Born in Ohio, the son of a tanner, Ulysses Grant was a man who initially struggled for success. He was, at best, a very average student at West Point, and his first career in the US Army was ended by an enforced resignation over a charge of intoxication. After leaving the Army, Grant was unsuccessful as a farmer, a bill collector and a salesman, but when the Civil War came, he was a man who found greatness, rising to the rank of Commanding General of the United States Army, leading the armies of the Union to victory in the Civil War before later becoming the two-term 18th President of the United States. This biography of President Grant was written in 1901, less than twenty years after his death, and offers a much more immediate image of Grant than later biographies.