Hero Tales from History — Ulysses S. Grant, The General Who Hated War
ULYSSES S.
GRANT, THE GENERAL WHO HATED WAR
“This poor little boy has no name!
” exclaimed Miss Simpson, the aunt who was visiting the Grant family at Point Pleasant, overlooking the Ohio River, about twenty miles east of Cincinnati.
The rest of the family agreed that it would be a shame to let the baby go a day longer without a name.
“Let’s name him now,” said the aunt; “let’s vote on it.
” The others consented, and each wrote a preferred name on a bit of paper.
Then a hat was passed and all put their [Illustration: GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT.
] slips in it.
The aunt took out a ballot which read, “Ulysses.
” This name was on several slips, because Grandfather Grant had just been reading the story of the siege of Troy.
“Hiram” and “Albert” were on two other ballots.
At last they decided to call the baby Hiram Ulysses Grant.
When “Baby Lysses,” as the family called him, was about a year old, the Grants moved to Georgetown, a village about ten miles farther from Cincinnati, and ten miles back from the Ohio.
Here little Ulysses grew and began to go to school, and some of the boys called him “Hug,” from his initials, H. U.
G.
Other boys, just to be funny, called him “Useless.
” Ulysses’ father was a tanner and leather worker.
The boy did not like tanning hides because it was dirty, bad-smelling work; but he did like horses.
Besides his tannery, Mr. Grant owned a small farm.
So Ulysses, while he was a boy, learned to plow and harrow, and to haul logs to the creek near by, where they were floated to the sawmill to be cut up into boards and timber.
The lad found a good way to make a horse do the heavy work of lifting or rolling logs on to the sled, so that he and the horse could do that better than two or three men.
A visitor in Georgetown was astonished one day to see a boy dash by, standing on the back of a horse on the run.
“Circus rider?
” the stranger asked.
“No--only ‘Useless’ Grant,” was the reply.
When a circus did come to Georgetown, the Grant boy was there to see the trained horses and the fancy riding.
There was a trick pony that had been trained not to allow a man or even a boy to stay on its back.
The manager came to the side of the ring and called out that a prize of five dollars in gold would be given to any one who could ride the pony five times around the ring.
Some of the men and boys in the crowd shouted, “Lyss Grant can do it.
Try it!
Oh, go ahead, Lyss!
” Although Ulysses was a bashful lad and hated to make a show of himself, the prize and his desire to see what he could do were too tempting to resist.
So he went to the ringside and began to pat the pony.
Then he sprang lightly upon its back.
The vicious little beast began to rear and tear around to shake or rub the rider off, but Ulysses hung on in spite of all its frantic efforts.
He won the prize, but that five dollars was of small value compared with the lesson he learned of trying hard and not giving up anything he attempted.
The Grant boy’s mastery of horses and his way of finishing whatever he started out to do made his services valuable to the neighbors.
He rode hundreds of miles on important business errands.
One time he was driving two young ladies and their baggage on a long journey where they had to ford a swollen stream.
The ladies, seeing the horses were swimming and that the wagon was full of water, began to scream and take hold of his arms.
“Keep quiet, please,” said Ulysses calmly.
“I’ll take you through safe.
” And the Grant lad was as good as his word.
Sometimes he was asked to break a horse to trot or to pace.
The wildest animal would soon become tame and gentle and would do whatever he wished.
People thought he would be a horse-trainer or jockey, or keep a racing stable, but Ulysses Grant, much as he enjoyed training horses, had a mind above doing that all his life.
He was studious at school and excelled in games and sports.
One day, while playing with a neighbor boy, he batted the ball through the window of a neighboring house.
Instead of running away or pretending that another boy had done it, Ulysses went at once and knocked at the door of the house, and said to the lady when she came out, “I have broken your window, but I’m going to get a pane of glass and have it put right in.
” The woman, who had seen how it happened, told the Grant boy to go back and play, and she would attend to the glass.
In telling about the accident, she said Ulysses was no more to blame than the other boy, and ended her story with, “I like Lyss Grant; he’s such a square, manly little fellow.
” The school at Georgetown was not advanced enough to suit Ulysses’ father; so the lad was sent away to a private school at Marysville.
When he came home, though he did not like the tannery, he worked faithfully there.
He told his father plainly that he would work at tanning hides until he was twenty-one--“but not one day after that!
” “What _would_ you like to do?
” his father asked.
“I’d like to be a planter, or a river merchant, or--or--get an education,” stammered the boy.
Father Grant smiled and sent his son off to another school.
He knew it would be very wrong to expect a real man to work all his life at something he did not like.
While Ulysses was away this time, his father obtained an appointment for his son to go to West Point.
Ulysses himself has written about this: “I was attending school at Ripley, only ten miles distant from Georgetown, but spent the Christmas holidays at home.
During this vacation my father received a letter from the United States Senator from Ohio.
When he read it he said to me, ‘Ulysses, I believe you are going to receive the appointment.
’ “‘What appointment?
’ I inquired.
“‘To West Point.
I have applied for it.
’ “‘But I won’t go,’ I said.
“He said _he_ thought I _would, and I thought so too, if he did_!
” Young Grant had such a high idea of the requirements at West Point that he was sure he could never pass the entrance examinations.
He began to study algebra and other branches to fit him better, but he said he never gave up hoping something would happen--even that the Military Academy might burn down!
--so he would not have to go.
He was afraid he would fail.
