ULYSSES S. GRANT.
General Grant's career was so extraordinarily brilliant, and was compressed into so short a time that it stands almost alone as one of the most astonishing succession of events.
His birthplace was Point Pleasant, Ohio. Here on the 27th of April, 1822, the future general was born. When he was but a year old his parents moved to Georgetown, where he grew into a sturdy, quiet lad, showing no particular smartness any more than the average boy. Indeed, he was rather dull, learning rather slowly, and with difficulty. There were no free schools when he was a boy. These institutions were supported by subscription, and one teacher had charge of all the pupils—from the primer class to the big boy or girl of eighteen.
General Grant never saw an algebra nor any mathematical work until he went to West Point. He had a great fondness for horses, and was never so happy as when he could be with them. He was an excellent judge of them. When he was but seven he drove his father's horses, hauling all the wood used in the house and shops. When he was fifteen he made a horse trade with a Mr. Payne, at Flat Rock, Kentucky, where he was visiting. The brother of this gentleman was to accompany young Grant back to Georgetown. The boy was told that the horse had never had a collar on (it was a saddle horse), but he hitched it up, and started to drive the seventy miles with a strange animal. The horse ran and kicked, and made the companion horse frightened, and Ulysses stopped them right on the edge of an embankment twenty feet deep. Every time he would start, the new horse would kick and run, until Mr. Payne, who was thoroughly frightened, would not proceed any further in his company, but took passage in a freight wagon. The boy was left alone, but with that faculty for surmounting difficulties which distinguished him in after life, a happy thought struck him—he took out his bandana, a huge handkerchief much used then, and blindfolded the creature, driving him quietly to the house of his uncle in Maysville, where he borrowed another horse.
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A laughable incident occurred when he was eight. He saw a colt which he very much coveted, and for which the owner demanded $25. General Grant's father said he would give $20. The boy was so anxious to possess the colt that his father yielded, giving him instructions how to make the bargain. Going to the owner the boy said: “Papa says I may offer you $20 for the colt, but if you won't take that I am to offer $22.50, and if you won't take that, to give you $25.” It is needless to say what he had to pay for the colt.
The elder Grant was not poor in the usual sense of the term—on the contrary, he was quite well situated for the time and place.
Ulysses was sent to West Point at seventeen; he was quite apt in mathematics, but had no love for military tactics, and resolved not to stay in the army, even if he graduated. He was not brilliant in his class here, either—he says himself that had “the class been turned the other end foremost, I should have been near the head.” He graduated four years after his entrance, No. 21 in a class of thirty-nine.
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It was feared at that time that he had the consumption, for he had a bad cough, but his outdoor life entirely removed it.
His real name was Hiram Ulysses Grant, but some one made a blunder in making out the document appointing him a cadet, and as U. S. Grant he will be known always.
On graduation he was breveted Second Lieutenant of Infantry, and placed in the Fourth Regiment, which was sent to the frontier. But two years went by, ere he was sent to Texas to join General Taylor's army, and here he became a full lieutenant. He was made quartermaster of his regiment early in 1847, after showing great valor in the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca, Monterey, and the siege of Vera Cruz. He participated in all of the engagements, and was promoted on the field of Molino del Rey for his bravery. A few days after an exhibition of the same quality won him special notice and praise from his brigade commander.
When the Mexican War was over, he was stationed at: Sackett's Harbor, New York. He had long been attached to Miss Julia Dent, the sister of one of his classmates, and August 22, 1848, she became his wife.
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Four years later he went with his regiment to California and Oregon, where he became captain. The summer of 1854 saw, apparently, an end to his military career, for he resigned his commission and tried to work a small farm near St. Louis, and attend to real estate in the city. He was not intended for either vocation. Greater things were in store for him, and, disheartened at his poor success, he went to work for his father, as clerk in his store—the leather trade, in Galena, Illinois.
At the first sound of war he offered his services to the government, and marched to Springfield at the head of a company. Governor Yates placed him on his staff, and made him mustering officer of all the volunteers from Illinois, but in June he was made colonel of the Twenty-first Regiment, which he had organized and drilled himself. Needing cars to transport it to a distant point, he was told they could not be furnished. So little a matter as that did not annoy him, but with that directness and energy which always marked his movements, he astonished the authorities by marching the entire regiment to the desired place.
In August he was promoted, becoming brigadier-general, and assuming command of all troops at Cairo. From this hour his successes were great, and have become matters of history. He was the idol of the army, and the surprise of the country, which gave him the popular name which seems to fit him so well—Unconditional Surrender Grant.
After the siege of Vicksburg and the defeat of General Bragg, it became plain to the government that one great mind should control all the forces, and General Grant was declared commander of the entire armies of the Union, early in 1864.
It was then that President Lincoln and General Grant met for the first time—a meeting between two great men. The commission of full general was bestowed upon Grant in July, 1866, this title being created especially for him. From August, 1867, to January, 1868, he was really Secretary of War, on account of the trouble between President Johnson and Secretary Stanton. He received the nomination for President, in May, 1868, at the hands of the Republican convention which met in Chicago, and was elected by an overwhelming majority. He was reelected to a second term and at its close he made a tour of the world, with his wife. He was received with unbounded enthusiasm everywhere.
In 1881 he bought a house in New York City, which he made a home in the fullest sense, for his family and himself. On Christmas Eve, 1883, he slipped on the sidewalk, and injured himself so badly that he had to use crutches ever after. Becoming partner in a banking house, he was robbed of all he had by his associates in business and had to turn his attention to literary work, furnishing the Century with some articles. Being solicited to give his experiences, he wrote his “Memoirs,” which he indited while suffering great anguish, and which he finished four days before his death. His wife received for the two volumes from his pen $400,000 as royalty.
The hero of many battles, the grand soldier, was doomed. In 1884 a trouble in his throat developed into a cancer, and for nearly a year he endured intense agony, never murmuring, but working on, that he might place those he so dearly loved beyond want.
On July 23, 1885, he died, in a cottage at Mt. McGregor, near Saratoga, New York—a man whom the world is better for having known.