Home > American Civil War > Ulysses S. Grant Biography

Born April 27, 1822
Point Pleasant, Ohio
Died July 23, 1885
Mount McGregor, New York

Union general who captured Vicksburg and defeated Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending the Civil War

Eighteenth president of the United States

Ulysses S. Grant was one of the greatest—and most unlikely—military commanders in American history. Prior to the Civil War, he struggled to provide for his family, first as a soldier and then as a businessman. But when the war began, he quickly showed that he was one of the North's top military leaders. During the first two years of the conflict, his victories at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga helped the Union seize control of the Confederacy's western states.

Grant then moved to the war's eastern theater (a large geographic area in which military operations take place), where he was given command of all the Union...