Biography

Ulysses S. Grant was born to Jesse and Hannah Grant on April 27, 1822 in the small town of Point Pleasant, Ohio. After growing up middle class, his parents sent him away to the West Point MIlitary Academy in New York where he spends the next four year as a cadet in the military. After graduating from West Point, Grant returned home to meet and marry his wife, Julia, and begin to work at his father's leather shop. Shortly after his return, the governor appointed him to command a volunteer regiment at the begin of the Civil War in 1861. After many victorious battles, President at the time, Lincoln, appointed Ulysses S. Grant to General-in-Chief of the Army in March of 1864. About a year later the war came to an end when Lee surrendered to Grant at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia. After the Civil War, Grant was awarded the first ever honor of being a "Four star General". Later, in 1868, Grant was nominated for President as a radical republican candidate. He won the 1869 election by about 300,000 popular votes and 135 electoral votes, then, was re-elected for a second term from 1873-1877, winning by a significantly larger number than the first election. Not long after the end of his presidency, in 1883, Grant suffers a serious injury to his hip after taking a hard fall on some pavement. This was not the end of unfortunate events for Grant; he was diagnosed with cancer of the throat in September of 1884. The cancer spread rapidly, which eventually ended his life on July 23, 1885.