Grant, ULYSSES SIMPSON, eighteenth president of the United States, was born at Point Pleasant, Clermont county, Ohio, April 27, Copyright 1890 in U.S. 1822. He was of Scottish ancestry, but his family had been American in all its branches for eight generations. Ulysses was the eldest of six children born to Jesse R. Grant and his wife Hannah Simpson, and assisted his father on the farm in summer, attending the village school during the winter. In the spring of 1839 he was appointed to a cadetship in the United States Military Academy, and graduated in 1843. He was commissioned brevet second-lieutenant, and assigned to duty at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. In May 1844 he accompanied his regiment, the Fourth Infantry, to Louisiana, and in September 1845 he was commissioned second-lieutenant, and joined the army of occupation under General Zachary Taylor. Grant participated in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and was also present at the capture of Monterey. Later the Fourth Infantry embarked for Vera Cruz, to join the army of General Winfield Scott, and Grant took part in all the battles of Scott's successful campaign and in the final capture of the city of Mexico. In the summer of 1848 his regiment returned to the United States, when he obtained leave of absence, and in August of that year was married to Julia B. Dent, of St Louis, by whom he had three sons and a daughter, the eldest of whom, Colonel Frederick D. Grant, was in April 1889 appointed American Minister to Austria. Lieutenant Grant served at various posts; was in 1853 appointed to a captaincy; and in the following year resigned his commission, and settled on a farm near St Louis, Missouri.
When the war began in April 1861 Grant was residing in Galena, Illinois; he immediately offered his services to the government, and in June he was appointed colonel of the 21st Regiment of Illinois Infantry, with which he was sent to Missouri. In August he was advanced to brigadier-general of volunteers, and assigned to the command of a district, and in November he fought the battle of Belmont. In February 1862 he captured Fort Henry, and ten days later Fort Donelson, with 14,623 prisoners, for which victories he was made major-general of volunteers. In April Grant fought a two days' battle at Shiloh, amongst the severest of the war, in which General A. S. Johnston, commanding the Confederate army, was killed. After various unsuccessful movements against Vicksburg, which commenced in the November of 1862, Grant crossed the Mississippi, April 30, 1863, defeated the enemy at Port Gibson and at Champion Hill, and drove them behind their entrenchments at Vicksburg, to which place he laid siege. After many assaults, the stronghold surrendered conditionally on July 4, 1863, with 31,600 prisoners and 172 cannon, and the Mississippi was opened from its source to its mouth. In October Grant was ordered to Chattanooga, where he fought a battle, capturing the enemy's entire line, and driving him out of Tennessee. In March 1864 Grant, having previously been made a major-general in the regular army for his victory at Vicksburg, was promoted to the grade of lieutenant-general, and assigned to the command of all the armies of the United States, with his headquarters with the army of the Potomac. His plan of campaign was to concentrate all the national forces into several distinct armies, which should operate simultaneously against the enemy, Sherman moving toward Atlanta, while Grant himself accompanied the army of the Potomac against Richmond. During the night of May 4 the latter crossed the Rapidan, encountered General R. E. Lee in the Wilderness, and fought a desperate three days' battle, one of the fiercest of modern times. Grant moved forward on the 7th, and fought again at Spottsylvania Courthouse on the 10th, and still again on the 12th, on which occasion he captured an entire division of the Confederate army. The smoke of battle hung over the mighty hosts for six days, while the North remained in a state of suspense bordering upon agony; but on the 11th Grant wrote to Washington, 'I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer.' Thus, fighting and flanking, ever pursuing the offensive, and daily drawing nearer to Richmond, he at length drove the enemy within the defences of that city, and there held him in a vice, while he left to his lieutenants—Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas—a harvest of laurels by active movements and successful battles. On March 29, 1865, there began a week's hard fighting, at the close of which Lee surrendered his entire army at Appomattox Courthouse, April 9, receiving from his victor most generous terms. The fall of Richmond substantially ended the war, and Grant returned to Washington to prepare his report of the operations of the armies of the United States from the date of his appointment to command the same, and to muster out nearly a million of troops that the country no longer required.
In July 1866 Grant was advanced to the grade of full general, and in May 1868 he was nominated for the presidency by the Republican convention, and in the following November was elected. Out of the 294 electoral votes Grant received 214, and Horatio Seymour, the Democratic candidate, 80. He was again elected to the presidency in November 1872, thus filling the office of chief-magistrate for eight years. Among the most important events of his administration were the adoption in 1869 of the fifteenth amendment to the constitution, which guaranteed the right of suffrage without regard to race, colour, or previous condition of servitude; and the peaceful settlement of the 'Alabama Claims' (see ALABAMA). After retiring from the presidency, General Grant spent two years in foreign travel, receiving unusual attentions from the rulers of the various countries which he visited in his tour round the world. In June 1880 his name was again presented to a Republican convention, but, chiefly owing to a traditional sentiment against a third term of the presidency, the nomination was given to James A. Garfield. In 1881 Grant purchased a house in New York, where he afterwards passed his winters, while his summers were spent in his seaside cottage at Long Branch, New Jersey. Finding himself unable with his income to properly maintain his family, he became a partner in a banking-house in which one of his sons and others were interested, bearing the name of Grant and Ward, and invested all his available capital in the business, but taking no part in the affairs of the firm, which were left almost entirely in the hands of the junior partner. In May 1884 the house, without warning, suspended, and it was then discovered that two of the partners had robbed the general and his family of all they possessed. Until this time Grant had refused all solicitations to write the history of his military career; but now, finding himself bankrupt, and with the hope of providing for his family, he began the preparation of his personal memoirs. The contract with his publishers was made February 27, 1885, and the work appeared about a year later. In the summer of 1884 he complained of a soreness in his throat, and an examination detected the presence of cancer at the root of the tongue. The sympathies of the nation were now aroused, and on March 4, 1885, congress passed a bill creating him a general on the retired list, thus restoring him to his former rank in the army, which he had lost on accepting the presidency. It may be doubted if since the world began any book has been written under similar conditions; the dying soldier, suffering constant and at times the severest agony, yet struggled on successfully, completing his literary labours only four days before his death at Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, New York, 23d July 1885. His remains were removed to New York, and on August 8 were interred with great pomp in Riverside Park, overlooking the Hudson. Many lives of Grant have been written, the most valuable of which is his own (2 vols. 1885-86), a work that brought his widow no less than $500,000.