GRANT, SIR PATRICK (1804-1895), British field marshal, was the second son of Major John Grant, 97th Foot, of Auchterblair, Inverness-shire, where he was born on the 11th of September 1804. He entered the Bengal native infantry as ensign in 1820, and became captain in 1832. He served in Oudh from 1834 to 1838, and raised the Hariana Light Infantry. Employed in the adjutant-general’s department of the Bengal army from 1838 until 1854, he became adjutant-general in 1846. He served under Sir Hugh Gough at the battle of Maharajpur in 1843, winning a brevet majority, was adjutant-general of the army at the battles of Moodkee in 1845 (twice severely wounded), and of Ferozshah and Sobraon in 1846, receiving the C.B. and the brevet rank of lieutenant-colonel. He took part in the battles of Chillianwalla and Gujarat in 1849, gaining further promotion, and was appointed aide-de-camp to the queen. He served also in Kohat in 1851 under Sir Charles Napier. Promoted major-general in 1854, he was commander-in-chief of the Madras army from 1856 to 1861. He was made K.C.B. in 1857, and on General Anson’s death was summoned to Calcutta to take supreme command of the army in India. From Calcutta he directed the operations against the mutineers, sending forces under Havelock and Outram for the relief of Cawnpore and Lucknow, until the arrival of Sir Colin Campbell from England as commander-in-chief, when he returned to Madras. On leaving India in 1861 he was decorated with the G.C.B. He was promoted lieutenant-general in 1862, was governor of Malta from 1867 to 1872, was made G.C.M.G. in 1868, promoted general in 1870, field marshal in 1883 and colonel of the Royal Horse Guards and gold-stick-in-waiting to the queen in 1885. He married as his second wife, in 1844, Frances Maria, daughter of Sir Hugh (afterwards Lord) Gough. He was governor of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, from 1874 until his death there on the 28th of March 1895.
GRANT, ROBERT (1814-1892), British astronomer, was born at Grantown, Scotland, on the 17th of June 1814. At the age of thirteen the promise of a brilliant career was clouded by a prolonged illness of such a serious character as to incapacitate him from all school-work for six years. At twenty, however, his health greatly improved, and he set himself resolutely, without assistance, to repair his earlier disadvantages by the diligent study of Greek, Latin, Italian and mathematics. Astronomy also occupied his attention, and it was stimulated by the return of Halley’s comet in 1835, as well as by his success in observing the annular eclipse of the sun of the 15th of May 1836. After a short course at King’s College, Aberdeen, he obtained in 1841 employment in his brother’s counting-house in London. During this period the idea occurred to him of writing a history of physical astronomy. Before definitely beginning the work he had to search, amongst other records, those of the French Academy, and for that purpose took up his residence in Paris in 1845, supporting himself by giving lessons in English. He returned to London in 1847. The History of Physical Astronomy from the Earliest Ages to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century was first published in parts in The Library of Useful Knowledge, but after the issue of the ninth part this mode of publication was discontinued, and the work appeared as a whole in 1852. The main object of the work is, in the author’s words, “to exhibit a view of the labours of successive inquirers in establishing a knowledge of the mechanical principles which regulate the movements of the celestial bodies, and in explaining the various phenomena relative to their physical constitution which observation with the telescope has disclosed.” The lucidity and completeness with which a great variety of abstruse subjects were treated, the extent of research and the maturity of judgment it displayed, were the more remarkable, when it is remembered that this was the first published work of one who enjoyed no special opportunities, either for acquiring materials, or for discussing with others engaged in similar pursuits the subjects it treats of. The book at once took a leading place in astronomical literature, and earned for its author in 1856 the award of the Royal Astronomical Society’s gold medal. In 1859 he succeeded John Pringle Nichol as professor of astronomy in the University of Glasgow. From time to time he contributed astronomical papers to the Monthly Notices, Astronomische Nachrichten, Comptes rendus and other scientific serials; but his principal work at Glasgow consisted in determining the places of a large number of stars with the Ertel transit-circle of the Observatory. The results of these labours, extending over twenty-one years, are contained in the Glasgow Catalogue of 6415 Stars, published in 1883. This was followed in 1892 by the Second Glasgow Catalogue of 2156 Stars, published a few weeks after his death, which took place on the 24th of October 1892.
See Month. Notices Roy. Astr. Society, liii., 210 (E. Dunkin); Nature, Nov. 10, 1892; The Times, Nov. 2, 1892; Roy. Society’s Catalogue of Scient. Papers.
