Ulysses S. Grant

He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant and lost the name to a stranger's pen — the congressman who nominated him to West Point wrote him down as U. S. Grant, and the academy declined to fix it. He finished 21st of 39 in 1843 and took brevets for bravery in a war he later called the most wicked ever waged by a strong nation against a weak one. He married Julia Dent in 1848. On July 31, 1854, at Fort Humboldt, he resigned his commission rather than answer for his drinking. Then came seven flat years. In March 1859, broke in Missouri and holding legal title to an enslaved man named William Jones, worth roughly 1,000 dollars he badly needed, he filed a deed of manumission instead.

He was a store clerk when the war started and commanded every Union army in the field by 1864. As president from 1869 he built the Department of Justice, saw the Fifteenth Amendment ratified in his first year, sent marshals and soldiers into South Carolina against the Klan, settled the Alabama claims with Britain by arbitration rather than war, signed Yellowstone into existence, and let a run of scandals move through his administration untouched. The campaigns and the two terms are laid out on BriefHistory. The last ten years are the part nobody plans for.

On May 4, 1884 the brokerage carrying his name collapsed. His partner Ferdinand Ward had run some 9 million dollars through a Ponzi scheme, and Grant, who had put in everything he had and vouched for the firm to friends, was left with a 150,000-dollar personal loan from William Vanderbilt he could not repay. That autumn the doctors found cancer in his throat. He was a heavy smoker and it was inoperable. He wrote the memoirs at a rented cottage on Mount McGregor in the Adirondacks, propped in a wicker chair, unable to swallow and finally unable to speak, passing notes to the people in the room. He finished on July 18, 1885 and died five days later. Julia received about 450,000 dollars in the first three years.

Some 1.5 million people lined his funeral route in New York, and 90,000 donors paid for the tomb dedicated in 1897. Then the reckoning reversed. Lost Cause writers and, from about 1900, William Dunning's students recast Reconstruction as a crime against the South, which required Grant to be a drunk and a fool. The surveys left him there for most of the 20th century. Historians began pulling him back in the 1990s — Brooks Simpson, then Jean Edward Smith in 2001, then Ronald White, Ron Chernow and Charles Calhoun — by reading what he did about the Klan and Black voting. In C-SPAN's survey he rose from 33rd in 2000 to 20th in 2021, the largest gain on the list.

Ulysses S. Grant's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Deed of manumission for William Jones other
  Filed while Grant was broke and the man was worth about 1,000 dollars 1859
• Department of Justice company
  Created to give the federal government lawyers who could enforce civil rights law 1870
• Ku Klux Klan Act law
  Let him suspend habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties 1871
• Treaty of Washington other
  Sent the Alabama claims against Britain to arbitration instead of war 1871
• Yellowstone National Park Protection Act law
  The first national park anywhere 1872
• Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant book
  Finished five days before he died — 350,000 two-volume sets sold 1885

• June 30, 1843 aged 21 Graduates West Point 21st in a class of 39 Enrolled under a name he never chose.
• August 22, 1848 aged 26 Marries Julia Dent
• July 31, 1854 aged 32 Resigns his commission at Fort Humboldt His commanding officer had given him a choice between reforming his drinking and leaving.
• March 1859 aged 36 Frees William Jones by deed of manumission Grant was near destitute at the time and could have sold him.
• April 9, 1865 aged 42 Takes Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House
• March 1, 1872 aged 49 Signs the act creating Yellowstone National Park
• May 4, 1884 aged 62 Grant and Ward collapses and takes everything he has Ferdinand Ward had run roughly 9 million dollars through a Ponzi scheme. He served six years.
• July 18, 1885 aged 63 Finishes the memoirs at Mount McGregor By then he could not speak and wrote his instructions on slips of paper.
• July 23, 1885 aged 63 Dies of throat cancer

• Robert E. Lee 1807–1870
  Confederate commander whose military reputation and later commemoration became central to Civil War memory and the Lost Cause. defeated
• William Tecumseh Sherman 1820–1891
  Union general whose campaigns through Georgia and the Carolinas helped destroy the Confederacy’s capacity to wage war. commanded
• Mark Twain 1835–1910
  Author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often called the father of American literature. published by
• Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
  Former slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights. allied with
• Jay Gould 1836–1892
  Controlled major railroad and telegraph systems through aggressive stock manipulation. opposed
• Horace Greeley 1811–1872
  Founding editor of the New-York Tribune whose editorials shaped antebellum and Reconstruction-era debate. defeated
• Ferdinand Ward 1851–1925
  Financier whose Ponzi scheme destroyed the firm bearing Ulysses S. Grant's name and bankrupted him. ruined by