#union generals

[deadpresidents]

Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant at his headquarters in Cold Harbor, Virginia, in June 1864, after losing a disastrous battle to Confederate General Robert E. Lee's forces.

"The hardest part of this General business is the responsibility for the loss of one's men. I can see no other way out of it, however; we've got to keep at them. But it is hard, very hard, to see all these brave fellows killed and wounded. It means aching hearts back home."

[humanismtoday]

[deadpresidents]

"Ulysses Simpson Grant's period in office seems to prove the theory that we can coast along for eight years without a President...Grant's period as President was one of the low points in our history...I don't think Grant knew very much about what the President's job was except that he was Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. That was the thing, I think, that impressed him more than anything, and he was pretty naïve or ignorant about everything else...He wasn't even a Chief Executive; he was another sleepwalker whose Administration was even more crooked than Warren Harding's, if that's possible."

-- President Harry S. Truman, on Ulysses S. Grant

[deadpresidents]

After that terrible Sunday at Shiloh, I started out to find [General] Grant and see how we were to get across the river. It was pouring rain and pitch dark, there was considerable confusion, and the only thing just then possible as it seemed to me, was to put the river between us and the enemy and recuperate. Full of only this idea, I ploughed around in the mud until at last I found him standing backed up against a wet tree, his hat well slouched down and coat pulled up around his ears, an old tin lantern in his hand, the rain pelting on us both, and the inevitable cigar glowing between his teeth, having retired, evidently, for the night. Some wise and sudden instinct impelled me to a more cautious and less impulsive proposition than at first intended, and I opened up with, "Well Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" "Yes," he said, with a short, sharp puff of the cigar; "lick 'em tomorrow, though."

-- General William Tecumseh Sherman, on General Ulysses S. Grant after the first day of the Civil War's Battle of Shiloh in 1862, as told to the Washington Post (published May 17, 1891).

[deadpresidents]

"General Grant is a copious worker and fighter, but a very meager writer and telegrapher...[He] doesn't worry and bother me. He isn't shrieking for reinforcements all the time. He takes what troops we can safely give him...and does the best he can with what he has got...[He is] a very determined little fellow."

-- President Abraham Lincoln, praising General Ulysses S. Grant, especially when compared with Lincoln's frustration for the previous commanding Generals of the Union Army during the Civil War, 1864

[deadpresidents]

[Portrait of General Ulysses S. Grant by Constant Mayer, 1866]

Happy 202nd birthday to Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States and the unlikely commanding General who helped defeat the Confederacy in the Civil War and preserve the Union. Grant was born (and originally named Hiram Ulysses Grant) on April 27, 1822 in Point Pleasant, Ohio, and was the first of six Presidents born in Ohio who were elected in 52-year span between 1868 and 1920. Grant served two terms in the White House (1869-1877) and died on July 23, 1885 at a cottage on Mount McGregor in upstate New York where he worked tirelessly to complete his Memoirs while dying of cancer, finishing the book just five days before his death.

Keep an eye on your dashboard throughout the day for a bunch of posts about General Grant!

[deadpresidents]

Just to add to that last post about the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, I also want to note that Grant's Civil War BFF, General William Tecumseh Sherman, also wrote a really good, very readable autobiography. Much like Grant's Memoirs, the Memoirs of General William Tecumseh Sherman (BOOK | KINDLE) are much less formal than most things written in the 19th Century and a little more lucid to 21st Century readers. Grant's book is the better of the two, but General Sherman's is definitely worth reading if you're a Civil War buff.

[deadpresidents]

"He has done more than any other President to degrade the character of Cabinet officers by choosing them on the model of the military staff, because of their pleasant personal relation to him and not because of their national reputation and the public needs...His imperturbability is amazing. I am in doubt whether to call it greatness of stupidity."

-- Then-Congressman James Garfield, on President Ulysses S. Grant and the scandals engulfing several of Grant's Cabinet members and advisers, 1874