The indulgent father allowed his son some unique experiences. Ulysses, at fifteen, having made a journey to Flat Rock, Kentucky, seventy miles away, with a carriage and two horses, took a fancy to a saddle-horse and offered to trade one which he was driving, for this animal. The owner hesitated about trading with a lad, but finally consented, and the untried colt was. .h.i.tched to the carriage with his new mate. After proceeding a short distance, the animal became frightened by a dog, kicked, and started to run over an embankment. Ulysses, nothing daunted, took from his pocket a large handkerchief, tied it over the horse"s eyes, and sure that the terrified creature would see no more dogs, though he trembled like an aspen leaf, drove peacefully homeward.
Young Grant was as truthful as he was calm and courageous. He tells this story of himself. "There was a Mr. Ralston living within a few miles of the village, who owned a colt which I very much wanted. My father had offered twenty dollars for it, but Ralston wanted twenty-five. I was so anxious to have the colt that after the owner left I begged to be allowed to take him at the price demanded. My father yielded, but said twenty dollars was all the horse was worth, and told me to offer that price; if it was not accepted, I was to offer twenty-two and a half, and if that would not get him, to give the twenty-five. I at once mounted a horse and went for the colt. When I got to Mr. Ralston"s house, I said to him: "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." It would not require a Connecticut man to guess the price finally agreed upon....
"I could not have been over eight years at the time. This transaction caused me great heart-burning. The story got out among the boys of the village, and it was a long time before I heard the last of it. 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. I kept the horse until he was four years old, when he went blind, and I sold him for twenty dollars. When I went to Maysville to school, in 1836, at the age of fourteen, I recognized my colt as one of the blind horses working on the tread-wheel of the ferry-boat."
All this time the father was desirous of an education for his child. The son of a neighbor had been appointed to West Point, and had failed in his examinations. Mr. Grant applied for his son. "Ulysses," he said one day, "I believe you are going to receive the appointment." "What appointment!" was the response. "To West Point. I have applied for it."
"But I won"t go," said the impetuous boy. But the father"s will was law, and the son began to prepare himself. He bought an algebra, but, having no teacher, he says, it was Greek to him. He had no love for a military life, and looked forward to the West Point experience only as a new opportunity to travel East and see the country.
At seventeen he took pa.s.sage on a steamer for Pittsburg, in the middle of May, 1839. Fortunately the accommodating boat remained for several days at every port, for pa.s.sengers or freight, and meantime the curious boy used his eyes to learn all that was possible. When he reached Harrisburg, he rode to Philadelphia on the first railroad which he had ever seen except the one on which he had just crossed the summit of the Alleghany Mountains. "In travelling by the road from Harrisburg," he says, "I thought the perfection of rapid transit had been reached. We travelled at least eighteen miles an hour, when at full speed, and made the whole distance averaging probably as much as twelve miles an hour.
This seemed like annihilating s.p.a.ce. I stopped five days in Philadelphia; saw about every street in the city, attended the theatre, visited Girard College (which was then in course of construction), and got reprimanded from home afterwards, for dallying by the way so long....
"I reported at West Point on the 30th or 31st of May, and about two weeks later pa.s.sed my examinations for admission, without difficulty, very much to my surprise. A military life had no charms for me, and I had not the faintest idea of staying in the army even if I should be graduated, which I did not expect. The encampment which preceded the commencement of academic studies was very wearisome and uninteresting.
When the 28th of August came--the date for breaking up camp and going into barracks--I felt as though I had been at West Point always, and that if I stayed to graduation I would have to remain always. I did not take hold of my studies with avidity, in fact I rarely ever read over a lesson the second time during my entire cadetship. 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, but not those of a trashy sort. I read all 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. Mathematics was very easy to me, so that when January came I pa.s.sed the examination, taking a good standing in that branch. In French, the only other study at that time in the first year"s course, my standing was very low. In fact, if the cla.s.s had been turned the other end foremost, I should have been near the head."
The years at West Point did not go by quickly; only the ten weeks of vacation which seemed shorter than one week in school. Sometimes at the academy a great general, like Winfield Scott, came to review the cadets.
"With his commanding figure," says young Grant, "his quite colossal size, and showy uniform, I thought him the finest specimen of manhood my eyes had ever beheld, and the most to be envied. I could never resemble him in appearance, but I believe I did have a presentiment, for a moment, that some day I should occupy his place on review--although I had no intention then of remaining in the army. My experience in a horse trade ten years before, and the ridicule it caused me, were too fresh in my mind for me to communicate this presentiment to even my most intimate chum." How often into lives there comes a feeling that there is a specified work to be done by us that no other person can or will ever do!