The neighbors also thought his father was making a mistake to send the boy to West Point when he seemed so little fitted for a soldier.
But, soon after his seventeenth birthday, the neighbors bade Ulysses good-bye, expecting him to come home because he could not pass.
Ulysses found the West Point buildings still standing when he arrived.
He registered, and, to his surprise, was permitted to enter as a cadet.
They made a mistake in recording his name, writing it Ulysses _S_.
, instead of H. Ulysses Grant.
He was tired of being called “Hug,” and, as it seemed too much trouble to correct the error, he let it go, accepting the S. for his middle initial.
As his mother’s maiden name was Simpson, he let them name him Ulysses Simpson Grant, in honor of the U. S.
government and his little mother.
But even then the boys made fun of his initials, “U. S.
,” calling him “United States” and “Uncle Sam” Grant.
From this he was nicknamed “Sam.
” Cadet Ulysses did well enough in his studies, and developed a taste for drawing and painting.
He thought he would rather be a water-color artist than a soldier.
The idea of shooting at men was shocking to him.
The sight of blood made him sick--“Just like a girl!
” the fellows said.
But there were horses at the Academy, so the young cadet managed to be quite happy.
He learned to ride like an Indian and to leap from one horse to the back of another as he met it running in the opposite direction.
The one thing for which he was remembered by the other cadets was the great feat of jumping York, a huge horse, over a bar.
Every one was afraid the vicious horse, if forced to clear such a height, might kill his rider.
“I can’t die but once,” remarked Cadet Grant coolly, and made the horse jump over the bar without the least harm to horse or rider.
The record of “Grant on York,” then made, has never been beaten since.
The people of Ulysses’ home town had changed their minds about him when he came home after two years, in his mid-course furlough, as a cadet in full uniform with gold lace and gilt buttons.
After he had been President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant said this summer vacation was the happiest time in his whole life, because every one was so kind, and his family were so proud of him.
When he finished his course at the Military Academy and was graduated, it was said of him: “There is ‘Sam’ Grant.
He is a splendid fellow; a good, honest man against whom nothing can be said, and from whom everything may be expected.
” Lieutenant Grant went home for a while, and then entered military service near St. Louis.
Here he became acquainted with Miss Julia Dent, who afterward became Mrs. Grant, wife of the great general and President of the United States.
He had the usual experiences of young army officers in the southwest, with wild beasts and savage Indians.
He tells of being wakened early one morning by hearing shots near at hand.
Getting up, he learned that two men had been fighting a duel.
He afterward wrote: “I don’t believe I ever could have the courage to fight a duel.
If I should do another man such a wrong as to justify him in killing me, I would make any reasonable amends in my power, if convinced of the wrong done.
I place my opposition to dueling on higher grounds.
No doubt, most of the duels have been fought _for want of moral courage_, on the part of those engaged, to decline.
” Lieutenant Grant’s friends thought it strange for the bravest man they ever met to say, “I don’t believe I ever could have the courage to fight a duel.
” But some things that seemed heroic to others did not seem so to Ulysses S. Grant.
He spoke almost with scorn of mere physical courage.
It is moral courage that counts--the heroism that will face a sneer and bravely say, “That is not right and I will not do it.
” He had shown this kind of courage as a boy, when other lads dared him to come out with them at night and disobey his little mother.
In the Mexican War, while fighting desperately in Monterey, the Americans ran short of powder.
Who would dare to go back through the streets of the town held by the enemy, and carry the request for more ammunition and reinforcements?
“Sam” Grant volunteered, and rode, Indian fashion, keeping his horse between him and the Mexicans’ bullets.
He made the dangerous run with both his horse and himself unhurt, relieved the Americans, and thus helped to save the day at Monterey.
When the Civil War broke out, Captain Grant was in business.
He had withdrawn from the army, and had been mentioned as a “military dead beat,” working in his father’s leather store at fifty dollars a month.
He at once enlisted as a volunteer, and was sent to command a brigade in Missouri.
Within a year the name of General U. S.
Grant was on every tongue.
He had won the battles of Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, and had made his famous demand of “Unconditional Surrender,” words which meant that they were to yield without asking any favors.
After that, people said his initials, U. S.
, stood for “Unconditional Surrender” Grant.
He went from one triumph to another until his enemies in the west were beaten.
Then President Lincoln called him to end the war in the east, a thing which five northern generals before him had failed to do.
Though he won great victories for his country and became the most successful general of his day, the greatest thing General Grant ever said was, “Let us have peace,” When Richmond was captured he refused to enter the city as its conqueror.
When General Lee surrendered, the northern commander treated the enemy general as a friend and a brother.
A grateful nation elected General Grant twice to the presidency of the United States.
After he left the White House, he and Mrs. Grant made a trip around the world and became the guests of kings, queens, princes, prime ministers, and peoples.
Wherever General Grant went, he went as a man of peace.
When he visited Prince Bismarck, “the man of blood and iron” who taught the Germans that everything they did would be right if they only had the power to do it, General Grant apologized for his record as a soldier.
In this way, the greatest living general became the foremost man in the world for peace.
He had learned to regard war as a duel between nations.
He thought that was quite as wrong as dueling between men, and that war was due to moral cowardice rather than to courage.
General Grant gave this as his belief: “Though I have been trained as a soldier and have taken part in many battles, there never has been a time when, in my opinion, some way could not have been found to prevent the drawing of the sword.
”
