance of this episode: Grant’s “orders and telegrams...demonstrated a grasp of the whole of the Western Theater of the war. From the disjointed reports he had been given, he put together a coherent picture of the terrain of an area new to him, and of the vast confused array of men who contended for it.”

He Had a Gift for Seeing the 'Lay of the Land'

Grant’s memory for terrain was photographic. One staff officer observed that after one hard look at a map, “he could follow its features without referring to it again. Besides, he possessed an almost intuitive knowledge of topography, and never became confused as to the points of the compass.” This gift was complemented by superb horsemanship, which allowed Grant to see for himself as much of the battlefield as possible.

In the Eastern Theater, which he studied for only eight weeks, Grant revealed a thorough grasp of the strategic situation. He decided to leave executive command of the Army of the Potomac to George G. Meade in order to give himself time to manage an extensive area of operations stretching from New England to New Mexico, from Minnesota to Mississippi.

“Wherever Lee goes,” he ordered Meade, “there you will go also.” Keeping Lee’s army engaged, Grant unleashed Philip Sheridan’s cavalry on the Shenandoah Valley , the breadbasket of the Confederacy, and freed Sherman to march through the South destroying railroads, supplies—and morale.

He Never Lost Sight of the Bigger Picture

Yet none of this would have been possible had Grant not also comprehended the war’s larger political context and harmonized his efforts on the battlefield with the aims of the Lincoln administration. As the latter enlarged from preservation of the Union to the freeing of enslaved persons in the Confederacy with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Grant’s policies and vision likewise evolved.

His way of prosecuting the war and securing the peace revealed a sure understanding of the war’s political stakes—and of the fact that the South’s best hope of victory was to sap the political will of the North by prolonging the war.

For Grant, who as a young man had fought in the Mexican War, a conflict in which he did not believe, the Civil War was a war of principle. At the conclusion of his memoirs, he sums it up with his customary lucidity when he describes the Confederate cause as “one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

This essay does not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

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Ulysses S. Grant

Born Hiram Ulysses Grant, in Point Pleasant, Ohio, the future General-in-Chief's name was changed due to a clerical error during his first days at the United States Military Academy at West Point.  To his friends, however, he was known simply as "Sam."  After a mediocre stint as a cadet, he graduated twenty-first out of the thirty-nine cadets in class of 1843.  Yet despite his less than exemplary school record, he performed well as a captain during the Mexican War (1846-1848), winning two citations for gallantry and one for meritorious conduct.  Only when the fighting stopped and Grant was assigned monotonous duties at remote posts far from his wife and family did he again begin neglecting his work and drinking heavily. He resigned in 1854 to avoid being drummed out of the service.

Grant spent the next six years in St. Louis, Missouri with his wife, Julia Dent Grant. After several short-lived pursuits, including a brief episode as a farmer, he moved to Galena, Illinois to be a clerk in his family's store. When the Civil War began in 1861, he jumped at the chance to volunteer for military service in the Union army. His first command was as the colonel of the 21st Illinois Infantry, but he was quickly promoted to brigadier general in July 1861, and in September was given command of the District of Southeast Missouri.

His 1862 triumphs at Fort Henry and  Fort Donelson in western Tennessee won him the nickname “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, and placed him before the public eye.  However, when a surprise attack by Confederate forces at the  Battle of Shiloh yielded devastating casualties during the first day's fighting, President Abraham Lincoln received several demands for Grant's removal from command. Nevertheless, Lincoln refused, stating, “I can’t spare this man. He fights.”  The following day, Grant's Army - bolstered by troops under Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell  - fended off Confederate advances and ultimately won the day. 

