⚔️Ulysses S. Grant

18th President · 1869–1877 · Republican

Ulysses S. Grant was the Union general who won the Civil War. As president, he tried to protect newly freed Black Americans during Reconstruction, signed the Enforcement Acts to combat the Ku Klux Klan, and oversaw the 15th Amendment's implementation. His two terms were also plagued by scandals among his political appointees, and modern historians have revised his presidential reputation sharply upward in recent decades.

From Failure to Commander

Grant graduated from West Point in 1843, served in the Mexican-American War, and resigned from the army in 1854 amid alcoholism rumors. He failed at farming, real estate, and storekeeping before the Civil War gave him his calling. His decisive victories at Fort Donelson (1862), Vicksburg (1863), and Chattanooga (1863) led Lincoln to make him general-in-chief in March 1864. His relentless Overland Campaign against Robert E. Lee ended the war at Appomattox in April 1865.

Reconstruction and Civil Rights

Grant was elected in 1868 on the slogan "Let us have peace." His administration actively defended Reconstruction. He signed the Enforcement Acts (1870–71), which gave the federal government authority to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan, and he deployed troops and federal prosecutors that largely destroyed the first Klan. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, protected the right to vote regardless of race — though it would be effectively nullified in the South within a generation.

Scandals

Grant personally was honest, but his administration was notorious for corruption among appointees — the Crédit Mobilier railroad scandal, the Whiskey Ring tax fraud, and the Panic of 1873 all damaged his reputation. His loyalty to friends and subordinates who turned out to be crooked was his principal political weakness.

The Memoirs

After leaving the presidency, Grant lost his fortune to a fraudulent investment. Diagnosed with throat cancer and desperate to provide for his family, he raced to finish his Personal Memoirs before he died. Mark Twain published the book, which earned Grant's widow Julia around $450,000 and is still regarded as one of the finest military memoirs in American literature. Grant completed the manuscript days before his death.

Grant Trivia

• His actual birth name was Hiram Ulysses Grant; a clerical error at West Point gave him "U.S." initials, which stuck.
• Grant's tomb in New York City is the largest mausoleum in North America.
• He appears on the $50 bill.
• Grant was president when the Yellowstone National Park Act was signed in 1872, establishing the first national park in the world.

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