Grant, the man of mystery

Front matter

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COL NICHOLAS SmiTH

Contents

I. — Truth is Stranger than Fiction

A Crisis Befalls the Land — He is Equal to the Occasion — It is of Grant — Washington, Lincoln, Grant.

II. — Birth and Boyhood 10

II. Birth And Boyhood

j]HE marriage of Jesse Root Grant, a young man of industry and sturdy qualities, to Hannah Simpson, a sensible and lovable young woman of cheerful piety, introduces us to one of the most dramatic periods in American history. The event was celebrated in 1821, at Point Pleasant, Ohio, some twenty-five miles east of Cincinnati. It is now the same sleepy hamlet as when Hiram Ulysses Grant was born there in a log cabin, April 27th, 1822.

One year after the birth of Hiram, the family settled at Georgetown, the county seat of Brown county, a few miles east of Point Pleasant. Here Mr, Grant owned and personally operated a small tannery. Before engaging in this business on his own account, he worked in a tannery and lived in the same house with Owen Brown, at Deerfield, Ohio. This simple fact

BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 11

suggests tu tlic iiiiud the wonders whicli are wrought by the passing of time. The second child and eldest son of the tanner and shoemaker became known as John Brown of Ossawatomie, whose "Soul goes marching on" ; and the first-born of the tanner and farmer became known to fame as U. S. Grant.

Hiram (that being the name by which his mother always called him) lived in Georgetown until his appointment to West Point in 1839. Two winters, howover, were spent at school away from home, those of 1836-7 at Mayville, Kentucky, and 1838-9 at Kipley, Ohio, the latter place being ten miles from Georgetown.

It has often been said that some of Hiram's early years were spent in his father's tannery, but this is fiction. Mr. Grant owned considerable land near the tannery, much of which was under cultivation, and a portion was timbered. Hiram detested the business of tanning as a trade, but was fond of farming and of all employment in which horses were used. When he was eight years old he began to haul all the wood necessary for the house and shops, though he could not load or unload the wagon. At the age of eleven he was strong enough to hold the plow, and from that time until he was seventeen he says he attended to all the work done with horses, ''such as breaking up the land, plowing corn and potatoes, bringing in the crops when harvested, besides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, and sawing wood for stoves, and so on," while attending school in the winter months.

m GRANT, THE MAN OF MYSTERY

Grant makes confession in the Memoirs that he did not like to work, yet he did not shirk the labor assigned to him by his father. And here we get somewhat of an insight into the soul standard of the coming man. If work on the farm was irksome to him, he was cautious in not communicating the fact to his parents, because of a tender regard for their feelings.

Hiram spent sixteen years in Georgetown, and while the Memoirs say they were "uneventful" years, they had much to do Avitli the making of the man. Here he laid a good foundation against the time to come. But those who knew Grant can readily understand why he called those years uneventful. He never wrote with a free hand with reference to personal matters not connected with the vast operations during the Civil War. That he did not wield the pen of a ready writer in mere personal affairs, and that there was a total absence of egotism and self-assertion in his character, is illustrated in the fact that all he says in the Memoirs of his life from Point Pleasant to West Point covers less than eight pages.

But the sixteen years at Georgetown were eventful. Hiram's home was the making of the man. His father and mother taught him patriotism, which never died out of his heart. He early fell into the habit of cherishing good impulses. It must not be inferred, however, that he was always an ideal boy. There were many pitfalls into which boys were often led in such a village as Georgetown, and he was as human as his com-

BIETn AND BOYHOOD 13

panioiis ; but witli this difference — he was stronger to resist evil than most boys of his class. Having a steady temper, which came from his mother, it was difficult to inveigle him into a quarrel; but if forced into one, , it was said to his credit that he was never defeated.