Grant’s hard-won victory at Vicksburg , Mississippi, in May of 1863 was a strategic masterpiece.  On May 1, 1863, Grant's army crossed the Mississippi River at the battle of Port Gibson.  With Confederate forces unclear of his intentions, Grant sent a portion of his army under Gen. William T. Sherman to capture the state capital, Jackson, while setting his sights on Vicksburg with a view toward permanently closing the Confederate supply base.  When initial assaults on the city demonstrated the strength of Vicksburg's defenses, the Union army was forced to lay siege to the city.  On July 4, 1863, after 46 days of digging trenches and lobbing hand grenades, Confederate general John Pemberton 's 30,000-man army surrendered.  Coupled with the Northern victory at Gettysburg , the capture of Vicksburg marked the turning point in the war.  It also made Grant the premier commander in the Federal army.  Later that same year, Grant was called upon to break the stalemate at  Chattanooga , further cementing his reputation as a capable and effective leader.

In March 1864, President Lincoln elevated Grant to the rank of lieutenant general, and named him general-in-chief of the Armies of the United States. Making his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, Grant was determined to crush Robert E. Lee and his vaunted Army of Northern Virginia at any cost.  Though plagued by reticent subordinates, petty squabbles between generals and horrific casualties, the Federal host bludgeoned Lee from the Rapidan River to the James in what one participant would later describe as "unspoken, unspeakable history."  The battles of the Wilderness , Spotsylvania , Cold Harbor and the subsequent siege of Petersburg effectively destroyed the rebel army, leading to the fall of Richmond and Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House .  Though Grant’s forces had been depleted by more than half during the last year of the war, it was Lee who surrendered in 1865.

After the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson named Grant Secretary of War over the newly reunited nation. In 1868, running against Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant was elected eighteenth President of the United States. Unfortunately, though apparently innocent of graft himself, Grant’s administration was riddled with corruption, and scandal.

For two years following his second term in office, Grant made a triumphal tour of the world. In 1884, he lost his entire savings to a corrupt bank. To make up some of his losses, he wrote about his war experiences for Century Magazine. They proved so popular that he was inspired to write his excellent autobiography, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant , finishing the two-volume set only a few days before dying of cancer at the age of sixty-three.  Ulysses S. Grant is buried in New York City in the largest mausoleum of its kind in the United States.  Reminiscent of Napoleon's tomb in Paris, Grant's tomb is a National Memorial.

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My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies

The Best Biographies of Ulysses S. Grant

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Steve in Best Biographies Posts , President #18 - U S Grant

≈ 141 Comments

American history , biographies , book reviews , Geoffrey Perret , H.W. Brands , Jean Edward Smith , Josiah Bunting , presidential biographies , Ronald C. White , Ulysses S Grant , William McFeely

Despite the pivotal role he played in the Civil War and the importance of his administration to Reconstruction, I don’t recall spending any meaningful time studying Ulysses S. Grant in school.

My only brush with his presidency involved memorizing his name as one of the then-forty presidents during a high school trip to the Texas State History Fair. During that drive to Austin we had to do something. …so those of us on the trip decided to learn the presidents’ names in order. Sad, really.

When I finished reading a dozen biographies of Lincoln a couple months ago I assumed I would be in for a slow spell until my encounter with Teddy Roosevelt sometime early in 2015. Fortunately, Grant and his biographers proved me very wrong!

Ulysses Grant’s life story is astonishingly fascinating. There are certainly stretches of his life which proved dull and uneventful – and sometimes spectacularly unsuccessful. But biographers tended not to linger on those moments and taken as a whole, Grant’s sixty-three years are almost inspirational.

Grant certainly seems to prove the adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover. He was that kid we all knew who sat in the back of class, paid little attention to the day’s lesson, never had much to say and would befriend almost anyone who would make even a modest effort to get to know him. Incredibly unpretentious and modest, no one could have foreseen that Grant was destined to become a spectacularly successful military leader…and president of the United States.

A cursory review of the ebb and flow of Grant’s presidential legacy over time reveals a remarkable evolution in opinion. After a enjoying an early period of spirited acclaim, Grant’s reputation suffered within a few decades of leaving office and did not recover until the last two decades of the twentieth century. Each of the Grant biographies I read was published during this recent period of re-evaluation and each, save the first, judged his reputation unfairly tarnished.

