| Головна » Статті » Англійська | [ Додати статтю ] |
President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant
|
Реферат на тему: President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant 18th In , – , Vice | (1869-1873), (1873-1875), None (1875-1877) Preceded Succeeded Born | , (1822-04-27) Died | , (aged ) Nationality | American Political Spouse Occupation | () Religion | Methodist Signature Ulysses S. Grant, born Hiram Ulysses Grant (, – , ), was an general and the eighteenth (1869–1877). He achieved international fame as the leading general in the , capturing in 1863 and in 1865. He accepted the surrender of his opponent at . After service in the , an undistinguished peacetime military career, and a series of unsuccessful civilian jobs, Grant returned to service in 1861 at the outset of the Civil War and proved highly successful in training new recruits. His capture of and in February 1862 marked the first major Union victories of the Civil War and opened up prime avenues of invasion to the South. Surprised and nearly defeated at (April 1862), he fought back and took control of most of western and . His great achievement in 1862-63 was to seize control of the by defeating a series of armies and by capturing in July 1863. After a victory at in late 1863, made him general-in-chief of all . Grant was the first Union general in the war to initiate coordinated offensives across multiple theaters. While his subordinates and marched through and the respectively, Grant personally supervised the 1864 against General 's Army in Virginia. He employed against his opponent, conducting a series of large-scale battles with very high casualties that alarmed public opinion, while maneuvering ever closer to the Confederate capital, . Grant announced he would "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." Lincoln supported his general and replaced his losses, and Lee's dwindling army was forced into defending trenches around Richmond and . In April 1865 Grant's vastly larger army broke through, captured Richmond, and forced Lee to surrender at . He has been described by as "the greatest general of his age and one of the greatest strategists of any age." His in particular has been scrutinized by military specialists around the world. Grant announced generous terms for his defeated foes, and pursued a policy of peace. He broke with President in 1867, and was elected president as a in 1868. He was the first president to serve for two full terms since forty years before. He led and built a powerful patronage-based Republican party in the South, with the adroit use of the army. He took a hard line that reduced violence by groups like the . Although Grant was personally honest, he not only tolerated financial and political corruption among top aides but also protected them once exposed. He blocked reforms and defeated the in 1872, driving out many of its founders. The pushed the nation into a that Grant was helpless to reverse. typically rank Grant in the lowest quartile of U.S. presidents, primarily for his tolerance of corruption. In recent years, however, his reputation as president has improved somewhat among scholars impressed by his support for for . Unsuccessful in winning a third term in 1880, bankrupted by bad investments, and terminally ill with throat cancer, Grant wrote his , which was enormously successful among veterans, the public, and the critics. Birth and early years Ulysses Grant Birthplace, , Grant was born in a small two-room cabin in , , , 25 miles (40 km) east of on the . He was the eldest of the six children of Jesse Root Grant (1794–1873) and Hannah Simpson Grant (1798–1883). His father, a tanner, and his mother were born in Pennsylvania. In the fall of 1823, they moved to the village of in . The smell of his father's tannery was one of his earliest memories. Family On , , Grant married (1826–1902), the daughter of a slave owner. They had four children: , , , and . Military career Ulysses S. Grant Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, portrait by Allegiance Yearsservice 1839-1854, 1861-1868 Rank General of the Army (four star) Battles/wars , At the age of 17, Grant entered the at , after securing a nomination through his , . Hamer erroneously nominated him as "Ulysses S. Grant of Ohio," knowing Grant's mother's maiden name was Simpson and forgetting that Grant was referred to in his youth as "H. Ulysses Grant" or "Lyss." Grant wrote his name in the entrance register as "Ulysses Hiram Grant" (concerned that he would otherwise become known by his initials, H.U.G.), but the school refused to accept any name other than the nominated form. Upon graduation, Grant adopted the form of his new name with middle initial only. He graduated from West Point in 1843, ranking 21st in a class of 39. At the academy, he established a reputation as a fearless and expert horseman. Although this made him seem a natural for , he was assigned to duty as a regimental quartermaster, managing supplies and equipment. Ulysses S. Grant in 1843, in his West Point uniform Grant at the capture of , painting by . Mexican-American War Lieutenant Grant served in the (1846–1848) under Generals and , where, despite his assignment as a quartermaster, he got close enough to the front lines to see action, taking part in the battles of Resaca de la Palma, Palo