In one important particular Hiram was highly favored in his youth. His father was a wise man in many respects, though often stern and somewhat eccentric. His mother was patient, sensible, and devout. The father's hard sense and the mother's religious instinct and loyalty to convictions were inherited by the son. The saying that "all good boys take after the mother" may have exceptions, but it was verified in Hiram. Napoleon says, "The future destiny of the child is always the work of the mother" ; and Emerson puts the same thought in the same sentence, "Men are what their mothers made them." Young Grant was rocked in a Methodist cradle and trained in a Methodist home. His mother's love had a lasting influence over him. From his youth to the close of his life he was scrupulously free from vulgarity or profanity. He was deeply religious by nature, but apparently devoid of sentiment or emotion ; and it is a singular fact that he — the most religious boy in the family — was the only one of the six children who was not baptized in early life.

The progress Hiram made in the schools at Mayville and Ripley did not seem to justify the outlay for board and tuition. He got on quite well in mathematics, and read with interest the few volumes of biography which were accessible in those days, but in other studies he did not attain to a standard of proficiency. One of his confessions in later life was that the older he grew the more indolent he became — "my besetting sin through life."

III. The Door To West Point Is Opened

F Mr. Grant were a stern and an eccentric man at times, he was a considerate father. He had stndied the weak and strong points of Hiram's character. While he did not presume that the boy conld ever be fitted for great things, he firmly believed there was more good stuff in him than anyone could discover by mere outward indications. It was not revealed at the time that there were latent in his son the wide and varied qualities of efficiency and power derived from the personalities of father and mother. But Mr. Grant had confidence in Hiram, despite his often provoking failures and lack of energy and promise, and in his wisdom he carefully thought out a career for him in which he believed he would be tolerably successful.

While Mr. Grant was fairly well-to-do for a tanner and farmer in those days, he was, for financial reasons,

16 (iRAXT. THE MAX OP MY8TERY

unable to place Hiram in any of the higher institutions of learning. Therefore, he had in view the Military Academy at West Point, where cadets were educated at government expense. He was something of a prophet in this matter, as he had stronger hope of his son's ultimate success than Hiram himself, or any of his Georgetown neighbors.

When Hiram was spending his Christmas vacation at home in the winter of 1839 (he was then attending school at Ripley), one morning, his father said to him :

"Ulysses, I believe you Avill receive the appointment."

"What appointment ?" asked Ulysses.

"To West Point ; I have applied for it."

"But I won't go," responded Ulysses.

The Memoirs say : "Father said he thought I would, and I thought so too, if he did. I really had no objection to going to West Point, except that I had a very exalted idea of the requirements necessary to get through. I did not believe I possessed them, and I could not bear the idea of failing."

The father's commands, firmly, but kindly enforced, governed the Grant home, and therefore the General was impelled to employ, in a facetious way, the italics found in the quotation.

The accounts relating to the efforts of Mr. Grant to secure the appointment of his son to West Point vary in several biographies. Even the Memoirs are partly in error, but this should not cause surprise when the

THE DOOR ro WEiiT POINT IS OPENED 17

painful conditions in which that great work was written are considered. The subject is important enough to warrant a correction of the errors.

In the autumn of 1838, Thomas Morris of Ohio, a member of the United States Senate, visited Georgetown, and on that occasion Mr. Grant spoke to him relative to the appointment of Hiram to West Point. Later in the season, evidently early in December, he wrote a letter to Morris, the answer to which he read to Hiram at Christmastide. The power to appoint cadets to the Military Academy was vested in the Representative in Congress, and the sitting member from that district was Thomas L. Hamer, a resident of Georgetown, and, of course, an acquaintance of the Grant family. But there were strained relations existing between Mr. Hamer and Mr. Grant; and the Memoirs say: "Under these circumstances my father would not write to Mr. Hamer for the appointment, and he wrote Senator Morris, informing him that there was a vacancy at West Point from our district. . . . This letter, I presume, was turned over to Mr. Hamer, and as there was no other applicant, he cheerfully appointed me."

