Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) American general and 18th president of the United States (1869-1877) won fame for his capture of Vicksburg (1863) and defeat of Robert E. Lee (1865), thereby winning the American Civil War.

Early career

Grant was born April 27, 1822, in a two-room cabin at Point Pleasant, Ohio. His father, Jesse Root Grant, was descended from undistinguished Puritan forebears who had immigrated to Massachusetts in the early 17th century. His mother, Hannah Simpson Grant, was a typical hard-working and pious frontier woman. The elder Grant was a tanner who by hard work and native shrewdness managed to acquire a modest competence. Lacking much education himself, he was determined that his sons should have the best the community offered. From the time he was 6 until he was nearly 17, young Grant regularly attended school, first in Georgetown, Ohio, to which the family had moved soon after he was born, and later at nearby academies. WHile working on the family, he developed a fondness for horses almost amounting to a passion and a liking for outdoor life that in after years stood him in good stead.