Ulysses S. Grant and His Triumph Over Adversity in 1822-1865

Ulysses S. Grant was a mystifying figure in American public life. He was a failure in his early ventures into both business and military life. In four years of commanding Union forces he climbed to the highest rank in the U.S. Army and directed the strategy that successfully concluded the Civil War in 1865. His two terms as president of the United States are considered by many historians to be the most corrupt in the country’s history. Yet from accounts of Grant’s colleagues, as well as from his own memoirs, there emerges a personality of strong character and considerable dignity. Grant would soon become the most celebrated and respected American of his generation.

Ulysses S. Grant arrived at West Point on May 29, 1839, a 17-year-old youth who had been coerced by his father into attending the Academy. His record in the following four years was unremarkable and he graduated in 1843, 21st in a class of 39 cadets. In later years, he had ambivalent feelings about the institution, and when he spoke of it, it was generally without enthusiasm. The endless drilling, regimented lifestyle and Spartan routine had not appealed to him, though he thought it the best school in the world for turning out “manly characters.” After a ten-week leave of absence home, he confided: “The ten weeks were shorter than one week at West Point.” He had hoped to get a position teaching mathematics at the academy and later a professorship “in some respectable college,” but he was instead assigned to infantry duty on the southwestern frontier.

Stationed in Missouri in 1848, Grant married Julia Dent, the daughter of a plantation owner and the sister of a West Point classmate. From 1848 to 1852, Grant served at army posts in Detroit, Michigan, and Sackets Harbor, New York. In 1852 he was transferred to the Pacific Coast, first to Fort Vancouver in Oregon Territory, then to Fort Humboldt in California. Grant’s Pacific Coast duty made him depressed. Because of the expense and privation of the trip, his family did not go with him. Grant felt homesick and isolated, and grew miserable. “How broken I feel here,” he wrote to his wife in February 1854. He took to drinking heavily and bickering with his commander, Robert Buchanan. Two months later he was made to resign, soon after reaching the rank of captain.

Grant had started working in his brothers’ leather shop in Galena, Illinois, when the Confederacy seceded from the federal Union and the Civil War broke out. Loyal to the Union, Grant applied to serve as an officer when a call for troops went out in Illinois. Grant mustered in a volunteer Galena regiment and took it to the state capital in Springfield. There he took charge of mustering several more regiments and came to the attention of the governor, Richard Yates. Grant fought his first battle, an indecisive action against the Confederates at Belmont, Missouri, in November 1861. Three months later, aided by Commodore Andrew Foote’s gunboats, he captured Fort Donelson and Fort Henry. These were the first major Union victories of the war. The Confederate commander, Brigadier General Simon Buckner, an old friend of Grant’s, yielded to Grant’s hard conditions of “no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender.”

Despite his success, abuse was heaped on Grant throughout the North. Some accused him of having been drunk or grossly negligent at Shiloh. Major General Henry Halleck took over command of the Union offensive, and although Grant was second in command, Halleck ignored him. An embarrassed Grant thought of resigning. President Abraham Lincoln was pressed to remove Grant but would not do so. “I can’t spare this man,” declared Lincoln. “He fights.” In the autumn of 1862, Grant began planning the drive on Vicksburg, the Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, which was to give way to one of his greatest military victories.

Grant’s capture of Vicksburg and the Union victory at Gettysburg on the same day brought great joy to the North. Besides giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, the Vicksburg victory removed a Confederate army from the field and freed Grant and his men for operations elsewhere. Grants’ military career would peak on April 9, at the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. There, at Lee’s request, Grant met with his defeated foe to discuss terms for the surrender. Because Lee was now commander in chief of all the Confederate armies, his surrender effectively ended the war.

Although Grant would later serve two terms as president of the United States, it was probably in the command of his country’s army that his career found its true climax. He was a keen judge of military men and knew how to elicit their best efforts. If he was not a brilliant diplomat, he did understand modern mass warfare. He could plan and carry out campaigns involving large armies and complex supporting operations. Personally, Grant commanded the respect of his common soldiers as well as his fellow officers. Grant dies July 23, 1885, four days after finishing his memoirs in Mt. McGregor, New York.

Brooks D. Simpson, “Ulysses S. Grant; Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865.” (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000).