When the years were over at West Point, each "four times as long as Ohio years," young Grant was anxious to enter the cavalry, especially as he had suffered from a cough for six months, and his family feared consumption. Having gone home, he waited anxiously for his new uniform.
"I was impatient," he says, "to get on my uniform and see how it looked, and probably wanted my old school-mates, particularly the girls, to see me in it. The conceit was knocked out of me by two little circ.u.mstances that happened soon after the arrival of the clothes, which gave me a distaste for military uniform that I never recovered from. Soon after the arrival of the suit I donned it, and put off for Cincinnati on horseback. While I was riding along a street of that city, imagining that every one was looking at me with a feeling akin to mine when I first saw General Scott, a little urchin, bareheaded, barefooted, with dirty and ragged pants held up by a single gallows--that"s what suspenders were called then--and a shirt that had not seen a washtub for weeks, turned to me and cried: "Soldier, will you work? No sir-ee; I"ll sell my shirt first!" The horse trade and its dire consequences were recalled to mind.
"The other circ.u.mstance occurred at home. Opposite our house in Bethel stood the old stage tavern where "man and beast" found accommodation.
The stable-man was rather dissipated, but possessed of some humor. On my return, I found him parading the streets, and attending in the stable, barefooted, but in a pair of sky-blue nankeen pantaloons--just the color of my uniform trousers--with a strip of white cotton sheeting sewed down the outside seams in imitation of mine. The joke was a huge one in the minds of many of the people, and was much enjoyed by them; but I did not appreciate it so highly."
In September, 1843, Grant reported for duty at Jefferson Barracks, St.
Louis, the largest military post in the United States at that time. His hope was to become a.s.sistant professor of mathematics at West Point, and he would have been appointed had not the Mexican War begun soon after.
A new page was now to be turned in the eventful life of the young officer; when he was to have, as Emerson beautifully says of love, "the visitation of that power to his heart and brain which created all things anew; which was the dawn in him of music, poetry, and art; which made the face of nature radiant with purple light; the morning and the night varied enchantments; when a single tone of one voice could make the heart bound, and the most trivial circ.u.mstance a.s.sociated with one form is put in the amber of memory; when he became all eye when one was present, and all memory when one was gone; ... when the moonlight was a pleasing fever, and the stars were letters, and the flowers ciphers, and the air was coined into song; when all business seemed an impertinence, and all the men and women running to and fro in the streets were pictures."
At West Point, Grant"s cla.s.s-mate was F. T. Dent, whose family resided five miles west of Jefferson Barracks. "Two of his unmarried brothers,"
says Grant, "were living at home at that time, and, as I had taken with me from Ohio my horse, saddle, and bridle, I soon found my way out to White Haven, the name of the Dent estate. As I found the family congenial, my visits became frequent. There were at home, besides the young men, two daughters, one a school miss of fifteen, the other a girl of eight or nine. There was still an older daughter, of seventeen, who had been spending several years at boarding-school in St. Louis, but who, though through school, had not yet returned home.... In February she returned to her country home. After that I do not know but my visits became more frequent; they certainly did become more enjoyable. We would often take walks, or go on horseback together to visit the neighbors, until I became quite well acquainted in that vicinity.... If the fourth infantry had remained at Jefferson Barracks it is possible, even probable, that this life might have continued for some years without my finding out that there was anything serious the matter with me; but in the following May a circ.u.mstance occurred which developed my sentiment so palpably that there was no mistaking it."
This "circ.u.mstance" was the annexation of Texas, the probability of a war with Mexico, and the necessity of leaving Jefferson Barracks for the Texan frontier. Alas! now that days full of hope, and the sweet realization of a divine companionship had come, they must have sudden ending. Grant took a brief furlough, went to say good-bye to his father and mother, and then to White Haven to see Julia Dent. In crossing a swollen stream, his uniform was wet through, but he donned the suit of a future brother-in-law, and appeared before his beloved to ask her hand in marriage, to receive her acceptance, and then to hasten to the scene of action. He saw her but once in the next four years and three months; four anxious years to her, when death often stared her lover in the face.
As soon as Texas was admitted to the Union, in 1845, the "army of occupation," as the three thousand men under General Zachary Taylor were called, advanced to the Rio Grande and built a fort. When the first hostile gun was fired, Grant says, "I felt sorry that I had enlisted. A great many men, when they smell battle afar off, chafe to get into the fray. When they say so themselves, they generally fail to convince their hearers that they are as anxious as they would like to make believe, and as they approach danger they become more subdued. This rule is not universal, for I have known a few men who were always aching for a fight when there was no enemy near, who were as good as their word when the battle did come on. But the number of such men is small."
