Who Is Buried in Grant's Tomb?

My Mom always asks that, along with “What color is George Washington’s white horse?” when she is pointing out that something should be obvious. I only knew some guy named Grant and he is on the fifty dollar bill. Now I can tell you that Ulysses S. Grant was a Civil War hero and the eighteenth President of the United States. The son of an Ohio tanner, he was a West Point graduate. He made many notable contributions to the Civil War that eventually led to South surrendering to the North. Yet he made many not so notable contributions to the Presidency. Sickness ended his life just after he completed his personal memoirs.

Ulysses S. Grant was not really his whole name. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant but an error was made on his application to the West Point Military Academy in New York when the person completing the form assumed his middle name was Simpson (his mother’s maiden name) and used the initial S. Whatever the name, Ulysses was born on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio to Jesse and Hannah Grant. He grew up on his family’s farm on the frontier of Ohio. His father was a tanner but Ulysses had no interest in farming or tanning, instead by the age of eight he had developed great horseman skills and drove his father’s team to deliver goods and passengers. He would later graduate from the Military Academy at West Point, become a husband and father, a war hero, a U.S. President and a writer.

From 1839 until 1841, Grant was in New York where he attended West Point. He was known as a skilled horseman but was not a distinguished student, graduating at the bottom of his class. Upon leaving West Point, he was commissioned as a brevet 2nd lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infantry at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. Ulysses then saw action ...

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...hough his Presidency and it’s efforts for the 15th Amendment changed our nation, that does not get rid of the fact that almost everything else he did as President was a failure. At the end of his life and through today is memoirs have been read by many and seem to still get a lot of praise. So he must have done a few things right! Now we both know just who is buried in Grant’s Tomb.

Works Cited

Achenbach, Joel – “Ulysses S. Grant: Hero or butcher? Great Man or doofus?” The Washington Post, Apr 25, 2014; medium: print

Achenbach, Joel – “U.S. Grant was the great hero of the Civil War but lost favor with historians” The Washington Post, April 24, 2014; medium: print

Venezia, Mike – “Ulysses S. Grant Eighteenth President” Scholastic 2005 www.ulyssessgrant.org – medium: web www.granthomepage.com – medium: web www.millercenter.org – medium: University of Virginia web