Grant wasn’t brilliant, especially handsome, or charming. He was an alcoholic and he wasn’t good at public speaking. He made mistakes, especially when it came to trusting businessmen. What made him successful was his honesty, his tenacity, and his reliance on others. He remained calm in battle. Once, while writing a dispatch, a shell landed near him. He only looked up briefly before he returned to writing.

Hiram Ulysses Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio in 1822, weighing 10 and 3/4 pounds. His father favored the name Hiram, while his maternal grandmother was a fan of the Greek hero Ulysses. The family moved to nearby Georgetown a year after Grant’s birth. He had three younger sisters and two younger brothers. His father operated a tannery. His mother was serious and reserved. She was a lifelong Democrat who refused to visit her son in the White House while he was president.

Ulysses wasn’t particularly studious at school, but had a natural affinity for horses. As a toddler, he’d play underneath the bellies of horses and sometimes swing from a horse’s tail. Neighbors were horrified, but his mother wasn’t concerned. By the age of 8, he was able to handle a wagon team. At 11, he was plowing the family’s fields and handling all the other horse-related chores. He became a local celebrity in his teens, as he was able to train spirited horses. People would gather to watch him work.

At 17, his father sent him to West Point military academy. Grant didn’t want to go but his father made him. When his name was submitted to the war department, it was mistakenly written  as Ulysses S. Grant (the S for his mother’s maiden name Simpson) and the name stuck.

His fellow classmates included many future Civil War generals. Because his initials were U. S. Grant, he was nicknamed Uncle Sam Grant. He befriended James Longstreet who was boisterous, loud, and large while Grant was shy, reserved, and short. Grant didn’t dance (he was tone deaf) and didn’t know how to talk to girls.

He didn’t care for West Point and didn’t want a military life. Instead of textbooks, he preferred to read novels from the library. He at least excelled at art class. While he was a middling cadet overall, he was the best horseman in his class. He was one of two cadets who could ride an intractable horse named York. He got York to jump a hurdle so high, the record held for 25 years.

After West Point, there was no vacancy in the cavalry, so he was assigned to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri along with his friend Longstreet. He applied to be a mathematics professor at West Point and was accepted, but had to wait for a vacancy to occur.

In Missouri, he often visited the family of one of his fellow officers and became enamored of his sister Julia who’d just returned from finishing school. She enjoyed his sense of humor. When her pet canary died, Grant made a miniature coffin painted yellow and held a mock funeral with eight officers in solemn dress. They both loved horses. Her horse Psyche was one of the few that could keep up with Grant’s spirited horse. Grant’s unit was sent to Louisiana in preparation for the Mexican War. Before leaving, he and Julia were secretly engaged. He gave her his class ring and she gave him a lock of her hair.

Mexico originally encouraged American immigrants into the Texas territory. However, the immigrants soon outnumbered the Mexicans. When Mexico outlawed slavery, the American immigrants declared Texas an independent nation. Eventually, they were annexed into the United States.

Grant thought the Mexican War was unjust, however he kept his political views to himself and was a good soldier. He served under future president Zachary Taylor who was his role model. Taylor had an informal style, often not wearing a uniform and fraternizing with common soldiers, a style which Grant would adopt.

They marched to the Rio Grande, going into what was then Mexican territory. Mexico said if they didn’t return to American soil, it would be considered an act of war. The Americans stayed put. Hostilities commenced.

The Americans won several battles and marched further into Mexico. Taylor instructed his troops to not take any private property from the Mexican civilians without paying for it. Members of the regular army were joined by inexperienced volunteers. The volunteers from the deep south were so used to slaves doing everything for them, they didn’t know how to chop their own wood or draw their own water.

Taylor had to train the volunteers and set up a supply train. Volunteers from Texas were impatient and claimed they didn’t need supplies. They marched into Mexico on their own, ran out of ammunition after an hour, weren’t able to hold on to any place they conquered, and had to abandon their sick and wounded. They learned the hard way that only fools rush in without proper preparation.

