No man since Washington has better illustrated the genius of American institutions or the temper of Americans as a people.
MONTGOMERY (ALA.) ADVERTIZER
July 25, 1885
ULYSSES GRANT was born at Point Pleasant, Ohio, April 27, 1822. This was the period in American history known as the “Era of Good Feelings.” James Monroe was in the White House, political partisanship was on the wane, and the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall was hammering together the constitutional underpinnings for the expansion of federal power. Slavery loomed as a source of trouble for the Union, but the Missouri Compromise of 1820 papered over the conflict, maintaining, for a while at least, the balance between slave states and free.
It was also a time of national expansion as America’s rivals for the continent fell off one by one. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry had dispatched Great Britain’s freshwater fleet to the bottom of Lake Erie and with it all British hopes to control the Northwest Territory. William Henry Harrison broke Indian resistance at Tippecanoe. France had ceded the Louisiana Territory to the United States, opening the vast area west of the Mississippi for settlement. In the Southeast, the United States supplanted Spain in the Floridas, and in the Southwest, a feeble Mexican republic retained a tenuous hold on Texas and California.
Grant’s family was part of the nation’s westward migration. His paternal ancestor, Matthew Grant, landed in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Successive generations inched their way across the country—first to the Connecticut River, then to the rocky uplands beyond, eventually to Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ohio. Grant represented the eighth generation in this American pilgrimage. His great-grandfather, Captain Noah Grant, was killed in action during the French and Indian War. His grandfather fought at Bunker Hill.1 His father, Jesse Root Grant, operated a tannery at Point Pleasant, a village of less than a dozen dwellings on the north bank of the Ohio River, twenty-five miles east of Cincinnati.
Grant’s mother, Hannah, came from a family of Scottish Protestants by the name of Simpson. Her grandfather landed in Philadelphia in 1762, established a flourishing farm on the outskirts of the city, and fought with Washington during the Revolutionary War. His son, Hannah’s father, sold the homestead in 1817 and moved the family to Ohio where he bought a large farm in the fertile alluvial lands north of the Ohio River, not far from Grant’s home in Point Pleasant. Hannah was twenty-two when she and Jesse met; he was twenty-seven. Friends at the time described her as slim, above medium height, handsome but not pretty, serious, steadfast, and supremely reserved. (“I never saw my mother cry,” Grant confessed to a friend many years later.2) The couple married June 24, 1821, and Grant was born the following year. Those who knew Jesse and Hannah said the general inherited his equable disposition and endurance from his mother. Some claimed he also got his good sense from her.3
Grant, a big, strapping baby, weighed ten and three-quarters pounds at birth, and was immediately christened Hiram Ulysses. His father favored Hiram; his maternal grandparents suggested Ulysses. (Mrs. Simpson was enthralled with the prowess of the Grecian hero whose exploits she had followed in Fénelon’s epic Telemachus). Hannah, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat,4 wanted to name the baby Albert Gallatin in honor of Jefferson’s able secretary of the treasury, but the rest of the family did not share her partisan devotion. In the end, everyone agreed upon Hiram Ulysses.
One year after Grant’s birth, Jesse sold the Point Pleasant tannery and moved the family and his business twenty miles east to Georgetown, Ohio, the seat of Brown County. Georgetown was no larger than Point Pleasant, but from a business standpoint it had several advantages. The town was situated on the White Oak River, a fast-flowing tributary of the Ohio, and was surrounded by towering hardwood forests. Fresh water and tanbark, preferably stripped from oak trees, are essential in the tanning process. By transferring his operations to Georgetown, Jesse insured ready access to both.
