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Ulysses S. Grant
Late in the administration of Andrew Johnson, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant quarreled
with the President and aligned himself with the Radical Republicans. He was, as
the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, their logical candidate for
President in 1868.
When he was elected, the American people hoped for an end to turmoil. Grant
provided neither vigor nor reform. Looking to Congress for direction, he seemed
bewildered. One visitor to the White House noted "a puzzled pathos, as of a man
with a problem before him of which he does not understand the terms."
Born in 1822, Grant was the son of an Ohio tanner. He went to West Point rather
against his will and graduated in the middle of his class. In the Mexican War he
fought under Gen. Zachary Taylor.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his father's leather
store in Galena, Illinois. He was appointed by the Governor to command an unruly
volunteer regiment. Grant whipped it into shape and by September 1861 he had
risen to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers.
He sought to win control of the Mississippi Valley. In February 1862 he took
Fort Henry and attacked Fort Donelson. When the Confederate commander asked for
terms, Grant replied, "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender
can be accepted." The Confederates surrendered, and President Lincoln promoted
Grant to major general of volunteers.
At Shiloh in April, Grant fought one of the bloodiest battles in the West and
came out less well. President Lincoln fended off demands for his removal by
saying, "I can't spare this man--he fights."
For his next major objective, Grant maneuvered and fought skillfully to win
Vicksburg, the key city on the Mississippi, and thus cut the Confederacy in two.
Then he broke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga.
Lincoln appointed him General-in-Chief in March 1864. Grant directed Sherman to
drive through the South while he himself, with the Army of the Potomac, pinned
down Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered. Grant
wrote out magnanimous terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials.
As President, Grant presided over the Government much as he had run the Army.
Indeed he brought part of his Army staff to the White House.
Although a man of scrupulous honesty, Grant as President accepted handsome
presents from admirers. Worse, he allowed himself to be seen with two
speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk. When Grant realized their scheme to
corner the market in gold, he authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to sell
enough gold to wreck their plans, but the speculation had already wrought havoc
with business.
During his campaign for re-election in 1872, Grant was attacked by Liberal
Republican reformers. He called them "narrow-headed men," their eyes so close
together that "they can look out of the same gimlet hole without winking." The
General's friends in the Republican Party came to be known proudly as "the Old
Guard."
Grant allowed Radical Reconstruction to run its course in the South, bolstering
it at times with military force.
After retiring from the Presidency, Grant became a partner in a financial firm,
which went bankrupt. About that time he learned that he had cancer of the
throat. He started writing his recollections to pay off his debts and provide
for his family, racing against death to produce a memoir that ultimately earned
nearly $450,000. Soon after completing the last page, in 1885, he died. |
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