Had he more strongly asserted his own views on civil rights, a new South might well have emerged. By the end of his second term, the North had exhausted its interest in Reconstruction, and the oppression of African Americans asserted itself once again. He was, as president, reluctant to press too hard on his former military enemy. Privacy Policy Contact Us You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message.
Grant left office at the end of his two terms in His administration was plagued by corruption, although Grant himself has largely been seen as not personally involved with the crimes of his underlings. Always a bad businessman, Grant invested in speculative ventures that toward the end of his life rendered him nearly penniless, until he wrote a best-selling memoir.
He died in New York in at the age of sixty-three. Over a million people lined the street for his funeral procession. Join our new membership program on Patreon today. JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students.
After the assault on Fort Donelson, Grant earned the moniker "Unconditional Surrender Grant" and was promoted to major general of volunteers. In April , Grant moved his army cautiously into enemy territory in Tennessee, in what would later become known as the Battle of Shiloh or the Battle of Pittsburg Landing , one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Confederate commanders Albert Sidney Johnston and P. Beauregard led a surprise attack against Grant's forces, with fierce fighting occurring at an area known as the "Hornets' Nest" during the first wave of assault.
Confederate General Johnston was mortally wounded, and his second-in-command, General Beauregard, decided against a night assault on Grant's forces.
Reinforcement finally arrived, and Grant was able to defeat the Confederates during the second day of battle. The Battle of Shiloh proved to be a watershed for the American military and a near disaster for Grant. Though he was supported by President Abraham Lincoln, Grant faced heavy criticism from members of Congress and the military brass for the high casualties, and for a time, he was demoted.
A war department investigation led to his reinstatement. Union war strategy called for taking control of the Mississippi River and cutting the Confederacy in half. In December , Grant moved overland to take Vicksburg — a key fortress city of the Confederacy — but his attack was stalled by Confederate cavalry raider Nathan Bedford Forest, as well as due to getting bogged down in the bayous north of Vicksburg. In his second attempt, Grant cut some, but not all, of his supply lines, moved his men down the western bank of the Mississippi River and crossed south of Vicksburg.
Failing to take the city after several assaults, he settled into a long siege, and Vicksburg finally surrendered on July 4, Though Vicksburg marked both Grant's greatest achievement thus far and a moral boost for the Union, rumors of Grant's heavy drinking followed him through the rest of the Western Campaign.
Grant suffered from intense migraine headaches due to stress, which nearly disabled him and only helped to spread rumors of his drinking, as many chalked up his migraines to frequent hangovers.
However, his closest associates said that he was sober and polite and that he displayed deep concentration, even in the midst of a battle. In October , Grant took command at Chattanooga, Tennessee. The following month, from November 22 to November 25, Union forces routed Confederate troops in Tennessee at the battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, known collectively as the Battle of Chattanooga.
The victories forced the Confederates to retreat into Georgia, ending the siege of the vital railroad junction of Chattanooga — and ultimately paving the way for Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's Atlanta campaign and march to Savannah, Georgia, in Grant saw the military objectives of the Civil War differently than most of his predecessors, who believed that capturing territory was most important to winning the war. Grant adamantly believed that taking down the Confederate armies was most important to the war effort, and to that end, set out to track down and destroy General Robert E.
Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. From March until April , Grant doggedly hunted for Lee in the forests of Virginia, all the while inflicting unsustainable casualties on Lee's army.
On April 9, , Lee surrendered his army, marking the end of the Civil War. The two generals met at a farm near the village of Appomattox Court House, and a peace agreement was signed.
In a magnanimous gesture, Grant allowed Lee's men to keep their horses and return to their homes, taking none of them as prisoners of war. During post-war reorganization, Grant was promoted to full general and oversaw the military portion of Reconstruction. While Grant was a former Democrat himself, he became aligned with the Radical Republicans. Grant was the youngest president elected at the time. The former general was 46 years old and never held elected office when he took office in His inexperience would be a factor in a tumultuous eight-year term amid Reconstruction.
Grant tried to annex the Dominican Republic to the U. The President wanted the Dominican Republic in the Union for several reasons: as a military base, as a sanctuary for freed slaves, and as a market for U. The treaty was approved by the Dominicans but stalled in the Senate.
In addition to the fight over the Dominican Republic, Grant had to grapple with corruption, numerous scandals within his administration, an economic disaster the Panic of , the 15th Amendment, Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, and the threat of war with Great Britain and Spain. Military Academy at West Point. Grant never amended the error and went on to accept Ulysses S.
In , Grant graduated from West Point, where he was known as a skilled horseman but an otherwise undistinguished student. He was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 4th U. Infantry, which was stationed at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri , near St.
The following year, he met Julia Dent , the sister of one of his West Point classmates and the daughter of a merchant and planter. Grant, Jr. In the early years of his marriage, Grant was assigned to a series of remote army posts, some of them on the West Coast, which kept him separated from his family.
In , he resigned from the military. Grant for the Civil War. Now a civilian, Ulysses Grant was reunited with his family at White Haven, the Missouri plantation where Julia had grown up. There he made an unsuccessful attempt at farming, followed by a failed stint in a St. Louis real estate office.
Later that summer, President Abraham Lincoln made Grant a brigadier general. Grant, who was earning a reputation as a tenacious and determined leader, was appointed lieutenant general by Lincoln on March 10, and given command of all U.
He led a series of campaigns that ultimately wore down the Confederate army and helped bring the deadliest conflict in U. Grant and his wife had been invited to accompany the president that night but declined in order to visit family. By the summer of , tensions were running high between Johnson and the Radical Republicans in Congress, who favored a more aggressive approach to Reconstruction in the South.
The president removed a vocal critic of his policies, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton , from the Cabinet and replaced him with Grant. In January , Grant resigned the war post, thereby breaking with Johnson, who was later impeached but acquitted by a single vote in May That same month, the Republicans nominated Grant as their presidential candidate, selecting Schuyler Colfax , a U.
In the general election, Grant won by an electoral margin of and received more than 52 percent of the popular vote. At age 46, he became the youngest president-elect in U. Grant: Known for Scandals, Overlooked for Achievements.
Ulysses Grant entered the White House in the middle of the Reconstruction era, a tumultuous period in which the 11 Southern states that seceded before or at the start of the Civil War were brought back into the Union.
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