At this point the Memoirs are in error. It is presumable that Senator Morris, in corresponding with Mr. Grant, urged him to make a direct application to Mr. Hamer for the appointment. The father's heart was firmly set on his son entering the Academy. In a matter that so deeply concerned him, he had the good sense to forget and forgive. His asperity, so far as his

18 GRAST, THE J/^A Ob' MYiiTERY

relation to Mr. Hamer was concerned, was softened, and lie wrote the following letter:

"Georgetown, Feb. 19, 1839.

Hon. Thomas L. Hamer:

"Dear Sir: — In consequence of a remark of Mr. Morris while here last fall, I was induced to apply to the War Department, through him, for a cadet appointment of my son, H. Ulysses.

"A letter this evening received from the Department informs me that you only are entitled to the nomination and that your consent would be necessary to enable him to obtain the appointment.

"I have thought it advisable to consult you on the subject. And if you have no other person in view for the appointment, and feel willing to consent to the appointment of Ulysses, you will please signify that consent to the Department.

"When I last wrote Mr. Morris I referred him to you to recommend the young man if that were necessary. "Respectfully yours,

"Jesse R. Grant.

"Hon. Thomas L. Hamer, M.C., "Washington City."

It was this letter, written to a personal and political adversary, that opened to young Grant the door to his great career, Mr. Henry C. Badger of Cambridge, Massachusetts, secured the original letter in 1868 from the daughter of General Hamer, then living at Mount Vernon, Indiana, and it is now among the treasures of

THE DOOR TO WEST POIXT IS OPENED 19

the Massachusetts Historical Society of Boston. Its first appearance in print was in the K^ew York Tribune, in 1886.

The appointment of Hiram to the Academj Avas a magnanimous act on the part of Mr. Hamer, and little did he realize how much it meant to history. There was an enmity apjjroaching bitterness between the congressman and Mr. Grant. "To the victors belong the spoils," was the shibboleth of the party then in power, and Mr. Hamer was a lifelong Democrat, and Mr. Grant a staunch Whig.

It will be interesting to the readers to learn that when the war with Mexico was declared in 1846 — Mr. Hamer's term in Congress having expired — he enlisted as a private in the army in which Grant was then serving as a second lieutenant, but in a few weeks was commissioned a brigadier general. He distinguished himself at the battle of Monterey, September 21-23, 1846, and on the 3d of the following December he died suddenly in that city of malignant fever.

The pathway of young Grant to the Military Academy was not strewed with promise and hope. He had no love for military life. In appearance, at least, he did not possess soldierly qualities. He could see in West Point only a temporary advantage. The curious condition of his heart and mind at this time is revealed in the Metnoirs: "Going to West Point would give me the opportunity of visiting the two great cities of the continent, Philadelphia and JSTew York. This was

20 GRAXT, THE MAX OF MYSTERY

enough. When these places were visited I would have been glad to have had a steamboat or a railroad collision, or any other accident happen, by which I might have received a temporary injury sufficient to make me ineligible, for a time, to enter the Academy. Nothing of the kind occurred, and I had to face the music."

Here begins one of the strangest and most interesting chapters of American biography ; and here, also, we catch a glimpse of Grant — the man of mystery.

IV. The West Point Cadet

IRAM ULYSSES GRANT reported at West Point in the last week of May, 1839. He was seventeen years old, a good, all around boy, but not ambitious. The examination, for which he had so much dread, was passed successfully. Yet he fancied himself out of place in the Academy. What he was there for he hardly knew. He was of that temperamental type which made it slow work for him to reach a definite decision as to what his purpose in life should be. Thus far he was a stranger to mental discipline or action expressive of sentiment or passion. And the one thing which was farthest removed from him was the dream of military glory.

When Mr. Hamer nominated young Grant for a cadetship, he sent the name, Ulysses S. Grant, to the War Department, supposing his second name was Simpson, the maiden name of his mother. The name given him ill infancy was Hiram Ulysses, but of this Mr. llamer had no knowledge. Although the error, unwittingly committed, was a provoking one to the Grant family, neither the commandant at the Academy nor the Secretary of War deemed the matter of sufficient consequence to warrant correction.

