Born on April 27th, 1822 in Point Pleasant, Ohio, Hiram Ulysses Grant was the son of Jesse Root Grant and his wife, Hannah Simpson. Grant's father was a leather tanner, a profession his son hated and consequently avoided by assuming duties on the family farm, where he spent more time becoming a skilled horseman than learning husbandry. When Grant was 17 his father managed to secure an appointment for him to the US Military Academy at West Point, an appointment Grant initially refused, having no interest in the military. Being offered the ultimatum of accepting the appointment and an education or joining the family business- immediately- Grant opted for an education and entered West Point at barely 5 feet tall and insisting on reversing his name to Ulysses Hiram rather than endure having the acronym "HUG" emblazoned across his uniforms and gear. When an administrative error listed Grant as Ulysses S. rather than Ulysses H. Grant, he accepted the error, preferring U.S. Grant for career use. His classmates made it a nickname of Uncle Sam, and as Sam he was known for his four years at the academy.

Grant's West Point instructors and peers often criticized his sloppiness and perpetual slouch and lack of graces which some speculated was deliberate, as Grant maintained that he was enrolled against his will. Grant showed small interest in any of the military academy curriculum other than mathematics and horsemanship, and graduated solidly in the lower half of his class in 1843, admitting his greatest accomplishments for his 4 years were growing more than 6 inches and reading many good books. Assigned as a brevet lieutenant to an infantry garrison outside of St. Louis, Grant was brought into St. Louis social circles through a former classmate, Frederick Dent, whose family was among the region's elite plantation clans.

Grant was introduced to Dent's younger sister Julia Boggs Dent, an unusual young woman of progressive ideas and a private school education. Julia Dent was short, stout, and walleyed with a vivacious laugh, and her family of slave owners was rich in social influence but perpetually short of cash. Grant was socially awkward and smitten by Miss Dent's humor and kindness, and despite her own limited marriage prospects her father initially rejected Grant as a suitor for his daughter. Julia Dent, who proved in life to be determined, independent and resilient, became engaged to Grant against her family's wishes as he prepared for duty in the Mexican War.

Grant hoped to prove himself in active duty, driven as much by his wish to win over the Dent family as by a new wave of ambition. Assigned to General Zachary Taylor and later General Winfield Scott, Grant proved himself in battle in 1847, and in 1848 after the end of the war married Miss Dent. Julia Grant accompanied her husband to many of his posts until 1852 when he was assigned to a garrison in the Oregon Territory (now Washington State). Considering the wilderness outpost unsuitable for his wife and the first two of their four children, Grant sent his family home to her parents in Missouri.

Conscious of his relative poverty Grant served at the rustic outpost while experimenting with several business ventures he hoped would afford him passage and lodging for his family, but found himself further in debt. Assigned to Fort Humboldt in California upon his promotion to captain in August of 1853, Grant was still unable to bring his family west and in loneliness and boredom developed a fondness for drink which may have led to his exit from the army in 1854. Grant returned to his family and humbly accepted an 80-acre estate from his wife's father. Grant failed as a farmer, and an ill-conceived real estate venture also floundered, sending the Grants, who now had four children to Illinois where Ulysses joined his family's flourishing tannery in 1860.

Though a poor businessman, Grant was adroit at the business of war and the call to arms in 1861 gave him a chance to ply his trade. In April 1861 as the Civil War began Grant recruited, outfitted and instructed troops at Galena with such skill he was placed in command of the 21st Illinois Volunteers, a regiment that had been unmanageable by other officers, but which became a crack unit under Grant's leadership. Grant earned a promotion to brigadier general before ever engaging in battle, and upon informing his father of his promotion, the elder Grant, weary of his son's dismal track record, replied "Be careful, Ulyss, you are a general now- it's a good job, don't lose it!"

Grant ascended rapidly and in late 1862 began his offensive campaign. Grant's victory at Fort Donelson in Tennessee was the first Union triumph of the Civil War. When Donelson's commanding officer requested Grant's terms of surrender, Grant would accept nothing but the unconditional surrender of the garrison of 15,000 men. Grant got it, and his men joked that the U.S. in U.S. Grant stood for "Unconditional Surrender". Grant was made a full general that year and led troops at Shiloh, where the Union Army and his reputation suffered deep wounds at the hands of the Confederate Army. Grant redeemed himself with later victories and by July 4th, 1863 had divided the Confederacy in half. March 1864 saw Grant named commander of all the Union troops, and with General William Tecumseh Sherman launched his plan to pin down General Robert E. Lee and march to the Atlantic. The plan succeeded a year later when on April 9th, 1865 Grant met with Lee at the courthouse at Appomattox to present his terms: Unconditional surrender. Grant had come to respect his adversary if not his cause, which he declared "one of the worst for which a people ever fought", and in drafting the final surrender agreement included terms which prevented trials for treason.

Grant was still overseeing the dispersal of both armies when president Abraham Lincoln was assassinated just a week after the surrender of the Confederate Army, and had in fact been scheduled to attend the Ford Theater performance of "Our American Cousin" with the Lincolns on the night the president was killed. Assigned by president Johnson to tour the devastated South, Grant returned a report to the White House recommending a generous reconstruction plan and amnesty for those who had served the Confederacy. In 1866 Ulysses S. Grant became the first General of Armies of the United States.