(A. A. R.*)
GRANT, ULYSSES SIMPSON (1822-1885), American soldier, and eighteenth president of the United States, was born at Point Pleasant, Ohio, on the 27th of April 1822. He was a descendant of Matthew Grant, a Scotchman, who settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630. His earlier years were spent in helping his father, Jesse R. Grant, upon his farm in Ohio. In 1839 he was appointed to a place in the military academy at West Point, and it was then that his name assumed the form by which it is generally known. He was christened Hiram, after an ancestor, with Ulysses for a middle name. As he was usually called by his middle name, the congressman who recommended him for West Point supposed it to be his first name, and added thereto the name of his mother’s family, Simpson. Grant was the best horseman of his class, and took a respectable place in mathematics, but at his graduation in 1843 he only ranked twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine. In September 1845 he went with his regiment to join the forces of General Taylor in Mexico; there he took part in the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma and Monterey, and, after his transfer to General Scott’s army, which he joined in March 1847, served at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Molino del Rey and at the storming of Chapultepec. He was breveted first lieutenant for gallantry at Molino del Rey and captain for gallantry at Chapultepec. In August 1848, after the close of the war, he married Julia T. Dent (1826-1902), and was for a while stationed in California and Oregon, but in 1854 he resigned his commission. His reputation in the service had suffered from allegations of intemperate drinking, which, whether well founded or not, certainly impaired his usefulness as a soldier. For the next six years he lived in St Louis, Missouri, earning a scanty subsistence by farming and dealings in real estate. In 1860 he removed to Galena, Illinois, and became a clerk in a leather store kept by his father. At that time his earning capacity seems not to have exceeded $800 a year, and he was regarded by his friends as a broken and disappointed man. He was living at Galena at the outbreak of hostilities between the North and South.
[For the history of the Civil War, and of Grant’s battles and campaigns, the reader is referred to the article [American Civil War]. To the “call to arms” of 1861 Grant promptly responded. After some delay he was commissioned Grant’s Civil War career. colonel of the 21st Illinois regiment and soon afterwards brigadier-general. He was shortly assigned to a territorial command on the Mississippi, and first won distinction by his energy in seizing, on his own responsibility, the important point of Paducah, Kentucky, situated at the confluence of the two great waterways of the Tennessee and the Ohio (6th Sept. 1861). On the 7th of November he fought his first battle as a commander, that of Belmont (Missouri), which, if it failed to achieve any material result, certainly showed him to be a capable and skilful leader. Early in 1862 he was entrusted by General H. W. Halleck with the command of a large force to clear the lower reaches of the Cumberland and the Tennessee, and, whatever criticism may be passed on the general strategy of the campaign, Grant himself, by his able and energetic work, thoroughly deserved the credit of his brilliant success of Fort Donelson, where 15,000 Confederates were forced to capitulate. Grant and his division commanders were promoted to the rank of major-general U.S.V. soon afterwards, but Grant’s own fortunes suffered a temporary eclipse owing to a disagreement with Halleck. When, after being virtually under arrest, he rejoined his army, it was concentrated about Savannah on the Tennessee, preparing for a campaign towards Corinth, Miss. On the 6th of April 1862 a furious assault on Grant’s camps brought on the battle of Shiloh (q.v.). After two days’ desperate fighting the Confederates withdrew before the combined attack of the Army of the Tennessee under Grant and the Army of the Ohio under Buell. But the Army of the Tennessee had been on the verge of annihilation on the evening of the first day, and Grant’s leadership throughout was by no means equal to the emergency, though he displayed his usual personal bravery and resolution. In the grand advance of Halleck’s armies which followed Shiloh, Grant was relieved of all important duties by his assignment as second in command of the whole force, and was thought by the army at large to be in disgrace. But Halleck soon went to Washington as general-in-chief, and Grant took command of his old army and of Rosecrans’ Army of the Mississippi. Two victories (Iuka and Corinth) were won in the autumn of 1862, but the credit of both fell to Rosecrans, who commanded in the field, and the nadir of Grant’s military fortunes was reached when the first advance on Vicksburg (q.v.), planned on an unsound basis, and complicated by a series of political intrigues (which had also caused the adoption of the original scheme), collapsed after the minor reverses of Holly Springs and Chickasaw Bayou (December 1862).
It is fair to assume that Grant would have followed other unsuccessful generals into retirement, had he not shown that, whatever his mistakes or failures, and whether he was or was not sober and temperate in his habits, he possessed the iron determination and energy which in the eyes of Lincoln and Stanton,[1] and of the whole Northern people, was the first requisite of their generals. He remained then with his army near Vicksburg, trying one plan after another without result, until at last after months of almost hopeless work his perseverance was crowned with success—a success directly consequent upon a strange and bizarre campaign of ten weeks, in which his daring and vigour were more conspicuous than ever before. On the 4th of July 1863 the great fortress surrendered with 29,491 men, this being one of the most important victories won by the Union arms in the whole war. Grant was at once made a major-general in the regular army. A few months later the great reverse of Chickamauga created an alarm in the North commensurate with the elation that had been felt at the double victory of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, and Grant was at once ordered to Chattanooga, to decide the fate of the Army of the Cumberland in a second battle. Four armies were placed under his command, and three of these concentrated at Chattanooga. On the 25th of November 1863 a great three-days’ battle ended with the crushing defeat of the Confederates, who from this day had no foothold in the centre and west.