Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865

By Brooks D. Simpson and Gary Gallagher

“The best study of Grant’s military career since Bruce Catton’s two volumes. . . . The best treatment of Union military command and strategy now in print.” —The New Republic

Many modern historians have painted Ulysses S. Grant as a butcher, a drunk, and a failure as president. Others have argued the exact opposite and portray him with saintlike levels of ethic and intellect.

In Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity 1822–1865, historian Brooks D. Simpson takes neither approach, recognizing Grant as a complex and human figure with human faults, strengths, and motivations. Simpson offers a balanced and complete study of Grant from birth to the end of the Civil War, with particular emphasis on his military career and family life and the struggles he overcame in his unlikely rise from unremarkable beginnings to his later fame as commander of the Union Army. Chosen as a New York Times Notable Book upon its original publication, Ulysses S. Grant is a readable, thoroughly researched portrait that sheds light on this controversial figure.

“[An] eminently informed and finely balanced portrait of Ulysses S. Grant as man, husband, failed entrepreneur and shrewd, victorious general. Simpson . . . uses carefully excavated facts and anecdotes to reveal an individual far more complex than the caricature . . . handed down to us by popular history. At the same time, Simpson does not gloss over Grant’s shortcomings. Although a fan of the general’s, Simpson is not in the business of writing apologetics, and therein lies his strength.” —Publishers Weekly

“Persuasively explains the complexities and seeming contradictions of his subject’s character and genius.” —Library Journal

“Skillfully written. . . . Simpson, who has benefited from decades of Civil War study, wears his wide-ranging scholarship lightly. Guaranteed to enlighten and please.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Simpson has done a masterly job. . . . He has given us a detailed and exciting narrative of how one man succeeded, where so many others had failed.” —The New York Times Book Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781627885461

Book preview

ULYSSES S.

GRANT

TRIUMPH OVER ADVERSITY, 1822-1865

BROOKS D. SIMPSON

Acknowledgments

•

I want to thank the people who assisted me at the Huntington Library, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Newberry Library, the Chicago Historical Society, the Illinois State Historical Library, the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, Morris Library (Southern Illinois University), Doheny Library (University of Southern California), Alderman Library (University of Virginia), and Hayden Library (Arizona State University). Thanks also go to my other editors and publishers, who waited patiently for their turn (and in some cases are still waiting): Dan Ross, Fred Woodward, Lew Bateman, and Andrew and Linda Davidson.

Two people with a particular interest in Ulysses S. Grant, John Y. Simon and William S. McFeely, are in some sense partly responsible for this book. Ably assisted by a skilled staff, John is into his fourth decade of editing Grant’s papers for publication, and the result has eased my labors. At a very early stage in my career Bill took me aside and suggested that the best way for me to say what I wanted to say about Ulysses S. Grant was to write my own book.

In following this advice I have encountered good people who have given generously of their time and of themselves. Terry Winschel reviewed the chapters on Vicksburg; Gordon Rhea shared insights and some of his own work concerning the campaign from the Wilderness to the crossing of the James; Charles Dellheim read the early chapters and helped in many ways during the past several years. Pam Sanfilippo shared with me her research on White Haven, and the whole crew at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site have been wonderful and welcoming to me in my visits. Also offering assistance and information were Jim Epperson, Chuck Ten Brink, Jeff and Janet Davis, Leah Berkowitz, and Dave Smith, who took me on a tour that included stops at Georgetown and the gravesite of Grant’s parents.

Mark Grimsley, Candace Scott, and Roger Bridges read the entire manuscript, correcting errors, questioning arguments, and offering useful suggestions and constant encouragement. That’s nothing new for Roger, who’s been a boon companion and adviser for a decade. Among those friends who have been especially supportive, I want to thank Joan Cashin, Len and Bill Riedel, Frank Scaturro, Tom Schwartz, Michael Burlingame, Herman Hattaway, Ed Bearss, Al Castel, Trevor Hall, Lew Tambs, Rachel Fuchs, Noel Stowe, David Wilson, Wendy Venet, and Steve Woodworth. Dick Sewell and Al Bogue have continued to be as professional colleagues what they once were as mentors — models of what to do and how to do it.

Gerry McCauley has offered me good advice and counsel as we went through the process of contracting with a publisher. Harry Foster has served as my editor and, along with Katie Dillin and especially Liz Duvall, has guided me through the preparation of the manuscript; Charlotte Saikia’s discerning pencil sharpened my prose and raised good questions; Jacques Chazaud prepared the maps.

For this paperback edition I have Elizabeth Demers to thank. Her hard work and patience did much to see this project through, as did the folks at Zenith/Quarto. As for those close to me, this book could never have been done without the love and support of my parents, who did all they could to foster a young boy’s interest in American history, whether it was going to museums, visiting battlefields, or buying books. Nor could it have been done without the patient tolerance of my sister, Joy, who had to put up with her brother’s interests but always reassures me that she finds them interesting, too. My wife, Cheryl, now knows more about Ulysses S. Grant than she ever cared to discover and made most memorable a trip to White Haven by asking our tour guide if she could see Julia’s bed, because she was quite curious about the bedpost she named after her Ulysses. Finally, there are my three daughters, Rebecca, Emily, and Olivia, who like anything to do with the Yankees. No father could be prouder than I am of them.