In addition, McFeely is well-known for his negative opinion of Grant. Although I could not detect it at the time without broader exposure to Grant, McFeely’s perspective of the general now seems flawed and unreasonably jaundiced. I can’t recall a single mention of praise or adoration toward Grant…but surely there must have been one  somewhere.

Possibly more important to me than objectivity is writing style. After all, I’m seeking the best and most enjoyable presidential biographies; thoughtful and transparent bias can be tolerated. But McFeely’s writing style is anything but smooth and fluid. Important messages, except those key to his take-down of Grant, have to be teased from the text and when something could be said clearly, McFeely often seems to choose a more abstruse path. ( Full review here )

* Next was Geoffrey Perret’s 1997 “ Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President .” Often described as fatally riddled with factual errors, I found Perret’s survey of Grant’s life much more interesting than McFeely’s. Although the errors I spotted (or read about) are generally minor and of relatively little consequence to most readers, they would be acutely annoying to a professional historian.

But my issue with Perret’s book is that it seems too casual at times – and filled with excessive hyperbole. And in contrast to McFeely, who was reluctant to praise Grant, Perret is liberal with applause. But overall, the biography is captivating, a bit provocative and capable of holding my attention to the very end. ( Full review here )

* My third Grant biography was Brooks Simpson’s 2000 “ Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865 .”  This was the first in an anticipated two-volume series and covers Grant’s life only through the end of the Civil War. Simpson’s analysis is more sober and serious than Perret’s but more forgiving (and balanced) than McFeely’s.  But because the second volume to this series has never appeared, Simpson’s coverage of Grant is restricted to his pre-presidency and is therefore incomplete. ( Full review here )

* My next biography was “ Grant ” by Jean Edward Smith. Published in 2001, this was the biography of Grant I had been waiting for. This book starts off with a bang – six or eight of the most thoughtful and potent introductory pages to a presidential biography I’ve seen – and rarely slows down from there.

For the first three-fourths of the book (until Grant’s presidency) I could not put this biography down. Smith’s narrative is fluid, colorful, captivating and insightful. The Mexican War comes to life in a way that even Zachary Taylor’s biographers could not match, and Smith’s review of Grant and the Civil War is excellent.

Only Grant’s presidential years slow the book’s pace (there’s little a biographer can do about this, I’m afraid) and the book ends far too abruptly. Given Jean Edward Smith’s excellent introduction, I’m surprised the book’s conclusion isn’t equally penetrating and revealing. But while reading this book I quickly knew I had found a favorite, and the imperfect ending did little to upset that view. ( Full review here )

* Fifth on my list was Josiah Bunting’s 2004 “ Ulysses S. Grant .”  A member of  The American Presidents Series , this biography is exactly what you would expect: short, straightforward and entirely comprehensible. Nearly every important message about Grant’s life is provided and nearly every crucial detail is included. Left behind, of course, is much of the nuance and flavor of Grant’s life – the granularity that makes his story really come to life.

Although geared toward an impatient reader and excellent for such a concise biography, I can’t help but believe that anyone who appreciates this book would find Jean Edward Smith’s biography even more compelling – despite the extra pages. But for readers committed to a balance of brevity and insight, Bunting’s biography of Grant succeeds remarkably well. ( Full review here )

* Finally, I read H.W. Brands’s 2012 “ The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses S. Grant in War and Peace .” As the sixth biography of Grant I had read in as many weeks I feared there was little new I could learn about Grant unless Brands uncovers something unique about Grant. He does not, and I felt as though I was re-reading much of what Bunting, Smith and Simpson had previously written.

What is different is Brands’s writing style, but not the substance of what is put on the page. Other than simply fulfilling a desire to write about Grant, I’m not sure of this biography’s raison d’être. In many respects, coming so late in the Grant renaissance and with little new to say, this seems just another sympathetic and thoughtful biography.

