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Hiram was one of six children, including his five younger siblings Samuel Simpson, Clara, Virginia Paine, Orvil Lynch and Mary Frances. Hiram came from a family that, he proudly declared, had been American "for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral." (Grant, 1) In 1823, Jesse Root Grant moved his tanning business to Georgetown, Ohio where Hiram, Commonly called “Lyss” spent his boyhood. Lyss spent many of his younger years being educated at many schools: a grammar school in Georgetown, at Maysville Seminary in Maysville, Ky., and at the Presbyterian Academy of Ripley, Ohio. Grant found all of his early education to be superficial and repetitious. “The schools, at the time of which I write, were very indifferent. There were no free schools, and none in which the scholars were classified. They were all supported by subscription, and a single teacher--who was often a man or a woman incapable of teaching much, even if they imparted all they knew--would have thirty or forty scholars, male and female, from the infant learning the ABC's up to the young lady of eighteen and the boy of twenty, studying the highest branches taught--the three R's, "Reading, `Riting, `Rithmetic." I never saw an algebra, or other mathematical work higher than the arithmetic, in Georgetown, until after I was appointed to West Point.” (Grant, 7) He showed no scholarly bent. One thing that Hiram did enjoy, though, and was in fact quite notable for, was his sturdy self-reliance and his ability to ride and control even the wildest horses. While schooling and obtaining an education, Hiram found himself doing a lot of work on his family farm and not at his father’s ten yard, a place in which he found a true dislike. While growing up, Hiram did not find many friends due to his constant changing of schools and his never-ending work on the farm. In 1839, Jesse Grant, Hiram’s father, was able to secure an appointment for his son to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. In one of most famous lines in his Memoirs, Grant recalled that he told his father he wouldn't go to West Point, but "he said he thought I would, and I thought so too, if he did." (Grant, 14) Hiram was seventeen years old when he arrived at West Point. On his arrival at the academy, Hiram learned that he was on the muster roll as Ulysses Simpson Grant. This was an error that was accidentally produced by the congressman who nominated Hiram. Finding this mistake one that was impossible to correct, seeing as how he would have to go through a long and arduous procedure to change the official listing, Hiram accepted the inevitable and dropped Hiram from his name and became Ulysses Simpson Grant. Grant was not a spectacular student at the academy and did not care much for his studies. "A military life had no charms for me," Grant said later, and his only purpose at the academy was "to get through the course, secure a detail for a few years as assistant professor of mathematics at the Academy, and afterwards obtain a permanent position as professor at some respectable college." (Catton, 18) Understandably, his West Point record was not spectacular. Ulysses Grant graduated in 1843 with a rather unremarkable record, ranking twenty first in his class of thirty-nine. Although Ulysses was not a great student, he was undoubtedly the finest horseman at the academy during his four-year stay there. In his later years, Ulysses was fond of the academy and frequently enjoyed visiting the campus and the surrounding area. About his stay at the academy, though, Ulysses later recalled that he had ambivalent feelings about the institution. When he spoke of it, Ulysses usually spoke without enthusiasm. He constantly recalled the countless drilling, regimented lifestyle, and the spartan routine that had no appeal to him at the time. He was not happy as a cadet and easily described his four years at West Point as interminable. There is one characteristic about West Point that Grant found appealing, and it was that the academy was the best school in the world for turning out “manly characters.” Ulysses was too simple in his deportment and modest in his outlook to canonize the institution, as MacArthur was later to do. There was none of the maudlin "Corps, corps, corps" doctrine within the psyche of U.S. Grant. When he graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1843, Ulysses Grant was commissioned the rank of brevet second lieutenant. He was assigned to the fourth United States Infantry and was sent to the Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, Missouri. While at the Jefferson Barracks, Ulysses began to learn his army duties and the great amount of military knowledge that would help in the not to distant future. He also met his wife, Julia Dent, while serving out his duty at the barracks. Julia Boggs Dent was the sister of a West Point classmate. In May 1844, Grant’s regiment was given orders that sent it to the southwest frontier. This order was a temporary interruption of his romance. This interruption of romance was nothing more than the Mexican War. Grant served with distinction in the Mexican War (1846-1848), a conflict that he privately deplored as an unjust war to extend