Alto, Monterrey (where he volunteered to carry a dispatch on horseback through a sniper-lined street), and Veracruz. Once Grant saw his friend, Fred Dent, lying in the middle of the battlefield; he had been shot in the leg. Grant ran furiously into the open to rescue Dent; as they were making their way to safety, a Mexican was sneaking up behind Grant, but the Mexican was shot by a fellow U.S soldier. Grant was twice brevetted for bravery: at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. He was a remarkably close observer of the war, learning to judge the actions of colonels and generals. In the 1880s he wrote that the war was unjust, accepting the theory that it was designed to gain land open to slavery. Between wars After the Mexican-American war ended in 1848, Grant remained in the army and was moved to several different posts. He was sent to in the in 1853, where he served as quartermaster of the . His wife, eight months pregnant with their second child, could not accompany him because his salary could not support a family on the frontier. In 1854, Grant was promoted to captain (one of only 50 still on active duty) and assigned to command Company F, 4th Infantry, at , California. However, he still could not afford to bring his family out West. He tried some business ventures, but they failed. Grant resigned from the Army with little advance notice on , , offering no explanation for his abrupt decision. Rumors persisted in the Army for years that his commanding officer, Bvt. Lt. Col. , found him drunk on duty as a pay officer and offered him the choice between resignation or court-martial. Some biographers discount the rumors and suggest Grant's resignation, and his drinking, were both prompted by profound depression. According to this view, Buchanan hated Grant and concocted the drunkenness story years later to protect Buchanan's action in removing the man who became one of the most famous generals in history. The War Department stated, "Nothing stands against his good name." He wrote in his memoirs about the war against Mexico: "I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation". A civilian at age 32, Grant struggled through seven lean years. From 1854 to 1858 he labored on a family farm near , using slaves owned by his father-in-law, but it did not prosper. Grant owned one slave (whom he set free in 1859); his wife owned four slaves (two women servants and their two small boys). In 1858-59 he was a bill collector in St. Louis. Failing at everything, in humiliation he asked his father for a job, and in 1860 was made an assistant in the leather shop owned by his father and run by his younger brother in . Grant & Perkins sold harnesses, saddles, and other leather goods and purchased hides from farmers in the prosperous Galena area. Although Grant was essentially apolitical, his father-in-law was a prominent Democrat in St. Louis (a fact that lost Grant the good job of county engineer in 1859). In 1856 he voted for Democrat for president to avert secession and because "I knew " (the Republican candidate). In 1860, he favored Democrat but did not vote. In 1864, he allowed his political sponsor, Congressman , to use his private letters as campaign literature for Abraham Lincoln and the Union Party, which combined both Republicans and . He refused to announce his political affiliation until 1868, when he finally declared himself a Republican. Civil War Western Theater: 1861–63 The of President Grant while he lived in . Shortly after Confederate forces fired upon , President put out a call for 75,000 volunteers. Grant helped recruit a company of volunteers and accompanied it to , the capital of . Grant accepted a position offered by Illinois Governor to recruit and train volunteers, which he accomplished with efficiency. Grant pressed for a field command; Yates appointed him colonel of the undisciplined and rebellious in June 1861. Grant was deployed to Missouri to protect the . Under pro-Confederate Governor , Missouri had declared it was an armed neutral in the conflict and would attack troops from either side entering the state. By the first of August the Union army had forcibly removed Jackson and Missouri was controlled by Union forces, who had to deal with numerous southern sympathizers. In August, Grant was appointed brigadier general of volunteers by Lincoln, who had been lobbied by Congressman Elihu Washburne. At the end of August, Grant was selected by Western Theater commander Major General to command the critical District of Southeast Missouri. Battles of Belmont, Henry, and Donelson Grant's first important strategic act of the war was to take the initiative to seize the town of , immediately after the violated the state's neutrality by occupying . He fought his first battle, an indecisive action against Confederate Brig. Gen. , at , in November 1861. Three months later, aided by 's Navy gunboats, he captured two major Confederate fortresses, on the and on the . At Donelson, his army was hit by a surprise Confederate attack (once again by Pillow) while he was temporarily absent. Displaying the cool determination that would characterize his leadership in future battles, he organized counterattacks that carried the day. Both General Floyd and Pillow, the two senior Confederate commanders fled. The Confederate commander, Brig. Gen. , an old