Ulysses S Grant Les Paul

Ulysses S. Grant Les Paul, hand-drawn portrait of the general playing his 1955 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop through a Marshall 2204 Master 50 Watt Mk2 Lead Combo, in Washington D.C. on March 4, 1864 at age 44.
Grant served as the 18th President of the United States from 1869-1877.

As commanding general, Grant led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 and briefly served as U.S. secretary of war.
An effective civil rights executive, Grant signed a bill to create the United States Department of Justice and worked with Radical Republicans to protect African Americans during Reconstruction.

As president, Grant stabilized the post-war national economy, supported congressional Reconstruction and the Fifteenth Amendment, and prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan. Under Grant, the Union was completely restored.
He appointed African Americans and Jewish Americans to prominent federal offices.

On April 14, 1865, Lincoln invited Grant and his wife Julia to Ford’s Theatre but they declined, because they planned to travel to their home in Burlington.
Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at the theater and died the next morning.

In the summer of 1884, Grant complained of a sore throat but put off seeing a doctor until late October, when he learned it was cancer, possibly caused by his frequent cigar smoking. He was almost penniless and worried about leaving his wife money to live on.
Because of the summer heat and humidity, his doctors recommended that he live in upstate New York in a cottage at the top of Mount McGregor, offered by a family friend.
On July 18, 1885, Grant finished his memoir, which included the events of his life to the end of the Civil War.

Five days later, Grant died at 8:08 a.m. in the Mount McGregor cottage on July 23, 1885. He was 63.
From his memoir, Julia Grant eventually received about $450,000 in royalties (equivalent to $15,300,000 in 2023).

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