词条 | Grant, Ulysses S. |
释义 | Grant, Ulysses S. president of United States Introduction original name Hiram Ulysses Grant born April 27, 1822, Point Pleasant, Ohio, U.S. died July 23, 1885, Mount McGregor, New York ![]() Early life Grant was the son of Jesse Root Grant, a tanner, and Hannah Simpson, and he grew up in Georgetown, Ohio. Detesting the work around the family tannery, Ulysses instead performed his share of chores on farmland owned by his father and developed considerable skill in handling horses. In 1839 Jesse secured for Ulysses an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, and pressured him to attend. Although he had no interest in military life, Ulysses accepted the appointment, realizing that the alternative was no further education. Grant decided to reverse his given names and enroll at the academy as Ulysses Hiram (probably to avoid having the acronym HUG embroidered on his clothing); however, his congressional appointment was erroneously made in the name Ulysses S. Grant, the name he eventually accepted, maintaining that the middle initial stood for nothing. He came to be known as U.S. Grant—Uncle Sam Grant—and his classmates called him Sam. Standing only a little over five-feet tall when he entered the academy, he grew more than six inches in the next four years. Most observers thought his slouching gait and sloppiness in dress did not conform with usual soldierly bearing. Grant ranked 21st in a class of 39 when he graduated from West Point in 1843, but he had distinguished himself in horsemanship and showed such considerable ability in mathematics that he imagined himself as a teacher of the subject at the academy. Bored by the military curriculum, he took great interest in the required art courses and spent much leisure time reading classic novels. Upon graduation Grant was assigned as a brevet second lieutenant to the 4th U.S. Infantry, stationed near St. Louis, Missouri, where he fell in love with and married Julia Boggs Dent, the sister of his roommate at West Point. In the Mexican War (Mexican-American War) (1846–48) Grant showed gallantry in campaigns under General Zachary Taylor (Taylor, Zachary). He was then transferred to General Winfield Scott (Scott, Winfield)'s army, where he first served as regimental quartermaster and commissary. Although his service in these posts gave him an invaluable knowledge of army supply, it did nothing to satiate his hunger for action. Grant subsequently distinguished himself in battle in September 1847, earning brevet commissions as first lieutenant and captain, though his permanent rank was first lieutenant. Despite his heroism, Grant wrote years later: “I do not think there was ever a more wicked war….I thought so at the time…only I had not moral courage enough to resign.” On July 5, 1852, when the 4th Infantry sailed from New York for the Pacific coast, Grant left his growing family (two sons had been born) behind. Assigned to Fort Vancouver, Oregon Territory (later Washington state), he attempted to supplement his army pay with ultimately unsuccessful business ventures and was unable to reunite his family. A promotion to captain in August 1853 brought an assignment to Fort Humboldt, California, a dreary post with an unpleasant commanding officer. On April 11, 1854, Grant resigned from the army. Whether this decision was influenced in any way by Grant's fondness for alcohol, which he reportedly drank often during his lonely years on the Pacific coast, remains open to conjecture. Settling at White Haven, the Dents' estate in Missouri, Grant began to farm 80 acres (30 hectares) given to Julia by her father. This farming venture was a failure, as was a real estate partnership in St. Louis in 1859. The next year Grant joined the leather goods business owned by his father and operated by his brothers in Galena, Illinois. The Civil War (American Civil War) ![]() In January 1862, dissatisfied with the use of his force for defensive and diversionary purposes, Grant received permission from General Henry Wager Halleck (Halleck, Henry W) to begin an offensive campaign. On February 16 he won the first major Union victory of the war, when Fort Donelson (Fort Donelson, Battle of), on the Cumberland River in Tennessee, surrendered with about 15,000 troops. When the garrison's commander, General Simon B. Buckner (Buckner, Simon Bolivar), requested his Union counterpart's terms for surrender, Grant replied, “No terms except unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.” For many, from that point on Grant's initials would stand for “unconditional surrender.” ![]() Command over Union armies ![]() That Grant's army vastly outnumbered Lee's at the close of the conflict should not obscure Grant's achievements: the Union had numerical superiority in Virginia throughout the war, yet Grant was the first general to make these