 Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz
 Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz
 Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz
ULYSSES S. GRANT
Statue Description:
Standing figure of Ulysses S. Grant in full uniform. He holds a sword in his proper left hand, and binoculars in his proper right hand. He stands with his proper left leg forward. A plaque on the front of the base depicts the Battle of Lookout Mountain.
Donated by Grant Memorial Association of Missouri. Commissioned for an estimated $10,000. The monument was first installed in the middle of Twelfth Street in 1888, awaiting completion of the construction of City Hall. When City Hall was completed in 1898, the sculpture was moved to the south entrance of City Hall, where it was placed with a Civil War cannon. In response to criticism of the backdoor location of the monument, the sculpture was moved in 1915 to its present site, without the cannon.
A civilian at age 32, Grant struggled through seven lean years. From 1854 to 1858 he labored on a family farm near St. Louis, Missouri, using slaves owned by his father-in-law, but it did not prosper. Grant owned one slave (whom he set free in 1859); his wife owned four slaves (two women servants and their two small boys). In 1858-59 he was a bill collector in St. Louis. Failing at everything, in humiliation he asked his father for a job, and in 1860 was made an assistant in the leather shop owned by his father and run by his younger brother in Galena, Illinois. Grant & Perkins sold harnesses, saddles, and other leather goods and purchased hides from farmers in the prosperous Galena area.
Although Grant was essentially apolitical, his father-in-law was a prominent Democrat in St. Louis (a fact that lost Grant the good job of county engineer in 1859). In 1856 he voted for Democrat James Buchanan for president to avert secession and because "I knew Frémont" (the Republican candidate). In 1860, he favored Democrat Stephen A. Douglas but did not vote. In 1864, he allowed his political sponsor, Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, to use his private letters as campaign literature for Abraham Lincoln and the Union Party, which combined both Republicans and War Democrats. He refused to announce his political affiliation until 1868, when he finally declared himself a Republican.
Sculptor: Robert Porter Bringhurst (1855-1925). Dedicated October 29, 1888.
Tucker Blvd. & Market St., city hall, Saint Louis City Missouri
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Missouri 
