Show ands mon mosess Aff ARM 0 7 7 4 W M W ac 5 K ile 4 tan ai A ck r by ELMO SCOTT WATSON NIO NB may day in the tha year 1839 there walked into the old frame hotel which had been built to provide accommodations for visitors to the united states military academy at west point N Y it freckled faced awk awkward vard youth of sov sev enteen years yeam ila wore a a suit stilt of putter butter colored I 1 jeans 9 woven on a nl back backwoods woodi hand loom on ills his feet 21 wore were a pair of coarse shoes rough and heavy soled also lsd evidently homemade in a halting baiting bashful manner he e made anade known his desire for a rind when the proprietor of the hotel pushed aero rero across ss the desk desi the ruled sheet of paper which ter served vad a is g a register the awkward ard youth scrawled on it the name 1117 U 11 grant georgetown ohio it Is doubtful it if the hotel proprietor gave him a second glance as he assigned him to a room D 32 for the arrival of such youngsters at his hotel preparatory to their entrance into the military academy was no novelty to him if anything lie he must have remarked in tits his own mind that this rustic lad ind w was as even more unpromising material from which aw officer and gentleman enato anito Tn ito be made th alian an youth who came to point certainly lie ho could not have realized that he to was a witness to the beginning of a military career caree of a man who was waa to be the victor in the greatest civil war the world had ever known and whom furfure fut ure generations were to hall as one of the groat great captains of all times for this shy yoto was waa the future gen ulysses S grant whose m omory memory americans honor on april 27 of ench 1 1 jimr the anniversary of his birth Ca cadee depeU tit 11 grant and gen ulysses S one become the other this in ills fits name Is one of the many in the an career of the man from the beginning ginning ft seemed there were to be many in tits hla name on april 27 1822 a son the first born of jesse grant and hannah simpson grant arrived in their home at point pleasant a small town on the ohio river 0 25 1 miles east of cincinnati Ill history story tins has recorded that for six weeks this first born was without a name because his parents could riot not agree upon one finally it was deci decided deff to let chance decide the question so BO tho the relatives and friends took slips of paper wrote their choices upon them and somebody drew one that name was ulysses and the person who had written it was grandmother simpson later nobody knows who tacked allram on in n front of ulysses evidently believing that this virile biblical name it 11 means most boblo ans more appropriate for the son of a pioneer was the greek ulysses it means a hater hate r but atit little hiram uysses Ulysses 1 mother preferred the second part of the name which she called lyss for short and as lyss lysa grant he be started out in life when lyss was a year old the family moved to georgetown ohio and there boy grew up cp into a bashful youth who was looked upon by the other hoys boys as domett something ing of a dullard and a weakling so perhaps perli aps it was inevitable that he be was to be known in georgetown as useless grant when lie reached the a age ge of seventeen his father finding that the boy had no desire to follow in tits his footsteps as a tanner decided to try to get him appointed to west point lie ie took the matter up with the congressman of his district thomas L harrier hamer red and hamer madle made tho the appointment at this point another name was tucked tacked on to the unfortunate grant heiner hamer knew his name was wag ulysses but could not remember what his other oilier name was remembering however that jesse grant had married hannah simpson he be wrote oat tho the name ulysses simpson sampson grant and vent gent it to the war department as aa his choice tor for a vacancy at west point when young grant got ready to start for west point the village carpenter made fl trunk for him and as a finishing touch put on it in brass tacks the initials 11 IL U 0 for hiram ulysses grant when grant saw this he bo immediately visualized the nickname which the cadets cabets would be certain to bestow upon him gwim useless was had bad enough but ling hug would be worse so lie he pulled out tile tacks and in order to avoid any possibility of a repetition of that embarrassment he transposed ills two given names so we find han registering ot at the hotel as U 11 II grant gant they will show you that page from the register it you go theio o today when on may alay 29 1839 lie he presented himself to tile the adjutant of the military academy and signed ills his name in full on the adjutants register as ulysses allram grant another difficulty arose the adjutant said that he was expecting a ulysses simpson grant that was the work of congressman hamar ainer and here was ulysses Ulys sea hiram grant applying f 1 it was such things asthik as pr produced the endless 3 yards ards of red tape wait