The move proved successful and the family remained in Georgetown for the whole of Grant’s childhood. In time, Grant was joined by five siblings: three sisters and two brothers. The general wrote that his boyhood was uneventful.5 Certainly, his schooling was unremarkable. Initially he attended a one-room school in Georgetown. Later he was sent to board for a year in Maysville, Kentucky, and then for a year in Ripley, Ohio. At no time did Grant stand out as a scholar. “I was not studious in habit, and probably did not make progress enough to compensate for the outlay for board and tuition. At all events, both winters were spent in going over the same old arithmetic and repeating: ‘A noun is the name of a thing’ . . . until I had come to believe it.”6
While he did not take naturally to school, Grant, from an early age, developed an enduring affinity with horses. As a toddler, he often played beneath the bellies of customers’ teams hitched at the tannery gate, sometimes swinging on a horse’s tail. Horrified neighbors would rush to warn Hannah, but she never seemed concerned. “Horses seem to understand Ulysses,” she would say.7 By the age of eight Grant was able to handle the wagon team that hauled wood for the tannery. “I could not load it on the wagons . . . but I could drive, and the choppers would load, and some one at the house would unload.” At eleven, he was plowing the family’s fields. “From that age until seventeen I did all the work with horses. For this I was compensated by the fact that there was never any scolding or punishing by my parents; no objections to rational enjoyments, such as fishing, going to the creek to swim in summer, taking a horse and visiting my grandparents in the adjoining county, fifteen miles off.”8
In addition to earning him his parents’ gratitude, Grant’s horsemanship soon became well known in the larger community. Indeed, he became a local celebrity while still in his teens. Farmers brought spirited colts to the Georgetown tannery for him to train, and more often than not an admiring crowd would gather in the village square to watch him work. Grant rarely raised his voice, relying instead on a gentle firmness that won the horse’s confidence. As Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Hamlin Garland wrote, there was something mysterious about Grant’s ability to communicate to a horse his wishes. “He could train a horse to trot, rack, or pace, apparently at will.”9
When Grant turned seventeen his father told him he was sending him to West Point. Several young men from southern Ohio had gone to the military academy, and Jesse Grant was eager to secure a professional education for his son at the government’s expense. West Point trained its cadets as civil engineers, one of only two schools in the United States to do so at the time, and as the nation moved westward the demand for engineers grew steadily. For that reason, few of the young men who went to West Point did so with the intention of making the army a career. It was no disgrace to resign from the service to take a better civilian position, and of the 1,058 cadets who had graduated from the academy between its inception in 1802 and 1839, only 395 remained on active duty. Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, and Jefferson Davis stayed in the military just long enough to establish professional reputations. Lieutenants George Meade and Jubal Early resigned after completing their one-year obligated tour. Those whose fathers enjoyed political influence often left the army sooner. Leonidas Polk, son of a leading North Carolina banker, quit after five months; Lloyd Tilghman, son of a Maryland congressman, left after two; Henry Clay’s son, who finished second in the class of 1831, resigned after four months.10
Despite the advantages a West Point education offered, Grant was less than pleased at the prospect and initially said he would not go. But a brief discussion with Jesse resolved the matter. “He said he thought I would, and I thought so too, if he did.”11 Grant’s appointment came at the hand of Democratic congressman Thomas Hamer, who at one time had been a close friend of Jesse’s. The two had parted company with some bitterness as a result of political differences in the early 1830s. Both men regretted the rupture, and when Jesse swallowed his pride and wrote to Hamer requesting the appointment, the congressman responded with alacrity. “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?”12 In his haste to send Grant’s name to the War Department, Hamer made a slip of the pen. Instead of writing Hiram Ulysses Grant, he wrote “Ulysses S. Grant.” Knowing Hannah was a Simpson, Hamer carelessly assumed that to be Grant’s middle name.13 The name Ulysses S. Grant was duly recorded on the roll of incoming cadets, and despite Grant’s protests to the contrary, Ulysses S. Grant it remained.14
