Ulysses S. Grant

Grant had failed at farming and at business before the war made him the general who finally beat Lee. As president he fought the Ku Klux Klan with federal troops and prosecutions, though corruption among his appointees marked both terms.

Dying of throat cancer and ruined by a swindler, he wrote his memoirs in a race against his own illness to leave his wife something to live on. He finished them four days before he died; they sold 300,000 copies. His tomb is the largest mausoleum in North America.