William T. Sherman was a cadet of three years' standing when young Grant entered the Academy, and speaking of the event many years afterwards, he said : ''In that year there appeared on the walls of the hall in Old North Barracks, a list of new cadets, among them U. S. Grant. A crowd of lookers-on read. United States Grant, Uncle Sam Grant, and Sam Grant he is known to-day in the tradition of the Old Fourth U. S. Infantry. Cadet Grant tried to correct this error at the beginning and end of his cadet life without success, and to history his name must ever be U. S. Grant."

I have already intimated that the life of a soldier had no charms for Cadet Grant. He was in no condition of mind to push his studies. At the beginning of his cadetship no vision which vitalized his hope came to him. He did not have the eye of faith which sees the prize at the end long before it is reached. He tells us that he had not the remotest idea of staying in the army even should he be fortunate enough to be graduated, which he did not expect.

A bill was before Congress in 1839, to abolish the West Point Academy, and Cadet Grant fervently hoped it would become a law, that he might be relieved from

THE WEST POINT CADET 23

the obligation of spending four years at the school. When the bill failed to pass he was sorely disappointed, and writing of the occasion, he says: "Time hung drearily with me. My idea then was to get through the course, secure a detail for a few years as assistant professor of mathematics, and afterwards obtain a permanent position as professor in some respectable college; but circumstances always did shape my course different from my plans."

There are no incidents of an unusual character on record pertaining to Cadet Grant's life at the Academy. But the study of his quiet, unambitious life at that period is of particular importance. The thing that fills one with wonder is the contrasting of his standing as a military student with the marvellous ability he displayed as a commander of great armies in the War of the Eebellion.

Cadet Grant was highly esteemed at the Academy. He was kindly disposed, never provoked a quarrel, was a companionable room-mate, and his cool judgment and constant fairness Avere so observable that he was frequently called upon to umpire disputes among cadets. But in one thing he was lacking. 'No great passion burned in his soul. His habits were not of the studious kind. His mental capacity was sufficient for the accomplishment of great things, but his deficient energy kept him from pushing towards the mark for the prize of high standing in his class. He had not then, and had never afterwards, the gift of self-advertisement; and

24 GRAXT. THE MAS OF MYSTERY

after lie got fairly well started in his studies, the best he could say for himself is in this characteristic sentence to his father : "I don't expect to make very fast progress, but I will try to hold on to what I get." Here was somewhat a foreshadowing of the bulldog tenacity which afterwards made him so famous. His constant drawback at this period was the absence, to all appearances, of military instincts and inclinations ; and hence in after years he was prompted to confess, "I never succeeded in getting squarely at either end of my class, in any study, during the four years."

The better way to obtain an insight into Cadet Grant's life at the Academy — for this is important in considering the mystery of his character — is to accept the statements of men of high standing Avho were his classmates at that time.

Among the young men who registered at West Point with Grant, and were graduated with him, was George Deshon, of Connecticut, who, fifteen years later became Superior General of the Paulists, in New York. When the Independent asked Father Deshon for some recollections of Grant, he said: "Grant was not what we called military. He was careless in his dress, and did not pay much attention to the minutiae of drill. For two years we w^ere both high privates in the company. . . . We had a good many laughs about our military cadet rank. He was at the foot of the list and I was next above him. The next year Avhen the appointment of cadet officers was made, he returned to the rank of

THE WEST POINT CADET 25

private, and I took foot of the list. He had a good head for mathematics and other studies; but he was not a hard student. . . . He got a great deal of demerits for trifling carelessness in military matters which lowered his general standing in the class. . . . He was free from all profanity, and his conversation was pure. He did not drink liquor or use tobacco. One of his characteristic traits was a great straightforwardness and a scrupulous regard for truth."

Many curious stories have been circulated relative to Grant's life at the Academy, but as they do not possess authentic quality they cannot be used as illustrating the character of the real Grant, and therefore cannot be repeated here.

