813503
Ulysses S. Grant
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Ulysses S. Grant, born Hiram Ulysses Grant, 1822-1885. 18th President of the United States, 1869-1877. Nice signature, U. S. Grant, on a card.
Grant has signed in fountain pen on this 2⅜” x 3⅝” white card. The signature is perfectly centered on the card and would be excellent for framing.
Grant, who had graduated as a mediocre student from the United States Military Academy at West Point and who had previously resigned his Army commission, rejoined the Army at the outbreak of the Civil War. His 1862 victories at Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee and at Shiloh in Mississippi, and his 1863 victory after a siege at Vicksburg, Mississippi, securing control of the Mississippi River for the Union, led President Abraham Lincoln to promote him to commander of all of the Union forces in March 1864. After conducting a war of attrition, continually attacking the Confederates while destroying the South’s ability to carry on the war, he accepted General Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Confederate forces at Appomattox Court House in Virginia in 1865.
After the war, Grant split with President Andrew Johnson, supporting the Radical Republicans in Congress. He acceded to the Tenure of Office Act, refusing to assume the duties of Secretary of War when Johnson sought to discharge Lincoln appointee Edwin M. Stanton and appoint him in Stanton’s place. Grant the war hero, as politically inexperienced as he was, thus became the obvious choice as the Republican presidential candidate in 1868. He won the election by a 5% margin of some 300,000 votes but with a huge margin of 214-80 in the electoral college. Personally honest, Grant was beset by scandals within his administration but nonetheless won reelection in 1872. He allowed Radical Reconstruction to run its course in the South, sometimes bolstering it with force.
Grant left office in 1877 and traveled abroad with his wife for two years before retiring to New York. He encouraged a Stalwart Republican bid to nominate him for a third term in 1880 but lost the nomination to James A. Garfield. He then invested heavily in a banking concern, but his partner swindled him and other investors and left the firm bankrupt. About the same time, Grant learned that he had throat cancer.
To raise funds, Grant wrote a series of articles about his Civil War campaigns. They were well received, so Grant accepted Mark Twain’s invitation to write his Memoirs, recounting, among other things, his experiences in the Civil War. He was terminally ill but forged ahead, completing the Memoirs only a few days before he died on July 23, 1885. The Memoirs, which are almost universally regarded as some of the finest presidential memoirs, earned his family some $450,000.
This signature is in very fine condition. The card has a couple of small spots, which appear darker in the scan below than they appear on the piece in person, and mounting traces on the back that do not show through. It would be very nice in a framed display.
Unframed. Click here for information about custom framing this piece.
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