CHAPTER I.

U. S. GRANT'S EARLY DAYS.

No military man of modern times has accomplished as much, with so little ostentation, as he of whom this narrative is written. From his earliest history until the present time, his deeds, and not his words, have spoken in "trumpet tones" for him. On the eve of any important movement or action it has been his custom to assemble his trusted aids-ask for and listen to their counsels, and, if good, adopt their plans-never forgetting to give credit if successful, and assuming the blame if failure ensued. He was never guilty of petty oppressions to those holding inferior rank, nor did he ever find it necessary or politic to push himself into notoriety, and yet there is no one living who possesses more fame and celebrity, or has received more marked attention from the world at large.

Ulysses Simpson Grant was born April 27, 1822, at Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio, a small town on the Ohio River, twenty-five miles above Cincinnati. The Grants are of Scotch descent, and the motto of their clan in Aberdeenshire was, "Stand fast, stand firm, stand sure." Grant inherits from many of his ancestors a love for freedom and a determination to fight for its cause. In 1799, his grandfather, a Pennsylvania farmer, joined the great tide of emigration moving to the Northwest Territory.

His great grandfather, Captain Noah Grant, of Windsor, Connecticut, and his brother, Lieutenant Solomon

Grant, were soldiers in the old French war, and were both killed in battle in 1756.

His grandfather, also Noah Grant, of Windsor, hurried from his fields at the first conflict of the Revolution, and appeared as a lieutenant on Lexington Common on the morning of the memorable 19th of April, when the embattled farmers "fired the shot heard round the world."

His father, Jesse R. Grant, was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in 1794. Was apprenticed to the tanner's trade at the early age of eleven years. Removed to Mayville, Kentucky, thence to Point Pleasant, Ohio, where he followed the business of a tanner. In 1869 he was appointed postmaster at Covington, Kentucky, by President Grant, and died in 1874.

General Grant's father married in June, 1821, at Point Pleasant, Ohio, Miss Hannah Simpson. She was the daughter of John Simpson, and was born in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, but removed with her family in 1818 to Clermont County. Ten months after marriage their first child Ulysses was born.

Like other great men, Grant had an excellent mother -a pious woman, cheerful, unambitious of worldly display, watchful of her children, and "looking well to the ways of her household." Her husband pays her the highest tribute which can be paid to any wife and mother in saying, "Her steadiness, firmness and strength of character have been the stay of the family through life."

Love of their children has ever been a marked trait in the Grant family.

He was originally christened Hiram Ulysses, his grandfather giving the name of Hiram; his grandmother, who was a great student of history, giving the name of Ulysses, whose character had strongly attracted her admiration.

The member of Congress who appointed Grant to his cadetship at West Point when a boy of seventeen, by accident changed his name, in filling his appointment, to U. S. Grant. Grant repeatedly endeavored to have the mistake corrected at West Point, and at the war department at Washington, but this was one of the few things in which he failed; his applications were never complied with. As if fate foresaw the patriotic duty, the filial love, the transcendant services he was one day to render his country, the government seemed to insist, when adopting him among her military children, on renaming him, and giving to him her own initials, "U. S.," which he has ever since borne.

As a child, Grant was robust, strong and cool, as he has since shown himself. He was neither a precocious nor a stupid child; he was a well-behaved, dutiful boy. He attended the public school in the village during the winter months; he learned well, but was no prodigy.

He never liked his father's business of tanning. It was disagreeable; and he early determined not to follow it. He wanted an education. He said he would be a farmer, or trade down the river; but a tanner he would not be.

His father, with limited means, did not feel that, in justice to himself and his other children, he could afford the money to send Ulysses to college.

The father of General Grant, in an account of his childhood published in the New York Ledger, gives the following interesting narrative.

"The leading passion of Ulysses, almost from the time he could go alone, was for horses. The first time he ever drove a horse alone, he was about seven and a half years old. I had gone away from home, to Ripley, twelve miles off. I went in the morning, and did not get back

until night. I owned, at the time, a three-year old colt, which had been ridden under the saddle to carry the mail, but had never had a collar on. While I was gone, Ulysses got the colt and put a collar and the harness on him, and hitched him up to a sled. Then he put a single line on to him, and drove off, and loaded up the sled with brush, and came back again. He kept at it, hauling successive loads, all day; and, when I came home at night, he had a pile of brush as big as a cabin.

"At about ten years of age he used to drive a pair of horses alone, from Georgetown, where we lived, forty miles, to Cincinnati, and bring back a load of passengers.

"When Ulysses was a boy, if a circus or any show came along, in which there was a call for somebody to come forward and ride a pony, he was always the one to present himself, and whatever he undertook to ride he rode. This practice he kept up until he got to be so large that he was ashamed to ride a pony.

"Once, when he was a boy, a show came along in which there was a mischievous pony, trained to go round the ring like lightning, and he was expected to throw any boy that attempted to ride him.

"Will any boy come forward and ride this pony?' shouted the ring master.

"Ulysses stepped forward, and mounted the pony. The performance began. Round and round and round the ring went the pony, faster and faster, making the greatest effort to dismount the rider, but Ulysses sat as steady as if he had grown to the pony's back. Presently out came a large monkey, and sprang up behind Ulysses. The people set up a great shout of laughter, and on the pony ran; but it all produced no effect on the rider. Then the ring-master made the monkey jump up on to Ulysses'

shoulders, standing with his feet on his shoulders, and with his hands holding on to his hair. At this there was another and a still louder shout, but not a muscle of Ulysses' face moved. There was not a tremor of his nerves. A few more rounds, and the ring-master gave it up; he had come across a boy that the pony and the monkey both could not dismount."

It appears that when he was twelve years of age, his father sent him to a neighboring farmer, a Mr. Ralston, to close the bargain for a horse which he was wishing to purchase. Before Ulysses started, his father said to him,

"You can tell Mr. Ralston that I have sent you to buy the horse, and that I will give him fifty dollars for it. If he will not take that, you may offer him fifty-five; and I should be willing to go as high as sixty, rather than not get the horse."

This is essentially an old story, probably having a mere foundation in fact; but the peculiarity in this case was, that when Ralston asked Ulysses directly, "How much did your father say you might give for the horse?" he did not know how to prevaricate, but replied, honestly and emphatically,―

"Father told me to offer you fifty dollars at first; if that would not do, to give you fifty-five dollars; and that he would be willing to give sixty, rather than not get the horse."

Of course, Ralston could not sell the horse for less than sixty dollars.

"I am sorry for that," returned Grant, "for, on looking at the horse, I have determined not to give more than fifty dollars for it, although father said I might give sixty. You may take fifty if you like, or you may keep the horse."