And although it lacks the fluidity and narrative charm of Jean Edward Smith’s biography, the drama of Perret’s and the brevity of Bunting’s, Brands’s biography of Grant is comprehensive, methodical, deliberate and objective. ( Full review here )

– – – – – – –

–>On my “Ulysses Grant follow-up list” (yes, it already exists) I am including Grant’s Memoirs as well as the three-volume Lewis/Catton series. Oh…and Ron Chernow’s upcoming biography of Grant as well!

[ Added April 2019 ]

* Two years after I completed my initial round of reading related to Ulysses Grant, Ronald White’s “ American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant ” was published. Between late March and early April 2019 I finally had an opportunity to read this highly-anticipated and well-regarded biography.

While I found “American Ulysses” to be good, it’s not quite great . White is the first biographer afforded access to the complete collection of “The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant” and yet there is relatively little which stands out as particularly new or revelatory.

Jean Edward Smith’s narrative is more colorful, engaging and insightful. Bunting’s biography packs more “punch” in far less space. And Brooks Simpson’s treatment of Grant’s pre-presidency probably provides the most detailed (if not exciting) exploration of Grant’s early life.

To his great credit, White includes an extensive collection of invaluable charts and diagrams in this biography, and his positive reassessment of Grant’s image is compelling. But the narrative is probably a better historical work than a literary one, and Grant’s personality is never fully dissected.

As a comprehensive, and certainly more-than-satisfactory, review of the life of Ulysses S. Grant this biography succeeds. But for anyone who has already navigated Grant’s life there is probably not enough new insight or analysis to make this a truly compelling read. ( Full review here )

[Added June 2020]

* Three years after I completed my initial journey through the best biographies of Grant, Ron Chernow’s “ Grant ” was published.  By far the longest of the Grant biographies I’ve read, it is also one of the very best.

Some have argued that Chernow’s biography is late in the “rehabilitation” game for the 18th president and that nothing new is revealed. I am somewhat sympathetic with this argument; the dust jacket claims Grant’s life “has typically been misunderstood” but Chernow is hardly the first biographer to reveal the more nuanced Grant. And no bombshell revelations appear in this book.

But this biography provides a far more fulsome, vivid and nuanced portrait of Grant than the more concise reviews of his life found elsewhere and Chernow undertakes a more exhaustive and thoughtful exploration of Grant’s alleged alcoholism than I’ve seen.

Casual consumers of presidential history may be inclined to turn to shorter treatments of Grant’s life; in that case, Jean Edward Smith’s biography of Grant is an excellent alternative (and a fantastic choice in any case). But anyone with a keen interest in Ulysses Grant – or who revels in Ron Chernow’s literary fluency – will want to read this excellent biography.  ( Full review here )

– – – – – – – – – – –

Best Biography of Ulysses S. Grant:  tie between ————–> Jean Edward Smith’s “ Grant ” (2001) and ————–> Ron Chernow’s “ Grant ” (2017)

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141 thoughts on “the best biographies of ulysses s. grant”.

August 4, 2023 at 2:25 pm

I thought the Smith biography far superior to the Chernow book. Although a Grant partisan when I read the McFeely biography (and an even stronger one today) I found his critical tone toward Grant to be fair; though if one compares Grant to nearly every other man who held the Presidency McFeely’s criticism seem ridiculous. Grant was one of perhaps three men elected President without requiring to be associated with a particular political party (the other two being Washington and Eisenhower, though Grant would have needed the Republican Party more than the other two, with Eisenhower having the freest hand to choose) and in comparison to nearly every other President Grant’s personal policy choices (except the Dominican Republic affair) where largely just and honorable while the policy areas where he was inclined to follow his advisors were no worse than those made by other Presidents who relied on such advice. Those actions were only made to seem worse because the Lost Cause and anti-Reconstruction contingent had to denigrate Grant the Man to justify their cruel and evil opinions.

December 4, 2023 at 3:10 pm

Question about the concluding sentence:

But anyone with a keen fascination in Ulysses S. Grant – or who revels in Ron Chernow’s literary fluency – will want to pass on this excellent biography.

Is that supposed to be “will NOT want to pass”?

December 4, 2023 at 3:13 pm

You are correct – thanks!

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