which h slave churn characterized the work et the sf ngab 7 TU 06 J 1 b it ahi kr 1 C ct a ik am G binl ja d 0 asod ai d fraud 41 ow U bw tul sw 6 bv ab U aaka aun ft M hi 60 tew S faur W A f 0 V FA F A ui U i I 1 TU ahn k dmn tr un tc fam w M te un ib A y wall WW k II 11 nw U ax lujin tf te reg rox 6 U K fe P jadw faw IU jahn M k axt 4 Z bah r r C aji C cj i ua a W kan AV A V d te hk ua 7 7 aci US adaa ai AA y v pictures courtesy united states military academy A war depa department 4 went from its ita beginning and tife adjutant declared declare d that the papers would have ha ve to b go back to washington to have the name changed but the young doting cadet with the simple directness which was wag to characterise charac terise his future career cut through the red tape without the slightest hesitation ile he decided then and there to take the name ulysses Ulys sea simpson and be done with it grants grants ilia life its as et a cadet formal one of too tha most interesting parts of a new blo graphy of the alie great civil war leader it Is meet general grant by W E woodward published by horace liveright of new york and in the chapter headed beaded the unwilling soldier woodward tells how grant cameto came to west point as follows gray cray coated cadema cadets loiter about the bulletin board of the acad academy eniy guard slim follows fellows their movements graceful and fluid they tire are living in a time dimension that contains neither ago age nor youth their fresh contours con have not been eroded to sharpness by the tha disillusion of life enough they havo have ceased to be boys they have not yet become i r men en their existence Is happily suspended b between tween and achievement they laugh a lot for they are still to learn that ambition and achievement never meet in the throng la Is a vivacious youth named sherman slender and blue eyed tho the world Is to hear bear of him and after he has departed his image in bronze bronee will sit bit on a bronze horse and stare pensively through the changing years at tile the flood of new generations ln in new ew yorks fifth ditth avo ave nue but on that day hai was aar far away in the incredible future IlaA ha was vaa simply young sherman called bill full of good nature and abid likeable traits ire he had queer ideas and a whimsical mind ills fl fanger nger runs down the list of new cadets cabets on the bulletin board and stops at U S grant heres U S grant he calls calla out U S yes yen thata what it says what do you suppose the U S part of it stands for for united statial Sta teal somebody shouts thata what U S stands elands for were going to have a fellow be here re named after this great big united states N no it cornea comes another voice from the crowd there anybody named united states it cant be well its uncle sam another cadet insists zelk uncle acle sam grant thaila what ho he Is 19 the grandson of our good old uncle sam when grant arrived at the academy he found himself already named ile he was sam grant no matter how he ha protested and he did not protest much the name naine ulysses was never heard at west point and does not appear when grant to la mentioned in the reminiscences of his classmates they all knew him as sam despite woodwards deierl description tion of the scene of grants entrance upon tits his military career the 11 apparent logical explanation of how grant become became known its as U S instead of U n U the fact remains that two years after lie he had entered the academy lie he was signing hla his name naine U it H grant at least that la Is the signature on oil the bachof a drawing made by grant in 1841 as a part of hla his academic work still preserved at west point but the most interesting paradox of all Is the fact that this man who waa destined to become one of the greatest generals in american history had a profound distaste for military life as woodwards chapter heading the unwilling soldier implies in regard to this woodward observes to those who attended the shrine of mars mar R he seemed a very unmilitary figure not only on his first day but for many months thereafter Ws ills shoulders had a noticeable stoop the result of his bac bending labor at as a child and he walked with the high stepping clomp clomp of a farmer on newly plowed ground one of his fellow kadets recollected him its as unique appearing another said they all thought him countrified to ma many a of them he seemed an obvious misfit they kept him in the awkward squad for months and after a tame he succeeded in adjusting hi himself in crudely to hla his environment thought though ho he continued for four icara years to be something ota of a trial to the tactical of livera the act Us Is that he bo possessed posses sod no mo native talent for or soldiering and cef he lot like the military the mould 1 rc 0 of west went point had to tip struggle here bere with nat later erfal lal that was waa noC not adapted to ta its processes processes an inu the effort was somewhat like that of trying to make an automobile