The first battle was at Palo Alto, meaning "tall trees or woods," six miles from the Rio Grande. Early in the forenoon of May 8, Taylor"s three thousand men were drawn up in line of battle, opposed by superior numbers. The infantry was armed with flintlock muskets and paper cartridges charged with powder, buckshot, and ball. "At the distance of a few hundred yards," says Grant, "a man might fire at you all day without your finding it out." The artillery consisted of two batteries and two eighteen-pounder iron guns, with three or four twelve-pounder howitzers throwing sh.e.l.l. The firing was brisk on both sides. One cannon-ball pa.s.sed near Grant, killing several of his companions. After a hard day"s fight, the enemy retreated in the night. The war had now begun in earnest, and the man who at the first hostile gun "felt sorry that he had enlisted" was ready to brave danger on any field.
In the hard-fought battle of Monterey, between sixty-five hundred men under Taylor and ten thousand Mexicans, Grant"s curiosity got the better of his judgment, and, leaving the camp, where he had been ordered to remain, he mounted a horse and rode to the front. He made the charge with the men, when about a third of their number were killed. He loaned his horse to the adjutant of the regiment, Lieutenant Hoskins, who was soon killed, and Grant was designated to act in his place.
The ammunition became low, and to return for it was so dangerous that the general commanding did not like to order any one to fetch it, so called for a volunteer. Grant modestly says, "I volunteered to go back to the point we had started from.... My ride back was an exposed one.
Before starting, I adjusted myself on the side of my horse furthest from the enemy, and with only one foot holding to the cantle of the saddle, and an arm over the neck of the horse exposed, I started at full run. It was only at street-crossings that my horse was under fire, but these I crossed at such a flying rate that generally I was past and under cover of the next block of houses before the enemy fired. I got out safely, without a scratch."
When Monterey was conquered, and the garrison marched out as prisoners, young Grant was moved to pity, as he says in his Memoirs, thus showing a gentle nature, which he bore years later when thousands were falling around him, and he was still obliged to say, "Forward."
After the capture of Vera Cruz and the surprise at Cerro Gordo, where three thousand Mexicans were made prisoners, the army advanced toward the City of Mexico. Between three and four miles from the city stood Molino del Rey, the "mill of the King," an old stone structure, one story high, flat-roofed, and several hundred feet long. Sandbags were laid along the roof, and good marksmen fought behind them. Near by was Chepultepec, three hundred feet high, fortified on the top and on its rocky sides. From the front, guns swept the approach to Molino. Yet, on the morning of September 8, the a.s.sault upon Molino was made, young Grant being among the foremost. The loss was severe, especially among commissioned officers.
Grant says, "I was with the earliest of the troops to enter the mills.
In pa.s.sing through to the north side, looking toward Chepultepec, I happened to notice that there were armed Mexicans still on top of the building, only a few feet from many of our men. Not seeing any stairway or ladder reaching to the top of the building, I took a few soldiers, and had a cart that happened to be standing near brought up, and, placing the shafts against the wall, and chocking the wheels so that the cart could not back, used the shafts as a sort of ladder, extending to within three or four feet of the top. By this I climbed to the roof of the building, followed by a few men, but found a private soldier had preceded me by some other way. There were still quite a number of Mexicans on the roof, among them a major and five or six officers of lower grades, who had not succeeded in getting away before our troops occupied the building. They still had their arms, while the soldier before mentioned was walking as sentry, guarding the prisoners he had _surrounded_, all by himself. I halted the sentinel, received the swords from the commissioned officers, and proceeded, with the a.s.sistance of the soldiers now with me, to disable the muskets by striking them against the edge of the wall, and throwing them to the ground below."
Five days after the fall of Molino, Chepultepec was taken, with severe loss. Grant was mentioned in the official report as having "behaved with distinguished gallantry." Just before the City of Mexico fell into our hands, Grant was made first lieutenant. Promotion had not come rapidly.
It is sometimes better if success does not come to us early in life. To learn how to work steadily, day after day, with an unalterable purpose; to learn how to concentrate thought and will-power, how to conquer self through failure and hope deferred, is often essential for him who is to govern either by physical or moral power.
