Ulysses S. Grant

Two Images of the Man

Tara Dillon-Sumner
Unity Point School, Carbondale

Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant in Ohio in 1822. As a youth he helped his father on the farm. His father, Jesse Root Grant, enrolled him at West Point in order to get him an education. At West Point, Ulysses was enrolled with the wrong name: Ulysses Simpson Grant. He could not get the records changed so he adopted the new name and used Ulysses S. Grant for the rest of his life. At West Point, he ranked twenty-fourth out of a class of thirty-nine. Grant distinguished himself in horsemanship and was also good in mathematics. Grant had a great sense of humor and some interest in education. He wrote in his Memoirs that he spent the winter of 1839 repeating, "'a noun is the name of a thing' until I had come to believe it."

Grant was an accomplished horseman; he is pictured here with his horse, Cincinnati.

He graduated from West Point in 1843, and he was assigned as a Brevet Second Lieutenant to the Fourth United States Infantry, near St. Louis, Missouri. While at this assignment, he met and fell in love with Julia Boggs Dent, whom he married in 1848. Together they had four children.

Grant was unmilitary in appearance—short and somewhat slouchy in posture. His only outstanding military skill was the horsemanship that he learned from living on a farm as a young boy. As a general, he preferred the simple uniform of the common enlisted soldier to the ornate uniform of the officers of the day. Grant was quiet but firm. His informal manner and common sense approach won him the respect and admiration of his men as well as his military and political superiors.

Grant spent his last years at his home in New York writing his memoirs. He is pictured here on the porch just a few days before his death.

Grant was the leader and fighter that President Lincoln had been seeking. His first Civil War position was as the commander of the Twenty-first Illinois Regiment. After some significant successes in Tennessee and Vicksburg, Mississippi, Lincoln promoted Grant to Lieutenant General and selected him to command all Union armies in 1864. Comments from the soldiers at the time he took command varied from, "He's a little 'un'" to "we all felt at last that the boss had arrived." But, James Longstreet, one of Robert E. Lee's principal deputies, made the comment that was to be the most prophetic of the rest of the war: "That man will fight us every day and every hour till the end of the war." And that is what Grant did for the next year until the historic surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

A close reading of Grant's history will show two images of the man—one the person he had to be to win the Civil War and the other the person he most likely really was. The first face, one that he was most famous for, was "the look of a man willing to put his head through a wall if necessary to achieve his goal." This face was the reputation built throughout the war. At the Battle of Shiloh, things went bad for the North after the first day. A few of Grant's officers approached him and asked if they should prepare for retreat. "Retreat?" he asked, "No. I propose to attack at daylight and whip them." The next day, with terrible losses for both sides, he did just that.

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To further understand this face of Grant, we need but to read his instructions to General Sheridan "to turn the Shenandoah Valley into a barren waste. The people must be left with nothing but their eyes to weep with." Finally, in 1864 Grant ordered his generals to destroy the South—the factories, the railroads, the farms, and the will of the people. His goal, as stated by General Sherman, was to make the South "so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it." This face of Grant, this cold approach to war, cost the North more than 65,000 soldiers in the first half of 1864 alone. Even Northerners were referring to Grant as a "butcher. . . who was sacrificing the flower of American manhood."

Even in the last days of the war, the face of relentless force, of winning at all costs, stayed with Grant. He knew Lee's army was starving and struggling. Grant ordered his generals to cut off all supplies and equipment and to surround and crush Lee's army. As he prepared to do just that, it seemed the other face of Grant emerged, and he stopped and wrote a letter.

The letter, addressed to Robert E. Lee, asked him to surrender. Rather than attack and kill or starve out Lee's army, which likely would have been the result, Grant asked Lee to recognize the hopeless situation and stop the bloodshed on both sides by surrendering. Although Lee was not quite ready to surrender, Grant's letter led to a series of short, polite letters between the two, which resulted in no more fighting and an ultimate surrender by Lee on April 9, 1865. This face of Grant is the gentleman, the honorable soldier who, once the war was won, had the best interests of his country and all of his countrymen at heart. While Grant was known for holding out for unconditional surrenders during the war, that was not his intent at this, the final surrender. With an unsolicited hand of kindness and understanding, he offered to Lee surrender terms to which Lee replied, "This will have the best possible effect upon the men, it will be very gratifying, and will do much toward conciliating our people." Grant then offered Lee rations and some medical supplies to care for up to twenty-five thousand Confederate soldiers. Lee came to Appomattox dressed in a new uniform, perfectly attired, and fully expecting to become a prisoner of war. Thanks to the greatness of Ulysses S. Grant, Lee left Appomattox with his head held high. As he rode off to join his soldiers. Grant saluted him.

In the end, Grant was a great warrior, an effective leader, and a compassionate man. He finished his Memoirs shortly before his death. It includes the following visionary statement. "The war has made a nation of great power and intelligence. We have but little to do to preserve peace, happiness and prosperity at home, and the respect of other nations. Our experience ought to teach us the necessity of the first; our power secures the latter."—[From Bruce A. Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox; Shelby Foote, The Civil War; James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom.]

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