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As a military commander who rose to the position of general in chief of the armies of the United States during the American Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant helped preserve the Union and destroy slavery. In the last twenty years of his life he did what he could to define what victory meant, most notably as president of the United States from 1869 to 1877.

Born in 1822 in southwestern Ohio, Grant was a shy boy who seemed most comfortable around horses. In 1839 he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating four years later in the middle of his class. The army, overlooking his skill with horses, commissioned him as a brevet second lieutenant of infantry. During the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) he distinguished himself several times on the field of battle; however, Grant found life in the peacetime army rather trying, especially when it meant he had to leave his family behind, so in 1854 he resigned his commission as captain. For the next seven years he struggled in civilian life in a variety of jobs; by 1861 he could be found working the desk of his father's general store in Galena, Illinois.

Commissioned colonel of an Illinois infantry regiment in 1861, Grant soon rose to the rank of brigadier general, and his rapid response in taking Paducah, Kentucky, in September 1861 established a launching point for future offensives. In February 1862 he captured Forts Henry and Donelson along the Tennessee-Kentucky border; two months later he fended off a Confederate counterattack at Shiloh, Tennessee, and survived subsequent criticism of his performance there. In 1863, after several failed efforts, he directed a masterful campaign that resulted in the capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and its garrison of thirty thousand on July 4; his triumph at Chattanooga that November made him the obvious choice to command the armies of the United States during the critical 1864 campaigns. In the year that followed, Grant drove Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond and Petersburg, while other forces under his direction captured Atlanta, secured the Shenandoah Valley, and penetrated the Confederate heartland through a series of marches. Union military success guaranteed the reelection of Abraham Lincoln as president in November 1864; the following April, Grant forced Lee first to evacuate Richmond and Petersburg and then to surrender his army on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

As a general, Grant was renowned for his coolness under fire and his ability to improvise in response to circumstances. He also displayed a knack for understanding how to work with his civil superiors and understood the relationship between how one wages war and why one is waging war. His ability to reduce complex problems to simple and understandable premises stood him in good stead as he mapped out ambitious campaign plans, including the one that most historians celebrate as his masterpiece, Vicksburg. His relentless determination proved valuable in weathering setbacks and pushing on. Documents he wrote during this time, including a letter to William Tecumseh Sherman and his final report of military operations, give historians insight into his generalship.

As general in chief during Reconstruction, Grant attempted to balance sectional reconciliation with justice for the newly freed blacks in the South. Over time he came to realize the seriousness of white violence against African Americans and their allies and supported enfranchising blacks as essential to giving them the means to protect them and become full partners in the national polity.

In 1868 Republicans persuaded him to run for president as the best way to assure a Republican victory, which would safeguard the fruits of Union victory and serve to protect African Americans. Grant accepted the party's nomination, won the ensuing election, and during the next eight years served as president. Reconstruction proved to be his greatest challenge--as reflected in such documents as his first inaugural address, his special message to the Senate on unrest in Louisiana, and others. Endorsing the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, he came to sanction the use of federal force to protect blacks from violence and prevent white southerners from overthrowing Republican state governments in the South. Although his policies enjoyed some initial successes, over time white southern Democrats took over the South state by state, while a combination of limited enforcement tools, increasing apathy in the North, and political setbacks for Republicans limited what Grant could do to prevent the triumph of white supremacy. By 1876 he conceded that he could do little to stop the retreat from Reconstruction, and after he left office in 1877 Democrats completed their resurgence in the South.

Following his presidency Grant took a trip around the world; upon his return to the United States in 1879 Republicans persuaded him to seek his party's nomination for a third term as president, but he lost that contest to James A. Garfield. He joined a private business firm run by his son in New York City but was swindled out of his earnings and investments in 1884. That same year he learned that he had throat cancer. Dying and destitute, he decided to compose his memoirs, which would be published by the American author Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. He completed the two-volume work just a week before his death at Mount McGregor, New York, on July 23, 1885. His autobiography was hailed as a masterpiece of American literature and proved to be a best seller.

References:

1. Bunting, Josiah, III. Ulysses S. Grant. New York: Times Books, 2004.

2. Catton, Bruce. Grant Takes Command. Boston: Little, Brown, 1969.

3. Catton, Bruce. Grant Moves South 1861-1863. Boston: Little, Brown, 1990.

4. Lewis, Lloyd. Captain Sam Grant. Boston: Little, Brown, 1950.

5. McFeely, William S. Grant: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981.

6. Simpson, Brooks D. Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

7. Simpson, Brooks D. The Reconstruction Presidents. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.

8. Simpson, Brooks D. Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822-1865. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

9. Smith, Jean Edward. Grant. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

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