Ulysses S. Grant
The Quiet Man Who Won the War
On April 9, 1865, in a modest brick farmhouse in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, a rumpled Union general in a mud-spattered private's blouse sat across from Robert E. Lee in his immaculate dress uniform with a jewelled sword at his side. The contrast could not have been sharper — or more fitting. Ulysses S. Grant, who had failed at farming, real estate, and bill collecting before the war, had just won the bloodiest conflict in American history. He offered Lee the most generous surrender terms in modern warfare: officers could keep their sidearms, and any soldier who claimed to own a horse or mule could take it home. 'Let them take their animals home to put in a crop,' Grant said. The war was over. The harder fight — for the soul of the nation — was about to begin.
“The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.”
1822–1885
Born Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio. A clerical error at West Point changed his name to Ulysses S. Grant — and he kept it. Died of throat cancer on July 23, 1885, just days after completing his memoirs, which saved his family from poverty and became one of the greatest works of American literature.
15+
Grant won every major campaign he commanded: Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh (a near-disaster turned into victory), Vicksburg (the masterpiece), Chattanooga, the Overland Campaign, and the final Petersburg-Appomattox pursuit that ended the war. He never lost a campaign. Lincoln called him 'the quietest little fellow you ever saw' — and then gave him command of all Union armies.
2
Served as the 18th President of the United States from 1869 to 1877. His presidency was defined by Reconstruction — the effort to integrate four million formerly enslaved people into American civic life. He crushed the Ku Klux Klan with the Enforcement Acts, pushed for the 15th Amendment, and sent federal troops to protect Black voters in the South. His reputation suffered from the corruption scandals of his subordinates, but modern historians have significantly re-evaluated his presidency.
336,000 words
Dying of throat cancer and facing bankruptcy after a Wall Street fraud, Grant wrote his <em>Personal Memoirs</em> in a race against death — completing the manuscript just days before he died. Published by Mark Twain, the book earned his family nearly $450,000 (over $14 million today) and is regarded by literary critics as the finest military memoir in the English language.
Union victory in the Civil War, 18th President of the United States, author of landmark memoirs
Defining Events
The Siege of Vicksburg
Grant's Vicksburg campaign is considered one of the most brilliant in military history. After five failed attempts to take the Confederate fortress city on the Mississippi, Grant marched his army down the Louisiana side of the river, ran gunboats past the batteries at night, crossed below the city, and then fought five battles in seventeen days — cutting off Vicksburg from behind. The garrison surrendered on July 4, 1863, one day after Gettysburg. The Mississippi was Union-held from source to sea. 'The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea,' Lincoln wrote.
Appomattox
On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox Court House. Grant's terms were remarkably generous: Confederate soldiers could go home, keep their horses and mules, and officers could retain their sidearms. There would be no mass trials, no executions, no humiliation. When Union soldiers began firing celebratory salutes, Grant ordered them to stop. 'The war is over,' he said. 'The rebels are our countrymen again.' It was the act that defined American reconciliation — and set the tone for what Grant hoped Reconstruction would become.
The Battle of Shiloh
At Shiloh, Grant nearly lost everything. A surprise Confederate attack on April 6 drove his army back to the Tennessee River. Subordinates urged retreat. William Tecumseh Sherman found Grant standing alone in the rain under a tree, smoking a cigar. 'Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?' Sherman said. 'Yes,' Grant replied. 'Lick 'em tomorrow, though.' He did. Reinforcements arrived overnight, and Grant counterattacked at dawn, driving the Confederates from the field. The battle cost 23,000 casualties — more than all previous American wars combined — and taught Grant a lesson he never forgot: in this war, the only way out was through.
Timeline
Born in Point Pleasant, Ohio
Hiram Ulysses Grant is born on April 27 in a one-room cabin in Point Pleasant, Ohio. His father Jesse is a tanner; his mother Hannah is a devout Methodist who never once visited her son during the war. A clerical error at West Point will change his name to Ulysses S. Grant — the 'S' stands for nothing, but he keeps it for the rest of his life.
Graduates from West Point
Grant graduates twenty-first out of thirty-nine cadets. He is an indifferent student in everything but mathematics and horsemanship — at the latter he sets a jumping record that stands for twenty-five years. He is assigned to the 4th Infantry Regiment and stationed in Missouri, where he meets Julia Dent, the sister of a fellow officer. They will marry in 1848.
