Grant, Ulysses S. 

Born: April 27, 1822, Point Pleasant, Ohio; Died: July 23, 1885, Wilton, New York.  Republican.  18th President of the United States, 1869-1877.  U.S. Secretary of War, 1867-1868.  Commanding General of the U.S. Army during the conclusion of the War Between the States and much of the Reconstruction Period, 1864-1869.  Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, bringing an end to the War Between the States.  President Johnson, when Grant was inaugurated, refused to attend the event, or ride with Grant when Johnson departed from the White House for the last time.  Unlike Johnson, Grant’s Reconstruction strategy included federal enforcement of civil rights, including against voter intimidation of Southern blacks.  During his presidency the remaining Confederate States were readmitted to the Union, and in 1871 he employed the Ku Klux Klan Act authorizing him to impose martial law and suspend habeas corpus should he believe it necessary. By October, the new law was used in South Carolina, with the help of federal troops.  By 1872, the Klan’s power had collapsed and the Black Community was voting in record numbers.  In 1871, he signed a bill ending the Indian treaty system; the law now treated individual Native Americans as wards of the federal government, and no longer dealt with the tribes as sovereign entities.