friend of Grant's and senior commander with Floyd and Pillow fleeing, yielded to Grant's hard conditions of "no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender." Buckner's surrender of over 12,000 men made Grant a national figure almost overnight, and he was nicknamed "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. The captures of the two forts with over 12,000 prisoners were the first major Union victories of the war, gaining him national recognition. Desperate for generals who could fight and win, Lincoln promoted him to major general of volunteers. Although Grant's new-found fame did not seem to affect his temperament, it did have an impact on his personal life. At one point during the Civil War, a picture of Grant with a cigar in his mouth was published. He was then inundated with cigars from well wishers. Before that he had smoked only sporadically, but he could not give them all away, so he took up smoking them, a habit which may have contributed to the development of throat cancer later in his life; one story after the war claimed that he smoked over 10,000 in five years. Despite his significant victories (or perhaps because of them), Grant fell out of favor with his superior, Major General . Halleck had a particular distaste for drunks and, believing Grant was an alcoholic, was biased towards him from the beginning. After Grant visited , where he met with Halleck's rival, , Halleck used the visit as an excuse to relieve Grant of field command on . Personal intervention from President Lincoln caused Halleck to restore Grant, who rejoined his army on . Shiloh General Grant at , photographed by in 1864 In early April 1862, Grant was surprised by Generals and at the . The sheer violence of the Confederate attack sent the Union forces reeling. Nevertheless, Grant refused to retreat. With grim determination, he stabilized his line. Then, on the second day, with the help of timely reinforcements, Grant counterattacked and turned a serious reverse into a victory. The victory at Shiloh came at a high price; with over 23,000 casualties, it was the bloodiest battle in the history of the United States up to that time. Halleck responded to the surprise and the disorganized nature of the fighting by taking command of the army in the field himself on , relegating Grant to the powerless position of second-in-command for the campaign in . Despondent over this reversal, Grant decided to resign. The intervention of his subordinate and good friend, , caused him to remain. When Halleck was promoted to general-in-chief of the Union Army, Grant resumed his position as commander of the (later more famously named the ) on . He commanded the army for the battles of and that fall. Vicksburg In an attempt to capture the fortress of , Grant spent the winter of 1862–1863 conducting a series of operations to gain access to the city through the region's bayous. These attempts failed. However, his strategy to take Vicksburg in 1863 is considered one of the most masterful in military history. Grant marched his troops down the west bank of the Mississippi and crossed the river by using ships that had run the guns at Vicksburg. There, he moved inland and—in a daring move that defied conventional military principles—cut loose from most of his supply lines. Operating in enemy territory, Grant moved swiftly, never giving the Confederates, under the command of , an opportunity to concentrate their forces against him. Grant's army went eastward, captured the city of , and severed the rail line to Vicksburg. Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant Knowing that the Confederates could no longer send reinforcements to the Vicksburg garrison, Grant turned west and won the . The Confederates retreated inside their fortifications at Vicksburg, and Grant promptly surrounded the city. Finding that assaults against the impregnable breastworks were futile, he settled in for a six-week . Cut off and with no possibility of relief, Pemberton surrendered to Grant on , . It was a devastating defeat for the Southern cause, effectively splitting the Confederacy in two, and, in conjunction with the Union victory at the previous day, is widely considered the of the war. For this victory, President Lincoln promoted Grant to the rank of major general in the regular army, effective . A distinguished British historian has written that "we must go back to the campaigns of Napoleon to find equally brilliant results accomplished in the same space of time with such a small loss." Lincoln said after the capture of Vicksburg and after the lost opportunity after Gettysburg, "Grant is my man and I am his the rest of the War." Chattanooga After the Union general retreated to . Confederate followed to , surrounding the Federals on three sides. On , Grant was placed in command of the city. He immediately relieved Rosecrans and replaced him with . Devising a plan known as the "Cracker Line", Thomas's chief engineer, opened a new supply route to Chattanooga, helping to better supply the Army of the Cumberland. Upon reprovisioning and reinforcing, the morale of Union troops lifted. In late November, they went on the offensive. The started out with Sherman's failed attack on the Confederate right. He not only attacked the wrong mountain but committed his troops piecemeal, allowing them to be defeated