Grant was assigned to be quartermaster and commissary officer of the 4th infantry. He objected because he wanted to share in the danger with the rest of the troops, but being in charge of logistics gave him experience that would serve him well in the Civil War. Unlike other Union armies, his forces had steady food and ammunition trains.

During the attack on Monterrey, Grant disobeyed orders to stay at camp and joined the charge. When retreat was sounded, he gave his horse to Lieutenant Hoskins who was wounded. Hoskins didn’t make it. Grant returned to the battlefield at night to identify Hoskins’ body and tended to a wounded soldier he found on the battlefield.

Grant became acting adjutant with his regiment. The brigade needed to be resupplied, but it would be dangerous for a messenger to go. Grant volunteered. Like a trick rider in a rodeo, he rode his horse Nelly with his body clinging to the side to avoid gun fire.

Grant helped take Mexico City by installing a howitzer in a church belfry. Mexico surrendered and gave the US all Mexican land north of the Rio Grande in exchange for $15 million. It took ten months for the negotiations. During this time, Grant improved his Spanish and grew to love the Mexican people. Grant was granted a retroactive promotion to first lieutenant and a temporary promotion to captain. During the Mexican War, Grant served with over 50 officers who would become generals in the Civil War.

While in Mexico, Grant climbed the volcano of Popocatépetl, went spelunking in the caves of Cuernavaca, attended horse races, the theatre, and a bull fight (he was disgusted by the mistreatment of the bull and left early).

He finally got to return home to Julia who he hadn’t seen in three years, although they had exchanged love letters during the war. They married with Longstreet as his best man, and Cadmus Wilcox and Bernard Pratte as ushers. (All three would later surrender to Grant at Appomattox.)

During peacetime, he was assigned first to the Canadian border, then to California. Since Julia was eight months pregnant with their second child at the time, she stayed with his parents while he made the move to California.

The 4th Infantry would sail from New York to Panama, cross the isthmus over land, then sail to San Francisco with soldiers and their families. In Panama, a cholera epidemic was raging that killed almost half the people, including all the infants.

When they reached Panama City, Grant set up a field hospital. When orderlies refused to care for the sick, Grant tended to them himself, only sleeping for two or three hours at a time. He remained calm while others panicked. Later, he would talk more about the horrors of Panama than his battles. In his first presidential message to Congress, he recommended building a canal to keep other people from having to make the dangerous land crossing.

He arrived in California during the height of the gold rush and thought getting rich would be easy. He watched fellow soldier Joseph Hooker making money off land speculation and Julia’s brothers get rich operating a hotel and ferry service. While the 4th Infantry was stationed at Fort Vancouver, a merchant persuaded Grant to invest in a store, then left California without paying Grant back.

He had a string of bad luck. He bought cattle and hogs in the autumn, planning on selling them in the spring, but lost all his money. He invested in ice, which was selling for an outrageous price in San Francisco, but unfortunately, a headwind caused the ship to be delayed by two weeks, at which time the ice had all melted. He then tried to make money farming, but a flood destroyed his crop. He then tried to sell chickens to San Francisco, but once again the ship got delayed and all the chickens died. He invested in a social club, but the agent he hired ran away with the money. He was too trusting.

Despairing over his failed businesses and his separation from his wife and children, Grant turned to drink. Due to his metabolism and slight frame, a single drink or two could get him drunk. His “sprees” began to affect his work. He got a permanent promotion to captain, but had less work to do. The boredom drove him to drink more. He was eventually forced to resign from the army after being discovered drunk on the job.

He stopped drinking, but fell into poverty and struggled to support his family for the next seven years. He tried and failed at several occupations: farmer, real estate salesman, rent collector, businessman. He was reduced to peddling firewood on a street corner. Unable to sell crops due to the Panic of 1857, he fell into poverty and had to sell his gold pocket watch to buy presents for his family for Christmas. In 1858, a cold spring and record freeze destroyed most of his crops.

He gave up farming and went into business with a friend selling real estate and collecting rent in St. Louis. However, he was too tenderhearted to collect rent and too honest to sell real estate. It’s unclear exactly how, but Grant acquired a slave named William Jones from his father-in-law. He could have sold him for $1,000 and he desperately needed the money, however, he freed him instead.

