Ulysses Simpson Grant (April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was an American Civil War general and the 18th (1869–1877) president of the United States.

Grant won many important battles, rose to become general-in-chief of all Union armies, and is credited with winning the war. But although he was a successful general, he is considered by historians to be one of America's worst presidents, who led an administration plagued by severe scandal and corruption. Historians agree that Grant was not personally corrupt; it was his subordinates in the executive branch who were at fault. He is instead mostly criticized for not taking a strong stance against the corruption, and not acting to stop it. More recent treatments have emphasized the accomplishments of his administration, including his struggle to preserve Reconstruction, and looked with more understanding upon its shortcomings.


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

At the age of 17, he received a cadetship to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York through his Congressman. The Congressman erroneously registered him as Ulysses Simpson Grant, but Grant took such a liking to his new name that he kept it. He graduated from West Point in 1843, No. 21 in a class of 39.

He married Julia Boggs Dent (1826–1902) on August 22, 1848 and they had four children: Frederick Dent, Ulysses Simpson, Jr., Ellen Wrenshall, and Jesse Root (son).


Military career

Photo of General Grant by Mathew Brady in 1864Grant served in the Mexican-American War under Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, taking part in the battles of Resaca de la Palma, Palo Alto, Monterrey, and Veracruz. He was twice breveted for bravery: at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. On July 31, 1854, he resigned from the army. Seven years of civilian life following, in which he was a farmer, a real estate agent in St. Louis, and finally an assistant at the leather business owned by his father and brother.

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

Grant gave the Union Army its first major victory of the American Civil War by capturing Fort Henry, Tennessee, on February 6, 1862, followed by Fort Donelson, where he demanded the famous terms of "unconditional surrender" and captured a Confederate army. Later in 1862 he was surprised by Albert Sidney Johnston at the Battle of Shiloh, but with grim determination and timely reinforcements, turned a serious reverse into a victory in the second day of battle. His strategy in the campaign to capture the river fortress of Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1863 is considered one of the most masterful in military history and it split the Confederacy in two; and it represented the second major Confederate army to surrender to Grant. He was the savior of Union forces besieged in Chattanooga, Tennessee, decisively beating Braxton Bragg and opening an avenue to Atlanta, Georgia and the heart of the Confederacy. His willingness to fight and ability to win impressed President Abraham Lincoln, who appointed him lieutenant general—a new rank recently authorized by the U.S. Congress with Grant in mind—on March 2, 1864, and on March 12 Grant became Commander-in-Chief of all of the armies of the United States.


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

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

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

Despite the heavy losses, Grant did not retreat as his predecessors had done following their setbacks. Finally, he slipped his troops across the James River, fooling Lee, and, failing to capture the rail junctions at Petersburg, Virginia, settled in to a nine-month siege of Lee's army in the city. He dispatched Philip Sheridan to the Shenandoah Valley to defeat the army of Jubal A. Early and destroy the farms supplying Lee. His relentless pressure finally forced Lee to evacuate Richmond and surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Grant offered generous terms that did much to ease the tensions between the armies and preserve some semblance of Southern pride, which would be needed to reconcile the warring sides. Within a few weeks, the American Civil War was effectively over, although minor actions would continue until Kirby Smith surrendered his forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department on June 2, 1865. But immediately after Lee's surrender, Grant had the sad honor of serving as a pall bearer at the funeral of his greatest champion, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had been quoted after the massive losses at Shiloh, "I can't spare this general. He fights." It was a two-word description that completely caught the essence of Ulysses S. Grant.

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