slavery. Promoted on Sept. 20, 1845, to full second lieutenant, he took part in the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterrey. Grant's commanding general in all these engagements was "Old Rough and Ready," Gen. Zachary Taylor, whose informal dress and lack of military pretension he was to copy in later years. In 1847, Grant's regiment was transferred to the army of Gen. Winfield Scott, and he participated in all the battles that led to the capitulation of Mexico City--Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, where he was made first lieutenant for his bravery, and Chapultepec, where he was brevetted captain. Besides teaching Grant the practical lessons of warfare, the Mexican conflict gave him a personal acquaintance with most of the men who were later to command the Confederate armies. After the Mexicans surrendered, the American military establishment was drastically curtailed, and Grant was assigned to routine garrison duty. His four years at Sackets Harbor, N. Y., and Detroit, Mich., were pleasant, because Julia, whom he had married on Aug. 22, 1848, was with him. But in 1852, when the regiment was transferred to Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, his wife and young family had to be left at home. Grant's next two years, spent in barracks life on the West Coast, were the most miserable in his career. His duties were dull and routine; his superior officer, Col. Robert Buchanan, rode him hard; his income was inadequate, and efforts to increase it by farming and cattle raising were unsuccessful. Most of all, he missed Julia, the one woman in his life. Like so many other peacetime officers of the period, Grant began drinking. Though he was promoted to a captaincy, he continued forlorn and unhappy, and a quarrel with Colonel Buchanan helped to precipitate his decision, on April 11, 1854, to resign his commission. After resigning from his commission in 1854, Ulysses returned to Missouri where he tried working at a number of jobs, unsuccessfully. Among these jobs were selling cordwood, working his sixty-acre farm (a job that pointed towards a bleak future), real estate (where Ulysses proved to be completely worthless), and other small business ventures. In 1860, Ulysses finally moved to Galena, Illinois where he worked for his father’s leather business. He earned eight hundred dollars a year and lived in a comfortable housing facing a cemetery. Not particularly interested in politics, Grant was nominally a Democrat at this time; but when the South seceded, he had no trouble in making up his mind to support the Union cause. He helped organize the first company of Union volunteers in Galena and accompanied the men to Springfield. At the request of the Illinois governor, Richard Yates, he remained to muster in the new volunteer regiments, for his experience as quartermaster, commissary, and adjutant in the field made him invaluable. Grant longed for active duty, however, and on May 24, 1861, tendered his services to the U. S. government, suggesting modestly that he was "competent to command a regiment." Failing to secure such an appointment, he accepted from Governor Yates the command of the 21st Illinois Regiment, quickly brought it under excellent discipline, and did good service against guerrillas in Missouri. On Aug. 7, 1861, President Lincoln appointed Grant brigadier general of volunteers, and he took up headquarters at Cairo, Ill. Only a few days after he assumed his new command, he occupied Paducah, Ky., at the strategic junction of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers. On November 7 he attacked the Confederates at Belmont, Mo., in an assault that was not well planned or executed. During the attack, Grant’s horse is shot out from under him. The arrival of Confederate reinforcements compelled him to retreat. Belmont is frequently described as a fighting retreat by Union Forces. The general was still learning his trade, and his men were gaining much needed experience in the field and under fire. In February 1862, after much persuasion by Grant, Gen. Henry W. Halleck, Grant's superior officer, authorized him to move against Forts Donelson and Henry, the Confederate positions guarding the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. With 17,000 men and a flotilla of gunboats under the command of Commodore Andrew Hull Foote, Grant captured Fort Henry on February 6 and promptly moved against Donelson 12 miles away. When the Confederate commander there, Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, asked for terms of capitulation, Grant replied tersely: "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." On February 16, Buckner surrendered with over 14,000 men. The capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, the first major Union victories in the war, opened up Tennessee to the Federal armies. For the first time "Unconditional Surrender" Grant became prominent on the national scene. Despite Halleck's jealousy, Lincoln made him major general of volunteers. Grant's next important battle was at Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, Tenn., on April 6-7, 1862. Early in the morning of April 6, Gen. Albert S. Johnston's Confederate army burst through the unfortified Union lines near Shiloh