Ulysses S. Grant was the Union’s top Civil War general and later the 18th president of the United States, best known for winning the war for the North and trying to protect Black civil rights during Reconstruction.

Quick Scoop

1. Big picture: Who he was

  • Born in Ohio in 1822, Grant went to West Point and served in the Mexican–American War before drifting into obscurity as a struggling civilian.
  • The Civil War pulled him back into the Army, where he rose from an unknown officer to the commanding general who forced the Confederacy’s surrender.
  • After the war, he was twice elected president (1869–1877), becoming the key political face of the postwar United States.

2. What did Ulysses S. Grant do in the Civil War?

Grant’s main claim to fame is as the Union general who made total victory possible.

  • Early war:
    • He captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in early 1862, winning the Union’s first major victories in the West and earning the nickname “Unconditional Surrender Grant” for demanding complete surrender.
* He fought the bloody Battle of Shiloh in 1862, after which he kept pressure on Confederate forces instead of retreating, showing his willingness to absorb heavy losses to achieve strategic goals.
  • Breaking the Confederacy’s backbone:
    • In 1863, he led the Vicksburg Campaign, capturing the Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River and splitting the Confederacy in two, a turning point in the war.
* He then helped secure Chattanooga, opening the door for Union advances into Georgia and the Deep South.
  • Top commander and the end of the war:
    • Lincoln promoted him to lieutenant general and general-in-chief of all Union armies in 1864, the first since George Washington to hold that rank.
* Grant designed an all‑front strategy: he pinned Robert E. Lee’s army in Virginia while other Union forces struck across the South, grinding down Confederate manpower and resources.

* His relentless Overland Campaign—battles like the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor—inflicted enormous casualties on both sides but slowly strangled Confederate resistance.

* In April 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the Civil War; Grant offered generous terms to encourage reunion rather than revenge.

One way people on history forums describe him: not a flashy “genius” like some generals, but a calm, stubborn problem-solver who simply refused to quit until the Confederacy collapsed.

3. What did Grant do as president?

As president, Grant tried to secure the peace, stabilize the economy, and protect the rights of formerly enslaved people, though his administration became infamous for corruption scandals.

  • Reconstruction and civil rights:
    • Grant strongly backed Congressional Reconstruction and supported the 14th and 15th Amendments, which were meant to secure citizenship and voting rights for Black Americans.
* He used federal power against white supremacist violence, especially the Ku Klux Klan, signing and enforcing the Enforcement Acts and the Ku Klux Klan Act to prosecute terrorists and protect Black voters.

* In Washington, D.C., he approved a law guaranteeing equal rights for Black residents, including the right to serve on juries and hold office.
  • Government and law:
    • Grant signed the law creating the Department of Justice, giving the federal government a centralized legal arm to enforce civil rights and federal law.
* He briefly supported early civil service reform with a federal civil service commission, trying to reduce patronage and political spoils, though Congress did not fully fund it.
  • Economy and national policy:
    • He worked to stabilize the postwar economy, including supporting the Specie Resumption Act, which led to redeeming paper money in gold and expanding national banks.
* His administration pursued expansion and trade, such as backing an interoceanic canal study and concluding a treaty with Hawaii that gave the United States special trading status and made the islands a de facto protectorate.
  • Scandals and reputation:
    • Several of Grant’s associates were involved in major scandals, including schemes like the Whiskey Ring and other corruption in federal contracts, severely damaging his image even though he personally was not shown to be corrupt.
* Historians today often view him as personally honest but politically naïve, too loyal to friends and too slow to recognize or punish corruption.

4. After the presidency and his legacy

Grant’s final years reshaped how the public remembers him.

  • After leaving office, he traveled the world on a celebrated tour and remained a major public figure.
  • In his last years, dying of throat cancer and nearly broke, he wrote his “Personal Memoirs,” which became one of the most respected works of military autobiography in American history and secured his family’s finances.
  • Modern historians increasingly credit him as a determined general who ended the Civil War, a president who fought hard—if imperfectly—for Black rights, and a key figure in shaping Reconstruction and the long struggle for civil rights.

5. Why people still talk about him now

In recent years, Grant has become a trending topic again in books, documentaries, and online discussions because:

  • Debates over monuments, the Civil War, and systemic racism have pushed people to re‑evaluate Reconstruction and the leaders who tried to protect Black citizenship, putting Grant in a more positive light.
  • New biographies argue he was one of the most important defenders of Black rights in the 19th century, even though his presidency was plagued by scandal.
  • Military history forums still dissect his campaigns—Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and the Overland Campaign—as case studies in modern, grinding, total-war style strategy.

TL;DR: If you’re asking “what did Ulysses S. Grant do,” the core answer is: he led Union armies to victory in the Civil War, forced Lee’s surrender, then served two terms as president trying to rebuild the country and protect Black Americans, while wrestling with economic turmoil and major corruption scandals around him.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.