After Mexico fell, and General Scott lived in the halls of the Montezumas, he controlled the city as a Havelock or a Gordon might have done; and Grant learned by observation the best of all lessons for a soldier, to be magnanimous to a fallen foe. He learned other valuable lessons in this war; made the acquaintance of the officers with whom he was to measure his strength, in the most stupendous war of modern times, twenty years later.
When the treaty of peace was signed between our country and Mexico, February 2, 1848, whereby we paid fifteen million dollars for the territory ceded to us, Grant obtained leave of absence for four months.
One person must have been inexpressibly thankful that his life had been spared. Four years, and she had seen him but once! How n.o.ble we often become by the mellowing power of circ.u.mstances which prevent our having our own way! Discipline may be only another word for achievement.
U. S. Grant and Julia Dent were married August 22, 1848, when he was twenty-six, and began a life of affection and helpfulness, which grew brighter till the end came on Mt. McGregor. There was reason why the affection lasted through all the years; in the best sense they lived for each other. Those who find their happiness outside the home are apt to find little inside the home. Devotion begets devotion, and men and women must expect to receive only what they give. Affection scattered produces a scanty harvest.
The winter of 1848 was spent at the post at Sackett"s Harbor, New York; the next two years at Detroit, Michigan. In 1852, Grant was ordered to the Pacific coast. And now the young husband and wife must be separated; she to go to her home in St. Louis, and he to the then unsettled West.
When Aspinwall was reached the streets of the town were a foot under water, in a blazing, tropical sun. Cholera broke out among the troops, as it had among the inhabitants, and a third of the people died. The crossing of the Isthmus of Panama, on the backs of mules, was tedious and trying. San Francisco was reached early in September. The gold-mining fever was at its height. Soon the troops pa.s.sed up to Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, and a quiet and dull life began.
Measles and small-pox were killing the Indians so rapidly that the gun of the white man was superfluous as an agent of destruction.
In 1854, six years after Grant"s marriage, despairing of supporting his wife and two children on the Pacific coast with his pay as an army officer, he resigned. His prospects now were not bright. Without a profession, save that of arms, he was to begin, at thirty-two, a struggle for support, which must have tested the affection of the woman who married the young officer in her hopeful girlhood. She owned a farm in St. Louis, and thither they moved as their home. He says of the farm: "I had no means to stock it. A house had to be built also. I worked very hard, never losing a day because of bad weather, and accomplished the object in a moderate way. If nothing else could be done, I would load a cord of wood on a wagon and take it to the city for sale. I managed to keep along very well until 1858, when I was attacked by fever and ague.
I had suffered very severely and for a long time from this disease while a boy in Ohio. It lasted now over a year, and, while it did not keep me in the house, it did interfere greatly with the amount of work I was able to perform. In the fall of 1858 I sold out my stock, crops, and farming utensils at auction, and gave up farming."
Four years of struggling had not paid pecuniarily. Poverty is not a pleasant school in which to be nurtured. Blessings upon those who do not grow harsh or discontented with its bitter lessons. To keep sunshine in the face when want knocks at the heart is to win the victory in a dreadful battle. And yet many are able to accomplish this, and brighten with their happy faces lives more prosperous than their own.
In the winter of 1858 Captain Grant established a partnership with a cousin of his wife in the real estate business. Again separation came.
The little family were left on the farm while the father tried another method of earning a living for them. "Our business," he says, "might have become prosperous if I had been able to wait for it to grow. As it was, there was no more than one person could attend to, and not enough to support two families. While a citizen of St. Louis, and engaged in the real estate agency business, I was a candidate for the office of county engineer, an office of respectability and emolument which would have been very acceptable to me at that time. The inc.u.mbent was appointed by the county court, which consisted of five members. My opponent had the advantage of birth over me (he was a citizen by adoption), and carried off the prize. I now withdrew from the co-partnership with Boggs, and, in May, 1860, removed to Galena, Illinois, and took a clerkship in my father"s store."
He was once more in the tannery business, which he had so hated when a boy. It is well that men and women are spurred to duty because somebody depends upon them for daily food, otherwise this life of often uncongenial labor would be unbearable. We rarely do what we like to do in this world;--we do what the merciless goad of circ.u.mstance forces us to do. He is wise who goes to his work with a smile.
The year 1860 opened upon a new era in this country. Slavery and anti-slavery had struggled together till the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency told that the decisive hour had come. The nation could no longer exist "half slave and half free."
When Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated, March 4, 1861, the Southern States seceded, one after another, until eleven had separated from the Union.
Most of the Southern forts were already in the hands of the Confederates. Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, still remained under the control of the Union. While besieged by the South, an effort was made to send supplies to our starving garrison. The fort was fired upon April 11, 1861, and that shot, like the one at Concord, was "heard round the world."