meetinghouse and threatened to drive Grant's men back into the Tennessee River. Historians differ on almost every aspect of the battle: whether Grant was at fault in being at Savannah, 9 miles from Pittsburg Landing, at the beginning of the battle; whether Grant was surprised by Johnston; whether Union troops should have been entrenched; whether Grant was personally responsible for checking the Confederate advance; and whether the arrival of Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's army saved the day for the Union cause. At any rate, on April 7 the Union forces recaptured the initiative and drove the Confederates back in great disorder. When the news reached the North, a storm of abuse broke out against Grant, who was blamed for this bloodiest battle yet to occur on the American continent, and it was falsely whispered that he had been drunk and negligent of his duty. But Grant also had defenders, among them Lincoln, who said simply, "I can't spare this man--he fights." On April 11, General Halleck arrived at Pittsburg Landing and took personal command of the army. In the ensuing campaign against Corinth, Miss., Grant occupied an ambiguous and humiliating position. Nominally second in command of the army, he was in fact ignored during the slow advance that occupied the Union troops until the end of May. When Halleck was called to Washington in July, Grant was left in command of the District of West Tennessee, holding a wide territory with few troops. He was, nevertheless, able to drive Maj. Gen. Sterling Price's Confederates from Iuka, Miss., on September 19-20, and a part of his army, under Brig. Gen. William S. Rosecrans, defeated Price and Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn at Corinth on October 3-4. The next series of battles that Grant was involved in will forever engrave his name into the annals of history. On Oct. 25, 1862, Grant was made commander of the Department of Tennessee and was charged with taking Vicksburg, Miss., the principal Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. He first followed a rather conventional strategy, advancing with 30,000 men overland through Mississippi while sending Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman's troops down the river from Memphis. On December 20, Van Dorn destroyed Grant's principal supply base at Holly Springs; nine days later Sherman was bloodily repulsed at Chickasaw Bayou. Grant now faced the most important decision of his career. To pull back to Memphis and mount a new expedition would be an admission of defeat and a severe blow to Union morale. To any retreat Grant had an instinctive aversion. "One of my superstitions," he wrote, "had always been when I started to go anywhere, or to do anything, not to turn back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished." He decided, therefore, "There was nothing left to be done but to go forward to a decisive victory." That is precisely what he did, in a plan as brilliant in conception as in execution. Abandoning the overland approach, Grant moved his army to the position Sherman had occupied across the Mississippi from Vicksburg and ostensibly busied his troops during the rainy winter months in constructing a canal bypassing Vicksburg, while beginning to gather supplies for a daring experiment. By April 1863 he was ready. He ran his provisions down the river under the guns of Vicksburg, marched his men through the backcountry, reached a position on the west bank of the Mississippi below Vicksburg, crossed over to high ground on the eastern side, and commenced operations behind the Confederate lines. Grant had cut himself off from communications and supplies from the North; his troops had to subsist on the country until victory. He drove inland to Jackson, Miss., held off a threatened attack from Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army to the north, and pushed Lieut. Gen. John C. Pemberton's troops on the west into the defenses of Vicksburg. After a regular siege, on July 4, 1863, Pemberton was obliged to surrender his 30,000 men. The victory was one of the most decisive in the war. It eliminated a major Confederate army from the conflict; it cut off the trans-Mississippi states from the rest of the Confederacy (the capture of Port Hudson, La., by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks promptly followed); and it brought to the attention of the Northern government and people the ablest Union general of the war. President Lincoln wrote Grant a personal letter of congratulations and nominated him major general in the Regular Army. Grant's new victory made him the man of the hour, and he was brought to Washington to receive the personal thanks of the President, a gold medal voted by congress, and the newly created rank of lieutenant general commanding all the armies of the United States. Grant looked anything but a hero. He was, as Richard Henry Dana observed, "a short, round-shouldered man, in a very tarnished ... uniform. ... There was nothing marked in his appearance. He had no gait, no station, no manner, rough, light-brown whiskers, a blue eye, and rather a scrubby look withal." But behind the unprepossessing exterior and the modesty of manner lay a powerful strategic genius. Grant now gave to the