Free Republic

For once, this is not a joke: Who is buried in Grant’s tomb? A general who doesn’t have the Army’s highest rank. Not yet, anyway. Fans of Ulysses S. Grant are campaigning for a promotion that would elevate Grant to a rank held by only two other former generals, George Washington and the World War I hero John J. Pershing — general of the armies of the United States, above even five-star generals.

Ulysses S. Grant, original name Hiram Ulysses Grant, (born April 27, 1822, Point Pleasant, Ohio, U.S.—died July 23, 1885, Mount McGregor, New York), U.S. general, commander of the Union armies during the late years (1864–65) of the American Civil War, and 18th president of the United States (1869–77).

There is nothing stranger in American history than the up-and-down reputation of Ulysses S. Grant. Grant, who was born April 27, 1822, was the commanding general who ended the Civil War. He managed the great campaigns that captured Vicksburg and Richmond, saved Chattanooga, and compelled the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the main Confederate field army, and did it so well that President Abraham Lincoln apologized for not showing him enough confidence. Grant’s “Personal Memoirs,” published after he died in 1885, are a landmark of 19th-century American prose. Grant may be a greater example even than Lincoln of the...

On September 25, 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant addressed a reunion of the Army of the Tennessee, Civil War veterans under his command a decade earlier. “It always affords me much gratification to meet my old comrades in arms,” he told them. “How many of our comrades of those days paid the latter price for our preserved Union! Let their heroism and sacrifices be ever green and in our memory. Let not the results of their sacrifices be destroyed.” A statue of Ulysses S. Grant was torn down in San Francisco last week. Almost 145 years to the day earlier,...

There is a powerful scene in the 1994 movie Disclosure, about sexual harassment in the workplace, which ably captures the zeitgeist behind the wave of historic monument destruction we are witnessing around the country by ignorant young nihilists today. In the movie, Michael Douglas plays a Silicon Valley tech executive who is being sexually harassed by an aggressive female colleague played by Demi Moore. When he spurns her affections, Moore's seductress launches a corporate jihad against Douglas' hapless character to try to destroy the man, his reputation and his soon-to-be fortune that will result from his firm's forthcoming IPO. In...

he promise of bloodshed coming alongside or following shortly after is an historic certainty. The symbols of a people never satisfy: People themselves must always come next. WASHINGTON, DC — For millennia, King Mob has targeted societies’ icons with varied goals and to varied ends, and few things are more foreboding than his desecration of civic art. Just as the targets have ranged from rulers to clergy, from tyrants to helpless, and from the guilty to the innocent, the outcomes have ranged from victory to defeat depending on the society’s strength and will. The promise of bloodshed coming alongside or...

In recent weeks, participants in demonstrations against police violence in the United States have demanded the removal of monuments to Confederate leaders who waged an insurrection to defend slavery during the American Civil War of 1861-1865. But the justifiable demand for the removal of monuments to these defenders of racial inequality has been unfairly accompanied by attacks against memorials to those who led the Civil War that ended slavery and the American Revolution, which, in upholding the principle of equality, for the first time placed a question mark on the institution of slavery. Last Sunday, a statue of Thomas Jefferson,...

Protesters in Golden Gate Park toppled statues of Fr. Junipero Serra, Francis Scott Key and President Ulysses S. Grant on Friday night, spurring a national debate over the complex legacies of those historical figures amid a broader movement to remove what critics say are monuments to white supremacy. A group of roughly 100 people pulled down the monuments displayed in the park’s Music Concourse near the de Young Museum and California Academy of Sciences, an eyewitness said. Police were called to the area just after 8 p.m., and said people in the group threw objects at the officers. The crowd...

Protesters tore down the statues of Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Francis Scott Key Friday in San Francisco. Grant, who led the Union army into battle against the Confederacy, and Scott Key, who wrote America’s national anthem, are just two of the latest statues to be ripped down by protesters on the Juneteenth holiday that marks the 155th anniversary since a federal order to liberate slaves reached Galveston, Texas, almost two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Even though Grant is widely celebrated as the general who led the Union into the war that...

