Ulysses S. Grant

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Hiram Ulysses Grant (1822-1885) - born 27 Apr 1822, Point Pleasant, Ohio, died 23 Jul 1885, Mt. McGregor, New York.

At the age of 17, Grant received a cadetship to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, through his U.S. Congressman, Thomas L. Hamer. Hamer erroneously nominated him as Ulysses Simpson Grant, and although Grant protested the change, it was difficult to resist the bureaucracy. Upon graduation, Grant adopted the form of his new name with middle initial only, never acknowledging that the "S" stood for Simpson. He graduated from West Point in 1843, ranking 21st in a class of 39. At the academy, he established a reputation as a fearless and expert horseman. Grant drank distilled liquor and smoked huge numbers of cigars (one story had it that he smoked over 10,000 in five years) which may have contributed to his throat cancer of later life.

Grant married Julia Boggs Dent (1826–1902) on August 22, 1848. They had four children: Frederick Dent Grant, Ulysses S. (Buck) Grant, Jr., Ellen (Nellie) Grant, and Jesse Root Grant.

Mexican War

Grant served in the Mexican War under Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, taking part in the battles of Battle of Resaca de la Palma, Battle of Palo Alto, Battle of Monterrey, and Battle of Veracruz. He was twice brevetted for bravery: at Battle of Molino del Rey and Battle of Chapultepec. On July 31, 1854, he resigned from the army. Seven years of civilian life followed, in which he was a farmer, a real estate agent in St. Louis, Missouri, and finally an assistant in the leather shop owned by his father and brother.

U.S. Civil War

On April 24, 1861, ten days after the fall of Fort Sumter, Captain Grant arrived in Springfield, Illinois, with a company of men he had raised. The governor felt that a West Point man could be put to better use and appointed him colonel of the 21st Illinois Infantry (effective June 17, 1861). On August 7, Grant was appointed a brigadier general of volunteers.

Grant gave the Union Army its first major victory of the American Civil War by capturing Fort Henry, Tennessee, on February 6, 1862, followed by Fort Donelson, where he demanded the famous terms of "unconditional surrender" and captured a Confederate army. Later in 1862, he was surprised by Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston at the Battle of Shiloh, but with grim determination and timely reinforcements, Grant turned a serious reverse into a victory on the second day of battle. In the campaign to capture the river fortress of Vicksburg, Mississippi, he spent the winter of 1862–63 conducting a series of failed attempts to overcome geographic and logistical obstacles to reaching the city. His eventual success in the spring and summer of 1863 is considered one of the most masterful in military history; it split the Confederacy in two, and it represented the second Confederate army to surrender to Grant.

Grant was given command of besieged Union forces in Chattanooga, Tennessee, decisively beating Braxton Bragg and opening an avenue to Atlanta, Georgia, and the heart of the Confederacy. His willingness to fight and ability to win impressed President Abraham Lincoln, who appointed him lieutenant general—a new rank recently authorized by the U.S. Congress with Grant in mind—on March 2, 1864. On March 12, Grant became general-in-chief of all the armies of the United States.

General-in-chief and strategy for victory

Grant's fighting style was what one fellow general called "that of a bulldog". Although a master of combat by out-maneuvering his opponent (such as at Vicksburg and in the Overland Campaign against Robert E. Lee), Grant was not afraid to order direct assaults or tight sieges against Confederate forces, often when the Confederates were themselves launching offensives against him. Once an offensive or a siege began, Grant refused to stop the attack until the enemy surrendered or was driven from the field. Such tactics often resulted in heavy casualties for Grant's men, but they wore down the Confederate forces proportionately even more and inflicted irreplaceable losses. Grant has been described as a "butcher" for his strategy, particularly in 1864, but he was able to achieve objectives that his predecessor generals had not, even though they suffered similar casualties over time.

In March 1864, Grant put Major General William T. Sherman in immediate command of all forces in the West and moved his headquarters to Virginia where he turned his attention to the long-frustrated Union effort to destroy the army of Lee; his secondary objective was to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, but Grant knew that the latter would happen automatically once the former was accomplished. He devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the heart of the Confederacy from multiple directions: Grant, George G. Meade, and Benjamin Franklin Butler against Lee near Richmond; Franz Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley; Sherman to invade Georgia, defeat Joseph E. Johnston, and capture Atlanta; George Crook and William W. Averell to operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia; Nathaniel Banks to capture Mobile, Alabama. Grant was the first general to attempt such a coordinated strategy in the war and the first to understand the concepts of total war, in which the destruction of an enemy's economic infrastructure that supplied its armies was as important as tactical victories on the battlefield.

Assignments:

• (????-1843) (Cadet) United States Military Academy
• (1849-1851) (Lt.) Detroit, Michigan
• (1852-1854) (1st Lt.) 4th Infantry, Fort Vancouver, Washington
• (1854-1854) (Capt.) Fort Humboldt, California Resigned his commission & went back east.
• (1861-1861) (Col.) 21st Illinois Infantry (17 Jun 1861)
• (1861-18??) (Bg. General) (17 Aug 1861)
• (1864-1866) (Lt. General) General-in-Chief of all the Armies of the United States
• (1866-1869) (General of the Army)
• (1869-1877) (President of the United States) Washington, DC

Personal Description:

• Height: 5' 8"
• Build:
• Hair Color: Nut Brown
• Eye Color:

Links:

• Grant Homepage
• First Inaugural Address
• Second Inaugural Address
• Full text of Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, (1885) from Project Gutenberg
• Grant and Slavery
• White House Biography

Books:

• Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
• Fuller, Maj. Gen. J. F. C., Grant and Lee, A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press, 1957, ISBN 0-253-13400-5.
• Smith, Jean Edward, Grant, Simon and Shuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-84927-5.