Union armies something they had never had before, a concerted plan of action. He ordered simultaneous movements (commencing May 4, 1864) of all the Union armies--Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac, which he personally accompanied; Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler's Army of the James; Sherman's Army of the Tennessee; and Banks' troops in Louisiana. Throwing enormous concentrated force against the enemy, Grant planned to batter the Confederates constantly and, if only through attrition, to compel their surrender. The advance of Meade's army into the Virginia Wilderness was skillfully parried by Gen. Robert E. Lee's strategy, but undeterred by the appalling loss of 17,666 men, Grant gave the enemy no rest. At Spotsylvania Court House and on the North Anna, Lee again fended off Grant's sledgehammer blows. At Cold Harbor, Grant ordered a direct assault on the Confederate lines, only to lose 6,000 men in an hour's fighting. Though he was wearing down the Confederates, he had failed to defeat Lee in a single engagement. His prestige plummeted, and enemies in the North began to call him "Grant the Butcher," careless of his men's lives. Grant continued to hammer away. On June 12 he shifted his base, adroitly withdrew from Lee's front, and crossed the James River. Failing to capture Petersburg by surprise, he settled down to a regular siege. From June 18, 1864, to April 2, 1865, the Army of the Potomac was engaged chiefly in mining, sapping, assaulting, cutting Lee's transportation lines, and sending out flanking expeditions. But while Grant was starving Lee in Richmond, Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan was devastating the valley of Virginia, and Sherman's army, far to the south, was burning a trail of desolation through Georgia. In the spring of 1865, Grant was ready for the final push. Sheridan's victory at Five Forks (April 1, 1865) was the beginning of the end. The next day when Grant assaulted the Confederate right, Lee was obliged to abandon Richmond and Petersburg and march west, hoping to join the army of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Grant cut off his retreat, and a series of running battles made it clear that further resistance was useless. On April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee capitulated. Grant's terms were magnanimous, and Lee accepted them without question. Seventeen days later Johnston surrendered his army to Sherman, and the Civil War was over. As harsh and effective as Ulysses Grant was against the confederacy during the war, he was easy to reaccept his countrymen when Lee surrendered at Appomattox courthouse, “The Rebels are our countrymen again.” (Graf, 202) Grant also truly felt that the confederacy would suffer in the next few years to come as it struggled to regain its footing in society. “The suffering that must exist in the South the next year, even with the war ending now, will be beyond conception,” (Graf, 203) Grant later predicted in a letter to his wife after the conclusion of the war. In his later years, Ulysses S. Grant served two presidential terms under the Republican banner. His presidency was filled with scandal and deceit. Most of the fault was placed on Grant himself, but the senators and cabinet members that were able to use Grant’s name against him used him as a scapegoat. Upon leaving office for the second time, Grant made a tour of the world with his wife and youngest son, during which he was treated not as a discredited president of the United States but as the triumphant victor of the Civil War. After two years of travel, he returned more than ever interested in a third term, which now seemed possible because Hayes did not seek reelection. At the Republican National Convention in 1880 in Chicago he had 306 supporters, organized by Conkling; but a coalition of his opponents gave the nomination to James A. Garfield on the 36th ballot, and Grant's political career was ended. Afflicted with a cancer of the throat, the general was heroically trying to provide for his family during his last years. Exhausted from his heroic battle with cancer, he died quietly at Mount McGregor on July 23, 1885, and his body eventually found its last resting place in the great mausoleum (dedicated 1897) in New York City overlooking the Hudson River. Bibliography: BIBLIOGRAPHY Badeau, Adam. Military history of Ulysses S. Grant, from April, 1861, to April, 1865. New York: D. Appleton, 1868-81. Carpenter, John A. Ulysses S. Grant. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970. Catton, Bruce. U.S. Grant and the American military tradition. Boston: Little, Brown, 1954. Graf, Leroy P. Advice After Appomattox: Letters to Andrew Johnson 1865-1866. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1987. Grant, Ulysses S. Personal memoirs of U.S. Grant. New York: Charles Webster, 1885. Meives, Diane. Little Known Facts About Ulysses S Grant, http://saints.css.edu/mkelsey/facts.html Simpson, Brooks D. Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822-1865. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000. Williams, Frank J. The Ulysses S. Grant Association, www. lib.siu.edu/projects/usgrant/ Word Count: 3375
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