He went to West Point rather against his will and graduated in the middle of his class. 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.”īorn in 1822, Grant was the son of an Ohio tanner. Looking to Congress for direction, he seemed bewildered. When he was elected, the American people hoped for an end to turmoil. He was, as the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, their logical candidate for President in 1868. Grant quarreled with the President and aligned himself with the Radical Republicans.

Late in the administration of Andrew Johnson, Gen. As an American hero, Grant was later elected the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877), working to implement Congressional Reconstruction and to remove the vestiges of slavery. Grant led the Union Armies to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War. In 1865, as commanding general, Ulysses S. The biography for President Grant and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

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