Another authority of high merit who is well worth quoting is Professor Henry Coppee : "The honor of being Grant's comrade for two years at the Academy enables me to speak more intelligently, perhaps, than those of the 'new school' who have invented the most absurd stories to illustrate his cadet life. I remember him as a plain, common-sense, straightforward youth ; shunning notoriety; quite content while others were grumbling, taking to his military duties in a business-like manner ; not a prominent man in the corps, but respected by all. His sobriquet of 'Uncle Sam' was given to him there, where every good fellow has a nickname, from these very qualities. Indeed he was a very uncle-like sort of a youth. He exhibited but little enthusiasm in anything."

2G GRAM\ THE MAN OF MYSTERY

If Cadet Graut were lacking in enthusiasm in everything while in the Academy, he was exhibiting a characteristic trait which was inseparable from the man. He was never an enthusiast. No one ever heard him shout for joy, or give sonorous vent to anger. If he were not an enthusiastic student in most branches taught at the Academy, he showed creditable advancement in natural philosophy, engineering, mathematics, and horsemanship. In a quiet, undemonstrative way he was unconsciously preparing for one supreme hour. But to the student of human nature, and to the keen reader of character then at the school, it did seem that between Cadet Grant and General Grant, the commander-in-chief of the largest army any republic ever organized, there was an impassable gulf.

V

ANECDOTES, PROPHECIES. AND GRADUATION.

T has already been said that Cadet Grant excelled in mathematics and horsemanship. The exactitude of the former, of whatever branch, gave him no trouble, and as to the latter, his skill and courage were phenomenal.

Major General Jacob D. Cox, commander of the Twenty-third Army Corps in the Civil War, says Grant did not lack the sense of humor, and thoiTgh his voice did not possess volume, and seemed thin and high-keyed, his natural shyness did not prevent him from telling an occasional story with good effect. During the war lie related an interesting experience in his riding exercise at the Academy.

Tlie riding-master was II. E. Hershberger, "an amusing sort of n tyrant," and on one occasion, whether seriously or as a joke, he determined to "take down" the vouno' cadet. At the exercise Grant was mounted

•2.S GRANT, THE MAX OF ^fySTERY

on a powerful but vicious brute that the cadets fought shy of, and was put at leaping the bar. The bar was placed liigher and higher as he came round the ring, till it passed the "record." The stubborn rider would not say "Enough" ; but the stubborn horse was disposed to shy and refuse to make the leap. Grant gritted his teeth and spurred at it, but just as the horse gathered for the spring, his swelling body burst the girth, and the rider and saddle tumbled into the ring. Half stunned, Grant gathered himself up from the dust only to hear "the strident, cynical voice of Hershberger calling out : 'Cadet Grant, six demerits for dismounting without leave!'"

But the most graphic description of Grant's riding ability is given by General James B. Fry, who entered West Point the year the former was graduated.

"One afternoon in June, 1843, while I was at West Point, I wandered into the riding hall where the members of the graduating class were going through their final mounted exercises before a large assemblage of spectators. When the regular services were completed, the class was formed in line through the center of the hall, the riding-master placed the leaping bar higher than a man's head, and called out, 'Cadet Grant'! A clean-faced, slender, blue-eyed young fellow, weighing about one hundred and twenty pounds, dashed from the ranks on a powerfully built horse, and galloped down the opposite side of the hall. As he turned at the farther end and came into the straight stretch across which

ANECDOTES, PROPHECIES, AXD OIIADUATIOX 29

the bar was placed, the horse increased his pace, and measuring his strides for the great leap before him, bounded into the air and cleared the bar, carrying his rider as if man and beast had been welded together. The spectators were breathless! 'Very well done, sir!' growled old Hershberger."

The bar had been placed six feet and five inches high, and was the highest jump ever recorded at the academy, and next to the highest ever known in the United States.

Two months before Grant's death, General Fry visited him, and speaking of the riding hall scene, the dying man Avhispered : ''I remember that very well ; York was a wonderful horse. I could feel him gathering under me for the effort as he approached the bar."