Grant went to the academy without enthusiasm. The one bright spot he saw was the opportunity to travel. “I had been east to Wheeling, and north to the Western Reserve, west to Louisville, and south to Bourbon County, Kentucky, besides having driven or ridden pretty much over the whole country within fifty miles of home. Going to West Point would give me the opportunity of visiting the two great cities of the continent, Philadelphia and New York. This was enough. When those places were visited I would have been glad to have had a steamboat or railroad collision, or any other accident happen, by which I might have received a temporary injury sufficient to make me ineligible . . . to enter the Academy. Nothing of the kind occurred, and I had to face the music.”15
The military rigmarole of West Point has changed little over the years. The harsh plebe summer, the rigid discipline, the spit and polish, the painstaking attention to detail, meld a corps of cadets conditioned to adversity. “I slept for two months upon one single pair of blankets,” Grant wrote to his cousin after plebe summer. “This sounds romantic and you may think it is very easy. But I tell you what coz, it is tremendous hard.”16 Grant adjusted to the rigor of West Point, but had little love for the trappings of army life. “My pants sit as tight to my skin as bark to a tree and if I don’t walk military, that is if I bend over quickly or run, they are apt to crack with a report as loud as a pistol. When I come home [on furlough] in two years, if I live, the way I shall astonish you natives will be curious. I hope you won’t take me for a Babboon.”17
In May 1839 the corps of cadets numbered 250 men divided into four classes: most in the fourth (plebe) class, least in the first, attrition taking a heavy toll. Among the first classmen when Grant entered were William Tecumseh Sherman and George H. Thomas. Sherman was the wit of the senior class: iconoclastic, erratic, volatile, a volcano waiting to erupt. Thomas was the opposite. Grave, ponderous, statuesque, nicknamed “George Washington” by his classmates, he already displayed the rocklike qualities that would hold the Union line at Chickamauga.18 The sarcastic Richard Ewell of Virginia was there along with Ohio’s William Rosecrans and Mississippi’s fiery renegade, Earl Van Dorn. In the class ahead of Grant were John Pope and James Longstreet. Behind him came Simon Bolivar Buckner of Kentucky and Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania. When Grant was a senior, the entering class included fifteen-year-old George B. McClellan, considered a prodigy for having attended the University of Pennsylvania for two years. At the opposite end of the academic spectrum was Thomas J. Jackson from the hills of western Virginia, raised initially by his indigent mother, with little schooling, but nevertheless fiercely determined to graduate.
Sharing a common plight, cadets acquired reputations and nicknames that followed them into the service. Rosecrans inevitably became “Rosey”; Longstreet, for reasons long forgotten, was “Pete”; Sherman was “Cump”; and Grant became “Sam.” “I remember Grant’s first appearance among us,” said Sherman. “I was three years ahead of him. I remember seeing his name on the bulletin board, where all the names of the newcomers were posted. I ran my eye down the columns, and there saw ‘U.S. Grant.’ A lot of us began to make up names to fit the initials. One said, ‘United States Grant.’ Another ‘Uncle Sam Grant.’ A third said ‘Sam Grant.’ That name stuck to him.”19
It is often suggested that the friendships and acquaintances made at West Point contribute to the effectiveness of the officer corps in time of war: that they enable officers who serve together to know more about each other; to have more, or less, confidence in each other, as the case may be. The benefit is more apparent than real. As a reflective general officer once noted, “Of course you know whether you like them or not. But the later development of some of the members of my own class did not indicate that my judgment was any too accurate. I just don’t think you have enough maturity of judgment for that to have much value.”20
Grant’s friends at the academy are a case in point. Everyone assumed that Rosey Rosecrans and Nathaniel Lyon, a born disciplinarian, would go on to brilliant careers.21 By contrast, Longstreet and Jackson, who stood near the bottom of their respective classes, were not given much of a chance. In fact, Lyon and Rosecrans took early exits, while Longstreet and Jackson became Civil War legends. Curiously, Grant hit it off best with Longstreet.22 The two made an unlikely pair. Grant, small for his age, with a slight stoop and noticeably unmilitary bearing, the son of an Ohio tanner, was reserved, sensitive, and serious. The hulking Longstreet, one of the largest men to attend the military academy in the nineteenth century, a scion of coastal Georgia’s aristocracy, was boisterous, exuberant, and carefree. He enjoyed rough-and-tumble athletics, military exercises, bayonet drill, and swordsmanship—all of which Grant detested. And yet, despite these differences the two men were, in some respects at least, remarkably similar. Longstreet was a natural hell-raiser, and his open disregard for academy regulations held a vicarious appeal for Grant. Longstreet, for his part, considered Grant “fragile” and believed his “delicate frame” kept him out of sports. Grant’s distinguishing trait, said Longstreet, “was a girlish modesty; a hesitancy in presenting his own claims; a taciturnity born of his modesty; but a thoroughness in the accomplishment of whatever task was assigned to him. We became fast friends at our first meeting. [He had] a noble, generous heart, a loveable character, and a sense of honor which was so perfect . . . that in the numerous cabals which were often formed his name was never mentioned.”23
