U. S. GRANT.
What Longfellow wrote of Charles Sumner may well be applied to Grant:—
"Were a star quenched on high,
For ages would its light,
Still travelling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
"So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men."
The light left by General Grant will not fade out from American history. To be a great soldier is of course to be immortal; but to be magnanimous to enemies, heroic in affections, a master of self, without vanity, honest, courageous, true, invincible,—such greatness is far above the glory of battlefields. Such greatness he possessed, who, born in comparative obscurity, came to be numbered in that famous trio, dear to every American heart: Washington, Lincoln, Grant.
Ulysses Simpson Grant was born April 27, 1822, in a log house at Mount Pleasant, Ohio. The boy seems to have had the blood of soldiers in his veins, for his great-grandfather and great-uncle held commissions in the English army in 1756, in the war against the French and Indians, and both were killed. His grandfather served through the entire war of the Revolution.
His father, Jesse R. Grant, left dependent upon himself, learned the trade of a tanner, and by his industry made a home for himself and family. Unable to attend school more than six months in his life, he was a constant reader, and through his own privations became the more anxious that his children should be educated.
Ulysses was the first-born child of Jesse Grant and Hannah Simpson, who were married in June, 1821. When their son was about a year old, they moved to Georgetown, Ohio, and here the boy passed a happy childhood, learning the very little which the schools of the time were able to impart.
He was not fond of study, and enjoyed the more active life of the farm. He says in his personal memoirs: "While my father carried on the manufacture of leather and worked at the trade himself, he owned and tilled considerable land. I detested the trade, preferring almost any other labor; but I was fond of agriculture, and of all employment in which horses were used. We had, among other lands, fifty acres of forest within a mile of the village. In the fall of the year, choppers were employed to cut enough wood to last a twelve-month. When I was seven or eight years of age, I began hauling all the wood used in the house and shops. I could not load it on the wagons, of course, at that time, but I could drive, and the choppers would load, and some one at the house unload. When about eleven years old, I was strong enough to hold a plough. From that age until seventeen I did all the work done with horses, such as breaking up the land, furrowing, ploughing corn and potatoes, bringing in the crops when harvested, hauling all the wood, besides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, and sawing wood for stoves, etc., while still attending school. For this I was compensated by the fact that there never was any scolding or punishing by my parents; no objection to rational enjoyments, such as fishing, going to the creek a mile away to swim in summer, taking a horse and visiting my grandparents in the adjoining county, fifteen miles off, skating on the ice in winter, or taking a horse and sleigh when there was snow on the ground."