numbers count. Earlier, he had rebounded from initial defeat to triumph at Shiloh. His success as a commander was due in large measure to administrative ability, receptiveness to innovation, versatility, and the ability to learn from mistakes. In late 1865 Grant, by then immensely popular, toured the South at President Andrew Johnson (Johnson, Andrew)'s request, was greeted with surprising friendliness, and submitted a report recommending a lenient Reconstruction policy. (See primary source document: “Report on Conditions in the South.” (Ulysses S. Grant: Report on Conditions in the South)) In 1866 he was appointed to the newly established rank of general of the armies of the United States. In 1867 Johnson removed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (Stanton, Edwin M) and thereby tested the constitutionality of the Tenure of Office Act, which dictated that removals from office be at the assent of Congress, and in August appointed Grant interim secretary of war. When Congress insisted upon Stanton's reinstatement, Grant resigned (January 1868), thus infuriating Johnson, who believed that Grant had agreed to remain in office to provoke a court decision. ![]() ![]() Grant's presidency ![]() Julia was not beautiful—she had a cast in her left eye and squinted—but Grant was attracted to her liveliness, and his devotion to her was unbounded. Photography was just becoming part of the political scene when Julia rose to prominence as first lady, and, self-conscious about her looks, she contemplated having surgery to correct her eyes. Grant vetoed the idea, saying he loved her as she was. Consequently, almost all pictures of her were taken in profile. The Grants had four children. Their daughter, Nellie, became a national darling, and when she was married in the White House in 1874, the public was entranced by the details of the wedding. The executive mansion was also the home for both the president's father and his father-in-law, whose squabbling with each other was general knowledge and aroused considerable public amusement. Because the Gilded Age was at hand, Americans did not seem to mind that the Grants enjoyed ostentatious living. They redecorated the White House lavishly and entertained accordingly, with state dinners sometimes consisting of 29 courses complemented by nine French wines. On March 18, 1869, Grant signed his first law, pledging to redeem in gold the greenback currency issued during the Civil War, thus placing himself with the financial conservatives of the day. He appointed the first Civil Service Commission, but after initially backing its recommendations, he abandoned his support for the group when faced with congressional intransigence. Grant was more persistent but equally unsuccessful when the Senate narrowly rejected a treaty of annexation with the Dominican Republic (which Grant had been persuaded would be of strategic importance to the building of a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans). His negotiation of the Treaty of Washington provided for the settlement by international tribunal of American claims against Great Britain arising from the wartime activities of the British-built Confederate raider Alabama (Alabama claims), whose sale had violated Britain's declared neutrality. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Scandals have become the best-remembered feature of the Grant administration, obscuring its more positive aspects. Grant supported both amnesty for Confederate leaders and civil rights for former slaves. He worked for ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and went to Capitol Hill to win passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act (Force Acts) of 1871, although he was largely ineffective in enforcing the civil rights laws and other tenets of Reconstruction. His 1874 veto of a bill to increase the amount of legal tender diminished the currency crisis during the next quarter century, and he received praise two years later for his graceful handling of the controversial election of 1876, when both Republican Rutherford B. Hayes (Hayes, Rutherford B.) and Democrat Samuel Jones Tilden (Tilden, Samuel J) claimed election to the presidency. Later life ![]() In 1879 Grant found that a faction of the Republican Party was eager to nominate him for a third term. Although he did nothing to encourage support, he received more than 300 votes in each of the 36 ballots of the 1880 convention, which finally nominated James A. Garfield (Garfield, James A.). In 1881 Grant bought a house in New York City and began to take an interest in the investment firm of Grant and Ward, in which his son Ulysses, Jr., was a partner. Grant put his capital at the disposal of the firm and encouraged others to follow. In 1884 the firm collapsed, swindled by Ferdinand Ward. This impoverished the entire Grant family and