Contents

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Maps

Foreword by Gary Gallagher

Preface

1 My Ulysses

2 The Dashing Lieutenant

3 A Man on Fire

4 Forsaken

5 Hardscrabble

6 Off to War

7 What I Want Is to Advance

8 Under a Cloud

9 Enemies Front and Rear

10 Struggle and Scrutiny

11 Triumph at Vicksburg

12 The Heights of Chattanooga

13 The Top Spot

14 Planning the Grand Offensive

15 No Turning Back

16 A Very Tedious Job

17 Summer of Discontent

18 Celebrations and Salutes

19 Give Him No Peace

20 Ending the Matter

21 Peace

Afterword: Of Success, Fate, and Greatness

Notes

Index

Maps

•

The Western Theater, 1861–1862

The Mississippi Valley Region, 1862–1863

The Vicksburg Campaign, March–July 1863

Chattanooga, November 23–25, 1863

The Overland Campaign, May–June 1864

Richmond and Petersburg, 1864–1865

From Petersburg to Appomattox, March–April 1865

Foreword

•

Gary W. Gallagher

Ulysses S. Grant offers a compelling example of why it is important to understand the difference between history and memory. Grant played a profoundly important role during the Civil War, presiding over military operations that placed him alongside Abraham Lincoln as one of the two individuals most responsible for suppressing the Confederate rebellion and restoring the Union. The loyal citizenry of the time understood this, and they celebrated Grant as a soldier, twice elected him president, and honored him in death with the most impressive tomb in the Western Hemisphere. Over time and for various reasons — some linked to efforts by former Confederates and Copperhead Democrats to denigrate him — Grant fell in the public estimation. Often characterized as a butcher who understood little about strategy but benefitted from overwhelming advantages of manpower and resources as well as a drunk and a corrupt president, Grant became, in historical memory, a figure far removed from nineteenth-century reality. Popular misconceptions about Grant have complicated the work of scholars seeking to present a fair, unvarnished treatment of him as a man, a general, and a political figure.

Since the early 1990s, Brooks D. Simpson has done as much as anyone to recover the historical Grant, to assess him in ways that give full credit to his strengths while also examining his weaknesses and failures. Simpson’s Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868 (1991), among the first books that sought to reframe interpretations of Grant, heralded the arrival of a most promising historian and whetted appetites for more on Grant. Simpson delivered with this book, the first edition of which was published in 2000 to wide praise. This new edition, the first in paperback, brings a superb book to a wider audience.

Simpson’s mastery of sources and analytical acuity render this book a splendid place for readers to explore Grant’s life and career from his birth in Point Pleasant, Ohio, through the end of the Civil War. It is an admirably rounded portrait that accords full attention to Grant’s relationship with his family, his personality, his military training and service, his political skills, and his quite remarkable ability to overcome disappointments, both before and during the Civil War, that would have crushed many others. The principal focus is on the great challenge of preserving the Union. As Grant put it in his official report at the end of the war: From the first, I was firm in the conviction that no peace could be had that would be stable and conducive to the happiness of the people, both North and South, until the military power of the rebellion was entirely broken. For Grant’s accomplishment of that goal, as Harper’s Weekly put it in April 1865, the country pays now, and will forever pay, the homage of its unqualified gratitude to his genius and his spotless character.

By telling in detailed and often gripping fashion how Grant carried out his central part of the effort to salvage the Union, Simpson helps us recover why the editors at Harper’s Weekly predicted long-term fame for the nation’s preeminent Civil War soldier.

May 2014

Preface

•

William T. Sherman never hesitated to say what he thought to anyone who would listen, and he was not afraid to pass judgment. But he admitted that on one subject he was unable to offer an answer. He could never quite figure out Ulysses S. Grant. He marveled at his friend’s self-confidence, his equanimity, his resilience and determination; but he could not explain the secret of his success: I knew him as a cadet at West Point, as a lieutenant of the Fourth Infantry, as a citizen of St. Louis, and as a growing general all through the bloody Civil War. Yet to me he is a mystery, and I believe he is a mystery to himself.

If Sherman could not provide the answer, why should anyone else try? That is the question one must ask of any biographer of Ulysses S. Grant. It does not help that Grant often kept his thoughts to himself; no wonder he was called the American Sphinx. To some extent, he remains what a newspaper reporter once called him, an unpronounceable man. There are no simple answers to the riddles of his character and personality, no single threads that hold everything together; biographers who claim otherwise are either deluding themselves or misleading others. And yet Grant’s life is as fascinating as it is important. As Owen Wister noted a century ago, None of our public men have a story so strange as this. A seemingly ordinary man who accomplished extraordinary tasks, Grant deserves our attention and our understanding for who he was and for what he did; both his successes and failures can teach us much about his America and ours.

Grant has not fared well as a biographical subject in the past fifty years. A massive multivolume effort begun by Lloyd Lewis and continued by Bruce Catton carried the story to Appomattox, but Catton was happy to hear that he need not go further. In the past twenty years, despite the flood of literature about the Civil War, only two single-volume biographies have appeared, by William S. McFeely and Geoffrey Perret, as well as a few other attempts at explaining Grant’s life; the publication of a comprehensive edition of his papers continues under the supervision of John Y. Simon. Each of these endeavors has its merits and offers compelling arguments, but there is more than enough room for an extended examination of Grant the soldier, the president, and the man. This first volume takes his story from birth through the Civil War; a second volume will continue the tale through the two decades after Appomattox to Grant’s death in 1885.

I have no interest in becoming Grant’s advocate or antagonist, in either elevating or denigrating him. Like anyone else, Grant had his strengths and weaknesses, his virtues and his vices; if parts of his character and personality are praiseworthy, one must also concede that he was far from flawless. In short, he was human. People who search for perfect heroes reveal much more about themselves than about their subjects; so do those who make their subjects scapegoats for an age. The tendency of some people to categorize biographers as being for or against their subject has always struck me as being simplistic and somewhat simpleminded (and occasionally self-serving). If there is much to admire in Grant, there are also areas where he should be subject to scrutiny and criticism. In treating Grant with empathy, I have guarded against becoming too sympathetic, let alone apologetic, although those readers who hold a negative assessment of him may disagree. Grant could be petty, vindictive, stubborn, overly sensitive, and partial to favorites; in dealing with troubling issues he sometimes was too eager to compromise principle in pursuit of pragmatic practice and too willing to accept things as they were. Yet he also displayed bravery, integrity, determination, persistence, generosity, gentleness, and a self-confidence that if not as unshakable as is commonly portrayed was nevertheless astonishing. Critics who question his military renown fail to appreciate just how valuable common sense, character, courage, intuition, and the ability to cope with circumstances are to the making of a great commander. Grant may not have carried himself as did Robert E. Lee, embraced the pomp and circumstance of war as did George McClellan, or expressed himself in William T. Sherman’s colorful language of blunt realism and relentless logic; he may not have framed brilliant plans in the headquarters tent emphasizing elegant maneuvers or elaborate tactics — but generals are defined not by how they look or what they say but who they are and what they do.

