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Presidents Daddy
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United States Presidents
Early Years: Grant worked in his father's tannery and on the family farm where he took care of the animals. In 1839 he went to West Point and excelled in mathematics. He later served as commander of the Union army during the Civil War and intended to teach after serving. His Presidency: Grant supported the rights of African Americans and opposed the Ku Klux Klan. His greatest achievement as president was the settling of the Alabama claims dispute with Great Britain. The United States was awarded $15.5 million for damages done to the Union merchant marine by a Confederate warship built by Great Britain. His Life: Late in the administration of Andrew Johnson, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant quarreled with the President and aligned himself with the Radical Republicans. He was, as the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, their logical candidate for President in 1868. 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 Gen. 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. Lincoln appointed him General-in-Chief in March 1864. Grant directed Sherman to drive through the South while he himself, 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. 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. Quotations
-Ulysses S. Grant
"God
gave us Lincoln and Liberty; let us fight for
both."
-Ulysses S. Grant "It [campaigning] has been done, so far as I remember, by but two presidential candidates heretofore, and both of them were public speakers and both were beaten. I am no speaker and I don’t want to be beaten." -Ulysses S. Grant "Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately you occasionally find men disgrace labor." -Ulysses S. Grant "The truth is I am more of a farmer than a soldier. . . I never went into the Army without regret and never retired without pleasure." -Ulysses S. Grant (1878) "No other terms than unconditional and immediate surrender. I propose to move immediately upon our works." -Ulysses S. Grant (Letter, February 1862) "Our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war." -Ulysses S. Grant "I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer." -Ulysses S. Grant (Dispatch to Washington, 1862) "Let us have peace." -Ulysses
S. Grant "There never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword." -Ulysses S. Grant "A measure which makes at once 4,000,000 people voters who were heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land not citizens of the United States, not eligible to become so . . . is indeed a measure of grander importance than any other act of the kind from the foundation of our free Government to the present day." -Ulysses
S. Grant "I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and so valiantly." -Ulysses
S. Grant "I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effectual as their strict construction." -Ulysses
S. Grant "Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the State forever separate." -Ulysses S. Grant "Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal considerations should stand in the way of performing a duty." -Ulysses
S. Grant "My failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent." -Ulysses S. Grant Speeches
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