tarnished Grant's reputation. In 1884 Grant began to write reminiscences of his campaigns for the Century Magazine and found this work so congenial that he began his memoirs. Despite excruciating throat pain, later diagnosed as cancer, he signed a contract with his friend Mark Twain (Twain, Mark) to publish the memoirs and resolved grimly to complete them before he died. (For an account of Grant's experience writing his memoirs, seemPersonal Memoirs.) In June 1885 the Grant family moved to a cottage in Mount McGregor, New York, in the Adirondack Mountains, and a month later Grant died there. A funeral cortege seven miles long accompanied his coffin to a temporary vault in New York City's Riverside Park. In 1897, on the 75th anniversary of his birth, his remains were removed to a magnificent neoclassical granite tomb at Riverside Drive on Morningside Heights in Manhattan. The project, supervised by the Grant Monument Association, was paid for by almost 100,000 contributions. A million people turned out for the dedication proceedings, with President William McKinley (McKinley, William) among the dignitaries in attendance. Grant's Tomb (General Grant National Memorial), designed by the architect John Duncan, is one of the largest mausoleums in the world, 150 feet (45 metres) high, with a domed rotunda and allegorical relief figures representing episodes in Grant's life. Two figures representing victory and peace support a granite block containing Grant's epitaph, his own words, “Let us have peace.” The centre crypt contains two sarcophagi. Julia Grant, who lived until 1902, was interred beside her husband, as they had planned. It was said that the idea of a single burial place for the both of them stemmed from Grant's visit to the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain. Grant completed his memoirs shortly before his death. Written with modesty and restraint, exhibiting equanimity, candour, and a surprisingly good sense of humour, they retain high rank among military autobiographies. For an additional writing by Grant, see The Separation of Church and School (Ulysses S. Grant: The Separation of Church and School). Cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant Cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant Cabinet of President Ulysses S. GrantThe table provides a list of cabinet members in the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant. Additional Reading Grant's memoirs and letters are presented in E.B. Long (ed.), Personal Memoirs (1952, reissued 1962). This collection is supplemented by another 175 letters in Memoirs and Selected Letters, 2 vol. in 1 (1990), covering the period 1839–65. There have been many editions of the Memoirs alone, the most recent contains an introduction by James M. McPherson (1999). John Y. Simon (ed.), The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 22 vol. (1967–98), compiles an immense number of Grant's letters—most never before published—and other documents beginning with his West Point days. An excellent brief biography is Bruce Catton, U.S. Grant and the American Military Tradition (1954). More detailed studies are available in William B. Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant, Politician (1935, reissued 1957); Lloyd Lewis, Captain Sam Grant (1950); Bruce Catton, Grant Moves South (1960, reissued 1988), Grant Takes Command (1969), and A Stillness at Appomattox (1953, reissued 1977); William S. McFeely, Grant (1981); and Gene Smith, Lee and Grant: A Dual Biography (1984). Analyses of Grant as a soldier include J.F.C. Fuller, The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, 2nd ed. (1958, reprinted 1977); Allen Nevins, Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration, 2 vol., revised (1957); T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (1952, reprinted 1981); Kenneth P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General, vol. 3–5 (1952–59); and the appropriate chapter in John Keegan, The Mask of Command (1987). Brooks D. Simpson, Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868 (1991), assesses Grant's political development during this period. Four of the latest evaluations are Geoffrey Perret, Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier and President (1997); Harry J. Maihafer, The General and the Journalists: Ulysses S. Grant, Horace Greeley, and Charles Dana (1998); Frank J. Scaturro, Grant Reconsidered (1998); and Brooks D. Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents (1998). Julia Dent Grant is the subject of Ishbel Ross, The General's Wife: The Life of Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant (1959). John Y. Simon (ed.), The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant) (1975, reprinted 1988), is her autobiography, written in the 1890s. Ed. |
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