General Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant at Point Pleasant, Ohio, in 1822. After attending West Point, he gained distinction fighting as a captain in the Mexican-American War. When the fighting ended, he was assigned to isolated frontier posts, where his heavy drinking interfered with his duties, leading him to resign in 1854. At the outbreak of the Civil War six years later, he immediately enlisted in the Union Army, and was promoted to brigadier general in July of 1861. In July of 1863, he captured Vicksburg, an event often seen as a turning point in the war, and was given command of all Union armies in March of 1864. Brutal engagements with Confederate forces at the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor decimated Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, and the Virginian surrendered his battered force to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. After the war, Grant’s fame carried him to the White House, and he served two terms of Presidency, from 1869 to 1877.
This undated print of Grant depicts the general in military uniform, gazing out towards the viewer. The portrait, however, bears little resemblance to the image of Grant with which viewers have become familiar. Probably printed around the beginning of the war, during the North’s early exposure to the Union generals, this work was erroneously based on a photograph of a Cairo, Illinois, meat-packer, who was said to share similar features with the general. Since its publisher, Minard W. Wilson of New York, produced sheet music during the Civil War, this print possibly served as an accompanying illustration to a patriotic hymns.
