Ulysses S. Grant
From The UCSC Wikipedia Trust Project
Ulysses S. Grant[1] (born Hiram Ulysses Grant, April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was an American general and politician who was elected as the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877). He achieved international fame as the leading Union general in the American Civil War, as he captured Vicksburg in 1863 and Richmond in 1865, accepting the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse.
After service in the Mexican-American War, an undistinguished peacetime military career, and a series of unsuccessful civilian jobs, Grant proved highly successful in training new recruits in 1861. His capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in February 1862 marked the first major Union victories of the Civil War and opened up prime avenues of invasion to the South. Surprised and nearly defeated at Shiloh (April 1862), he fought back and took control of most of western Kentucky and Tennessee. His great achievement in 1862-63 was to seize control of the Mississippi River by defeating a series of uncoordinated Confederate armies and by capturing Vicksburg in July 1863. After a victory at Chattanooga in late 1863, Abraham Lincoln made him general-in-chief of all Union armies.
Grant was the first Union general to initiate coordinated offensives across multiple theaters in the war. While his subordinates Sherman and Sheridan marched through Georgia and the Shenandoah Valley, Grant personally supervised the 1864 Overland Campaign against General Robert E. Lee's Army in Virginia. He employed a war of attrition against his opponent, conducting a series of large-scale battles with very high casualties that alarmed public opinion, while maneuvering ever closer to the Confederate capital, Richmond. Grant announced he would "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." Lincoln supported his general and replaced his losses, but Lee's dwindling army was forced into defending trenches around Richmond and Petersburg. In April 1865 Grant's vastly larger army broke through, captured Richmond, and forced Lee to surrender at Appomattox. He has been described by J.F.C. Fuller as "the greatest general of his age and one of the greatest strategists of any age." His Vicksburg Campaign in particular is scrutinized by military specialists around the world.
Grant announced generous terms for his defeated foes, and pursued a policy of peace. He broke with President Andrew Johnson in 1867, and was elected President as a Republican in 1868. He led Radical Reconstruction and built a powerful patronage-based Republican party in the South, with the adroit use of the army. He took a hard line that reduced violence by groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Grant was personally honest, but he not only tolerated financial and political corruption among top aides, he protected them once exposed. He blocked civil service reforms and defeated the reform movement in the Republican party in 1872, driving out many of its founders. The Panic of 1873 pushed the nation into a depression that Grant was helpless to reverse. Presidential experts typically rank Grant in the lowest quartile of U.S. presidents, primarily for his tolerance of corruption. In recent years, however, his reputation as president has improved somewhat among scholars impressed by his support for civil rights for African Americans[2]. Unsuccessful in winning a third term in 1880, bankrupted by bad investments, and terminally ill with throat cancer, Grant wrote his Memoirs which were enormously successful among veterans, the public, and the critics.
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Birth and early years
Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant in a small two-room cabin in Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio, 25 miles (40 km) east of Cincinnati on the Ohio River. He was the eldest of the six children of Jesse Root Grant (1794–1873) and Hannah Simpson (1798–1883). His father, a tanner, and his mother were born in Pennsylvania. In the fall of 1823, they moved to the village of Georgetown in Brown County, Ohio, where Grant spent most of his time until he was 17.
At the age of 17, he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, after securing a nomination through his U.S. Congressman, Thomas L. Hamer. Hamer erroneously nominated him as "Ulysses S. Grant of Ohio,"[3] knowing Grant's mother's maiden name was Simpson and forgetting that Grant was referred to in his youth as "H. Ulysses Grant" or "Lyss". Grant wrote his name in the entrance register as "Ulysses Hiram Grant" (concerned that he would otherwise become known by his initials, H.U.G.), but the school administration refused to accept any name other than the nominated form.[4] Upon graduation, Grant adopted the form of his new name with middle initial only, never acknowledging that the "S" stood for Simpson.[5] 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. Despite his propensity for horsemanship, which caused many who knew him at West Point to consider him a natural for cavalry, he was assigned as a regimental quartermaster, managing supplies and equipment. Grant drank whiskey and, during the Civil War, a picture of him with a cigar in his mouth was published. He was then inundated with cigars from well wishers. Before that he had smoked only sporadically, but he could not give them all away, so he took up smoking them, which may have contributed to the development of throat cancer later in his life; one story after the war claimed that he smoked over 10,000 in five years.