In reading, writing, and thinking about Grant, I have been guided by one of his own wishes, expressed in his Memoirs, that he would like to see truthful history written. Here and there I have drawn on sources that shed new light on Grant’s life and career, but as I examined documents and read accounts I discovered that perhaps the toughest task facing a biographer is trying to get the story right. It was not so much uncovering new material as it was carefully rereading old sources that led me to cast a critical eye on traditional accounts and unexamined assumptions. I was surprised by what I learned about the Lincoln–Grant relationship, Grant’s drinking habits, and the general’s understanding of war and politics, including emancipation and reconciliation. If it became important for me to take a closer look at his performance as general-in-chief in 1864–1865, I was equally engaged in learning more about his personal struggles and his devotion to his wife and children. But, more than anything else, I found Grant’s ability to keep moving on, to overcome obstacles, to prevail somehow, some way, testament to some inner strength that weathered periods of difficulty, depression, and self-doubt.

Perhaps it was no accident that three of the greatest American authors of Grant’s time were drawn to him. Mark Twain’s relationship with him is well known; Herman Melville came away from an encounter in 1864 intrigued, an impression that found expression in his observation, Meekness and grimness meet in him — The silent General; Walt Whitman observed, In all Homer and Shakespeare there is no fortune or personality really more picturesque or rapidly changing, more full of heroism, pathos, contrast. But it may have been young Theodore Lyman who best expressed the fascination some people have about Grant when he observed in 1864, He is the concentration of all that is American.

And this man wins in the end.

—Stephen Vincent Benét,

John Brown’s Body

•

1

My Ulysses

JESSE GRANT exemplified what America was all about. A man of restless ambition striving to make his own way in the world, he was not shy about sharing his dreams, his hopes, and his accomplishments with anyone who would listen. Behind his drive was an understanding of what it meant to fail. Descended from good colonial stock, Jesse had watched his father, Noah Grant, fall short of the family standard. Noah’s claims to military glory as a captain during the American Revolution find no support in existing records; he was overly fond of alcohol and frittered away opportunities and money. He had two sons by a first wife before she died; with his second wife, Rachel, whom he married in 1792, he had seven more children, including Jesse, born in 1794. Ten years later Rachel died in a cabin in Deerfield, Ohio. Noah was unable to hold things together, and before long the family broke up. The two youngest children went with their father to Maysville, Kentucky, where Peter Grant, Noah’s son by his first marriage, was operating a tannery. The three middle children were parceled out to other families. Jesse, who was eleven, and his older sister Susan were set loose on their own.

The boy knew it would take a lot of work to make his way up in the world, but he was dead set on doing just that. For three years he scrambled to stay afloat. At fourteen he gained a job working on the farm of Judge George Tod, a member of the Ohio Supreme Court. He learned something about what might lie ahead for a hardworking lad when he saw the china bowls and silver spoons that the Tods used. Mrs. Tod did what she could to build the boy’s ambition and talents, lending him books to read and urging him to find a calling at which he could prosper.¹

Jesse took the advice to heart and at sixteen decided to learn the tanner’s trade. He apprenticed with his half-brother Peter, then worked at several tanneries in Ohio, including one owned by Owen Brown, whose son, John, openly denounced the peculiar institution of slavery. Jesse agreed with John’s sentiments, explaining later that he had left Kentucky because I would not own slaves and I would not live where there were slaves and not own them. In 1820 he moved to Point Pleasant, on the banks of the Ohio River, some twenty miles upriver from Cincinnati, and commenced working at Thomas Page’s tannery in order to accumulate enough capital to open his own business. He also wanted a wife. Page pointed him in the direction of Bantam, ten miles to the north, where John Simpson and his family, migrants from Pennsylvania, had settled on land purchased from Page. Jesse was soon courting Hannah Simpson, a plain unpretending girl, handsome but not vain, as her suitor remembered in later years. Moreover, she was quiet, allowing the voluble Jesse to hold forth uncontested. Although John Simpson was not too sure about Jesse’s prospects, his wife, Sarah, loved to discuss books with the young man; having ingratiated himself with his prospective mother-in-law, Jesse found it easier to achieve his objective of matrimony. As Jesse’s savings grew, John Simpson’s reservations faded, and on June 24, 1821, Jesse Grant wed Hannah Simpson. The newlyweds returned to Point Pleasant, where Jesse had rented a simple white frame house next to the tannery.²

When he was not scraping or tanning hides, Jesse Grant spent his hours reading and writing. Always willing to share his opinions with others — and never doubting his own wisdom — he liked to set down his thoughts on politics for the local paper. Hannah quietly kept house, attended the local Methodist church (bringing Jesse with her), and before long discovered that she would soon have new responsibilities. In the early hours of April 27, 1822, she gave birth to a boy, weighing ten and three-quarters pounds, with rich red-brown hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. For nearly a month the newborn went nameless: when Hannah was well enough to travel, Jesse drove his family up to Bantam, where several Simpsons had gathered to help select a name. Hannah wanted to name the boy Albert, after Pennsylvania’s Albert Gallatin, who had played a prominent role in Jeffersonian politics as a diplomat and secretary of the treasury. One sister seconded the choice; another preferred Theodore. John Simpson spoke up, offering Hiram, because it is such a handsome name. When Sarah Simpson, fresh from reading Fénelon’s Telemachus and thrilled by its dramatic description of Greek heroes, opted for Ulysses, Jesse, seeing yet another opportunity to please his mother-in-law, endorsed the suggestion (perhaps he had a hand in making it, for he had lent the book to Sarah). Aware of the growing political nature of the discussion, however, and determined to offend no one, he decided to leave the choice to chance. Anne Simpson, Hannah’s youngest sister, drew a slip from a hat bearing the name Ulysses. Looking to swing one more deal, Jesse then declared that the boy’s name would be Hiram Ulysses — a decision designed to delight both in-laws. Fate eventually triumphed over politics: the boy would always be known as Ulysses — or, as his father would put it, my Ulysses.³