engineer out of a man who wants to be a physician near the close of his life after he had become west points most distinguished von fon he wrote that when he entered the aca academy denty he had tittle little hope of ever getting through the course and ho be had expected it if he did graduate to resign from froin the army and try to get a place as a professor of mathematics in soma small smal 1 college even mori more remarkable in vlen view of his lliter latter fame us BS a general Is grants own testimony of ids his dislike for military life during ills his first year as a cadet there was a bill in congress to abolish the academy because the opponents of of rain tary dc declared blared thant west point was a breeding ground for snobbishness thai it was inefficient ea as a school and that keeping it up was simply a waste of money grant tins has toli how he looked at the newspapers every day hoping that the bill had bad parsed it never passed he be adds and a 86 r c W if 61 4 C 07 2 S r 7 I se it 1 y i i 1 if ipuy i z 11 1 ww i i A A t isa aa 13 3 ae if f aw S affy v y f amp 7 MP AA or n taw tyl L S A 1 l vr blui ui 7 vi r n k afi ww jr 1 9 G i acl hi js 1 fofi fw fi 09 ita aay fc ri ra year rear later although time hung drearily with me 1 would have been sorry to have seen it succeed woodward quotes a letter which grant wrote to his cousin in which he declared dectar ed that lie he was very fond of west point and enjoyed thi the c life there a statement ement which the biographer doubts seriously lyt qt of this letter woodward says it Is wholly out of tune with Grai grants grabits its direct sledgehammer sledge hammer character and stands as a horrible example of what rhetoric may do for a simple hearted plowboy and adds poor homesick boyl writing bravely of the delights of west point to keep up tits courage and scanning the newspapers in hope that congress has put an end to the whole affair at the end of his first year asa alln cadet no one was waa surprised kihen hla fils name iame did not appear among those who were appointed as corporals but auf every I 1 one was wag surprised when the commandant made grant a sergeant at the beginning of his third year and the appointment was made the subject of considerable joking the other cadets cabets said that sam grant was made a sergeant because he could not keep step As a sergen sergeant nt lie he would march among the ole file oni and in that position lie he could not throw the column out of step with his stumbling that their joking was more or less justified was as shown by the fact that tha lie be did not make good us as a serg sergeant erint at least he was a passed over in the list of captains and lieutenants at the end of if the third year and during his last year he served serri ed as A private graduation from the academy meant simply another frustration in a life of many frustrations and an tip apparent parent failure for grant there was just one thing in which he had excelled all others while he was a cadet and that was in borse so when lie he wits was graduated he had hoped to get a commission in the cavalry but ho he was told that there was no vacancy in that arm of the service so BO the finest horseman at west point had to bi be content with a commission in the infantry ind and ils as a second lieutenant in the fourth infantry lie he went to alzo Jeffer jefferson sun barracks Bar rachs near st louis one other frustrated hope occurred at this time next neat to his horsemanship his ability in mathematics bad been about the only note of distinction in an am otherwise insignificant career at the military academy so hp applied for foe a position as teacher of mathematics at west point and was told that there was no opening at th tant C t time lime he was promised a it place when next a vacancy occurred blui bu it never did occur so far na am grant waa concerned perhaps it was wag just its as well velli for as woodward has hag said ile he would hns been a fal failure lure as a teacher tench cr t without att chann 4 personality which every successful su teacher must possess his work would have become before long an ineffective drudgery undistinguished and he be would have gone laboring on for beamand years ye amand isad then the world would have heard beard no more of him pate fate had something different la in store for him than u return to these gray waw walls as a teacher I 1 of figur figures es it was waa to load lead bim through nearly a score vf u years of adversity adae ralty and apparent fail failure ure before promising him any measure of sue success cep then hll fellow cadets cabets who lind joh jokingly ingi y tralis fated IM U W S grant as uncle stio sam grant were to tf sic sec nation thrilled thil lied by its trao lation into unconditional surrender gentt grant and a tew few years year s later west point was to welcome cadet U U grant back as general of the tinny army and dent of the untied united states the only graduate it lias has ever had bad to hold bold both of 0 those |