by one Confederate division. In response, Grant ordered Thomas to launch a demonstration on the center, which could draw defenders away from Sherman. Thomas waited until he was certain that Hooker, with reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac, was engaged on the Confederate left before he launched the Army of the Cumberland at the center of the Confederate line. Hooker's men broke the Confederate left, while Thomas's men made an unexpected but spectacular charge straight up and broke the fortified center of the Confederate line. Grant was initially angry at Thomas that his orders for a demonstration were exceeded, but the assaulting wave sent the Confederates into a head-long retreat, opening the way for the Union to invade , and the heart of the Confederacy. Grant reportedly said afterward, "Damn, I had nothing to do with this battle," according to Hooker. Grant's willingness to fight and ability to win impressed President Lincoln, who appointed him in the regular army—a rank not awarded since (or 's appointment), recently re-authorized by the with Grant in mind—on , . On , Grant became general-in-chief of all the armies of the . General-in-Chief and strategy for victory In March 1864, Grant put Major General in immediate command of all forces in the West and moved his headquarters to where he turned his attention to the long-frustrated Union effort to destroy the ; his secondary objective was to capture the Confederate capital of , but Grant knew that the latter would happen automatically once the former was accomplished. He devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the heart of the Confederacy from multiple directions: Grant, , and against Lee near Richmond; in the ; Sherman to invade , defeat , and capture ; and to operate against railroad supply lines in ; and to capture . Grant was the first general to attempt such a coordinated strategy in the war and the first to understand the concepts of , in which the destruction of an enemy's economic infrastructure that supplied its armies was as important as tactical victories on the battlefield. Overland Campaign, Petersburg, and Appomattox The was the military thrust needed by the Union to defeat the Confederacy. It pitted Grant against the great commander in an epic contest. It began on , , when the crossed the , marching into an area of scrubby undergrowth and second growth trees known as the Wilderness. It was such difficult terrain that the was able to use it to prevent Grant from fully exploiting his numerical advantage. The was a stubborn, bloody two-day fight, resulting in advantage to neither side, but with heavy casualties on both. After similar battles in Virginia against Lee, all of Grant's predecessors had retreated from the field. Grant ignored the setback and ordered an advance around Lee's flank to the southeast, which lifted the morale of his army. Grant's strategy was not just to win individual battles, it was to fight constant battles in order to wear down and destroy Lee's army. Poster of "Grant from West Point to Appomattox." Sigel's Shenandoah campaign and Butler's James River campaign both failed. Lee was able to reinforce with troops used to defend against these assaults. The campaign continued, but Lee, anticipating Grant's move, beat him to , where, on , the fighting resumed. The lasted 14 days. On , Grant wrote a famous dispatch containing the line "I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all summer". These words summed up his attitude about the fighting, and the next day, , he ordered a massive assault by Hancock's 2nd Corps that broke a portion of Lee's line, captured 30 artillery pieces, took 4,000 prisoners, and broke forever the famous Stonewall Division. In spite of mounting Union casualties, the contest's dynamics changed in Grant's favor. Most of Lee's great victories in earlier years had been won on the offensive, employing surprise movements and fierce assaults. Now, he was forced to continually fight on the defensive without a chance to regroup or replenish against an opponent that was well supplied and had superior numbers. The next major battle, however, demonstrated the power of a well-prepared defense. was one of Grant's most controversial battles, in which he launched on a massive three-corps assault without adequate reconnaissance on a well-fortified defensive line, resulting in horrific casualties (3,000–7,000 killed, wounded, and missing in the first 40 minutes, although modern estimates have determined that the total was likely less than half of the famous figure of 7,000 that has been used in books for decades; as many as 12,000 for the day, far outnumbering the Confederate losses). Grant said of the battle in his memoirs "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made. I might say the same thing of the assault of the 22nd of May, 1863, at Vicksburg. At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained." But Grant moved on and kept up the pressure. He stole a march on Lee, slipping his troops across the . Arriving at , first, Grant should have captured the rail junction city, but he failed because of the overly cautious actions of his subordinate William Smith. Over the next three days, a number of Union assaults to take the city were launched. But all failed, and finally on , Lee's veterans arrived. Faced