By the following year Jesse had accumulated enough money to strike out on his own. He moved his family inland to Georgetown, the county seat, set up his own tannery a block east of the town square, and soon settled with Hannah and their son in a new brick two-story home. The structure was an impressive sight among the log cabins and plaster walls of other residences in the small town known for the propensity of its residents to drink — no surprise in light of the two dozen distilleries in Brown County. No matter, thought Jesse — he was now set up to make a living in an area that provided a ready supply of tanning bark. He befriended the justice of the peace, Thomas L. Hamer, who shared his political preferences for Andrew Jackson and a more democratic polity, and commenced working and writing to make a name for himself. But at times his offspring stole center stage from his father. Just as Ulysses neared his second birthday, a small circus came to town. The toddler, adorned in petticoats, was fascinated by a trained pony; when the ringmaster invited members of the audience to ride the animal, Ulysses begged and implored his father until he got his way. Lifted onto the horse’s back and held in place by an adult, he circled the ring several times, manifesting more glee than he had ever shown before. Several months later, a neighbor with an odd sense of curiosity wanted to see how the child would respond to the noise of a pistol shot. As Jesse held Ulysses, the boy tugged at the trigger. Finally the weapon went off: delighted, Ulysses demanded, Fick it again! Fick it again! The next year, however, when the toddler heard the local physician prescribe powder to remedy an ailment, he cried out, No, no, no! I can’t take powder; it will blow me up! Family members retold the story for years to come.⁴

By the time he was three, Ulysses was joined by a brother, Samuel; later came several more brothers and sisters, until by 1839 the Grants had three boys and three girls. Jesse added to the house as he added to the family: he bought books, read newspapers, and continued to make money and broadcast his opinions. As the eldest child, Ulysses got his own room on the second floor — but just about all he could see from his bedroom window was the tannery. He did not enjoy the view. The process of tanning hides as well as the stench that resulted turned his stomach. He hated doing chores. Whenever he could, he preferred to be with living animals, especially horses, for whom he soon developed a passion. As a small boy he liked to go out in the stable and sit beside his four-legged friends. Aware of the damage an errant hoof might cause, a neighbor shared her alarm with Hannah Grant. Calmly, Hannah smiled: Horses seem to understand Ulysses.⁵

And Ulysses seemed to understand horses. He was only five years old when he learned how to stand on the back of a trotting horse, using the reins to keep his balance. At six he harnessed horses to haul brush, much to his father’s surprise; when Jesse opened a small livery business, it was Ulysses who often drove passengers or carted wood. At nine he had saved up enough money to buy his first horse; local townsfolk brought him horses to break and train, and marveled as he raced through town or hugged the neck of an uncooperative colt as it bucked, kicked, and reared up on its hind hooves. When a horse had distemper, its owner would bring it to Ulysses to ride, for the best way to cure the ailment was by running the horse at a gallop to burn out the disease. Other boys tried to imitate him, sometimes prodded on by Ulysses, who teased them that their horses were too slow: one unfortunate youth was crushed to death when his mount suddenly shied and fell on him. Although Ulysses’s reaction to the boy’s death went unrecorded, thereafter he drew closer to the boy’s mother, Mrs. Bailey, who lived just up the street. In turn she thought he was exceedingly kind and amiable.⁶

Two stories about the boy and horses suggested something deeper about the character of Jesse Grant’s eldest son.

Ulysses was eleven when another circus visited Georgetown. Once more the ringmaster brought out a trained pony; once more Ulysses mounted it. This time, however, the ringmaster barked orders for the pony to throw its rider while galloping at full speed around the ring. Ulysses simply dug in his heels. Undeterred, the ringmaster brought out a monkey: it scrambled on board, grabbed Ulysses by the hair, and stared down at the boy’s face. People laughed; then they grew astonished when they saw that Ulysses stayed on. There was no quit in this boy. In a similar episode young Grant earned five dollars for hanging on to a particularly slick mount.⁷

And yet the boy’s love of horses could also lead to embarrassment. He was only eight years old when he set his heart on buying a colt owned by Robert Ralston, a farmer who lived just west of town. Jesse, needing to expand his stable, entrusted his son to make the purchase, but only after instructing him in the fine art of negotiating, for he did not want to pay Ralston’s asking price of twenty-five dollars. Accounts differ in the details of what happened next, but all agree that when Ralston asked the boy what his father would pay, Ulysses blurted out, Papa says I may offer you twenty dollars for the colt, but if you won’t take that, I am to offer twenty-two and a half, and if you won’t take that, to give you twenty-five. As he later dryly remarked, It would not require a Connecticut man to guess the price finally agreed upon.⁸

This tale soon made the rounds of Georgetown. Fathers and sons alike guffawed and laughed at the business acumen of my Ulysses; for once Jesse was forced to listen. Ulysses Grant later recalled that the story caused me great heart-burning … and it was a long time before I heard the last of it.

Biographers looking to find the man in the boy have read much into the incident. It was an early sign of his naivete in business; it illustrated his determination to gain his objective; it epitomized his guilelessness and gullibility. But Grant put his own stamp on the story. I certainly showed very plainly that I had come for the colt and meant to have him, he recounted: Jesse’s desire to cut a deal would not deter his son from what he wanted. Additional information about the aftermath tended to place the incident in a better light. Nearly four years later, the horse now nearly blind, Ulysses sold him for twenty dollars — not a bad price; two years after that, he spotted the Ralston horse working on the tread-wheel of the ferry-boat. Nevertheless, he never forgot the teasing: Boys enjoy the misery of their companions, at least village boys in that day did, and in later life I have found that all adults are not free from the peculiarity.⁹

Horses were more honest than people, or so Ulysses seemed to believe, for he gave himself to them as he never did to his friends. He trusted them, and they responded to him. Nor was his compassion limited to horses. He showed little interest in hunting; as for his father’s tanning trade, he frankly detested it, preferring to work his father’s fifty-acre farm on the outskirts of town or do anything else involving horses. He hauled and plowed; he transported passengers, sometimes as far as Cincinnati and once to Toledo, some 250 miles away; he often paid other boys to do his work at the tannery, then hired out his services as a horseman to people in the community, pocketing the difference. For fun he fished in the summer and skated in the winter, played ball with the boys, and took the girls on sleigh rides. He enjoyed swimming in White Oak Creek, which ran just west of the town, although once he nearly lost his life when he fell off a log into the creek, then flooded as a result of recent rains, and found himself being dragged away by the current; only the alert actions of his chum, Dan Ammen, rescued him from drowning. At school he was well-behaved, usually escaping the schoolmaster’s switch; his schoolmates found him quiet, a bit shy, and not particularly studious. He was a real nice boy, one of the girls later remembered, who never had anything to say and when he said anything, he always said it short. Another playmate noted that while Ulysses was up to any lark with us, he went about everything in such a peculiarly businesslike way…. I don’t remember that I ever saw him excited. Perhaps he was a quiet boy because as Jesse’s son he did not want to call more attention to himself — except when he mounted a horse, when he mixed flair with an occasional willingness to show off. Had it not been for this skill (and the burdens that came with being Jesse Grant’s son), Ulysses would have led an unremarkable childhood.¹⁰