He got a good job as a clerk in the US customshouse, but within a month, the collector of customs died and his replacement let Grant go. As a boy, he’d vowed never to work in the family tannery, but he was finally brought low enough to ask his father for a job. His father gave him a job working under his younger brothers in Illinois.

When the Civil War broke out, he tried to rejoin the army, but had a lot of difficulty doing so. He finally had some good luck when the governor appointed him command of an Illinois infantry regiment. The previous colonel had failed to maintain discipline and the men rioted over bad food, burned the guardhouse, and roamed around the countryside stealing pigs and chickens.

Having spent the last 7 years as a civilian, Grant knew how to handle the unruly volunteers. They liked to think for themselves and didn’t react well to strict discipline. They could be led, but not driven. He was strict with his officers and NCOs who were used to discipline, however.

Before entering combat, Grant was promoted to brigadier general thanks to Congressman Elihu Washburne who also came from Galena, Illinois and wanted to see a fellow local make good. This made Grant 35th in the Union chain of command.

Grant was chosen to lead the Union offensive to take possession of the Mississippi River. In addition to ensuring his men had all needed supplies, he also made mail a priority, knowing from his personal experience how necessary letters from home are to morale.

His first battle as general was at Belmont, which he attacked without orders. After initial success, his men started celebrating too early and failed to take the Confederates prisoner. Reinforcements arrived and drove Grant’s forces out. Grant helped the sick and wounded retreat and was the last man to board ship, riding his horse over a single plank. The losses were about equal on both sides, but the Union newspapers presented it as a victory. The Confederates thought they had been the victors until boatloads of their dead returned home and they learned they had a two to one advantage but still had higher casualties. Humbled, they went on the defensive and started fortifying Columbus rather than continuing their attack.

Grant attacked Fort Henry next. It was along a river so the army and navy worked together. The barrage from the Union’s ironclad gunboats frightened the Confederates so much, most of the men retreated to Fort Donelson almost immediately. Grant treated the defeated Confederate officers with respect, letting them stay on his headquarters steamer and take their meals with his staff.

Grant disobeyed orders to hold Fort Henry and marched on Fort Donelson next. While he was near the bottom of his West Point class in tactics, he had learned the importance of maintaining momentum from his time in the Mexican War.

Fort Donelson was better defended. The gun boats were all disabled by fire from the fort. This battle had to be fought by land. After a hard fought battle (I can’t do justice to Smith’s amazing description of battle, you have to read it yourself), Grant took the Fort and ordered wounded on both sides be tended to.

Grant’s old friend Simon Bolivar Buckner surrendered Fort Donelson to him, the first Confederate general to surrender. He asked for an armistice to discuss terms of surrender. Grant replied nothing other than unconditional surrender would be accepted.

He was magnanimous in victory. He allowed Confederate officers to keep their sidearms. Soldiers could keep their personal items. The prisoners were allowed to occupy their old camps and got the same rations as the Union soldiers. They were restrained only by their own commanders. When they surrendered, the Union troops didn’t cheer or make any hurtful comments towards their defeated foes. Grant hated vindictiveness and didn’t want to humiliate anyone.

U.S. Grant was promoted to major general, making him the 10th ranking general in the Union army. He was nicknamed Unconditional Surrender to match his initials. Because he smoked a cigar during the attack, gifts of cigars flooded in.

Grant wanted to keep the momentum going and attack before the Confederates had time to resupply and get reinforcements, but higher ups ordered him to wait for his own reinforcements to arrive. They believed that capturing key places by maneuvering would make fighting unnecessary. This delay caused the war to drag out years longer.

The Confederates launched a surprise attack on Grant at Shiloh. Before the attack, Grant’s horse lost its footing during a heavy rainstorm and fell, pinning him beneath. His ankle was injured and he needed crutches for a few days. After initial victory, Confederates paused to celebrate and plunder the Yankee camp, allowing the Union forces to reestablish their lines.

Due to an old dueling injury, Confederate General Johnston’s right leg was numb. During the battle, he was shot in the leg but didn’t feel it. An artery was severed and he died of blood loss.

The battle was bloody. According to Grant, there were so many dead bodies, one could walk across the battlefield without touching the ground. Losses were similar on both sides. On the first day of battle, the Confederates drove the Union back and thought they’d won. They expected Grant to retreat during the night and made no battle plans for the next morning. Grant, however, did plan an attack and had also received reinforcements. The next morning, the Confederates were the ones who were surprised and forced to retreat.

One of the things that made Grant the best Civil War general was the simplicity of his orders. He knew things changed quickly in battle and gave his subordinates leeway to do what they needed to do without specifying movements in too much detail.

Southern producers of cotton had been cut off from foreign markets, but secretly traded with northerners, including many soldiers. In response, Grant expelled all Jews from his department. When Lincoln learned of this, he revoked Grant’s order. Grant later apologized for his error. (To make up for this, he appointed more than 50 Jewish people to federal office when he was president.)

Grant next set his sights on Vicksburg. Since a frontal assault didn’t work, he attempted a number of ambitious experiments (digging canals, destroying a levee, etc.) so he could get boats into position, but these experiments didn’t work. To add insult to injury, a servant threw out his dentures and he had to go without for a month. He once again turned to drinking and people asked that he be fired, but Lincoln stood by him. His wife Julia would sometimes visit him in the lulls between battles and she helped to keep him sober, but she wasn’t there during his campaign against Vicksburg.

Grant’s adjutant, Colonel John Rawlins, who had an alcoholic father, threatened to resign if Grant kept drinking. While Grant would occasionally go on benders after this, these incidents were few and far between thanks to Rawlins who stayed with Grant throughout the rest of the war and even went with him to Washington.

Grant decided to attack Vicksburg from the south where it was weakest. This was risky as it would cut him off from his supply base and leave them surrounded by the enemy. They would have to live off the land. However, this would also allow them to move faster.

Grant employed blitzkrieg tactics, marching 180 miles in two weeks without tents and irregular rations, fighting five major engagements, inflicting 7,000 casualties while suffering half that. They hurried across the bridge at Hankinson’s Ferry before the Confederate demolition team was able to destroy it.

He went after the city of Jackson first to cut off Vicksburg’s rail link to the Confederacy. The Confederate officers, fellow West Point graduates, couldn’t fathom Grant cutting off his supply lines and were taken by surprise. Jackson was in Union hands before many residents of the city even knew what was happening.

After winning a couple battles along the way, he then laid siege to Vicksburg which eventually surrendered on July 4th, 1863. Once again, the only terms he offered was unconditional surrender. Rather than fill up the Union prisons he let the men go and allowed the Confederate officers to keep their guns, but not their slaves. Grant was promoted to major general in the regular army, the highest rank in the nation.

Grant’s next stunning victory was at Chattanooga where Union forces were under siege. Many wanted him to replace Lincoln as president, but he supported Lincoln and was too busy winning a war to run for office anyway. Congress revived the rank of lieutenant general, last held by Washington, to promote Grant to be the head of the entire Union army.

The previous general in chief was too cautious and made waging war too complicated. Grant’s simple but effective strategy was to ignore cities, rail junctions and other strategic points and focus only on destroying the enemy army. “The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can and keep moving on.”

Robert E. Lee had bested the previous Union generals he’d fought against on Virginia soil, but Ulysses S. Grant wasn’t as timid as previous generals had been. He stubbornly pressed forward no matter how difficult Lee made it. It took a year-long war of attrition and included brutal trench warfare at Spotsylvania where bodies were sprawled ten bodies deep and the firing so intense a two-foot-diameter tree was cut down by bullets. Grant eventually won out.

He would keep his military plans secret even from his own staff until the last possible moment so the enemy would have no way of learning about them. He had more casualties than Lee because Lee was often hidden behind fortifications, but he ended up winning through sheer determination.

After Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, he allowed the Confederates to keep their horses since he knew they’d need them for farming. He didn’t take them prisoner, but allowed them to return home. Lincoln had asked him to go easy on the Confederates once they surrendered so they could quickly rejoin the Union.

Grant and Lincoln grew to be friends at the end of the war. Grant was invited to join Lincoln at the theatre the night of his assassination, but his wife wanted to hurry home to see their children, so he wasn’t there. He felt guilty about this for years. An assassin tried to break into Grant’s train car, but was rebuffed. Assassins also targeted Secretary Seward and the vice president that night. Grant arranged Lincoln’s funeral. He called an African American regiment to serve as honor guard.

During the Civil War, Napoleon III had put an emperor in charge of Mexico and had provided support to the Confederates. As general in chief, Grant assembled an army along the Rio Grande to deal with lingering Confederate support, but also to put Mexico’s rightful president back in power, which they helped to do by secretly supplying 60,000 rifles.

Grant convinced President Johnson not to put Lee on trial. He also advocated for the Freedmen’s Bureau, which Johnson despised. When white terrorists massacred black citizens in Memphis, Grant was appalled that the civil authorities did nothing, but white supremacist President Johnson didn’t care.

When there was a rash of violence against black people in Mississippi, Grant sent in the army with instructions to arrest violent offenders if the civil authorities didn’t. In New Orleans, local police assisted a mob in killing 40 people for being in favor of black suffrage before federal troops restored order. Grant placed the city under martial law. President Johnson claimed abolitionists were behind the massacre!

Since Congress kept overriding his vetoes, Johnson wanted to get rid of congress and replace them with southerners. He asked Grant if the military would support him in this and Grant said they wouldn’t. Grant feared another civil war could break out and started making preparations. Johnson wanted to get rid of Grant by sending him as an ambassador to Mexico. Grant said he was obliged to follow the president’s military orders, but this wasn’t a military mission, so he refused.

Johnson wanted to deploy troops to Maryland to support the white supremacist state government who wanted to illegally add ex-rebels to the voting lists. Grant said it didn’t make sense to send in troops under such circumstances.

Grant was hesitant about supporting black suffrage at first, but the continued violence in the south convinced him to come out in favor of it. Grant was also sympathetic to Native Americans. When Chief Red Cloud killed 94 troopers, Grant didn’t retaliate but instructed the military to prevent further massacres by keeping white settlers out of Sioux territory.

Johnson fired his Secretary of War and appointed Grant to take his place. Grant fought for Reconstruction while Johnson fought against it. Johnson replaced military leaders keeping the south in check with military leaders who turned a blind eye.

Grant’s opposition to Johnson pretty much guaranteed he’d be the next president. He was the unanimous choice for the Republican ticket. Not talented at public speaking, he didn’t campaign, but he didn’t need to. He won the general election easily. 

At 46, he was the youngest man to be president up to that time. At his inauguration he urged states to ratify the 15th amendment giving blacks the right to vote. He also spoke about the plight of Native Americans and appointed a Seneca, Ely S. Parker, to be commissioner of Indian Affairs as part of his Peace Policy towards Plains Indians.

His wife Julia became the most popular first lady since Dolley Madison by refurbishing the White House and holding weekly social events. They had four children at this point.

Congress had created the Secret Service after Lincoln’s assassination, but Grant dismissed them. Despite receiving multiple death threats and despite a few attempts already made on his life, he didn’t feel they were needed. He walked about Washington on his own.

His secretary of treasury was able to shrink the national debt by $50 million in the first six months partly by selling gold. However Jay Gould and Jim Fisk wanted to corner the gold market. They tricked Grant’s brother-in-law to give them access to Grant. They wined and dined Grant, but he refused to give them any insider information. Nevertheless, they bought up so much gold, it hurt foreign exchange, devastating commerce.

By September 24, 1869, Black Friday, Fisk and Gould had accumulated calls for $100 million in gold and were set to bankrupt most of New York’s merchants and bankers by driving the price up even higher. Once he became aware of their scheme, Grant ordered his treasury secretary to sell gold which would lower its price, breaking the Gold Ring. However, the resulting gold crash devastated the economy for months.

Cuban rebels wanted to throw off Spanish rule and Americans were sympathetic. Some went on filibustering raids to provide support to the rebels. Spain treated some American merchants as filibusters, capturing and sometimes killing the crew. Grant sent in warships in response. Many in Congress called for war, but Grant held out for a diplomatic solution.

He tried to annex Santo Domingo (the Dominican Republic) which apparently wanted to become a US state, but Congress blocked this.

Tensions were high with Great Britain. England had helped the confederacy during the civil war, there were also skirmishes among the Canadian border and disputes over fishing rights. Grant trusted his secretary of state to smooth things over and a treaty was signed reestablishing good relations between the countries and bringing them back from the brink of war.

Tensions were high with Native Americans as well. The year before he took office, there was war with the Plains Indians. Rather than continue on this path, when Grant became president, he changed direction and sought for peace. As usual, he delegated to his secretary of the interior and commissioner of Indian affairs. With others focusing on details, this freed him up to focus on the big picture.

He got Congress to provide funding to tribes, protected them from white settlers, and set a policy to honor previous pledges made by the government. He also wanted to assimilate the Indians into white culture and have them live on reservations to protect them from white settlers. He was in favor of Indians getting their own state, but Congress blocked this.

Things didn’t go smoothly. There was the Piegan massacre, the Modoc War, and the Red River War, but Grant never stopped trying for peace.

When gold was discovered in the Black Hills on the Sioux reservation, the military claimed there were too many miners for them to keep out. Grant believed the commander and ordered him to round up Sioux in the Yellowstone and Little Big Horn regions and force them onto the reservation to reduce risk. It was a big mistake. Colonel George A. Custer was annihilated at Little Big Horn in a completely unnecessary attack and inexplicably became a national hero. Many Sioux died and were driven back to the reservation in revenge for Custer. Grant’s eight-year peace policy may have saved lives overall, but lapses in the peace cost many lives.

The Ku Klux Klan, an anti-black terrorist organization, reached its peak membership in the early years of Grant’s presidency. Crimes such as murder, arson, and assault should have been handled at the local level, but with few exceptions, law enforcement in Southern states refused to stop the Klan, so Grant was forced to step in. Thousands of terrorists were indicted and hundreds convicted by the newly-created Department of Justice. Grant used the military and suspended habeas corpus in areas in a state of insurrection. The violence declined and black people were free to vote in 1872, “the fairest and most democratic presidential election in the South until 1968.”

Grant was the only president between Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson to be elected to two consecutive terms. Again, he didn’t bother campaigning and again, won by a landslide.

Unfortunately, 3 of Grant’s 4 supreme court appointees didn’t want to protect freedmen. In 1872, Democrats in Louisiana who called themselves the White League refused to accept the election of a Republican governor and formed their own rival government. They attacked the courthouse in Colfax killing over 100 black men. 3 white men were convicted for their part in the massacre, but the Supreme Court overturned the convictions, blocking Grant’s efforts to protect freedmen.

The White League murdered six Republican office holders and took over the statehouse. Grant sent in the military and ejected the insurrectionists, preventing additional bloodshed. However, this action was unpopular and Republicans lost the House in the next election. The next president, Rutherford B. Hayes, did nothing to protect the freedmen. In fact, from the 1880s to the 1950s, presidents tended to turn a blind eye to the mistreatment of black people in the south.

The United States had been overwhelmingly Protestant for much of its history, but immigration had brought a lot of Catholics to the US by Grant’s time. Whether public schools should endorse the Protestant or Catholic religion became a burning issue. Grant advocated for religion to be kept out of public classrooms entirely. He also advocated for each state to establish free public education for all regardless of sex, race or religion. He was even in favor of taxing church property. They received benefits and protection from the government, so it was only right they should help fund it.

