Late in the administration of Andrew Johnson, I, a general at the time, quarreled with the President and aligned myself with the Radical Republicans. I was, as the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, their logical candidate for President in 1868.
When I was elected, the American people hoped for an end to turmoil. I provided neither vigor nor reform. Looking to Congress for direction, I seemed bewildered. One visitor to the White House noted "a puzzled pathos, as of a man with a problem before him of which he does not understand the terms."
Born in 1822, I was the son of an Ohio tanner. I went to West Point rather against my will and graduated in the middle of my class. In the Mexican War I fought under Gen. Zachary Taylor.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, I was working in my father's leather store in Galena, Illinois. I was appointed by the Governor to command an unruly volunteer regiment. I whipped it into shape and by September 1861 I had risen to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers.
I sought to win control of the Mississippi Valley. In February 1862 I took Fort Henry and attacked Fort Donelson. When the Confederate commander asked for terms, Grant replied, "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted." The Confederates surrendered, and President Lincoln promoted Grant to major general of volunteers.
At Shiloh in April, I fought one of the bloodiest battles in the West and came out less well. President Lincoln fended off demands for my removal by saying, "I can't spare this man--he fights."
For my next major objective, I maneuvered and fought skillfully to win Vicksburg, the key city on the Mississippi, and thus cut the Confederacy in two. Then I broke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga.
Lincoln appointed me General-in-Chief in March 1864. I directed Sherman to drive through the South while I myself, with the Army of the Potomac, pinned down Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered. I wrote out magnanimous terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials.
As President, I presided over the Government much as I had run the Army. Indeed I brought part of my Army staff to the White House.
Although a man of scrupulous honesty, I as President accepted handsome presents from admirers. Worse, I allowed myself to be seen with two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk. When I realized their scheme to corner the market in gold, I authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to sell enough gold to wreck their plans, but the speculation had already wrought havoc with business.
During my campaign for re-election in 1872, I was attacked by Liberal Republican reformers. I called them "narrow-headed men," their eyes so close together that "they can look out of the same gimlet hole without winking." My friends in the Republican Party came to be known proudly as "the Old Guard."
I allowed Radical Reconstruction to run its course in the South, bolstering it at times with military force.
After retiring from the Presidency, I became a partner in a financial firm, which went bankrupt. About that time I learned that I had cancer of the throat. I started writing my recollections to pay off my debts and provide for my family, racing against death to produce a memoir that ultimately earned nearly $450,000. Soon after completing the last page, in 1885, I died.
Thanks to whitehouse.gov
