The U.S. Military Academy at West Point is welcoming a statue of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant on its campus this week to celebrate 150 years since the West Point graduate was inaugurated as president of the United States.
The family of former Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald, who graduated from the service academy in 1975, provided a “generous donation” for a 7.5-feet bronze statue of Grant. The statue of Grant, who graduated in 1843, will be revealed by Grant’s great-great grandson Ulysses Grant Dietz on Thursday.
According to West Point’s History Department head Col. Ty Seidule, Grant “embodied the West Point motto of Duty, Honor, Country.”
“As a soldier, he led an army that emancipated four million people, ended slavery, and saved the United States of America,” Seidule said in a statement last week. “The Grant statue will inspire generations of cadets to become leaders of principle and integrity for the nation.”
In 2016, the House Armed Services Committee recommended the secretary of the Army erect a statue of Grant at West Point to coincide with the 150th anniversary of his inauguration into the Oval Office. The campus already has statues of three notable West Point graduates, including former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who graduated in 1915.
Grant, who was the first West Point graduate elected president, is best known as being Union Army’s commanding general during the Civil War.