"Have you heard anything of Hershberger, lately ?" asked General Fry. "Oh, yes," replied the General, "I have heard of him since the war. He was at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, old and poor, and I sent him a check for fifty dollars."

Time had tempered the manners and toned down the voice of the once gruff old riding-master, and in recognition of his former pupil's kind remembrance of him in his shadowy days, no doubt there came from a grateful heart, but in silent tones, "Very well done, sir I Very well done !"

Although Grant's standing at the academy did not give promise of a successful military career, it was allsufficient for the work he seemed to be foreordained to

30 GRANT, THE MAS' OF MYSTERY

perform. Hidden by an uninilitary spirit and an nnsoldierly bearing was a snrprisingly large military capacity. Any other training of his peculiar mind would have so changed his circumstances as to place him in entirely different relations to the events which ultimately moulded him into the commander the country so much needed, when rebellion threatened the existence of the Union.

When Grant was graduated from West Point in the summer of 1843, he stood twenty-one in a class of thirty-nine. Perhaps he would have stood a little higher had he not contracted a severe cough some six months prior to graduation, which greatly interfered with his studies.

There was an indefinable something iu Cadet Grant which attracted the attention of a few keen observers at the school. To those his personality was somewhat of a magnet. There was a mystery about him of peculiar attractiveness to those who got close enough to him to read him best. And a conscientious biographer hesitates to quote some of the alleged prophecies made by those who knew Grant at West Point, lest they might have had their origin after he had won the applause of the world. Such stock-stories, like those about Lincoln, being easily made, are numerous. But the following incident is authenticated by General Eliakin P. Scammon, professor of ethics at the academy from 1841 till 1846:

The night after Grant's class was graduated. Pro-

ANECDOTES, PROPHEVIEii, AND GRADUATION HI

fessor Charles Davies, the eminent mathematician, and teacher in the academy at the time, asked Scammon whom he considered the brightest man in the class. Scammon answered: "I suppose the brightest mind is the one that carries off the highest honors." "You are wrong," replied Davies. "I tell you the smartest man in the class is little Grant." Professor Davies contended that it was Grant's untidiness that brought down his average standing, and not poverty of intellectual capacity.

To this chapter may well be added the statement of an unknown writer : West Point, in making the gift of this one cadet, has paid back all the cost it has incurred since its foundation one hundred and thirteen years ao-o.

VI. In The Mexican War

N his graduation, Cadet Grant met with a defeat hardly less severe than the failure of Congress to pass the bill to abolish the Military Academy. He tells us that the members of the graduating class were privileged to record their choice of arms and service and regiment. Having a fondness for horses, though his native modesty excluded any self-appreciation of the matchless record he made with old York, he preferred the cavalry. At that time there Avas only one regiment of cavalry in the service and no vacancy for a commissioned officer existed when his choice was recorded, and therefore he was assigned to the Fourth Infantry as a brevet second lieutenant. He joined the regiment at Jefferson Barracks, near St. Louis, in the latter part of September, 1843, and when the trouble with Mexico began, an op-

T\ THE MEXICAN WAR X^

portuiiity was given him to show how he would behave in time of battle.

But there is another incident in the life of this young officer which should be given before proceeding further. It is curious how things failed to work together to meet the hopes and aspirations of his early life. Hardly anything went exactly his way. He planned, but a power unseen disposed. When he arrived at Jefferson Barracks it was his firm purpose not to remain in the army. He could not warm up to the profession of arms. He saw nothing in it for one of his temperament and bent of mind. So he resolved to prepare himself for the chair of mathematics in some college, preferably a professorship in the military academy. He wrote a letter to Professor Church at West Point, asking to become his assistant when the next detail should be made. The answer was satisfactory, and the lieutenant was hopeful. He began to review his West Point course, but this was as far as he ever got towards the goal of his ambition. As "the stars in their courses fought against Sisera," so the course of events defeated all his cherished plans to escape an army life. The trouble with Mexico began before Professor Church saw an opportunity to give the lieutenant an assistant professorship, and his hope of ever being ordered to the academy vanished forever.