In 1867, president Johnson removed Edwin M. Stanton, a Radical Republican from office as Secretary of War, an action which tested the Tenure of Office Act which required removals from a cabinet office to be approved by Congress. Grant was appointed Secretary of War, but when Congress insisted that Stanton be reinstated tendered his resignation in January, 1868. Johnson accused Grant of abandonment and manipulation, claiming that Grant had acted to provoke a Supreme Court intervention. Though Johnson was found not guilty after the impeachment hearings, he had alienated Radical Republicans as well as a nation who supported Grant as their conquering hero. In response the Republicans nominated Grant as their candidate for the 1868 presidential race.

Grant's letter of acceptance of his nomination was widely published and it's closing quote, "Let us have Peace" became his campaign slogan. Grant won his bid against former New York governor Horatio Seymour, his popular margin of over 300,000 votes believed to have come largely from grateful freed slaves, who had gained the right to vote. At the age of 46, Ulysses S. Grant became the youngest man to be elected president of the United States of America, a distinction he held for nearly 100 years. Grant moved into the White House with a circus of activity, bring his wife, unmarried children (his youngest daughter was married there in 1874) father and father-in-law, and the First Lady was soon holding extravagant 29-course dinners for guests who included her friend, Susan B. Anthony.

As President Grant came under fire for spending nearly as much on redecorating the White House as he did rebuilding the South and for bestowing lavish gifts at the expense of the treasury on friends and political allies. Grant was criticized for accepting gifts from admirers and fellow politicians, though in the Gilded Age acceptance of gratuities was something less an issue than in later generations. Grant's cabinet appointments drew fire from Radical Republicans, who had expected the new president to draw from an abundant pool of their party members: Grant instead appointed men he knew from his military career, including Ely S. Parker, a highly educated Seneca Indian from New York State who had served as his staff officer in the Union Army. Parker was appointed the first

Native American head of the division of the War Department which later became the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Grant further angered Radical Republicans in the House and Senate when he supported a Conservative bill that made "Greenback Currency" issued during the Civil War redeemable for gold. Grant appointed the first Civil Service Commission, but did little to police the appointment of public service officers which deteriorated under the patronage (or "Spoils") system. Maintaining the Gilded Age status quo largely by overlooking corruption in industry and politics, Grant was reelected in 1872 over Democrat Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, and the first woman candidate for president, Victoria Claflin Woodhull of the Equal Rights Party.

Grant's second term began in scandal, many powerful members of his Republican Party exposed for their involvement in the Credit Mobilier of America scandal, the corporation proving a front for money laundering and profiteering from the Union Pacific Railroad. Grant's Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin Helm Bustow was exposed in the "Whisker Ring" scandal, in which many high-ranking government officials were found to be defrauding the IRS. Grant's private secretary Orville E. Babcock was later convicted during the same investigation, and the president allowed his Secretary of War, William W. Belknap to resign while facing impeachment proceedings for accepting bribes for military contracts. Grant, dismayed over the criminal activity around him, assured Congress that the administration's failings were "errors of judgment, not of intent."

In light of the corruption around him it was overlooked that Grant supported civil rights for freed slaves, had supported passage of the 15th Amendment, and offered amnesty to those who had served the Confederacy. In 1874 Grant's veto of a Congressional proposal to increase the money supply averted inflation, and in 1876, though abandoned by his party, Grant "stood the fort" at the White House throughout the deadlocked election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden. Grant left Washington after Hayes was sworn to office and embarked on an extensive world tour with his wife Julia, where the former president and war hero was warmly welcomed and generously gifted by royalty and heads of state. Upon his return to the United States, Grant found his party had re-nominated him for a third term of office, though the final party nomination went to James A. Garfield who won the 1880 election.

In 1881 Grant made his home in New York City and invested nearly all his assets with his son Ulysses Jr.'s investment firm, Grant and Ward, encouraging friends and political associates to do the same. Grant, his family, and his reputation were ruined in 1884 when the firm collapsed in 1884, charging that Ferdinand Ward had embezzled the investments. Nearly penniless, Grant and his wife Julia moved to a small home in the Adirondack mountains in 1885. Grant, suffering terminal throat cancer, had managed to secure a contract to publish his memoirs through the intervention of his loyal friend, Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) and was determined to finish the manuscript before he died. Within weeks of finishing his life story, Ulysses S. Grant died at his home in Mount McGregor, New York at the age of 63. Grant's memoir has never been out of publication, originally earning the widowed Julia Dent Grant nearly $450,000, most of which went to pay off the family's debts.

Revered decades after his service in the Civil War, a fund was raised from over 100,000 individual donations for the erection of a memorial tomb in Manhattan New York for the former president, and on April 27th, 1897, Grant's remains were moved from a modest vault at Riverside Park in New York to the 150-foot tall domed mausoleum which bears his quote, "Let Us Have Peace." Grant's Tomb remains one of the largest mausoleums in the world. Julia Dent Grant attended the dedication of the monument, and in 1902, following her death in January, was laid to rest beside her husband.

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