Grant's Inauguration
U.S. Congress. Senate Gallery,
Washington, D.C.: Philip & Solomons,
Printed ticket, 1869
Rare Book & Special
Collections Division (88.6)
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Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), elected as the eighteenth president
of the United States, wrote his first inaugural address entirely
on his own. The result was a surprise lecture on the urgent need
for reduction of the national debt. The issue of Reconstruction
was scarcely mentioned. Grant may have accepted the responsibilities
of the office of president "without fear," as he claimed, but also
without knowledge of the problems that confronted the nation in
the aftermath of the Civil War.
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