Ulysses S. Grant - Civil War Hero & 18 th President Dobrova Uliana Form 11 a
• Ulysses S. Grant (1822 -1885) - Born Hiram Ulysses Grant at Point Pleasant, Ohio, on April 27, 1822, Ulysses was the oldest of six children born to Jesse and Hannah Simpson Grant.
• At the age of 17, Grant entered the United States Military Academy at West Point graduating in 1842. It was then that his name was changed to "Ulysses S. Grant, " when the member of Congress who appointed him to a cadetship at West Point, by accident, changed the name to U. S. Grant.
• After graduating from West Point, Grant served bravely in the Mexican-American War
• He resigned from the army on July 31, 1854 and retired to a farm near St. Louis, Missouri. He then worked as a farmer, a real estate agent, and a bill collector before moving to Galena, Illinois. There, he worked for his father and brother in a leather shop.
• When Fort Sumter, South Carolina was fired on by the Confederates, he said to a friend: "The government educated me for the army. What I am I owe to my country. I have served her through one war, and, live or die, will serve her through this. " He raised a company of volunteers at once, and tendered his services to the Governor of Illinois, who made him adjutantgeneral of the State.
Не was then made a colonel of an regiment on June 15, 1861. In August of the same year, he was made a brigadier-general, sent to the front, and had a number of successes in the Western Theater. In December, 1861, he was appointed commander of the department of Cairo, Illinois.
• On March 1, 1864, General Grant was made lieutenantgeneral and commander of all the armies of the United States. He then planned his last great campaign, against General Robert E. Lee's army in Virginia and the Battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor followed. He besieged Petersburg and took it, and then Richmond fell into his hands. He then compelled General Robert E. Lee and his whole army to surrender at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, and the great Civil War was over.
• Grant's success and war-hero status propelled him to the White House in 1868, when he was elected as the 18 th president. However, his two terms were some of the rockiest in American History. As a soldier, Grant had been superb; as a statesman he did not fair nearly as well.
Did You Know? . . . • General Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant met again only once‘ after leaving Appomattox in the Civil War. When President Grant was in the White House, he invited his former opponent to visit in 1869 and Lee accepted.