By the 1830s Georgetown was well on the way toward shedding its frontier origins. In 1827 a Methodist church opened across the street from the Grant residence; two years later the children started attending school in a newly opened brick building, the successor to the subscription school just a few dozen yards from the Grant house. Other homes appeared, including several that reflected the influences of the Greek Revival movement, complete with columns. What was once little more than a clearing was now beginning to look worthy of the name of county seat.

Jesse gained prominence in Georgetown’s political affairs. His early preference for Andrew Jackson eroded in the 1830s, and he became a staunch advocate of the rising Whig party, with its plans for integrated national growth and development. Jesse never espoused an opinion halfheartedly, however, and one casualty of his new political loyalty was Thomas Hamer, who now represented Georgetown in Congress as a Democrat. Jesse’s blunt editorials and poetry in the columns of the appropriately named Castigator placed him on the front lines of political controversy. He won his reward in 1837 when, in the aftermath of economic distress for which voters held Democrats accountable, he was elected mayor of Georgetown.¹¹

Jesse’s antislavery proclivities were becoming more pronounced as well, reflecting the rising intensity of the debate over slavery in the United States. However, his commitment paled beside that of the Reverend John Rankin, who lived by the Ohio River in Ripley. More than rumor had it that the reverend’s house sheltered fugitive slaves, including a family of three who had made their way across the river by navigating floating pieces of ice. Although Jesse could claim no such fame, he was visible enough in business and political affairs, and it was this, to say nothing of his bragging about Ulysses, that sometimes led others to focus on the son in retaliation against the father. One of the reasons two brothers, Carr and Chilton White, had spread the Ralston horse story with such glee was that their father, the local schoolmaster, was a Democrat.

Hannah Grant went about her chores and responsibilities quietly, so much so that one must search carefully for her traces. Dan Ammen recalled that she was a cheerful woman, always kind and gracious to children. But affection — or at least open displays of it — were rare in the Grant household. Ulysses told Ammen that he never saw his mother cry. Nor did Hannah brag as was her husband’s custom: she was modest, retiring, and restrained. Unlike Jesse, she thought nothing you could do would entitle you to praise, as one observer recalled; indeed, you ought to praise the Lord for giving you an opportunity to do it. Such a demeanor obscured that Hannah was fairly well educated, something that inspired Jesse to learn as much as he could about reading and writing. The house contained a small library of several dozen books, perhaps the largest such collection in the town.¹²

The Grants loved their children and took great pride in their accomplishments. In turn Ulysses loved and respected his parents, although signs of friction with his father remained evident, and he said little about his mother, who remains something of an enigmatic presence. Yet the extremes of a boastful father and a reserved mother offered lessons for later life: as a parent Ulysses would never leave his children starved for affection.

As the Grant household continued to grow, so did the extended family. Eventually Ulysses could count thirty-nine cousins: thirteen in Ohio and twenty-six more in the slave states of Kentucky and Virginia. Jesse once remarked of the latter that they had depended too much on slave labor to be trained in self-reliance, whereas his children had to wait upon themselves even so far as to black their own shoes. Responsibility led to prosperity in Jesse’s mind, and he was in earnest about giving his children the right tools and character to succeed. He prized education and hard work, and his boys got a good helping of both. Ulysses may have been embarrassed by his father’s boasting and uneasy about his drive to succeed in business; however, he appreciated the opportunities that his father’s success made possible, and respected his commitment to educate his children as well as prepare them for life. But he would never follow his father into the tanning business. Nor was he exactly enthusiastic about his father’s preference to call him Ulysses. Boys liked to taunt him with Useless, an especially humiliating label in light of his father’s principles: the boy inscribed his books Hiram U. Grant.

Ulysses was not especially athletic, nor even healthy, despite his skill as a horseman. At times he suffered from ague and fever. More threatening was the cholera outbreak that swept across the region in 1833. Jesse Grant traveled to Kentucky to purchase a remedy. He brought back two jugs. One contained a supposed cure; the other was filled with blackberry cordial, to stop the diarrhea that came with cholera. One Sunday morning, with his parents at church, Ulysses and his playmates, heated after some strenuous activities and convinced that a stomachache was the first sign of the dreaded cholera, hustled down to the basement to cure themselves with generous portions of medicine — and the cordial. The boys liked what they tasted and, believing that an ounce of prevention was always in order, often returned, as one recalled, to have a pull at the cholera medicine. I don’t know whether we took it right or not, but certain it is that we did not take the cholera.¹³

Fortunately, this story did not make the rounds of the town. Jesse, however, never missed an opportunity to recount tales of his eldest boy’s determination, calmness under pressure, and resourcefulness. One time, Ulysses was taking two young ladies to Georgetown when his buggy encountered a flooded ford. He plunged straight ahead. The water rose: when it reached the waists of his passengers, they began to scream. Ulysses turned around. Don’t speak! he shouted. I will take you through safe. And so he did. His hauling exploits became legendary. Once he devised a method to load logs onto his wagon, aided only by his horse, by wrapping them in a chain and dragging them up a half-felled tree that served as a ready-made incline to the wagon bed. And for years to come townspeople would marvel at how Ulysses, then fifteen, hauled a massive stone from the banks of White Oak Creek up a steep and winding road for a doctor who wanted it placed at the front door of his new house.¹⁴

