Return to Presidents List
U.S Presidents — Ulysses S. Grant | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
OVERVIEW
Name: Ulysses S. Grant
President: # 18 Term Number(s): 21, 22 Term Length: 8 Took Office: March 4, 1869 Left Office: March 4, 1877 Age when Elected: 46 Party: Republican Also Known As: ""Unconditional Surrender" Grant, Hero of Appomattox" BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
Education: United States Military Academy at West Point
Occupation: General-in-Chief Other Governmental Position: None Military Service: General of the Army of the United States Religion: Methodist Spouse(s): Julia Dent Grant (August 22, 1848) Children: Jesse Grant; Ulysses S. Grant, Jr.; Nellie Grant Sartoris Jones; Frederick Grant
Birthdate: April 27, 1822
Birthplace: Point Pleasant, Ohio Deathdate: July 23, 1885 Deathplace: Mount McGregor, New York Age at Death: 63 Cause of Death: cancer Place of Internment: Riverside Park in New York, New York  Signature FIRST ELECTION
Election Year: 1868
Main Opponent: Horatio Seymour Voter Participation: 71.30%
SECOND ELECTION
Election Year: 1872
Main Opponent: Horace Greeley Voter Participation: 71.30%
CABINET AND COURT APPOINTMENTS
Vice President: Schuyler Colfax, Henry Wilson, vacant
Secretary of State: Elihu B. Washburne (1869), Hamilton Fish (1869–1877) Secretary of the Treasury: George S. Boutwell (1869–1873), William A. Richardson (1873–1874), Benjamin H. Bristow (1874–1876), Lot M. Morrill (1876–1877) Secretary of War: John A. Rawlins (1869), William W. Belknap (1869–1876), Alphonso Taft (1876), J. Donald Cameron (1876–1877) Secretary of the Navy: Adolph E. Borie (1869), George M. Robeson (1869–1877) Secretary of the Interior: Jacob D. Cox (1869–1870), Columbus Delano (1870–1875), Zachariah Chandler (1875–1877) Attorney General: Ebenezer R. Hoar (1869–1870), Amos T. Akerman (1870–1871), George H. Williams (1871–1875), Edwards Pierrepont (1875–1876), Alphonso Taft (1876–1877) Postmaster General: John A. J. Creswell (1869–1874), James W. Marshall (1874), Marshall Jewell (1874–1876), James N. Tyner (1876–1877) Supreme Court Assignments: William Strong (1870), Joseph P. Bradley (1870), Ward Hunt (1873), Morrison Remick Waite 1874) PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY When he was elected, the American people hoped for an end to turmoil. Grant provided neither vigor nor reform. Looking to Congress for direction, he 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, Grant was the son of an Ohio tanner. He went to West Point rather against his will and graduated in the middle of his class. In the Mexican War he fought under General Zachary Taylor. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his father's leather store in Galena, Illinois. He was appointed by the governor to command an unruly volunteer regiment. Grant whipped it into shape and by September 1861 he had risen to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers. He sought to win control of the Mississippi Valley. In February 1862 he 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, Grant fought one of the bloodiest battles in the West and came out less well. President Lincoln fended off demands for his removal by saying, "I can't spare this man—he fights." For his next major objective, Grant maneuvered and fought skillfully to win Vicksburg, the key city on the Mississippi, and thus cut the Confederacy in two. Then he broke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga.  Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered. Grant wrote out magnanimous terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials. As president, Grant presided over the government much as he had run the Army. Indeed he brought part of his Army staff to the White House. although a man of scrupulous honesty, Grant as president accepted handsome presents from admirers. Worse, he allowed himself to be seen with two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk. When Grant realized their scheme to corner the market in gold, he authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to sell enough gold to wreck their plans, but the speculation had already wrought havoc with business. During his campaign for re-election in 1872, Grant was attacked by liberal Republican reformers. He called them "narrow-headed men," their eyes so close together that, "They can look out of the same gimlet hole without winking." The general's friends in the Republican Party came to be known proudly as "the Old Guard." Grant allowed Radical Reconstruction to run its course in the South, bolstering it at times with military force. After retiring from the presidency, Grant became a partner in a financial firm, which went bankrupt. About that time he learned that he had cancer of