president ulysses simpson grant 
eighteenth president of the united states
interesting facts
Ulysses S. Grant's two term presidency is considered the most corrupt in US history. Many consider him the first Gilded Age President.
quote
"Let us have peace." - Accepting a Nomination for the Presidency
"I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effectual as their strict construction." - First Inaugural Address
"No other terms than unconditional and immediate surrender. I propose to move immediately upon your works." - To General S. B. Buckner, Fort Donelson, Feb. 16, 1862.
biography
Born on April 27, 1822, Ulysses Grant grew up in Georgetown, Ohio (east of Cincinatti). His father, Jesse Root Grant, was foreman in a tannery and a farmer. His mother, Hannah Simpson Grant, was a pious, hard-working frontier woman. His father bought a farm, built a house, and set up a tannery of his own. Five more children were born--two boys and three girls. Lyss, as he was called, loved horses and early learned to manage them. When he was seven or eight years old he could drive a team and began hauling all the wood used in the house and shops. "When about eleven," he says in his `Personal Memoirs', "I was strong enough to hold a plow. From that age until seventeen I did all the work done with horses; such as breaking up the land, furrowing, plowing corn and potatoes, bringing in the crops when harvested, hauling all the wood, besides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, and sawing wood for the stoves." Three months each winter he went to a one-room schoolhouse.
When Ulysses was 17, his father secured his admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point through U.S. Congressman Thomas L. Hamer of Ohio. Grant entered West Point in May 1839. He now became Ulysses Simpson Grant through Congressman Hamer's error in writing the name. His classmates dubbed him "U.S.," "Sam," and "Uncle Sam" Grant. Although he excelled at horsemanship and mathematics, Grant liked drill and discipline no more than most cadets. After a ten-week furlough home, he confided: "The ten weeks were shorter than one week at West Point."
At West Point, Grant was indeed a inconspicuous. He graduated with a barely average school record and ranked 21st out of a class of 39. Soon he was assigned to an infantry in the southwestern frontier. In 1845 he joined the command of General Zachary Taylor in Texas. He fought in the Mexican War (1846-1848), but although twice cited for bravery in combat, he had little heart for the campaign. Later he told a friend, "I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico. … I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, but I had not moral courage enough to resign."
Grant came back from Mexico a brevet captain, with favorable mention. He at once married Julia Dent(Aug. 22, 1848) and took her to his new station, Sackett's Harbor, N. Y. Grant had formed the habit of drinking in the Mexican campaign. At Sackett's Harbor he joined a temperance society; but he forgot the pledge the next year when he was sent to Detroit. In the next ten years four children were born to Ulysses and Julia Grant: three boys, Frederick, Ulysses, Jr., and Jesse, and a daughter, Ellen. From 1848 to 1852, Grant served at army posts in Detroit, Michigan, and Sackets Harbor, New York. In 1852 he was transferred to the Pacific Coast, first to Fort Vancouver in Oregon Territory, then to Fort Humboldt in California.
Soon, he was assign to Cairo, Illinois during the Civil War. Grant reached his headquarters at Cairo, Ill., Sept. 4, 1861. Two days later, without firing a shot, he occupied Paducah, Ky., on the other side of the Ohio River. In November his raw recruits made an unsuccessful attack on a Confederate camp at Belmont, Mo. Grant then set to work to prepare his men for a long, hard struggle. Volunteers poured in until he had nearly 20,000 men.
In February 1862 Grant advanced into Tennessee. With the aid of Commodore A. H. Foote's gunboats, he captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Then he moved against the more formidable Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River. While he was besieging this fort, the Confederate general, Simon B. Buckner--the officer who in 1858 had loaned Grant money to rejoin his family--asked for an armistice. Grant's answer became famous in American history: "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." Buckner surrendered the fort with 14,000 prisoners. Newspapers in the North were filled with praise of "Unconditional Surrender" U.S. Grant, and Lincoln named him a major general.
The objective of the campaign in the West was to cut the Confederacy in two by winning the Mississippi Valley. The first major success came the next year in the battle of Shiloh in southern Tennessee. In two days of desperate fighting--April 6 and 7, 1862--Grant pushed the Confederate forces back to Corinth in Mississippi.
Losses on both sides were heavy. Grant was severely criticized for his conduct in this battle because he had failed to anticipate an attack by the enemy, but President Lincoln said, "I can't spare this man--he fights." Grant made no excuses but spent the rest of 1862 making plans to take Vicksburg, the great Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River that served as a transportation point for the Confederacy.
Vicksburg was a brilliant operation and showed Grant at his best. The fort surrendered unconditionally on July 4, 1863, a day after the battle of Gettysburg. Five days later Port Hudson fell. Grant's son Frederick, 13 years old, was with him in the Vicksburg campaign. Grant said, "He looked out for himself in every battle."
As a reward for Vicksburg, Grant was given supreme command of all the armies in the West. When he returned to Tennessee, he set out to relieve a Federal army penned up in Chattanooga. The Confederates occupied the heights of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, which controlled the approaches to the city. On November 24 and 25, the Federal troops stormed the heights, and the Confederates fled into Georgia. All Tennessee was now captured, and the power of the Confederacy west of the Alleghenies was effectively broken.
Grant went to Washington to disband the army. In April 1866 congress revived for him the rank of full general, a title not used since George Washington had held it. The pay gave Grant financial security, and he became a familiar figure in the streets in his light buggy, driving a spirited horse. Gifts were showered on him. Galena and Philadelphia both presented houses to him. New York City gave him $100,000.
