Congress creates a new rank so Grant outranks every soldier alive
A year after Appomattox, no existing rank matched what Ulysses S. Grant had become to the Union Army. On July 25, 1866, Congress passed legislation creating the rank of General of the Army and promoted Grant into it, placing him above every other officer in uniform. He had already worn the three stars of Lieutenant General, a rank last held by George Washington. Now he wore four, with the buttons on his coat arranged in three groups of four, and he was the only man in the country entitled to wear them.
Grant was elected President in 1868, and by then Congress's rank had already settled who outranked whom in the Army, a fact that mattered once he moved into civilian office during Reconstruction. The rank became a singular American honor, held by only three men before disappearing until revived for Eisenhower and Marshall's generation in World War II.
QHow many men ever held the original four-star General of the Army rank?
Only three: Grant first in 1866, then William Tecumseh Sherman when Grant became President in 1869, then Philip Sheridan after Sherman. Each held it alone, one at a time, unlike the later five-star version created for World War II, which could be held by multiple officers at once and was eventually held by five men: Marshall, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Arnold, and later Omar Bradley. When Sheridan died in 1888, the rank simply ceased to exist. Nobody replaced him. The rank stayed empty until 1944, when Congress created the five-star version.
QWhat happened to Grant's rank in the final weeks of his life?
In 1885, as Grant lay dying of throat cancer and racing to finish his memoirs to provide for his family, Congress passed legislation restoring his rank of General of the Army, which he had given up in 1869 upon becoming President. Grant died shortly afterward, holding the rank Congress had restored to him.
QWhat did Grant think of Custer, another famous Army officer of his era?
Grant had no patience for Custer's judgment. After the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Grant said he regarded "Custer's massacre as a sacrifice of troops, brought on by Custer himself, that was wholly unnecessary." It's a blunt line from a man who by then held the Army's highest possible rank and had little tolerance for recklessness that cost soldiers their lives.
