Grant Born: The General Who Saved the Union

Ulysses S. Grant failed at farming, real estate, and bill collecting before the Civil War. Born Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio, he attended West Point, where an enrollment error changed his name to Ulysses S. Grant. He never corrected it. He served competently in the Mexican-American War under Zachary Taylor, whose no-nonsense leadership style influenced Grant's own approach. He resigned from the Army in 1854, reportedly under pressure due to drinking, and spent seven years failing at civilian life. He was working in his father's leather goods store in Galena, Illinois, when the Civil War broke out in 1861. He proved to be the general the Union needed: one who would fight rather than maneuver. He captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in February 1862, demanding "unconditional surrender," a phrase that became his nickname. He won at Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. Lincoln promoted him to lieutenant general and commander of all Union armies in March 1864. He pursued Lee relentlessly through the Overland Campaign, accepting casualties that horrified the North but ground down the Confederate army's irreplaceable manpower. He accepted Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, offering generous terms that allowed Confederate soldiers to return home with their horses. As president from 1869 to 1877, he crushed the Ku Klux Klan through the Enforcement Acts, protected Black voting rights in the South, and pursued policies of Reconstruction that were abandoned by his successors. His memoirs, written while dying of throat cancer, are considered among the finest military writing in the English language.