The Mexican-American War
Grant serves under both Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott in Mexico, seeing combat at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterrey, and the Mexico City campaign. He later calls the war 'one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.' But he learns the art of logistics, the psychology of command, and the critical lesson that would define his Civil War career: that the commander who attacks holds the initiative.
The Wilderness Years
Grant resigns from the Army amid rumours of heavy drinking, separated from his wife and children at a remote Pacific Coast posting. He fails at farming a plot near St. Louis called 'Hardscrabble.' He fails at real estate. He fails at bill collecting. By 1860, he is working as a clerk in his father's leather goods store in Galena, Illinois, at forty dollars a month. He is thirty-eight years old and has accomplished nothing.
Fort Donelson and 'Unconditional Surrender'
Grant captures Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in February 1862 — the first significant Union victories of the war. When the Confederate commander at Donelson asks for terms, Grant replies: 'No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.' The Northern press christens him 'Unconditional Surrender Grant.' Lincoln, besieged by cautious generals, takes notice.
Vicksburg Falls
After a brilliant campaign of manoeuvre — five battles in seventeen days, cutting the Confederate army off from its supply lines — Grant forces the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863. The entire Mississippi River is now in Union hands. Grant is promoted to Major General of the Regular Army and given command of all Western forces.
General-in-Chief
Lincoln promotes Grant to Lieutenant General — a rank last held by Winfield Scott in 1855 — and gives him command of all Union armies. Grant devises a coordinated strategy: Sherman marches through Georgia while Grant pins Lee's army in Virginia. The Overland Campaign costs over fifty-five thousand Union casualties in five weeks, but Grant never retreats. 'I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer,' he writes to Washington. It takes ten months. Lee surrenders at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.
Death and the Memoirs
Dying of throat cancer and bankrupted by a Wall Street swindler, Grant writes his <em>Personal Memoirs</em> in a desperate race against death. Mark Twain publishes them. Grant finishes the manuscript on July 19 and dies on July 23, 1885. The book earns his family nearly $450,000 and is hailed as the greatest military memoir in the English language. His funeral procession in New York stretches for seven miles. Both Union and Confederate generals serve as pallbearers.
Key Figures
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln cycled through a parade of hesitant generals — McDowell, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Meade — before finding in Grant the commander he had been searching for: someone who would fight. When advisors urged Lincoln to fire Grant after the bloodbath at Shiloh, Lincoln replied, 'I can't spare this man — he fights.' When others complained about Grant's drinking, Lincoln supposedly asked for the brand so he could send a barrel to his other generals. The two men trusted each other implicitly. Grant gave Lincoln victories; Lincoln gave Grant the freedom to fight the war his way. Their partnership saved the Union.
Robert E. Lee
Lee was everything Grant was not: aristocratic, immaculate, revered by his soldiers as a demigod. He was also the finest tactical general of the war. But Grant understood what Lee's previous opponents had not — that Lee's army, not Richmond, was the objective, and that the Confederacy could not replace its losses while the Union could. Grant fought Lee to a standstill in the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania, at Cold Harbor, and then pinned him in the trenches of Petersburg for nine months until the Confederate army simply disintegrated. At Appomattox, Grant treated Lee with a dignity that surprised both armies. 'I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly,' Grant wrote.
The Legacy of Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant won the Civil War, served two terms as president, and wrote one of the greatest memoirs in the English language — all of it accomplished by a man who had been a failure at nearly everything before the age of thirty-nine. He was not brilliant in the way Lee or Sherman were brilliant. He was something rarer: he was relentless. He saw the whole board, he made decisions, and he did not look back.
As president, Grant crushed the Ku Klux Klan, championed the 15th Amendment, and tried to build a nation where the four million people freed by the war could live as citizens. He failed — not because he lacked the will, but because the nation lacked the will to follow him. His reputation was buried for a century under the myth of the 'Lost Cause.' Modern historians have begun to dig it out. The quiet man from Ohio deserves to be remembered not just as the general who won the war, but as the president who tried to win the peace. Read his story in his own words in the first-person ePub.
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