Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant won the American Civil War and served two terms as president. Born in Ohio in 1822, he was sent to West Point against his wishes by a father who had arranged the appointment, graduated in the middle of his class, and was an outstanding horseman. He served with distinction in the Mexican War, a conflict he called one of the most unjust ever waged. He resigned from the army in 1854 amid rumours of drinking, and failed at farming, at debt collecting and at real estate. In 1860 he was working as a clerk in his father's leather shop in Galena. The war restored him. He took Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862, demanding unconditional surrender, was nearly destroyed by surprise at Shiloh and won anyway, and in July 1863 took Vicksburg after a campaign of manoeuvre that split the Confederacy along the Mississippi. Lincoln, told he drank, is said to have asked what brand. Given overall command in 1864, he understood what his predecessors had not: that the objective was Lee's army rather than Richmond, and that the Union could replace losses and the Confederacy could not. The Overland Campaign cost him tens of thousands of casualties and did not stop. Lee surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865, and Grant's terms were deliberately generous. As president from 1869 he enforced Reconstruction with genuine commitment, using the Enforcement Acts to break the Ku Klux Klan and signing the Civil Rights Act of 1875. His administrations were riddled with corruption he did not personally share. Bankrupted and dying of throat cancer, he wrote his memoirs to provide for his family and finished them days before his death in 1885.
- Lived: 1822 CE – 1885 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: general, president