Jesse wore the stories out in the retelling, never letting listeners forget that he was speaking about my Ulysses. At last a few townsfolk saw another chance to get even. A traveling phrenologist arrived at Georgetown, boasting of his ability to predict a person’s future by feeling and assessing the shape of his or her head. At a public lecture the phrenologist offered to conduct a reading blindfolded: Ulysses, no doubt red-faced, was ushered to the stage. As the phrenologist’s fingers played over Ulysses’s head, the analyst exclaimed, It is no common head! It is an extraordinary head! People in the audience smirked and giggled. Jesse watched intently. At last the phrenologist reached the climax of the performance, declaring, It would not be strange if we should see him President of the United States. It was a standard routine often used to mock a parent’s pride in a child; once again, Ulysses had to suffer the consequences of his father’s bragging.¹⁵

This uneasiness between father and son became more apparent as Ulysses entered adolescence. He continued to show no interest in entering the family business. Tannery practices repelled him so much that he could not stomach seeing any blood on his plate, preferring his meat to be cooked until it was nearly burnt. To some observers he seemed more like a grown person than a boy, as quiet and serious as his mother. Aside from horses, however, he possessed few marketable skills or visible interests. He was ambivalent about entering any kind of business. Although he had shown some shrewdness in earning money and doubtless wanted to prove that he could be self-sufficient, his father’s way of doing things was too sharp and brash for Ulysses. Surely there was a better way to be prosperous. In school he cared little for writing and even less for reciting: one of his teachers recalled that Ulysses found public speaking unbearable, seldom spoke, and did so only by the greatest exertion. Only in mathematics did he display any real talent. Solving problems had always been one of his most apparent skills, and the logic of mathematics came as second nature to him. But where this ability could lead remained elusive. Two pursuits that had crossed the boy’s mind — becoming a farmer or a river trader — were unacceptable to his father, who suspected such occupations would cultivate habits of laziness, even shiftlessness. Lacking alternatives, and always looking for a good deal, Jesse investigated the possibility of sending Ulysses to the United States Military Academy at West Point.¹⁶

In considering West Point, Jesse did not necessarily envision a military career for his son. The Academy was the nation’s leading engineering school: mathematics would prove useful in that field. Other boys from Georgetown had attended West Point, including Jacob Ammen, Dan’s older brother. And, with the arrival of more children — and a hint of an economic chill in the air — money was an issue: West Point was free. So in 1836 Jesse sent Ulysses to a prep school in Maysville to bone up for admittance exams (he stayed with Uncle Peter’s family). There the boy joined a local debating club, where he espoused the impracticality of immediate abolition and supported the proposition that intemperance was a greater evil than war. The following year the boy attended a local subscription school, followed by a year at a school in Ripley headed by the Reverend Rankin. Local rumor had it that Jesse redoubled his efforts to get his son into West Point when he heard that a neighbor’s boy, Bartlett Bailey (brother of the boy killed while trying to emulate Ulysses’s horsemanship) had just secured an appointment to the Academy. The Baileys lived up the street from the Grants, in a house with columns that more than rivaled Jesse’s own sturdy but simple brick structure; in this case up the street also meant uphill, figuratively as well as literally. Jesse looked on Dr. George Bailey as competition, and he was determined not to lose.¹⁷

There was only one problem. Members of Congress selected candidates for examination for admission to the Academy. At first, Jesse thought that a fellow Whig, Senator Thomas Morris, could provide the nomination. But Morris had bartered it away to another congressman. That left Jesse’s congressman — Thomas Hamer. It was not an auspicious alternative. For several years the once-close friends had been at odds over politics, and Jesse’s mouth and pen had often gotten the better of him, aggravating the disagreement. Hamer fought to protect slaveowners’ rights; Jesse supported Morris’s efforts to end slavery and had sent Ulysses to the Reverend Rankin’s academy.

A slot was open. Despite two tries at making it through the first year, Bart Bailey had failed his exams, news his father had tried to keep under wraps. However, Mrs. Bailey had shared the story with Ulysses when the boy, home from Ripley during Christmas break, walked up the street to get a quart of milk. Bart’s resignation in the fall of 1838 was Ulysses’s — or Jesse’s — opportunity. When Jesse, brandishing a letter from Morris, broached his plan to Ulysses, the boy was not pleased. But I won’t go! he protested. As he later recalled, his father "said he thought I would, and I thought so, too, if he did."

But it would not be so easy. Officials flatly rejected Jesse’s attempt to bypass Hamer by applying directly to the War Department for a nomination. So, on February 19, 1839, Jesse sat down, swallowed his pride (no doubt with some difficulty), and wrote to Tom Hamer to ask him to nominate Ulysses to West Point. Rumor had it that Hannah Grant visited Hamer’s wife in an attempt to patch things up. The letter reached Hamer on the last day of his term as a congressman: he had decided to quit the House to attend to his private affairs. Hurriedly Hamer made out the request, although for a moment he was stumped trying to remember the boy’s precise name. The deed done, he responded to Jesse’s request: I received your letter and have asked for the appointment of your son, which will doubtless be made. Why didn’t you apply to me sooner? The mails being what they were, Hamer actually arrived in Georgetown ahead of the letter and wondered when Jesse would show his gratitude. In due time the letter arrived, and all was well once more between Jesse Grant and Tom Hamer.¹⁸

Several townspeople looked askance at Ulysses’s appointment. There was nothing exceptional about the lad — except for his way with horses. One disgruntled fellow, still smarting from the time Ulysses had named a horse after him, grumbled, I’m astonished that Hamer did not appoint someone with intellect enough to do credit to the district.¹⁹

So Ulysses prepared to travel to the school on the Hudson River. I really had no objection to going to West Point, he recalled years later, except that I had a very exalted idea of the acquirements necessary to get through. I did not believe that I possessed them, and could not bear the idea of failing. He had seen what happened to Bart Bailey — and he could well imagine what would happen to Jesse Grant’s son if he returned home in disgrace. He made the rounds of relatives and friends, did some last-minute studying, and packed his belongings. To identify his trunk, he and his cousins hammered in his initials, but it took only a moment to see that H. U. G. would not do: Ulysses was not going to be the butt of any more jokes if he could help it. From now on he would be Ulysses Hiram Grant. On May 15, 1839, he bade farewell to his parents and four siblings (with a fifth on the way). As he passed the Baileys’ house, Mrs. Bailey came out, crying, and kissed him. In light of all that had happened, the young man was both startled and grateful. Why, Mrs. Bailey, he responded. They didn’t cry at our house.²⁰