the throat. He started writing his recollections to pay off his debts and provide for his family, racing against death to produce a memoir that ultimately earned nearly $450,000. Soon after completing the last page, in 1885, he died. FIRST LADY'S BIOGRAPHY Julia Dent Grant Daughter of Frederick and Ellen Wrenshall Dent, Julia had grown up on a plantation near St. Louis in a typically Southern atmosphere. In memoirs prepared late in life—unpublished until 1975—she pictured her girlhood as an idyll: "one long summer of sunshine, flowers, and smiles…" She attended the Misses Mauros' boarding school in St. Louis for seven years among the daughters of other affluent parents. A social favorite in that circle, she met "Ulys" at her home, where her family welcomed him as a West Point classmate of her brother Frederick; soon she felt lonely without him, dreamed of him, and agreed to wear his West Point ring. Julia and her handsome lieutenant became engaged in 1844, but the Mexican War deferred the wedding for four long years. Their marriage, often tried by adversity, met every test; they gave each other lifelong loyalty. Like other army wives, "dearest Julia" accompanied her husband to military posts, to pass uneventful days at distant garrisons. Then she returned to his parents' home in 1852 when he was ordered to the West. Ending that separation, Grant resigned his commission two years later. Farming and business ventures at St. Louis failed, and in 1860 he took his family, now including four children, back to his home in Galena, Illinois. He was working in his father's leather goods store when the Civil War called him to a soldier's duty with his state's volunteers. Throughout the war, Mrs. Grant joined her husband near the scene of action whenever she could. After so many years of hardship and stress, Mrs. Grant rejoiced in her husband's fame as a victorious general, and she entered the White House in 1869 to begin, in her words, "the happiest period" of her life. With cabinet wives as her allies, she entertained extensively and lavishly. Contemporaries noted her finery: jewels and silks and laces. Upon leaving the White House in 1877, the Grants made a trip around the world that became a journey of triumphs. Julia proudly recalled details of hospitality and magnificent gifts they received. But in 1884 Grant suffered yet another business failure and they lost all they had. To provide for his wife, Grant wrote his famous personal memoirs, racing with time and death from cancer. The means thus afforded and her widow's pension enabled her to live in comfort, surrounded by children and grandchildren, till her own death in 1902. She had attended in 1897 the dedication of Grant's monumental tomb in New York City where she was laid to rest. She had ended her own chronicle of their years together with a firm declaration, "The light of his glorious fame still reaches out to me, falls upon me, and warms me." MAJOR EVENTS
1869: The Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroad companies finish the first transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point, Utah.
1870: Construction begins on the Brooklyn Bridge.
1870: The Fifteenth Amendment is passed, stating that no state shall deprive any citizen of the right to vote because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
1870: The Department of Justice under the administration of an attorney general is created.
1871: Grant signs the Treaty of Washington, which begins an amicable association between United States and Britain.
1871: The Chicago Fire. One of the worst disasters in U.S. history, the city of Chicago is almost completely burned.
1875: Grant signs the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guarantees equal rights to African Americans in public places and prohibits the exclusion of African Americans from jury duty.
1876: General George A. Custer and 265 men of the Seventh Cavalry are defeated and killed in battle at Little Big Horn by Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors.
1876: Colorado joins the Union.
TRIVIA
1. Ulysses S. Grant reversed the longstanding policies of war against the Native American tribes stating to Congress that "Wars of extermination... are demoralizing and wicked."
2. Toward the end of his life, Grant was swindled out of most of his life savings, and he had forfeited his military pension when he became president. As he suffered from a terminal case of throat cancer, he wrote a memoir to save himself and his family from bankruptcy. He completed it shortly before his death and earned $450,000 on a work that is still highly regarded.
3. Ulysses S. Grant established Yellowstone as the nation's first national park on March 1, 1872.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder