Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant; April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was the 18th president of the United States, serving from 1869 to 1877. He previously led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 as commanding general. Grant was born in Ohio and graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1843. He served with distinction in the Mexican–American War, but returned to civilian life impoverished in 1854. In 1861, shortly after the Civil War began, Grant joined the Union Army. He rose to prominence after securing victories in the western theater in 1862. In 1863, he led the Vicksburg campaign that gave Union forces control of the Mississippi River and dealt a major strategic blow to the Confederacy. President Abraham Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general and command of all Union armies after his victory at Chattanooga. Grant fought Robert E. Lee through the Overland Campaign, which ended when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson promoted Grant to General of the Army. Grant broke with Johnson over Reconstruction policies. A war hero, drawn in by his sense of duty, Grant was unanimously nominated by the Republican Party and elected president in 1868. As president, Grant stabilized the post-war economy, supported Reconstruction and the Fifteenth Amendment, and prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan. An effective civil rights executive, Grant signed a bill to create the United States Department of Justice and worked with Radical Republicans to protect African Americans. In 1871, he created the first Civil Service Commission. Grant was re-elected in the 1872 presidential election, but was inundated by executive scandals during his second term. His response to the Panic of 1873 was ineffective in halting the Long Depression, which contributed to the Democrats winning the House majority in 1874. Grant's Native American policy was to assimilate Indians into Anglo-American culture. In his foreign policy, the Alabama Claims against Britain were peacefully resolved, but the Senate rejected his proposal to annex Santo Domingo. During the disputed 1876 presidential election, he facilitated the approval by Congress of a compromise. Leaving office in 1877, Grant undertook a world tour, becoming the first president to circumnavigate the world. In 1880, he was unsuccessful in obtaining the Republican nomination for a third term. In 1885, impoverished and dying of throat cancer, Grant wrote his memoirs, which were posthumously published and became a major critical and financial success. At his death, he was the most popular American and was memorialized as a symbol of national unity. Due to the pseudohistorical and negationist mythology of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy spread by Confederate sympathizers around the turn of the 20th century, historical assessments and rankings of Grant's presidency suffered considerably before they began recovering in the 21st century. ### Early life Grant's father, Jesse Root Grant, was a Whig Party supporter and a fervent abolitionist. He and Hannah Simpson were married on June 24, 1821, and their first child, Hiram Ulysses Grant, was born on April 27, 1822. To honor his father-in-law, Jesse named the boy "Hiram Ulysses", though he always referred to him as "Ulysses". In 1823, the family moved to Georgetown, Ohio, where five siblings were born: Simpson, Clara, Orvil, Jennie, and Mary. At the age of five, Ulysses started at a subscription school and later attended two private schools. In the winter of 1836–1837, Grant was a student at Maysville Seminary, and in the autumn of 1838, he attended John Rankin's academy. In his youth, Grant developed an unusual ability to ride and manage horses; his father gave him work driving supply wagons and transporting people. Unlike his siblings, Grant was not required to attend church by his Methodist parents. For the rest of his life, he prayed privately and never officially joined any denomination. To others, including his own son, Grant appeared to be agnostic. Grant was largely apolitical before the war but wrote, "If I had ever had any political sympathies they would have been with the Whigs. I was raised in that school." ### Presidency On March 4, 1869, Grant was sworn in as president by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. In his inaugural address, Grant urged the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment; many African Americans attended his inauguration. He urged that bonds issued during the Civil War should be paid in gold, called for "proper treatment" of Native Americans and encouraged their "civilization and ultimate citizenship". Grant's cabinet appointments sparked both criticism and approval. He appointed Elihu B. Washburne Secretary of State and John A. Rawlins Secretary of War. Washburne resigned, and Grant appointed him Minister to France. Grant then appointed former New York Senator Hamilton Fish Secretary of State. Rawlins died in office, and Grant appointed William W. Belknap Secretary of War. Grant appointed New York businessman Alexander T. Stewart Secretary of the Treasury, but Stewart was found legally ineligible by a 1789 law. Grant then appointed Massachusetts Representative George S. Boutwell Secretary of the Treasury. Philadelphia businessman Adolph E. Borie was appointed Secretary of the Navy, but found the job stressful and resigned. Grant then appointed New Jersey's attorney general, George M. Robeson, Secretary of the Navy. Former Ohio Governor Jacob D. Cox (Interior), former Maryland Senator John Creswell (Postmaster-General), and Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (Attorney General) rounded out the cabinet. Grant nominated Sherman to succeed him as general-in-chief and gave him control over war bureau chiefs. When Rawlins took over the War Department he complained that Sherman was given too much authority. Grant reluctantly revoked his order, upsetting Sherman and damaging their friendship. James Longstreet, a former Confederate general, was nominated for Surveyor of Customs of New Orleans; this was met with amazement, and seen as a genuine effort to unite the North and South. In March 1872, Grant signed legislation that established Yellowstone National Park, the first national park. Grant was sympathetic to women's rights, including suffrage, saying he wanted "equal rights to all citizens". To make up for his infamous General Order No. 11, Grant appointed more than fifty Jewish people to federal office, including consuls, district attorneys, and deputy postmasters. He appointed Edward S. Salomon territorial governor of Washington, the first time an American Jewish man occupied a governor's seat. In November 1869, reports surfaced of Alexander II of Russia penalizing 2,000 Jewish families for smuggling by expelling them to the interior of the country. In response, Grant publicly supported the Jewish American B'nai B'rith petition against Alexander. In 1875, Grant proposed a constitutional amendment that limited religious indoctrination in public schools. Schools would be for all children "irrespective of sex, color, birthplace, or religions". Grant's views were incorporated into the Blaine Amendment, but it was defeated by the Senate. In October 1871, under the Morrill Act, using federal marshals, Grant prosecuted hundreds of Utah Territory Mormon polygamists. Grant called polygamy a "crime against decency and morality". In 1874, Grant signed into law the Poland Act, which made Mormon polygamists subject to trial in District Courts and limited Mormons on juries. Beginning in March 1873, under the Comstock Act, Grant prosecuted pornographers, in addition to abortionists. To administer the prosecutions, Grant put in charge a vigorous anti-vice activist and reformer, Anthony Comstock. Comstock headed a federal commission and was empowered to destroy obscene material and hand out arrest warrants to offenders. In September 1875, amidst pervading anti-Catholic sentiment within the Republican Party after its political losses in 1874, Grant gave a speech in Iowa before a reunion of veterans from the Army of the Tennessee in which he opposed appropriations for "the support of any sectarian school"; the word "sectarian" was understood to mean Catholic. Within the same speech, he surmised that the Protestant-Catholic divide will be the source of potential national conflicts after the Civil War: "I predict the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other." The speech later became Grant's most reproduced speech from his presidency. === Reconstruction === Grant was considered an effective civil rights president, concerned about the plight of African Americans. On March 18, 1869, he signed into law equal rights for black people, to serve on juries and hold office, in Washington D.C., and in 1870 he signed the Naturalization Act that gave foreign black people citizenship. During his first term, Reconstruction took precedence. Republicans controlled most Southern states, propped up by Republican-controlled Congress, northern money, and southern military occupation. Grant advocated the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment that said states could not disenfranchise African Americans. Within a year, the three remaining states—Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas—adopted the new amendment—and were admitted to Congress. Grant put military pressure on Georgia to reinstate its black legislators and adopt the amendment. Georgia complied, and on February 24, 1871, its senators were seated in Congress. With all former Confederate states represented, the Union was completely restored under Grant. Under Grant, for the first time in history, Black-American men served in…