ILLUSTRATIONS

ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT
From a photograph by W. Kurtz, New York. 		Frontispiece
JESSE ROOT GRANT, ÆTAT. 69
Father of Ulysses Simpson Grant.
From a photograph.
MRS. HANNAH GRANT
Mother of Ulysses Simpson Grant.
From a photograph by Landy, taken in Cincinnati.
FACSIMILE OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT TO HIS FATHER
FACSIMILE OF GENERAL GRANT'S PROCLAMATION TO THE CITIZENS OF PADUCAH
GENERAL ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT
From a photograph taken in 1865 by Gutekunst, Philadelphia.
ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT
From a photograph taken during his second term as President.

Letters of Ulysses S. Grant

[In 1843, at the age of twenty-one, Ulysses S. Grant was graduated from West Point with the rank of brevet second lieutenant. He was appointed to the 4th Infantry, stationed at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis. In May, 1844, he was ordered to the frontier of Louisiana with the army of observation, while the annexation of Texas was pending. The bill for the annexation of Texas was passed March 1, 1845; the war with Mexico began in April, 1846. Grant was promoted to a first-lieutenancy September, 1847. The Mexican War closed in 1848. Both this war and the Civil War he characterizes in his Memoirs as "unholy."

Soon after his return from Mexico he was married to Julia Dent. The next six years were spent in military duty in Sacketts Harbor, New York, Detroit, Michigan, and on the Pacific coast. He was promoted to the captaincy of a company in 1853; but because of the inadequacy of a captain's pay, he resigned from the army, July, 1854, and rejoined his wife and children at St. Louis. In speaking of this period Grant says, "I was now to commence at the age of thirty-two a new struggle for our support."

The first chapter in this new struggle was farming. The following letter was written to his youngest sister Mary, then sixteen years old, afterward Mrs. M.J. Cramer. "Jennie," afterward Mrs. A.R. Corbin, was the second sister, Virginia.]

St. Louis, Mo.,
August 22nd, 1857.

DEAR SISTER: