Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) was one of the critical figures — arguably the critical figure — of 19th-century American history.

Born to parents of modest means, Grant attended West Point, though he planned to become a teacher after completing his military service. He served as a quartermaster in the Mexican War, giving him training in supply chains, logistics, and other skills he would later master.

After a few years in civilian life, the Civil War drew him back into service, first as a military aide to Illinois' governor. But his skill brought several rapid promotions — he was raised a one-star general in less than two months — and in 1864, President Abraham Lincoln put him in charge of all Union armies, where he consistently outmaneuvered his Confederate rival, Robert E. Lee. In April 1865, he forced Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, which — though several smaller Confederate armies were still in the field — effectively ended the war. He is one of only eight men in U.S. Army history to hold its highest rank, General of the Army.

In 1868, after Andrew Johnson's disastrous presidency, Grant was nominated for president by the Republican Party. He was elected and served two imperfect terms marred by economic problems. He did more to enforce the laws of Reconstruction (and Black civil rights) than his predecessor or his successors, battling the Ku Klux Klan; it was not until after he left office that the South returned fully to white Jim Crow rule.

On top of it all, while dying of throat cancer in his final years, he wrote The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, which is widely considered the best book written by an American president and which one critic called "the single most important work of nonfiction in our literature."

This embedding is based on Civil War-era Grant, not the slightly pudgier and grayer man who served as president. It consistently gives him a shorter beard than he actually had, but that's addressable in your prompt. It's based on 30 images cooked for a total of 300 steps on base SD 1.5: 16 vectors per token, a 0.004 learning rate, a batch size of 6, and 5 gradient steps.

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