Another cadet remembered that although Grant was a small fellow, he was active and muscular. “His hair was reddish brown and his eyes grey-blue. We all liked him. He had no bad habits. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, dance. He had no facility in conversation with the ladies, a total absence of elegance, and naturally showed off badly in contrast with the young Southern men, who prided themselves on being finished in the ways of the world.”24
Grant had mixed feelings about the course of study at the academy. “I did not take hold of my studies with avidity,” he wrote. “In fact, I rarely read over a lesson the second time. I could not sit in my room doing nothing. There is a fine library connected with the Academy from which cadets can get books to read in their quarters. I devoted more time to these than to books relating to the course of studies. Much of the time, I am sorry to say, was devoted to novels. I read all of the works of Bulwer’s then published, Cooper’s, Marryat’s, Scott’s, Washington Irving’s works, Lever’s, and many others that I do not now remember.”25 These contemporary authors offered Grant an escape from the confines of cadet life. Reading novels that were not part of the school curriculum also gave him a way of expressing his skepticism of the routine memorization that masqueraded for learning in many courses, and there is no doubt it sharpened his appreciation for linguistic precision.26
In addition to reading fiction, Grant sought relief from military routine in the drawing courses offered by Robert Walter Weir, one of the most gifted teachers ever to grace a college faculty. Weir was a painter of exceptional ability,27 and his studio was a haven for cadets whose interests went beyond the cut-and-dried requirements of daily recitation. The ostensible purpose of the drawing course was to teach future officers to sketch terrain features. Weir, however, encouraged his charges to express their imagination. Grant was one of a number of cadets who drew well. Another who profited from Weir’s tutelage was James McNeill Whistler. “If silicon had been a gas, I would have been a major general,”28 the artist said later, referring to his dismissal from the academy for failing chemistry.
Nine of Grant’s artworks have survived. Four are skillful pen-and-ink drawings of Italian cityscapes rendered with considerable clarity and attention to detail—probably based on lithographs after Samuel Proutt or another recent artist, and presumably intended to teach the principles of perspective. Three are watercolors of European scenes, brave and fluid attempts to deal with the larger effects of light and shade in a demanding medium. Grant did two oil paintings of subjects nearer home: a marvelous, whimsical painting of a draft horse with its nose in a feedbag, and a gentle depiction of an Indian family trading with an itinerant merchant— the latter painting possibly inspired by an artist of the 1830s such as George Catlin or Paul Kane. Grant continued to draw in Mexico, but he made no mention of his artistic bent in his Memoirs, and there is no indication that he drew seriously in his later years.
Art courses aside, Grant viewed the academy as a necessary evil. He had no intention of making the army a career. West Point was merely a means to acquire professional standing.29 When Congress considered abolishing the academy in 1839, Grant supported the move. “I saw this as an honorable way to obtain a discharge, and read the debate with much interest.”30 He learned to tolerate military life, but never embraced it. During his sophomore year he was promoted to cadet corporal, and to sergeant the next. “The promotion was too much for me,” he wrote. Demerits proved his undoing, and he was busted back to the ranks. Grant was one of the few first classmen who served out his senior year as a buck private in the corps of cadets.
Academically, Grant finished 21st among the thirty-nine men who made up the graduating class of 1843. His fourth-year marks placed him 16th in engineering, 28th in ethics, 25th in artillery tactics, 28th in infantry tactics, and 17th in geology. In conduct he stood in the bottom half: number 156 in a corps of 233. Only in horsemanship did he excel. To the consternation of his plantation-reared classmates from below the Mason-Dixon line, no cadet could rival Grant’s ability in the saddle. During graduation exercises in June 1843, he was the center of attention. When the first classmen completed their mounted drill, the riders formed their horses into a single line down the middle of the riding hall. Sergeant Herschberger, the academy’s Prussian-trained riding master, moved to the jumping bar, lifted it higher than his head, fixed it in place, and then, facing the class, called out, “Cadet Grant.”
