Brief biographies from American history, for the fifth and sixth grades

by Edna Henry Lee Turpin

The reverse at Manassas distressed but did not daunt Lincoln. As commander-in-chief of the army and the navy, he appointed officers and supervised their movements. There were three great military tasks necessary for the northern forces,—to control the Mississippi River, to blockade southern ports, and to capture Richmond. The sea forces under Farragut and Porter successfully performed their tasks. In Virginia one unsuccessful or incompetent general after another was put forward and supported,—McClellan, Halleck, Pope, and Hooker. Meanwhile the great commanders, Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman, were fighting undiscovered in the west. At last they were brought forward and put at the head of magnificent armies to “end the job.”

As a military measure, in 1863, President Lincoln made the emancipation proclamation granting freedom to slaves. In November, of that year he made his famous address, consecrating the military cemetery at Gettysburg.

Not long before the presidential election of 1864, Lincoln issued a call for five hundred thousand soldiers; friends urged him to wait a few weeks as this call for troops might injure his chance of re-election. He refused saying, “What is the presidency worth to me if I have no country?”

In his second inaugural address are the famous words, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in.” The end was already in sight. The capital of the Confederacy fell and Lee’s little army was forced to surrender. Lincoln expressed only sympathy for the defeated and desolate South. But his plans for reunion in peace and kindness were not to be carried out. Just as the great victory was accomplished he was struck down by the hand of an assassin, John Wilkes Booth. His death was an even greater loss to the South than to the North which mourned so bitterly, the heroic man of the people, the martyred president.

Ulysses Simpson Grant

April 27, 1822, was born Hiram Ulysses Grant, who by an error of which you will hear later had his name changed to Ulysses Simpson Grant. His father was Jesse Grant, an Ohio tanner. Grant’s ancestors had settled in New England in the seventeenth century and some had served in the French and Indian War and some had served in the Revolution, so he was of good American stock.

When Ulysses was about ten years old, his father moved to Georgetown, Ohio, about forty miles from Cincinnati. There he prospered and became the owner of a farm as well as a tannery. Ulysses was not specially fond of books, but his father was resolved that he should have a good education. The boy was sent regularly to school and was a faithful student. He had work to do at home too—sometimes in the tannery which he disliked, sometimes on the farm, which he liked better. He was fond of horses and learned to ride and drive well.

From the time he was eleven till he was seventeen, he did the plowing and hauling on his father’s farm. His father who seems to have been more ambitious for his son than the boy was for himself, secured an appointment to West Point. Ulysses did not wish to go and feared he could not pass the entrance examinations. But his father’s word was the law of the family and so the sandy-haired, blue-eyed lad of seventeen left his Ohio home to go to West Point. He lingered on the way to see the sights in Philadelphia and other places.

Two weeks after he left home, he reached West Point, in May, 1839. He passed the dreaded examinations and was enrolled among the cadets. The Congressman who had secured the appointment for him forgot his name and filled in the application for Ulysses Simpson Grant, and by that name he was called. The boys nicknamed him “Uncle Sam” and called him “Sam Grant.” He got on well in his studies, especially in mathematics which had always been his favorite. He was more famous as a horseman, however, than as a student. At West Point there is still shown the place where he made a famous leap of six feet, three inches, on a big horse named York. Except for his horsemanship the young Ohioan, quiet in manner and careless in dress, was not much noted one way or another. He was graduated, June, 1843, twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine.

In 1846 came war with Mexico which Grant then and forty years later thought “one of the most unjust wars ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.” He had hoped for a place in the cavalry, but was sent in the infantry as second lieutenant.