There is no need to name names. The so-called conservatives who have been coddling mindless calls to destroy public art know who they are, so do the rest of us. These are the reasonable conservatives, the good ones, so ever careful no to be called racist. They had a compromise in mind because they always do. Throw the Confederate statues under the bus and we can save the rest. Well. Friday night a statue of Ulysses S. Grant was toppled. Also the statue of a Catholic saint. Do you know who is to blame? It is not the hordes of...

Junipero Serra statue toppled at Golden Gate Park Group also pulled down Francis Scott Key and Ulysses S. Grant monuments SAN FRANCISCO – Statues of Fr. Junipero Serra, Francis Scott Key and Ulysses S. Grant were toppled at Golden Gate Park on Friday. A group of roughly 100 people pulled down the statues about 8 or 9 p.m., an eyewitness said. One video posted to Twitter showed the group using a strap to topple the statue of Serra. The statue, according to the University of California, was first unveiled in 1907.

'After Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, died 130 years ago today, a million and a half Americans watched his funeral procession. His mausoleum was a popular tourist attraction in New York City for decades. But for most of the 20th Century, historians and non-historians alike believed Grant was corrupt, drunken and incompetent, that he was one of the country's worst presidents, and that as a general, he was more lucky than good. A generation of historians, led by Columbia's William A. Dunning, criticized Grant for backing Reconstruction, the federal government's attempt to protect the rights...

Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant is appointed Supreme Commander of all Union Armies by President Abraham Lincoln.

Serial fibber Brian Williams told yet another whopper on Friday night from his home in MSNBC exile known as The 11th Hour with Brian Williams. So what else is new? What makes his latest historical untruth ironically special is it came as Williams along with historian Michael Beschloss were fact checking President Donald Trump for a supposed error he made during his speech at a rally in Lebanon, Ohio on Friday. For years following the Civil War, many historians as well as much of the public in general discounted the military abilities of General Ulysses S. Grant by claiming he was able...

Born April 27, 1822, into a Methodist family in Ohio, he was nominated at age 17 for a position at West Point by Congressman Thomas Hamer, who mistakenly added the middle initial “S” to his name.

Living historian Curt Fields describes the life and accomplishments of Ulysses S. Grant. This video is part of the Civil War Trust's In4 video series, which presents short videos on basic Civil War topics. The Civil War in Four Minutes: Ulysses S. Grant

The surrender of Confederate Robert E. Lee to Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant 150 years ago Thursday was the definitive milestone of the end of the Civil War.

Bells will ring across the country and in Lynchburg on Thursday to mark the 150th anniversary of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, the symbolic end of four years of bloodshed. A historic bell will be rung at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park at 3 p.m., the time the surrender occurred. People at historic sites, schools, parks, government buildings and within communities throughout Lynchburg and the country will join in at 3:15 p.m., ringing bells for four continuous minutes, representing the four years of fighting.

23/02/2006 - Duke: Duke study posits presidents had mental illness U-Wire via NewsEdge Corporation : By Haley Hoffman, The Chronicle (Duke) DURHAM, N.C. -- No one would ever expect the general who led the Union army to victory in the Civil War to have a debilitating fear of blood. But Ulysses S. Grant was among the 49 percent of former U.S. presidents afflicted by mental illness, according to an article published recently by psychiatrists at the Duke University Medical Center. Jonathan Davidson, professor of psychiatry and director of the Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Program, has a particular interest in history,...

Geologists may be close to cracking one of the biggest seismological mysteries in the Pacific Northwest: the origin of a powerful earthquake that rattled seven states and provinces when Ulysses S. Grant was president. Preliminary evidence points to a newly discovered fault near the town of Entiat in Chelan County, Wash. The find adds to a growing body of evidence that Central and Eastern Washington are more quake-prone than previously thought, and will help refine seismic risks in an area that's home to 1.5 million people, more than a dozen hydropower dams and the Hanford nuclear reservation, said Craig Weaver,...