The Life of Ulysses S. Grant

Introduction

Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant in Point Pleasant, Ohio, on 27 April 1822, into a relatively prosperous frontier family. His father forced his reluctant son to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, where his name was changed due to an administrative error. He graduated from West Point in the middle of his class and was commissioned into the infantry. He served as an able regimental quartermaster during the war with Mexico (1846-1848), and, despite his position as an organizer of supplies, he saw enough of the conflict to distinguish himself on the battlefield. For more than a decade after this, however, Grant's life suggested that he had no particular propensity for leadership. He grew tired of the tedious life of a peacetime soldier at remote outposts in Oregon and California and resigned in 1854, his reputation tainted by allegations of drunkenness. As a civilian he failed at a number of enterprises, including farming and selling wood in St. Louis, and he barely made enough money to support his young family. In his thirtyninth year, when the Civil War broke out between the Northern Union states and the Southern Confederacy, he was working as a clerk in his father's leather goods store in Galena, Illinois.

The Civil War

In the early stages of the war, Grant helped recruit Union soldiers and muster regiments in Illinois but found difficulty securing a commission for himself. Once given a command in the western theater, however, Grant's rise was meteoric. In both word and deed, he displayed a determination to end the war as soon as possible. He harried his superiors with requests to advance upon the enemy, and he willingly took advantage of any reasonable opportunities to advance against or harm his opponents.

He first came to prominence after the capture of Fort Donelson in February 1862. The surrender of 14,000 Confederate troops provided the Union with its first major victory of the war and brought Grant to the attention of the nation. He suffered a setback in April when attacked at the Battle of Shiloh, but his rallying of retreating troops and stabilizing of officers and men under fire helped stave off the attack until reinforcements arrived the next day and drove the enemy back. Nonetheless, it is Grant's capture of the important Confederate town of Vicksburg in July 1863 that is often regarded as his finest hour. He risked cutting his army off from its supply base and being trapped between two armies to approach his target, but then he defeated one army and forced the other back into Vicksburg, leading to its surrender. This success, combined with his victory at Chattanooga in November 1863, led to Grant's being promoted to the rank of lieutenant general, with the title of general in chief, and put in charge of all the Union armies the following spring. This pitted him against Robert E. Lee's feared Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the eastern theater. Unlike his predecessors ...