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ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
 
 1890. 
 
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ULYSSES SIMPSON GRAT^T. 
 
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 PHIIiADELPIIIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
 
 1890. 
 
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 Copyright, 1890, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 
 
ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 
 
 Grant, Ulysses Simpson, eighteenth president of the 
 United States, was born at Point Pleasant, Clermont 
 county, Ohio, April 27, 1822. He was of Scottish 
 ancestry, but his family had been American in all its 
 branches for eight generations. Ulysses was the eldest 
 of six children born to Jesse R. Grant and his wife 
 Hannah Simpson, and assisted his father on the farm 
 in summer, attending the village school during the 
 winter. In. the spring of 1839 ^^^ was appointed to a 
 cadetship in the United States Military Academy, and 
 graduated in 1843. He was commissioned brevet 
 second-lieutenant, and assigned to duty at Jefferson 
 Barracks, Missouri. In May 1844 he accompanied 
 his regiment, the Fourth Infantry, to Louisiana, and 
 in September 1845 he was commissioned second-lieu- 
 tenant, and joined the army of occupation under 
 General Zachary Taylor. Grant participated in the 
 battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and was 
 also present at the capture of Monterey. Later the 
 Fourth Infantry embarked for Vera Cruz, to join the 
 army of General VVinfield Scott, and Grant took part 
 
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4 ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 
 
 in all the battles of Scott's successful campaign and 
 in the final capture of the city of Mexico. In the 
 summer of 1848 his regiment returned to the United 
 States, when he obtained leave of absence, and in 
 August of that year was married to Julia B. Dent, of 
 St Louis, by whom he had three sons and a daughter, 
 the eldest of whom. Colonel Frederick D. Grant, was 
 in April 18S9 appointed American Minister to Austria. 
 Lieutenant Grant served at various posts; was in 1853 
 appointed to a captaincy; and in the following year 
 resigned his commission, and settled on a farm near 
 St Louis, Missouri. 
 
 When the war began in April 1861 Grant was re- 
 siding in Galena, Illinois ; he immediately offered his 
 services to the government, and in June he was ap- 
 pointed colonel of the 2 1st Regiment of Illinois In- 
 fantry, with which he was sent to Missouri. In August 
 he was advanced to brigadier-general of volunteers, 
 and assigned to the command of a district, and in 
 November he fought the battle of Belmont. In Feb- 
 ruary 1862 he captured Fort Henry, and ten days 
 later Fort Donelson, with 14,623 prisoners, for which 
 victories he was made major-general of volunteers. 
 In April Grant fought a two days' battle at Shiloh, 
 amongst the severest of the war, in which General A. 
 S. Johnston, commanding the Confederate army, was 
 killed. After various unsuccessful movements against 
 Vicksburg, which commenced in the November of 
 1862, Grant crossed the Mississippi, April 30, 1863, 
 defeated the enemy at Port Gibson and at Champion 
 Hill, and drove them behind their entrenchments at 
 Vicksburg, to which place he laid siege. After many 
 
ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 
 
 5 
 
 assaults, the stronghold surrendered unconditionally 
 on July 4, 1863, with 31,600 prisoners and 172 cannon, 
 and the Mississippi was opened from its source to its 
 mouth. In October Grant was ordered to Chatta- 
 nooga, where he fought a battle, capturing the enemy's 
 entire line, and driving him out of Tennessee. In 
 March 1864 Grant, having previously been made a 
 major-general in the regular army for his victory at 
 Vicksburg, was promoted to the grade of lieutenant- 
 general, and assigned to the command of all the armies 
 of the United States, with his headquarters with the 
 army of the Potomac. His plan of campaign was to 
 concentrate all the national forces into several distinct 
 armies, which should operate simultaneously against 
 the enemy, Sherman moving toward Atlanta, while 
 Grant himself accompanied the army of the Potomac 
 against Richmond. During the night of May 4 the 
 latter crossed the Rapidan, encountered General R. E. 
 Lee in the Wilderness, and fought a desperate three 
 days' battle, one of the fiercest of modern times. 
 Grant moved forward on the 7th, and fought again at 
 Spottsylvania Courthouse on the lOth, and still again 
 on the 1 2th, on which occasion he captured an entire 
 division of the Confederate army. The smoke of 
 battle hung over the mighty hosts for six days, while 
 the North remained in a state of suspense bordering 
 upon agony; but on the nth Grant wrote to Wash- 
 ington, ' I propose to fight it out on this line, if it 
 takes all summer.' Thus, fighting and flanking, ever 
 pursuing the offensive, and daily drawing nearer to 
 Richmond, he at length drove the enemy within the 
 defences of that city, and there held him in a vice. 
 
6 ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 
 
 while he left to his lieutenants — Sherman, Sheridan, 
 and Thomas — a harvest of laurels by active move- 
 ments and successful battles. On March 29, 1865, 
 there began a week's hard fighting, at the close of 
 which Lee surrefidered his entire army at Appomattox 
 Courthouse, April 9, receiving from his victor most 
 generous terms. The fall of Richmond substantially 
 ended the war, and Grant returned to Washington to 
 prepare his report of the operations of the armies of 
 the United States from the date of his appointment to 
 command the same, and to muster out nearly a million 
 of troops that the country no longer required. 
 
 In July 1866 Grant was advanced to the grade of 
 full general, and in May 1868 he was nominated for 
 the presidency by the Republican convention, and in 
 the following November was elected. Out of the 294 
 electoral votes Grant received 214, and Horatio Sey- 
 mour, the Democratic candidate, 80. He was again 
 elected to the presidency in November 1872, thus 
 filling the office of chief-magistrate for eight years. 
 Among the most important events of his administra- 
 tion were the adoption in 1869 of the fifteenth amend- 
 ment to the constitution, which guaranteed the right 
 of suffi-age without regard to race, colour, or previous 
 condition of servitude ; and the peaceful settlement of 
 the ' Alabama Claims' (see Alabama). After retiring 
 from the presidency. General Grant spent two years 
 in foreign travel, receiving unusual attentions from 
 the rulers of the various countries which he visited 
 in his tour round the world. In June 1880 his name 
 was again presented to a Republican convention, but, 
 chiefly owing to a traditional sentiment against a third 
 
ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 7 
 
 term of the presidency, the nomination was given to 
 James A. Garfield. In 1881 Grant purchased a house 
 in New York, where he afterwards passed his winters, 
 while his summers were spent in his seaside cottage 
 at Long Branch, New Jersey. Finding himself unable 
 with his income to properly maintain his family, he 
 became a partner in a banking-house in which one of 
 his sons and others were interested, bearing the name 
 of Grant and Ward, and invested all his available 
 capital in the business, but taking no part in the 
 affairs of the firm, which were left almost entirely in 
 the hands of the junior partner. In May 1884 the 
 house, without warning, suspended, and it was then 
 discovered that two of the partners had robbed 
 the general and his family of all they possessed. 
 Until this time Grant had refused all solicitations 
 to write the history of his military career; but now, 
 finding himself bankrupt, and with the hope of pro- 
 viding for his family, he began the preparation of his 
 personal memoirs. The contract with his publishers 
 was made February 27, 1885, and the work appeared 
 about a year later. In the summer of 1884 he com- 
 plained of a soreness in his throat, and an examina- 
 tion detected the presence of cancer at the root of 
 the tongue. The sympathies of the nation were now 
 aroused, and on March 4, 1885, congress passed a 
 bill creating him a general on the retired list, thus 
 restoring him to his former rank in the army, which 
 he had lost on accepting the presidency. It may be 
 doubted if since the world began any book has been 
 written under similar conditions ; the dying soldier, 
 suffering constant and at times the severest agony, 
 
8 ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 
 
 yet struggled on successfully, completing his literary 
 labours only four days before his death at Mount 
 McGregor, near Saratoga, New York, 23d July 1885. 
 His remains were removed to New York, and on 
 August 8 were interred with great pomp in Riverside 
 Park, overlooking the Hudson. Many lives of Grant 
 have been written, the most valuable of which is his 
 own (2 vols. 1885-86), a work that brought his widow 
 no less than ;^5oo,ooo. 
 
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