From that hour slavery was doomed. The President issued his first call for seventy-five thousand volunteers for ninety days. The North and West seemed to respond as one man. The intense excitement reached the little town of Galena. The citizens were at once called together. Business was suspended. In the evening the court-house was packed. Captain Grant was asked to conduct the meeting. The people naturally turned to one who understood battles, when they saw war close at hand. With much embarra.s.sment Grant presided. The leather business was finished for him from that eventful night. The women of Galena were as deeply interested as the men. They came to Grant to obtain a description of the United States uniform for infantry, subscribed and bought the material, procured tailors to cut the garments, and made them with their own willing hands. More and more, with their superior education, women are to play an important part in this country, both in peace and war.
Captain Grant was now asked by Governor Yates, of Illinois, to go into the adjutant-general"s office, and render such a.s.sistance as he could, which position he accepted, but he modestly says, "I was no clerk, nor had I any capacity to become one. The only place I ever found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again was either a side coat-pocket or the hands of a clerk or secretary more careful than myself. But I had been quartermaster, commissary, and adjutant in the field. The army forms were familiar to me, and I could direct how they should be made out."
Though a man of few words, those few could be effective if Grant chose to use them. Meeting in St. Louis, in a street-car, a young braggart, who said to him, "Where I came from, if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union we hang him to a limb of the first tree we come to,"
Grant replied, "We are not so intolerant in St. Louis as we might be. I have not seen a single rebel hung yet, nor heard of one. There are plenty of them who ought to be, however." The young man did not continue the conversation. In May, 1861, Grant wrote a letter to the adjutant-general of the army at Washington, saying that, as he had been in the regular army for fifteen years, and educated at government expense, he tendered his services for the war. No notice was ever taken of the letter, and, of course, no answer was returned. Soon after he spent a week with his parents, in Covington, Kentucky. Twice he called upon Major-General McClellan, at Cincinnati, just across the river, whom he had known slightly in the Mexican War, with the hope that he would be offered a position on his staff. But he failed to see the general, and returned to Illinois. He was not to serve under McClellan. A different destiny awaited him.
President Lincoln now called for three hundred thousand men to enlist for three years or the war. Governor Yates appointed Grant colonel of the Twenty-First Illinois regiment. Another separation from wife and children had come; the beginning of a great career had come also. The regiment repaired to Springfield, Illinois, and, after some time spent in drill, was ordered to move against Colonel Thomas Harris, encamped at the little town of Florida. There was no bravado in the man who had fought so bravely in all the battles of the Mexican War. He says: "As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris" camp, and possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on. When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view, I halted. The place where Harris had been encamped a few days before was still there, and the marks of a recent encampment were plainly visible, but the troops were gone. My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before, but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war, I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his. The lesson was valuable."
Soon after this Lincoln asked the Illinois delegation in Congress to recommend some citizens of the State for the position of brigadier-general, and Grant, to his great surprise, was recommended first on a list of seven. After his appointment he spent several weeks in Missouri, whither he had been ordered. His first battle was at Belmont, where, in a severe engagement of four hours, the loss on our side was 485, and the Confederate loss 642. Grant"s horse was shot under him. After the battle the Confederates received reenforcements, and there was danger that our men could not return to the transports on which they had come to Belmont. "We are surrounded," they cried.
"Well," said their cool leader, "if that be so, we must cut our way out as we cut our way in;" and so they did.
Grant, meantime, rode out into a cornfield alone to observe the enemy.
While there, as he afterwards learned, the Southern General Polk and one of his staff saw the Union soldier, and said to their men, "There is a Yankee; you may try your marksmanship on him if you wish;" but, strangely enough, n.o.body fired, and Grant"s valuable life was spared.
He soon perceived that he was the only man between the Confederates and the boats. His horse seemed to realize the situation. Grant says: "There was no path down the bank, and every one acquainted with the Mississippi River knows that its banks, in a natural state, do not vary at any great angle from the perpendicular. My horse put his fore feet over the bank without hesitation or urging, and, with his hind feet well under him, slid down the bank and trotted aboard the boat, twelve or fifteen feet away, over a single gangplank. I dismounted and went at once to the upper deck.... When I first went on deck I entered the captain"s room, adjoining the pilot-house, and threw myself on a sofa. I did not keep that position a moment, but rose to go out on the deck to observe what was going on. I had scarcely left when a musket-ball entered the room, struck the head of the sofa, pa.s.sed through it, and lodged in the boat."
Thus again was his life saved.