A depression called the Panic of 1873 hit the nation. Partly caused by the Civil War and Franco-Prussian War, the Chicago and Boston Fires, but also caused by overexpansion in industry, too rapid growth of rail lines, banks lending money recklessly, and rampant speculation. In response, Congress passed an inflation bill to add currency to circulation, but Grant didn’t think simply printing more money would help and he vetoed it. Without a stable currency or regulation, expanding money supply by itself doesn’t fix a depression. Congress next passed a bill to resume specie payment which introduced a stable currency which Grant approved. This paved the way for economic growth for decades to come.

He appointed a new secretary of state who dismissed 700-800 political appointees and made the treasury department more businesslike. The liquor industry (the Whiskey Ring) was cheating on its taxes. With Grant’s backing, his secretary brought 350 indictments. Even Grant’s secretary of war was forced to resign. Grant also asked for the resignation of his corrupt attorney general and replaced him with an honest one. Grant was so popular, he was endorsed for a third term, but he turned it down.

Grant was opposed to the patronage system in which civil servants got jobs based on political favoritism. He was in favor of a merit-based system with guaranteed tenure rather than the party currently in charge rewarding supporters with cushy jobs. He got Congress to establish a Civil Service Commission which came up with rules for reform, but Congress didn’t implement the rules until 1883.

There was rampant election fraud on both sides in the presidential election of 1876 between Hayes and Tilden. Democrats had used violence and threats to keep blacks from voting (in one Louisiana parish, votes for Republicans suspiciously dropped from 1,688 in 1874 to just 1 in 1876) and Republicans, who controlled certifying the vote, simply changed the numbers. There ended up being two different sets of returns in three disputed states and who won depended on which set of returns was counted.

There were rumors the Democrats would storm Washington. There was talk of civil war. Grant came up with a solution to appoint a committee equally represented by both democrats and republicans with one independent to come up with a procedure to decide the election. Hayes was declared the winner. The Southerners accepted this in exchange for Hayes agreeing to withdraw the army from the South and leaving blacks at the mercy of their former masters.

After leaving the presidency, Grant, who loved to travel, circumnavigated the globe, visiting more countries than anyone had before, meeting with kings, queens, and the pope. He especially loved visiting art galleries. The Sultan of Turkey gave him two Arabian horses as a gift. These two became the foundation sires for the purebred Arabian breed in America. His favorite country was Japan. He even negotiated peace between Japan and China over the Ryukyu Islands which could have led to war.

When he returned to the United States, Grant was more popular than ever and was urged to run for president again. However, not campaigning didn’t work this time and Garfield got the nomination.

Grant’s son brought him in as a silent partner in an investment banking firm. The firm was worth millions on paper, but in reality, the firm’s success was all an illusion. Grant and his son had trusted the wrong people. The other two partners in the company were committing embezzlement and Grant was left destitute.

However, his friends helped him out. William Vanderbilt took the title of Grant’s house and allowed him and his wife to continue living there as if it were theirs. A publishing company offered Grant money to write his memoirs, but his friend Mark Twain pointed out the publishing company was cheating him and offered to pay Grant a fair price for his memoirs.

Eating and even drinking water had started to hurt for Grant and a doctor told him he had throat cancer (maybe the fact he smoked two dozen cigars a day contributed to this). In his final days, he struggled through pain to finish his memoirs. He also insisted upon fact-checking his own memory with official records so everything he wrote would be correct. The book was a commercial and literary success. After his death, Twain presented his widow with a check for $200,000, the largest royalty check ever written.

Grant never wanted to be in the military, but he ended up a general. He never wanted to be a politician, but ended up as president. He never wanted to be an author, but ended up writing a best-seller. He was a flawed man, but also one of the best presidents the United States has ever had.

In terms of lives saved or lives lost, Grant’s Peace Policy towards Native Americans reduced, but didn’t eliminate, warfare. He saved lives overall, but could have done more. His Reconstruction policy protected black people from the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist organizations, saving many lives. He avoided war with Spain over the Cuban independence movement, and also avoided war with Great Britain. He was not responsible for the Panic of 1873 which turned into the Long Depression, but if he had better advisors, he might have done more to protect the economy and prevent related deaths. Overall, he saved thousands of lives, making him one of the best presidents so far.