Civic Calendar: Remembering Ulysses S. Grant and James Monroe

Monday, April 27

The Forty-Ninth State Fellows of the UAA Honors College call the attention of the University community to the anniversary of the birth of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) on April 27, and James Monroe (1738-1851) on April 28.

Grant is credited with winning the American Civil War. After victories in the Mississippi River Valley and at Chattanooga, Lincoln made Grant General-in-Chief of the Army. After his successful siege of Richmond, he accepted Robert E. Lee's Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. Though Grant's presidential terms, 1869-1877, were plagued by corruption, his memoirs, published after his death, have earned him a significant literary reputation.

James Monroe's presidency, 1817-1825, included the acquisition of Florida (from Spain), the Missouri Compromise (limiting the expansion of slavery) and the Monroe Doctrine, the declaration that, in the name of liberty, the United States would not tolerate re-colonization of the western hemisphere. Monroe died on July 4, 1831, the third president (after Adams and Jefferson) to die on the anniversary of the founding of the nation.