On August 22, 1848, Grant married Julia Boggs Dent (1826–1902), the daughter of a slave owner. They had four children: Frederick Dent Grant, Ulysses S. (Buck) Grant, Jr., Ellen (Nellie) Wrenshall Grant, and Jesse Root Grant.
Military career
Mexican-American War
Lieutenant Grant served in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) under Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, where, despite his assignment as a quartermaster, he got close enough to the front lines to see action, taking part in the battles of Resaca de la Palma, Palo Alto, Monterrey, where he volunteered to carry a dispatch on horseback through a sniper-lined street, and Veracruz. He was twice brevetted for bravery: at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. He was a remarkably close observer of the war, learning to judge the actions of colonels and generals. In the 1880s he wrote that the war was unjust, accepting the theory that it was designed to gain slave territory.[6]
Between wars
After the Mexican-American war ended in 1848, Grant remained in the army and was moved to several different posts. He was sent to Fort Vancouver in the Washington Territory in 1853, where he served as regimental quartermaster of the 4th U.S. Infantry regiment. His wife could not accompany him because his salary could not support a family (she was eight months pregnant with their second child) on the frontier. In 1854, he was promoted to captain and assigned to command Company F, 4th Infantry, at Fort Humboldt, California. He was one of only 50 captains on active duty in the entire army, but still could not afford to bring his family out West. He tried some business ventures, but they failed. Grant resigned from the Army with little advance notice on July 31, 1854, offering no explanation for his abrupt decision. Rumors persisted in the Army for years that his commanding officer, Bvt. Lt. Col. Robert C. Buchanan, found him drunk during duty as a pay officer and offered him the choice between resignation or court-martial. [7] Some biographers discount the rumor and suggest Grant's resignation, and his drinking, were both prompted by profound depression and that Buchanan hated Grant and concocted the drunkenness story years later to protect Buchanan's action in removing the man who became one of the most famous generals in history. The War Department stated, "Nothing stands against his good name."[8]
A civilian at age 32, Grant had seven lean years ahead. From 1854 to 1858 he labored on a family farm near St. Louis, Missouri, using slaves owned by his father-in-law, but it did not prosper. Grant owned one slave (whom he set free in 1859); his wife owned four slaves (two women servants and their two small boys).[9] In 1858-59 he was a bill collector in St. Louis. Failing at everything, in humiliation he asked his father for a job, and in 1860 was made an assistant in the leather shop owned by his father and run by his younger brother in Galena, Illinois. Grant & Perkins sold harnesses, saddles, and other leather goods and purchased hides from farmers in the prosperous Galena area.[10]
Grant was nonpolitical, but lost the good job of county engineer in 1859 because his father-in-law was a prominent Democrat in St. Louis. In 1856 he voted for Democrat James Buchanan for president to avert secession and because "I knew Frémont" (the Republican candidate). In 1860, he favored Democrat Stephen A. Douglas but did not vote. In 1864, he allowed his political sponsor, Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, to use his private letters as campaign literature for the Union Party, which combined both Republicans and War Democrats. He refused to announce his politics until 1868, when he finally declared himself a Republican.[11]
Civil War
Western Theater: 1861–63
Shortly after Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 volunteers. Grant helped recruit a company of volunteers and accompanied it to Springfield, the capital of Illinois. Grant accepted a position offered by Illinois Governor Richard Yates to recruit and train volunteers, which he accomplished with efficiency. Grant pressed for a field command; Yates appointed him colonel of the undisciplined and rebellious 21st Illinois Infantry, in June 1861.
