Grant and His Family

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Lead with the family group rather than the general: this picture shows Ulysses S. Grant with his wife, Julia, and their children, a domestic scene that sets it apart from the battlefield and official portraits most people associate with him. Grant's rise from Union commander to president made family images like this useful for presenting him as a devoted husband and father after the long strain of the Civil War. Photographs of presidents with their households were becoming more common in the later nineteenth century, and such pictures helped shape public feeling about a leader who had once been a relatively private man. Notice how the group is arranged, since posed family portraits of the period often reveal as much about social expectations as about the people themselves.

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