with fully manned trenches in his front, Grant was left with no alternative but to settle down to a . As the summer drew on and with Grant's and armies stalled, respectively in Virginia and Georgia, politics took center stage. There was a presidential election in the fall, and the citizens of the North had difficulty seeing any progress in the war effort. To make matters worse for , Lee detached a small army under the command of Lieutenant General , hoping it would force Grant to disengage forces to pursue him. Early invaded north through the and reached the outskirts of . Although unable to take the city, Early embarrassed the simply by threatening its inhabitants, making Abraham Lincoln's re-election prospects even bleaker. In early September, the efforts of Grant's coordinated strategy finally bore fruit. First, Sherman took Atlanta. Then, Grant dispatched to the to deal with Early. It became clear to the people of the North that the war was being won, and Lincoln was re-elected by a wide margin. Later in November, Sherman began his . Sheridan and Sherman both followed Grant's strategy of by destroying the economic infrastructures of the Valley and a large swath of Georgia and the . At the beginning of April 1865, Grant's relentless pressure finally forced Lee to evacuate Richmond, and after a nine-day retreat, Lee surrendered his army at on , . There, Grant offered generous terms that did much to ease the tensions between the armies and preserve some semblance of Southern pride, which would be needed to reconcile the warring sides. Within a few weeks, the American Civil War was effectively over; minor actions would continue until surrendered his forces in the on , . Immediately after Lee's surrender, Grant had the sad honor of serving as a pallbearer at the funeral of his greatest champion, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had been quoted after the massive losses at Shiloh as saying, "I can't spare this man. He fights." It was a two-sentence description that completely caught the essence of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant's fighting style was what one fellow general called "that of a bulldog". The term accurately captures his tenacity, but it oversimplifies his considerable strategic and tactical capabilities. Although a master of combat by out-maneuvering his opponent (such as at Vicksburg and in the Overland Campaign against Lee), Grant was not afraid to order direct assaults, often when the Confederates were themselves launching offensives against him. Such tactics often resulted in heavy casualties for Grant's men, but they wore down the Confederate forces proportionately more and inflicted irreplaceable losses. Many in the North denounced Grant as a "butcher" in 1864, an accusation made both by Northern civilians appalled at the staggering number of casualties suffered by Union armies for what appeared to be negligible gains, and by , Northern who either favored the Confederacy or simply wanted an end to the war, even at the cost of recognizing Southern independence. Grant persevered, refusing to withdraw as had his predecessors, and Lincoln, despite public outrage and pressure within the government, stuck by Grant, refusing to replace him. Although Grant lost battles in 1864, he won all his campaigns. Historian Michael Korda explained his strategic genius: " | Grant understood topography, the importance of supply lines, the instant judgment of the balance between his own strengths and the enemy's weaknesses, and above all the need to keep his armies moving forward, despite casualties, even when things had gone wrong—that and the simple importance of inflicting greater losses on the enemy than he can sustain, day after day, until he breaks. Grant the boy never retraced his steps. Grant the man did not retreat—he advanced. Generals who do that win wars. | ” After the war, on , , Congress authorized the newly created rank of , the equivalent of a full (four-star) general in the modern . Grant was appointed as such by President on the same day. Reconstruction: Grant and Johnson As commanding general of the army, Grant had a difficult relationship with President Johnson. Although he accompanied Johnson on a national stumping tour during the 1866 elections, he did not appear to be a supporter of Johnson's moderate policies toward the South. Johnson tried to use Grant to defeat the Radical Republicans by making Grant the Secretary of War in place of , whom he could not remove without the approval of Congress under the . Grant refused but kept his military command. That made him a hero to the Radicals, who gave him the Republican nomination for president in 1868. He was chosen as the presidential candidate at the in in May 1868, with no real opposition. In his letter of acceptance to the party, Grant concluded with "Let us have peace," which became the Republican campaign slogan. In , he won against former New York governor with a lead of 300,000 out of a total of 5,716,082 votes cast but by a commanding 214 Electoral College votes to 80. He ran about 100,000 votes ahead of the Republican ticket, suggesting an unusually powerful appeal to veterans. When he entered the White House, he was politically inexperienced and, at age 46, the youngest man yet elected president. | |
| Переглядів: 579 | |
| Всього коментарів: 0 | |