Grant was deployed to Missouri to protect the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. At the time Missouri under pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne Jackson had declared it was an armed neutral in the conflict and would attack troops from either side entering the state. By the first of August the Union army had forcibly removed Jackson and Missouri was controlled by Union forces, who had to deal with numerous southern sympathizers.
In August, Grant was appointed brigadier general of volunteers by Lincoln, who had been lobbied by Congressman Elihu Washburne. At the end of August, Grant was selected by Western Theater commander Major General John C. Frémont to command the critical District of Southeast Missouri.
Battles of Belmont, Henry, and Donelson
Grant's first important strategic act of the war was to take the initiative to seize the Ohio River town of Paducah, Kentucky, immediately after the Confederates violated the state's neutrality by occupying Columbus, Kentucky. He fought his first battle, an indecisive action against Confederate Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow at Belmont, Missouri, in November 1861. Three months later, aided by Andrew H. Foote's Navy gunboats, he captured two major Confederate fortresses, Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. At Donelson, his army was hit by a surprise Confederate attack (once again by Pillow) while he was temporarily absent. Displaying the cool determination that would characterize his leadership in future battles, he organized counterattacks that carried the day. The Confederate commander, Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, an old friend of Grant's, yielded to Grant's hard conditions of "no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender." Buckner's surrender of over 12,000 men made Grant a national figure almost overnight, and he was nicknamed "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. The captures of the two forts with over 15,000 prisoners were the first major Union victories of the war, gaining him national recognition. Desperate for generals who could fight and win, Lincoln promoted him to major general of volunteers.
Despite his significant victories, or perhaps because of them, Grant fell out of favor with his superior, Major General Henry W. Halleck. Halleck objected to Grant's visit to Nashville, Tennessee, where he met with Halleck's rival, Don Carlos Buell, and used that as an excuse to relieve Grant of field command on March 2. Personal intervention from President Lincoln caused Halleck to restore Grant, who rejoined his army on March 17.
Shiloh
In early April 1862, Grant was surprised by Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard at the Battle of Shiloh. The sheer violence of the Confederate attack sent the Union forces reeling. Nevertheless, Grant refused to retreat. With grim determination, he stabilized his line. Then, on the second day, with the help of timely reinforcements, Grant counterattacked and turned a serious reverse into a victory.
The victory at Shiloh came at a high price; it was the bloodiest battle in the history of the United States up to that time with over 23,000 casualties. Halleck responded to the surprise and the disorganized nature of the fighting by taking command of the army in the field himself on April 30, relegating Grant to the powerless position of second-in-command for the campaign in Corinth, Mississippi. Despondent over this reversal, Grant decided to resign. The intervention of his subordinate and good friend, William T. Sherman, caused him to remain. When Halleck was promoted to general-in-chief of the Union Army, Grant resumed his position as commander of the Army of West Tennessee (later more famously named the Army of the Tennessee) on June 10. He commanded the army for the battles of Corinth and Iuka that fall.
Vicksburg
In the campaign to capture the Mississippi River fortress of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Grant spent the winter of 1862–1863 conducting a series of operations to gain access to the city through the region's bayous. These attempts failed. His strategy in the campaign to capture Vicksburg in 1863 is considered one of the most masterful in military history.
Grant marched his troops down the west bank of the Mississippi and crossed the river by using the U.S. Navy ships that had run the guns at Vicksburg. There, he moved inland and—in a daring move that defied conventional military principles—cut loose from most of his supply lines.[12]. Operating in enemy territory, Grant moved swiftly, never giving the Confederates, under the command of John C. Pemberton, an opportunity to concentrate their forces against him. Grant's army went eastward, captured the city of Jackson, Mississippi, and severed the rail line to Vicksburg.