Up by steamboat to Pittsburgh, then by ferryboat to Harrisburg, and finally by train to Philadelphia, Ulysses Hiram Grant made his way east. He spent five days in Philadelphia — the first truly large city he had ever visited — staying with his mother’s cousins, the Hare family. One of them described the newcomer as a rather awkward country lad, wearing plain clothes and large, coarse shoes as broad at the toes as at the widest part of the soles. Then it was on to New York, where he encountered another Academy aspirant, Fred Dent of Missouri. Together the two westerners traveled up the Hudson River to West Point, some eighty miles north of New York City. Grant was not eager to reach his destination; he would have been perfectly content had an accident en route or some other misfortune forced him to return to Ohio, honor intact. But it was not to be, and so, as he later put it, I had to face the music (an especially pointed turn of phrase, for music made him cringe). Arriving on May 29, he secured a room at a local hotel, then presented himself at the adjutant’s office, where he signed the register Ulysses Hiram Grant. The adjutant firmly informed him that there was no appointment waiting for such a person. Two Grants were scheduled to arrive: Elihu Grant from New York and Ulysses S. Grant from Ohio. Apparently Congressman Hamer, in his rush to make out the papers of nomination, had mistakenly affixed an S (Hannah’s maiden name was Simpson) to serve as a middle initial after the name by which the boy went — Ulysses. Try as he might to explain the mix-up, Ulysses confronted for the first time the reality that rules were rules, at least at West Point. He could agree to be Ulysses S. Grant or he could go home. Faced with this choice, Grant, who had never had much use for Hiram anyway, agreed to yet another name change — this one with memorable consequences.²¹

At the time, however, the switch proved significant primarily because it foiled Grant’s effort to avoid mockery. As the cadets scanned the list of incoming candidates, their eyes fell on U. S. Grant. Well, who was that? United States Grant? Uncle Sam Grant? One senior, a redheaded Ohioan, was among the leaders in this guessing game. William Tecumseh Sherman knew firsthand about name changes, for the William was slapped on after a priest refused to baptize a baby named after an Indian warrior. Grant explained what had happened, but it was no use. He was now Ulysses S. Grant. Before long his friends started calling him Sam, just as Sherman went by Cump; another cadet, James Longstreet of South Carolina, was known as Pete.²²

Over the next month the cadet candidates, called Things by cadets, learned the basics of parade ground drill as they awaited entrance exams on July 1. Grant, lacking any sense of rhythm, struggled to keep in step and winced when bands played, an odd reaction for one whose voice was often described as musical. But he was better prepared for the practical jokes practiced by upperclassmen, having carried with him a letter of introduction — perhaps from one of the Baileys — to one cadet, who shared the secrets of some common pranks with the newcomer. Late one night, someone resembling an officer entered Grant’s room and directed Grant and his roommate to memorize twenty pages of a textbook: they would be tested in the morning. When the impostor left, Grant went back to sleep, while his roommate fell for the ruse. However, Grant was the victim of another prank: some mischievous upperclassman ordered him to stand guard over a pump, and he remained at his post until thirdclassman William S. Rosecrans finally put an end to the joke. It was one of the few times someone got the better of him. He refused to be intimidated by his peers: once he knocked down a larger Thing, the son of an officer, after his antagonist had shoved him out of line during drill. Meanwhile, he studied. The exams proved no obstacle — the schooling had paid off — and he joined fifty-nine others in making up the initial class of 1843. Eventually the class swelled to seventy-seven in number before the inevitable attrition began.²³

Whatever exultation Grant felt at his success was soon tempered by his return to the parade ground for more drilling and field exercises, which he found very wearisome and uninteresting. The monotony of such training was broken only by the visits of the academy’s commandant, Charles F. Smith, and the commanding general of the United States Army, Winfield Scott. Smith looked every inch the magnificent soldier; Scott, a bit older and thicker, was a national hero who looked the part in a rather ornate uniform. Grant was impressed. In his mind’s eye he imagined himself in Scott’s place, surveying the corps of cadets. It was best, he decided, to keep this fantasy to himself, lest he open himself to ridicule.²⁴

For someone who was reluctant to attend West Point, Grant soon came to enjoy some aspects of this prettiest of places. He waxed effusive about it to a cousin. So far as it regards natural attractions it is decidedly the most beautiful place that I have ever seen. From his window he could see the Hudson, that far famed, that beautiful river with its bosom studded with hundreds of snow white sails, he scrawled, revising as he wrote. All around him were reminders of the American Revolution and its heroes and its villains, including the house of Benedict Arnold, "that base and heartless traiter to his country and his God. All in all, I do love the place. it seems as though I could live here ferever if my friends would only come too. But the school regimen was a different matter. Over the summer he did not sleep on a mattress for two months; he had been laboring away at algebra and French, the latter proving especially difficult; he had yet to see a single familier face" nor had he "spoken to a single lady. He cared little for the tight-fitting uniforms (if I do not walk military, that is if I bend over quickly or run, they are very apt to crack with a report as loud as a pistol) and less for the demerit system of penalizing cadets for infractions to preserve discipline. He denied that he was homesick (although the tone of the letter suggested something different), reported that he had laid eyes on various big bugs, including Scott, President Martin Van Buren, and Washington Irving, and remarked that when he returned home in uniform, he hoped his friends wont take me for a Babboon."²⁵

On the whole I like the place very much, so much that I would not go away on any account, Grant told his cousin. The fact is if a man graduates here he is safe fer life, let him go where he will. He intended to study hard and stay here if it be possible. If I cannot — very well — the world is wide. However, September’s optimism faded with fall; by year’s end Grant was bored. He rarely reviewed his lessons, preferring to explore the academy library to read the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper, Sir Walter Scott, and Washington Irving. He found mathematics easy and French excruciatingly hard, so that he needed but little time to study the former and despaired of making any sense of the latter, to the point that it seemed a waste of time to study it. Through the newspapers he avidly followed a debate in Congress over a bill that would abolish the academy, seeing in its passage an honorable way to return home. Jesse kept a close eye on his progress, and soon learned that his son had survived the January 1840 exams.²⁶

