The resulting two-day battle of Shiloh was a hard won and controversial victory. He concentrated his troops at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the Tennessee River little expecting Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnson to launch a surprise attack on the sleeping Union camps at dawn on April 6, 1862. Halleck, Grant pressed his advantage after Fort Donelson, planning an attack on the Confederates at their new stronghold in Corinth, Mississippi. Overcoming thorny relations with the top western commander, General Henry W. Now famous as “Unconditional Surrender,” Grant continued to display the kind of strong generalship that brought him to the favorable attention of President Lincoln and the victory-starved North. When the Confederate commander of Fort Donelson sent Grant a note to discuss the terms of surrender for his army of 21,000 men, he received these words in reply: “No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” Navy, captured the strategically important Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. The lesson was valuable.” In the fall and winter of 1861/62 Grant used his troops aggressively, and in conjunction with the U.S. “I never forgot, he wrote, “that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his. After the former, Grant recalled that he learned a valuable insight into the enemy’s psyche. Anxious to lead in battle, he demonstrated some needed mettle for the lagging Union cause in May and November, 1861 in Missouri at Salt Lick and Belmont. Rising swiftly through the ranks, Brigadier General Grant was placed in command of the big Union supply and training camp at Cairo, Illinois. When the guns of Fort Sumter fired, Grant was anxious to serve his country.Īfter briefly holding a series of low-level positions, Lieutenant Colonel Grant was given command of the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was a loving husband to Julia Dent Grant, and an unusually attentive and affectionate father to their four children, Fred, Ulysses Jr., Jesse, and Nellie. Although these years were a low point in his life, there were some happy times. Louis, Missouri, until moving in 1859 to Galena, Illinois to work as a clerk in his father’s store. He lived on his father-in-law’s land outside of St. Grant failed as a soldier, and then failed as a provider for his family, as a farmer, and as a businessman. The civilian world proved just as difficult. His actions during this period clouded an otherwise stellar military record. Grant took to drinking, officially resigning from the army on April 11, 1854. Surviving a dangerous journey from New York Harbor to the West Coast, Captain Grant increasingly missed his wife and growing family, suffered financial setbacks, enduring a lonely and boring existence in remote forts in Oregon and California. Grant demonstrated a talent for fighting, and even more, displayed an impressive knowledge of the strategy and tactics of warfare learned from experience, not textbooks.ĭespite his good record in the war, and a happy marriage to the sister of a West Point classmate, Grant did not do well in the peacetime army of the late 1840s and early 1850s. Although his quartermaster duties largely kept him from most battles, he won promotion and congratulations at two engagements, Monterrey and Chapultepec, showing great courage and skill as a soldier. Military Academy (1839-1843) Grant was a middling student, but a superb horseman.Ī few years after graduation from West Point, Lieutenant Grant fought in the Mexican War (1846-48). He was temperamentally unfit for the family leather goods business, making Jesse’s decision to send “Lyss” to West Point a wise one, in retrospect. Hiram was sensitive, often in ill health, but well educated for the time and place. The young Hiram Ulysses (his first and middle names were later changed to Ulysses Simpson) struggled to live up to his ambitious father’s high expectations. The oldest child of Jesse and Hannah Simpson, Grant was raised on the rough-hewn Ohio frontier first in Point Pleasant and then in nearby Georgetown. Grant was born on Apin Point Pleasant, Ohio. Commanding general of the Union Army, and eighteenth president of the United States, Ulysses S.
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