Knowing that the Confederates could no longer send reinforcements to the Vicksburg garrison, Grant turned west and won at Champion Hill. The defeated Confederates retreated inside their fortifications at Vicksburg, and Grant promptly surrounded the city. Finding that assaults against the impregnable breastworks were futile, he settled in for a six-week siege. Cut off and with no possibility of relief, Pemberton surrendered to Grant on July 4, 1863. It was a devastating defeat for the Southern cause, effectively splitting the Confederacy in two, and, in conjunction with the Union victory at Gettysburg the previous day, is widely considered the turning point of the war. For this victory, President Lincoln promoted Grant to the rank of major general in the regular army, effective July 4.
Chattanooga
After the Battle of Chickamauga Union general William S. Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Confederate Braxton Bragg followed to Lookout Mountain, surrounding the Federals on three sides. On October 17, Grant was placed in command of the city. He immediately relieved Rosecrans and replaced him with George H. Thomas. Devising a plan known as the "Cracker Line", Grant's chief engineer, William F. "Baldy" Smith opened a new supply route to Chattanooga, greatly increasing the chances for Grant's forces.
Upon reprovisioning and reinforcing, the morale of Union troops lifted. In late November, they went on the offensive. The Battle of Chattanooga started out with Sherman's failed attack on the Confederate right. He not only attacked the wrong mountain but committed his troops piecemeal, allowing them to be defeated by one Confederate division. In response, Grant ordered Thomas to launch a demonstration on the center, which could draw defenders away from Sherman. Thomas waited until he was certain that Hooker, with reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac, was engaged on the Confederate left before he launched the Army of the Cumberland at the center of the Confederate line. Hooker's men broke the Confederate left, while Thomas's men made an unexpected but spectacular charge straight up Missionary Ridge and broke the fortified center of the Confederate line. Grant was initially angry at Thomas that his orders for a demonstration were exceeded, but the assaulting wave sent the Confederates into a head-long retreat, opening the way for the Union to invade Atlanta, Georgia, and the heart of the Confederacy.
Grant's willingness to fight and ability to win impressed President Lincoln, who appointed him lieutenant general in the regular army—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
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 Northern Virginia; 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; and 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.
Overland Campaign, Petersburg, and Appomattox
The Overland Campaign was the military thrust needed by the Union to defeat the Confederacy. It pitted Grant against the great commander Robert E. Lee in an epic contest. It began on May 4, 1864, when the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River, marching into an area of scrubby undergrowth and second growth trees known as the Wilderness. It was such difficult terrain that the Army of Northern Virginia was able to use it to prevent Grant from fully exploiting his numerical advantage.
The Battle of the Wilderness was a stubborn, bloody two-day fight, resulting in advantage to neither side, but with heavy casualties on both. After similar battles in Virginia against Lee, all of Grant's predecessors had retreated from the field. Grant ignored the setback and ordered an advance around Lee's flank to the southeast, which lifted the morale of his army. Grant's strategy was not to win individual battles, it was to wear down and destroy Lee's army.
Sigel's Shenandoah campaign and Butler's James River campaign both failed. Lee was able to reinforce with troops used to defend against these assaults.
The campaign continued, but Lee, anticipating Grant's move, beat him to Spotsylvania, Virginia, where, on May 8, the fighting resumed. The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House lasted 14 days. On May 11, Grant wrote a famous dispatch containing the line "I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all summer". These words summed up his attitude about the fighting, and the next day, May 12, he ordered a massive assault that nearly broke Lee's lines.
In spite of mounting Union casualties, the contest's dynamics changed in Grant's favor. Most of Lee's great victories in earlier years had been won on the offensive, employing surprise movements and fierce assaults. Now, he was forced to continually fight on the defensive without a chance to regroup or replenish against an opponent that was well supplied and had superior numbers. The next major battle, however, demonstrated the power of a well-prepared defense. Cold Harbor was one of Grant's most controversial battles, in which he launched on June 3