Grant, Ulysses S(impson), originally Hiram Ulysses Grant 1822-85
18th President of the USA

Born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, he graduated from West Point in 1843 and fought in the Mexican War (1846-48), gaining promotion to the rank of captain in 1853. He resigned from the army (1854) and settled on a farm near St Louis, Missouri. However, on the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 he returned to the army, swiftly becoming a brigadier-general, and in 1862 he captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee, securing for the Union its first major victory. He was criticized for high Union casualties at Shiloh, but in 1863 he besieged Vicksburg, Mississippi, and forced its surrender, thus capturing the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River and cutting the Confederacy in half. Having driven the enemy out of Tennessee, he was made a lieutenant-general and given command of the Union forces in 1864. His strategy was to concentrate all the national forces into several distinct armies, which should operate simultaneously against the enemy, with General Sherman moving toward Atlanta, while Grant accompanied the army of the Potomac against Richmond. He encountered General Robert E Lee in the wilderness, and fought a desperate battle, driving the enemy within the lines of Richmond and culminating in Lee surrendering his entire army in April 1865. The fall of Richmond substantially ended the war. In July 1866 Grant was appointed a full general but relinquished the rank when in 1868 and 1872 he was elected President as the candidate of the Republicans. Despite his military skill, he was politically na�ve, and his administration (1869-77) was marked by corruption and incompetence. Most of the achievements of his presidency were traceable to his brilliant Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, who negotiated the Treaty of Washington (1871) with Great Britain and resolved the Alabama claims. The proposal of a third term of presidency not having been approved, Grant returned to private life and became a sleeping partner in a banking-house but was robbed of all he possessed by two of the partners. In the hope of providing for his family, he had begun his autobiography, when in 1884 a sore throat proved to be cancer at the root of the tongue. The sympathies of the nation were aroused, and in March 1885 Congress restored him to his rank of general which he had lost on accepting the presidency, thus qualifying his dependants for an army pension. His Personal Memoirs (2 vols, 1885-86) are a classic of US military history.

Bibliography: Bruce Catton, U S Grant and the American Military Tradition (1954)