Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant, born Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822, commanded the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War before serving as the 18th President of the United States from March 4, 1869, to March 4, 1877. He rose to prominence through victories in the war's western theater, most notably the 1863 Vicksburg campaign that gave Union forces control of the Mississippi River, after which President Abraham Lincoln promoted him to lieutenant general and command of all Union armies; he defeated Confederate general Robert E. Lee through the Overland Campaign, concluding with Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House in 1865. Elected president in 1868 and reelected in 1872, he worked to stabilize the postwar economy, supported Reconstruction and the Fifteenth Amendment, prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan, and created the first United States Civil Service Commission in 1871 as well as the Department of Justice. After leaving office he undertook a world tour, becoming the first president to circumnavigate the globe, and in his final months, dying of throat cancer on July 23, 1885, completed his memoirs, which became a major commercial and literary success.