Ulysse

1865 · réf. 37764 — 21/12/1865. Ulysses S. Grant through his intelligence determination iron will and patriotism was the military man most responsible for leading the United States through the greatest time of crisis and chaos in the nation’s history. As general of the Army during the Civil War he commanded hundreds of thousands of soldiers leading the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy. Moreover all recognized that his strategy had compelled Lee and the Confederacy to fight the kind of war they could not win. Later as president he guided the nation through Reconstruction helping to bind the wounds between North and South while empowering newly freed African Americans. In November 1865 President Andrew Johnson sent Grant on a fact-finding tour of the defeated South to assess conditions and report back on Reconstruction. Grant returned and submitted his report to Johnson on December 18 1865. Grant recommended continuing a reformed Freedmen's Bureau though he advised against using Black troops in garrisons believing it discouraged farm labor. Johnson seized on the generally lenient tone of Grant's report to bolster his own position: Grant's report recommended a lenient Reconstruction policy and that December Johnson declared the reconstruction process complete — a declaration that outraged Radical Republicans in Congress who had just reconvened that same month and were refusing to seat the newly elected Southern representatives including several former Confederate generals and cabinet officers. Samuel Stephen Curtis was born in 1838 in McConnelsville Ohio the son of Samuel Ryan Curtis the future Union major general and congressman from Iowa. Before the war he made his way west to the Colorado gold country where he became a prominent figure in the young territory — laying out the streets of Denver naming one Curtis Street after himself building a business in real estate mercantile trade and mining and serving as the city's postmaster. When the Civil War broke out Colorado's territorial governor sent him east to Fort Laramie to secure arms and munitions for the territory's volunteer companies then on to Washington to lobby for funding — missions he carried out successfully enough to earn a major's commission in the 2nd Colorado Infantry. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1862 and joined the staff of his father then commanding in the Trans-Mississippi theater serving as his aide-de-camp through campaigns in Arkansas and later duty with the Departments of Kansas Missouri and the Northwest. He briefly left his father's staff to command Camp Weld Colorado's training post near Denver at the request of territorial governor John Evans before returning to serve alongside his father for the remainder of the war. Mustered out of the volunteer service at war's end Curtis embarked on a tour of Europe in December 1865 Letter signed Washington December 21 1865 on official “Head-Quarters Armies of the United States” letterhead. “Col. S.S. Curtis late an officer of the Volunteer Service of the United States is about visiting Europe on a trip of information and pleasure. His services and late rank entitle him to consideration abroad from those who have felt interested on the success of the National Cause.” <img class=""alignnone wp-image-25018 size-post-window"" src=""https://cdn.raabcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/20231204144051/Folder-site-11-1600x1327.jpg"" alt=""historical memorabilia dealer"" width=""1600"" height=""1327"" /> unknown books