Ulysses S. Grant

On April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio, Ulysses S. Grant was born into a family involved in tanning and western commerce. He graduated from West Point in 1843, served in the Mexican-American War, and after a difficult prewar civilian period returned to command when the Civil War began. Illinois volunteer service quickly revealed the operational talent that had been hidden in his earlier career.

Grant captured Forts Henry and Donelson in 1862, won at Vicksburg in 1863, and as general in chief coordinated the relentless campaigns that ended in Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox in 1865. Elected president in 1868, he used the Enforcement Acts and federal troops to combat the Ku Klux Klan and defend the Reconstruction Amendments. His administration also navigated corruption scandals and the Panic of 1873, showing both the reach and the limits of postwar federal power.

Grant's military victories preserved the Union, and his presidency helped give real force to the Fifteenth Amendment and early civil rights enforcement. Later civil rights struggles and historical reassessments of Reconstruction repeatedly returned to the possibilities and failures visible in his years of leadership.