According to a plebe who witnessed the scene, “A clean-faced, slender young fellow, weighing about one hundred and twenty pounds, dashed from the ranks on a powerfully built chestnut-sorrel horse, and galloped down the opposite side of the hall.”31 Grant was on York—a massive animal infamous for his intractability. Only Grant and one other cadet could ride him, and only Grant could ride him well.32 At the far end of the hall, Grant turned York, and the two came thundering down toward the bar. As the plebe recalled, “The horse increased his pace, and measured his strides for the great leap before him, bounded into the air, and cleared the bar, carrying his rider as if man and beast were welded together. The spectators were breathless.”33 Grant’s jump on York set an academy record that held for twenty-five years.34 Whenever reminded of the feat, Grant would invariably smile and defer to his mount. “York was a wonderful horse. I could feel him gathering under me for the effort as he approached the bar.”35, I
Assignments after West Point were based on class standing. Those at the top of the class were brevetted to the engineers, while the combat arms took the remainder. Grant requested the cavalry, but with only one regiment on active duty there were no vacancies. His second choice, the 4th Infantry at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, was approved. Before reporting to their initial assignments, the graduates were given three months’ leave. Grant returned to Ohio and spent the summer recuperating from a debilitating cough he contracted at West Point. Doctors called it “Tyler’s Grip.” Painfully thin, Grant weighed 117 pounds, exactly the weight at which he had entered the academy although he had grown six inches in the interim.36 That summer Grant recognized, perhaps for the first time, what the army meant to him. West Point had made more of an impression than he anticipated. When his tailored infantry uniform arrived, he immediately tried it on. “I was impatient to see how it looked, and probably wanted my old school-mates, particularly the girls, to see me in it.”37
That day Grant learned a lesson he never forgot. Riding into Cincinnati in his new regimentals with his sword dangling at his side, imagining everyone was looking at him with awe and admiration, he was jeered as a no-account tin soldier. “A little urchin, bareheaded, barefooted, with dirty and ragged pants and a shirt that had not seen a wash-tub for weeks, turned to me and cried: ‘Soldier! Will you work? No sir-ee; I’ll sell my shirt first!’ ” When he returned home that evening, Grant found a drunken stable attendant parading the streets in a homemade imitation of his uniform, sending the townspeople into gales of laughter. According to Grant, the joke was on him. The two humiliations gave him a permanent distaste for military uniforms. Throughout the remainder of his career he would go to great lengths to avoid wearing full service dress, and never wore a sword unless ordered.38
Grant reported to Jefferson Barracks on the last day of September 1843. The post occupied a seventeen-hundred-acre reservation on the banks of the Mississippi ten miles south of St. Louis, and was the largest military cantonment in the country, garrisoned by the 3rd and 4th infantry regiments. It was America’s principal bastion on the Western frontier, the prime protector of settlers heading across the Great Plains, and the site of the infantry’s School of Practice, a nascent postgraduate institution where junior officers were taught tactics. The commanding officer was Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny, one of the ablest officers in the army.39 Kearny kept discipline tight, but never harassed the men with unnecessary requirements. “Every drill and roll call had to be attended, but in the intervals officers were permitted to enjoy themselves, leaving the garrison, and going where they pleased . . . so long as they were back for their next duty.”40
Grant admired Kearny’s style of leadership. Like Kearny, he believed in sensible discipline and was contemptuous of commanders who nitpicked excessively. “It did seem to me, in my early army days, that too many of the older officers, when they came to command posts, made it a study to think what orders they could publish to annoy their subordinates and render them uncomfortable. I noticed, however, a few years later, when the Mexican war broke out, that most of this class of officers discovered they were possessed of disabilities which entirely incapacitated them for active field service.”41
The 4th Infantry numbered twenty-one officers and 449 enlisted men, divided into eight companies. Grant was assigned to I Company, commanded by First Lieutenant Benjamin Alvord, a scholarly Vermonter who had graduated from West Point ten years earlier. James Longstreet and Richard Ewell had joined the regiment the year before; Grant’s classmate Robert Hazlitt reported when Grant did. Grant learned the trade of a company officer at Jefferson Barracks. His salary was $779 a year, which was more than adequate to cover his expenses, yet he looked forward to a teaching career at a private college as soon as he could find a suitable position. To prepare himself, Grant wrote to the head of the mathematics department at West Point requesting assignment to the academy as an assistant professor. His offer was accepted and Grant was told he would be called back when the next vacancy occurred. That might come within one year, two at the most. “Accordingly, I laid out for myself a course of studies to be pursued in garrison. I reviewed my West Point course of mathematics, and read many valuable historical works, besides an occasional novel.”42