Grant had never been interested in politics and belonged to no political party. President Johnson hoped to put through Lincoln's mild plan of "reconstructing" the seceded states. The Radical Republicans in Congress demanded a harsh policy. Johnson hoped to have Grant's support, but Grant quarreled with him and was won over by the Radicals.
While the Senate was impeaching Johnson, the Republican convention in Chicago unanimously nominated Grant for president, with Schuyler Colfax of Indiana for vice-president. The platform was vague, and the campaign was fought over problems of reconstruction. Grant received 214 electoral votes as against 80 for the Democratic candidate, Horatio Seymour. Grant's popular majority, however, was small--only about 306,000 out of 5,720,250 votes. Black votes in Southern states decided the election.
Grant moved into the White House with Julia and his beautiful daughter Nellie. His sons were also there from time to time, and his old father, now a postmaster in Covington, Ky., made brief visits.
Grave problems confronted the nation. The war had brought poverty and desolation to the South. To the North it had brought prosperity. Speculation was rife, and there was widespread corruption in both political and business life. In 1869 two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk, attempted to corner gold and brought pressure on Grant to keep the United States treasury from selling it. Foreign trade was almost stopped. On Black Friday, Sept. 24, 1869, the United States treasury, with Grant's approval, suddenly put up for sale 4 million dollars in gold. The price plunged, causing the ruin of many speculators.
The Radical Republicans hoped to gain Black votes in the South by the 15th Amendment to the Constitution (1870), which provides that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged ... on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The immediate result of the amendment was an increase of terroristic acts against Blacks to prevent their voting.
In foreign policy Grant usually supported his capable secretary of state, Hamilton Fish. The United States had claims against Great Britain for damage done by the Confederate cruiser Alabama and other commerce destroyers built in England. In 1871 a treaty was signed in Washington agreeing to submit the Alabama claims to an arbitration tribunal to meet at Geneva, Switzerland, the next year. This was the first important case of arbitration in United States history . Grant wanted to annex the Dominican Republic to the United States, but his treaty failed in the Senate.
During the Election of 1872 a group in the Republican party set out to defeat Grant for reelection. They organized the Liberal Republican party, which called for civil service reform, an end to corruption in government, and the withdrawal of troops from the South. The Democratic party joined with them in supporting Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune, for the presidency . The regular Republicans, called Stalwarts, renominated Grant. Grant received 286 electoral votes. Since Greeley died shortly after the election, his 63 electoral votes were divided among other candidates.
Grant's popularity declined as evidence of serious political corruption came to light. The government had given money and land grants to the new railways in the West. In 1873 it was found that certain members of Congress had been bribed to vote in the interests of the Union Pacific Railroad. The bribes were in the form of stock in a railway construction company, the Credit Mobilier. In 1874 the Whiskey Ring scandal was uncovered. The ring was a combination of distillers and tax officers who defrauded the treasury of the revenue tax on whiskey. Grant was not personally implicated in the scandals, but he gave appointments to unfit people and stood by them after they had been shown to be dishonest.
The wartime boom ended with the great panic of 1873. Five years of hard times followed. Businessmen urged the government to return to a sound currency and call in the "greenbacks"--paper money issued during the Civil War. The greenbacks were not based on gold or silver in the treasury and had therefore declined in value, causing a steep rise in prices. Grant vetoed a bill calling for more paper currency. In 1875 he signed the Specie Resumption Act, which made greenbacks redeemable in gold or silver coin.
Grant's followers planned to nominate him for a third presidential term in 1876, but the leaders of the Republican National Convention opposed his renomination. They named Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio as the party's standard-bearer, and he won the election. Grant left office in March 1877, with a few thousand dollars saved and a desire to see the world. On May 17 he sailed with his family for Liverpool, England, on the first leg of a journey around the world. Everywhere he was well received, not as the former president of the United States, but as the hero of the Civil War. He met and talked with many foreign leaders. John Russell Young's Around the World With General Grant (1879) provides an account of some of Grant's impressions and conversations.
After two years of travel, Grant returned home. He was still interested in a third term as president, but at the convention in 1880 the nomination went to James A. Garfield. Grant's political career was at an end.
Grant's last years were bitter ones. He had given up an assured income for life when he resigned from the army to become president. For a year after returning to the United States, his family lived on the income from a $250,000 fund collected for him by friends. When the securities in which the fund was invested failed, Grant was once again without financial resources.
Not until 1885 did Congress vote to restore Grant's rank of full general with an appropriate salary. By that time he was fatally ill. He was moved to Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, New York, in an effort to restore his health. There he began to write his recollections of the war years, the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (1885-1886). They were completed only a week before he died of cancer of the throat. Because in the last months of his life he was unable to speak, the memoirs were in large part written out in his own hand.
The book was a resounding success. Grant focused on the Civil War, the period of his greatest glory, yet he did not write to glorify or justify himself. He attempted to tell what really happened, admitting his mistakes and sharing credit with others. His book remains one of the great war commentaries of all time.
Grant died at Mount McGregor in 1885. His body eventually found its last resting place in the great mausoleum known as Grant's Tomb, overlooking the Hudson River in New York City.
Just before his death, Grant summed up his career in a note to his doctor: "It seems that man's destiny in this world is quite as much a mystery as it is likely to be in the next. I never thought of acquiring rank in the profession I was educated for; yet it came with two grades higher prefixed to the rank of General officer for me. I certainly never had either ambition or taste for political life; yet I was twice President of the United States. If anyone … suggested the idea of my becoming an author I was not sure whether they were making sport of me or not. I have now written a book which is in the hands of the manufacturers."
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events during grant's administrations 1869-1877 |
cabinet and supreme court of grant |
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