With the new year Grant reassessed his desire to leave West Point. At last he was making friends. Roommate Rufus Ingalls of Maine was a fun-loving, mischievous cadet: it was he who was responsible for Grant’s sole visit to the off-limits tavern known as Benny Havens, a favorite cadet haunt. Then there was William B. Franklin of Pennsylvania, New Jersey’s Samuel G. French, fellow mathematics whiz Joseph J. Reynolds of Indiana, New Yorker Frederick Steele, and the Missourian Dent. Ingalls remembered that despite his roommate’s dislike for extended study, he was so quick in his perceptions that he usually made very fair recitations even with so little preparation. Grant found memorizing material difficult (especially the conjugation of French verbs), and in scientific subjects he never built on his natural knack for them with patient study. Mathematics, however, was a different story: as he later explained, The subject was so easy to me as to come almost by intuition. At the end of the year, with the class back down to its original size of sixty, Grant ranked sixteenth in mathematics and forty-ninth in French; his fifty-nine demerits contributed to his class rank of twenty-seventh.²⁷

Sophomore year was better, in part because the academy decided to introduce a course in horsemanship. Grant volunteered to break in the more troublesome mounts, succeeding, as Ingalls observed, not by punishing the animal he had taken in hand, but by patience and tact, and his skill in making the creature know what he wanted to have it do. Roommate George Deshon of Connecticut was adept at sneaking food into quarters, although once a planned feasting on a turkey captured by fellow cadet Nathaniel Lyon was nearly cut short when an officer of the day burst in unannounced. Grant and Deshon snapped to attention, shoulder-to-shoulder, in front of the fireplace, shifting back and forth to conceal their prize from the inspecting officer (who probably ignored the prevalent aroma, satisfied that he had made his point). Grant tried to learn how to dance, but the experiment proved ill-fated, for how could he move in time to the music when he had a tin ear? He made new friends in the upper classes, including James Longstreet and Georgian Lafayette McLaws. Longstreet thought Grant modest, taciturn, and honorable to a fault: he and Ingalls agreed that Grant’s fellow cadets often turned to him to settle a dispute. He also recalled that Grant was the most daring horseman in the Academy, and no one disagreed. In private the cadets smoked — Grant gave it up when he became sick — and at times drank, although Grant swore off liquor when a classmate proved vulnerable to it.

Grant’s studies were more diversified his second year. Once more he excelled in mathematics, and he showed promise in philosophy. Most surprising was his skill in drawing: one sketch demonstrated his feel for horses, while others reflected insight into human interaction. French remained a disaster, as did ethics — a catch-all term for grammar, writing, rhetoric, and geography. At least he would not have to take any more languages after he completed his second year of French. But it was not his success in class but his ability to make friends and ride horses that led Grant to reconsider his initial distaste for the school. By year’s end he thought it might not be a bad idea to stay on at West Point on the instructional staff, and become a college professor — and then return to Georgetown in retirement.²⁸

At the end of a cadet’s second year he was rewarded with a ten-week furlough. This I enjoyed beyond any other period of my life, Grant recalled. He returned to Ohio (the Grants had moved to Bethel, a dozen miles from Georgetown), where his family greeted him with so little emotion that it startled the boy who had driven him home. Jesse had expanded the family tanning business, forming a partnership with E. A. Collins, who opened a general store in far-off Galena, Illinois, along the Mississippi River in the northwest corner of the state. Jesse looked to employ his younger sons, Simpson and Orvil, in the business, for they did not share Ulysses’s hatred of the tannery. He also had reason to be proud of his eldest son, who now stood twenty-fourth in his class. Even the endless hours of drill had left their mark. Ulysses, you’ve grown much straighter! Hannah Grant exclaimed on seeing her soldier son — to which he dryly replied, Yes, that was the first thing they taught me.²⁹

All summer Grant visited his friends, riding a young horse his father had set aside for him. There were stories that he was interested in a young woman — although it was unclear whether the target of his supposed affections was Kate Lowe, a relative of Bethel resident John Lowe, or Mary King, the recipient of one of his drawings. A comrade later recalled that Grant had someone on his mind during his days at West Point, and talked about getting married; but he never mentioned the name of his intended bride.³⁰

The furlough came to an end all too quickly. Grant returned to the academy to find himself elevated to the rank of cadet sergeant, only to be overwhelmed (or uninterested) by the promotion, for he proved unequal to the responsibilities that came with the position. This year he had no classes in mathematics; he produced more sketches and watercolors; and he achieved average grades in chemistry. He became more unruly, and at one point was confined to quarters for two weeks for speaking disrespectfully to a superior officer: at year’s end he did not retain his rank, reverting to private. Senior year was better, if for no other reason than it was the last year Sam Grant would be a cadet. Yet it was the incoming class of 1846 that seemed to draw much of the attention. Cadets were impressed with newcomer George B. McClellan, who at fifteen had already attended the University of Pennsylvania for two years; Grant found Thomas J. Jackson, a rough-hewn but determined and straightforward Virginian, also worthy of interest.³¹

Grant’s roommate his senior year was Fred Dent. It was rumored that the two cadets had come close to blows in an argument over slavery until Grant broke out laughing. From these unlikely beginnings grew a close friendship. Other stories also circulated about Grant. Just before an engineering class one day, jovial Frank Gardner exhibited a large silver-cased timepiece to his friends. Grant received it just as the cadets entered the classroom and quickly jammed it inside his coat. Moments later he was at the board, working out a problem. As he commenced explaining his solution to the class, a great clanging, a sound not unlike a Chinese gong, as a cadet described it, echoed throughout the room. Only two people knew what it was: Gardner, who was stifling a guffaw, and Grant, who felt his chest pound as the timepiece’s alarm banged away. Without missing a beat, he coolly continued his recitation over the racket, waited until the watch wound down, and only then took his seat — by which time it seemed that the bemused instructor was the only person in the room not aware of what had happened.³²

Grant had little enthusiasm for his classes in ethics (which now covered constitutional and international law, moral philosophy, and logic), geology, military science, and tactics. More engaging were his extracurricular activities. The cadet literary society elected him its president; he also