In addition to company duties and getting ready for his West Point assignment, Grant occupied himself with trips into the Missouri countryside. The family of Fred Dent, his academy roommate, lived only five miles from Jefferson Barracks. Dent had been assigned to Fort Towson, a frontier post on the Red River in Indian Territory,43 and Grant was urged to accept the family’s hospitality in Dent’s absence. That autumn Grant rode over to get acquainted. Longstreet, whose mother was related to the Dents, accompanied him.44
The Dent estate was known as White Haven—925 acres of lush Missouri bottomland on the Gravois road that led southwest from St. Louis toward Springfield and Joplin. The Dents were originally from Maryland and the name White Haven was chosen to commemorate the family’s tidewater estate.45 Colonel Dent was a heavyset man of large frame and irascible temperament. Originally trained as a lawyer and businessman, he became a plantation grandee: supervising his slaves, watching his crops grow, and belligerently defending the Southern way of life to all who would listen. Dent had no previous military experience; the designation “Colonel” went with the lifestyle. Mrs. Dent, who was in her late forties, was small and slender, with sparkling gray eyes and an engaging manner. She was as gentle as her husband was gruff, and together they had eight children, four of whom, two boys and two girls, were still at home.
Grant visited the Dents often that winter, sometimes accompanied by Longstreet, but more frequently going alone. Both men appreciated White Haven as a home away from home, and the Dents, who took their social obligations seriously, enjoyed entertaining the young officers. Soon, however, Longstreet’s trips to the estate became less frequent as he found himself drawn to the daughter of his commanding officer.46 Grant, on the other hand, struck up a lively rapport with the Dent family. He and Colonel Dent enjoyed talking politics, and Mrs. Dent’s initial liking for her son’s roommate ripened into admiration. As one of the Dents’ younger daughters noted, “I think the rare common sense he displayed, his quiet, even tones, free from gestures and without affectation, especially attracted her. On many occasions after he had ridden away, I’ve heard her say, ‘That young man will be heard from some day. He has a good deal in him. He’ll make his mark.’ ”47
In February, White Haven became even more attractive to Grant. Instead of going for dinner once or twice a week he visited four and five times. Julia, the Dents’ oldest, fairest daughter, had returned from spending the season in St. Louis. Seventeen, almost eighteen, she had recently completed studies at Miss Mauro’s fashionable finishing school,48 and her first season in St. Louis society had been a decided success. Already it was rumored she had had several affairs of the heart.49 To observers Julia appeared well-informed for her age, intelligent, striking if not beautiful, and marvelously self-assured. Neither tall nor short, with long brown hair and expressive brown eyes, she had a rosy, outdoor complexion and a firm, athletic figure.
Grant quickly became Julia’s regular escort. Once, when he was on duty, she attended a ball at the post without him. “Where is that small man with the large epaulets?” Lieutenant Charles Hoskins, adjutant of the 4th Infantry, jokingly asked her.50 Julia found Grant’s sense of humor attractive. When her pet canary died, Grant made a miniature coffin for the bird, painted it yellow, and presided at a mock funeral attended by eight fellow officers in solemn dress.51 As the weather improved that spring, she and Grant rode daily along the woodland roads near White Haven. Julia was a talented rider and, like Grant, a good judge of horseflesh. Her mount, Psyche, was part Arabian and one of the few horses that could keep up with her escort’s spirited animal. “Such rides!” Julia wrote later.52
At the end of April, Grant received leave to visit his parents. Before departing he went to see Julia and spent the day with her. “As we sat on the piazza alone, he took his class ring from his finger and asked me if I would not wear it?” Julia declined. Her mother, she said, would not approve of her accepting a gift from a gentleman. Grant seemed put out by her reply and left shortly afterward, lingering just long enough to ask if she would miss him. “I, child that I was, never for a moment thought of him as a lover. But, Oh! How lonely I was without him.”53
Four days after Grant departed for Ohio, the 4th Infantry was ordered to the field. It was to occupy a position in Louisiana near the Texas border. Texas had declared its independence from Mexico and following Sam Houston’s resounding victory on the San Jacinto, the Lone Star Republic had become a reality. Annexation, which had long loomed on the horizon, appeared imminent, and the United States was flexing its muscle. The ostensible reason for sending the army to Louisiana was to prevent filibustering by American adventurers. The real purpose was to menace Mexico and deter any possible Mexican intervention in Texas.
