The New Student's Reference Work/Grant, Ulysses S
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| ULYSSES S. GRANT |
Grant, Ulysses S[1] When news that Fort Sumter had been fired on was flashed over the wires, in April, 1861, meetings were held in every city and village in the north, and volunteers by thousands offered their services in defense of the Union before President Lincoln issued his first call for troops. At a meeting in Galena, Illinois, a middle-aged clerk in the hardware and leather store of Jesse Grant came forward. Many did not know, until then, that U.S. Grant was a graduate of West Point, that he had served with distinction in the Mexican War and that he had resigned from the regular army with the rank of captain. His friends urged him to go to Washington and be restored to his old rank, for trained officers were in demand, and his rise would be rapid. It was characteristic of him that he did not think of his own advantage, but organized a company of volunteers and went with it to the state capital. Politics and self-seeking were foreign to his nature. Sheer ability and devotion to duty carried him to the top.
Born on April 27, 1822, on a farm near Point Pleasant, Ohio, the boy was named Hiram Ulysses. An error in his papers when he entered West Point Military Academy in 1839 dropped the Hiram and substituted Simpson, his mother's maiden name. He reported the error, but it was never corrected. Upon his graduation in 1843 he was sent to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, and thence to the Mexican War where he won two brevets for gallantry. In 1848 he married Julia B. Dent, the sister of a classmate, in St. Louis, and saw several years' service in California in gold-fever days. In 1854 he resigned and retired to a farm near St. Louis, at the same time opening a real-estate office in the city. Like so many other great men Grant was a failure in business. He got into debt, and was glad to take a place as clerk in his father's store in Galena.
In May, 1861, Grant was appointed Colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Infantry, and in August he was made brigadier-general of volunteers and given command of southwestern Missouri, with headquarters at Cairo. From the start Grant's policy was strategic and aggressive, qualities which marked his whole career. He at once took possession of Paducah, a move which secured Kentucky to the Union. On Nov. 1 he routed the Confederate garrison at Belmont Mo., a result which checked the advance of a Confederate force under General Price. In Feb., 1862, he captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, the latter after a three days' siege which resulted in the unconditional surrender of the garrison with 14,000 prisoners. This important victory broke the Confederate lines, and secured Federal control of western Kentucky and Tennessee. Grant was now made major-general of volunteers and given command of western Tennessee. On April 6th he fought the battle of Shiloh (which see), one of the severest engagements of the war. During the summer he fought the minor battles of Iuka and Corinth. He then determined to capture Vicksburg and thus open the Mississippi. The high ground east of the city offered the only favorable point of attack, but failing, after months of effort, to secure a foothold there, Grant transferred his army to the west side of the river and marched through the swamps to a point below the city, while Commodore Porter's fleet of gunboats, with the transports, ran past the Confederate batteries. Again crossing the river 30 miles below Vicksburg, he pushed rapidly between the armies of Johnston and Pemberton, defeating them separately and driving the latter into the defenses of Vicksburg. This stronghold, after a siege of six weeks, was surrendered July 4, 1863, with its garrison of 32,000 men. Grant's next campaign was for the relief of Chattanooga, where the Federal army, beaten at Chickamauga, was besieged and practically cut off from supplies. On Nov. 23rd to 25th the battles of Lookout Mountain and Mission Ridge were fought, resulting in the defeat of the Confederates. In March, 1864, Grant was made lieutenant-general and placed in command of all the Union armies. He now planned a wide campaign which should press the Confederates simultaneously at all points east and west. Leaving Sherman to fight Johnston from Chattanooga to Atlanta, he himself with the Army of the Potomac confronted the Confederates under General Lee. The clash of these great leaders came in the terrible battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna and Cold Harbor and, finally, in the siege of Petersburg, which ended in its fall, the capture of Richmond and the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, April 9, 1865.
The war was over. Grant, hailed as the nation's deliverer, went immediately to Washington to hasten the disbanding of the army. He was created General, a higher rank than had hitherto existed in our army. His magnanimity toward his late foe won the gratitude of the south. He threatened to resign, if President Johnson had Lee tried for treason. In 1868 General Grant was elected President.
“The man on horseback” is not always a successful executive. But General Grant made up for his lack of experience in public office by his personality. In the president's chair he displayed the same characteristics that he had in the field. Self-reliance, prompt decision, willingness to assume full responsibility, moral and physical courage, devotion to duty, simplicity, purity of personal life and unimpeachable honesty marked him. Honest himself, he reposed complete confidence in those around him, and was sometimes betrayed. The eight years of his presidency covered the difficult period of reconstruction in the south, the adoption of the 15th Amendment, the financial crisis of '73, the completion of the Union Pacific Railway and the Franco-Prussian War. Mistakes were made — errors of judgment deplored to-day, but, in the midst of the turmoil, Grant secured the passage of the first Civil Service reform bill and a treaty with Great Britain defining the rights and duties of neutral nations in time of war.
In 1877 General Grant made his famous tour of the world, in which Occident and Orient were in rivalry to do him honor. At the age of 56 a man of enduring fame, he was too poor to maintain his family in its enforced prominent position. Investing his capital in the banking firm of Grant and Ward, with his usual trust in his associates and his ignorance of business, he left the conduct of the enterprise to his partners. The firm failed, Grant was robbed and left penniless. A fall had crippled him, so that, at this time and until his death, he had to use a crutch.
Nothing in all the career of this great American is so heroic as the closing year of his life. Bankrupt, crippled, dying of cancer of the tongue, he dictated two volumes of memoirs to provide for his family. When it was absolute agony to speak, with a fortitude and unselfishness that have few parallels in history, he continued his task, completing it only four days before his death at Mt. McGregor, near Saratoga, N. Y., July 23, 1885.
Of the literary quality of these Memoirs it is enough to say that Edward Everett Hale asserts that “no prose writer of our country is more likely to be generally read three centuries hence than the despatches of Grant;” and Matthew Arnold, a severe critic, declared that the style of Grant's Memoirs equals that of Caesar's Commentaries. See Personal Memoirs.
- ↑ As a matter of curious interest U. S Grant Jr. informs the Editor of The Student's that the S was always written without a period and that while it may have meant “Simpson” it was never so written.