A messenger from the regiment was sent after Grant, but failed to intercept him. Grant did not learn of his unit’s deployment until he was back with his parents in Ohio. “A day or two after my arrival I received a letter from a classmate and fellow lieutenant in the 4th [Robert Hazlitt] informing me, and advising me not to open any letter postmarked St. Louis or Jefferson Barracks until the expiration of my leave, and saying that he would pack up my things and take them along for me. His advice was not necessary, for no other letter was sent to me.”54
Grant observed the terms of his leave and reported back to Jefferson Barracks on May 20. He knew the regiment had departed, and was in no hurry to join it. He was, however, eager to see Julia. “If the 4th Infantry had remained at Jefferson Barracks it is possible, even probable, that life might have continued for some years without my finding out that there was anything serious the matter with me.”55 With the regiment in the field, life had changed and Grant realized he was in love.
The officer on duty in St. Louis when Grant reported back was Lieutenant Richard Ewell, who had been left behind to clear up matters when the regiment departed. Ewell was highly regarded in the regular army for his common sense. Grant explained his desire to go to White Haven and asked that his leave be extended for several days, and Ewell readily agreed. There was nothing of any immediate consequence Grant could do in Louisiana and if he had personal business to attend to, Ewell said he should take care of it.56
Grant left for White Haven forthwith. The Gravois Creek was out of its banks and he almost drowned trying to ford it. His uniform was soaked, but he pressed on. Grant had a superstitious aversion to turning back and never retraced his steps. He arrived at White Haven wet and disheveled. Then, in Grant’s words, “I mustered up courage to make known, in the most awkward manner imaginable, the discovery I had made on learning that the 4th Infantry had been ordered away from Jefferson Barracks.”57
Julia’s recollection of their meeting is more romantic. “He declared his love and told me that without me life would be insupportable. When he spoke of marriage, I simply told him I thought it would be charming to be engaged, but to be married—no! I would rather be engaged. I do not think he liked this arrangement, but . . . he let the matter rest.”58
Julia and Grant became secretly engaged. He gave her his ring and she gave him a lock of her hair.59 Grant and Julia said nothing to her family, and the two spent the remainder of the week taking long rides and walks through the countryside. On May 27, 1844, Brevet Second Lieutenant Grant departed Jefferson Barracks to join his regiment in Louisiana.
I. Grant never outgrew his love for spirited horses. Captain Alfred M. Fuller of the 2nd Cavalry reported seeing Grant in Milan in 1878, during his world tour. Grant was scheduled to review the famous flying Bersaglieri regiment of the Italian army, and some young officers arranged for him to ride a blooded bay horse of immense proportions. “A more restless, wicked appearing animal I have seldom seen,” said Captain Fuller. “I was in mortal fear that our general would be speedily thrown and crushed to death by the cruel hoofs. From the sly winks and nudges that passed between these dandyish officers it looked to me very much as if they had assigned to the general a young, untamable horse that had never been ridden. My fears were somewhat removed when I saw General Grant’s eyes light up with admiration as he gazed upon the horse.” The elderly ex-president mounted the horse with some difficulty, but as soon as he was seated his horsemanship so impressed the crowd they broke into spontaneous applause. “The horse, after a few futile plunges, discovered that he had his master, and started off in a gentle trot. From that time on horse and rider were as one being.” “Grant’s Horsemanship,” 8 McClure’s Magazine 501 (1897).