Unconditional Surrender Grant

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Once upon a time, Ulysses S. Grant, the Union's most masterful military leader and 18th President of these Unites States, was a nobody, an ordinary nobody at that. The kids around town called him "Useless" Grant, and even his old man wasn't too keen on him. His father ran, after all, a moderately successful tannery, but "useless" didn't take to the smell of leather, and thereby caught something more than the derision of his father, so much so that Pa Grant filled out an application for his son to go to West Point without even telling the poor kid, then broke the news that's where "useless" was bound.

Ulysses enrolled, but wasn't thrilled, wasn't looking to be anybody's hero. His classmates called him "Sam," classmates, by the way, who were almost all the generals who went to battle in the War between the States. Grant scholars like to say that, while at West Point, his estimation of their characters helped him to fight both with and against them during the war to come. 

What kind of student was he? Meh, middle of the class at best, mindless most of the time in class. But, he loved horses and was outstanding in horsemanship. 

Now Grant's sometimes tyrannical father was an hot-blooded abolitionist; Grant rode a different horse. He didn't advocate for slavery, but neither did he say much when a friend from West Point, a man named Dent, told him to visit his family's farm in Missouri when Grant's first post after graduation was nearby. The Dents owned slaves.

Many say Grant's story is a real American story, and it is. Imagine this--Sam Grant, son of a fervent abolitionist, grad of West Point, visits the Dent plantation--where there are slaves--and then wow! falls in love with the gorgeous daughter of this Missouri slaveholder. 

It happened; but when the two of them were engaged, Sam Grant was sent to the Mexican War as a quartermaster, a supply clerk, a job he despises. But one bad day on the battlefield, the captain calls for volunteers to runa dangerous mission which quartermaster Grant accomplishes with his incredible horsemanship. 

We're talking about none other than General Ulysses S. Grant, who did more to seal the fate of the Confederacy than any other Northern general. 

"War seems much less horrible to persons engaged in it," he told his betrothed, when he learned that he simply wasn't afraid of battle. When he returned from Mexico, he and Julia Dent were married. Be it known-- none from his abolitionist family attended.

Meanwhile, he was sent to the Pacific Northwest, where there was nothing to do--and it's out there, bored to tears and missing his wife and family that he starts drinking. How much? That's a question no one's ever answered definitively, but it's where he gets his glowing reputation as a lush. 

Sam Grant moves back to Missouri, then, dirt-poor, to his father's leather shop in Galena, Illinois, where he meets a tall, gaunt man named Lincoln, who, oddly enough, would, unlikely as it seems, become President. The Southern cannons fire on Fort Sumter, and America lurches fitfully into war with itself.

Lincoln needed an army. Illinois needed a regiment. The right people told Sam Grant to come back, to lead the military. Useless was pretty much a failure in Galena just then--one Christmas he had to sell his watch to buy gifts for his family. But when the right men asked, he pulled on his military jacket and became a new man.

At Padukah, Kentucky, he brought in hundreds of Yankees and commanded his first fight at a place called Belmont, Missouri. In February of 1862, the very first outright victory for the Northern armies occurred at Fort Donaldson, Tennessee, when Useless Grant secured a complete and total surrender. The useless son of a tanner he was, an undistinguished West Point grad. The U. S. Grant story, people say, is an American story.

News spread quickly. The Fort Donaldson takeover was the very first secure victory the Yankees had achieved. People were thrilled. It was big news in every last newspaper in the country. Lincoln hiked up Grant's rank to Major General. It was a blessing, a huge deal.

When some news correspondent sketched out a picture of this new guy, he couldn't help but render him as he often appeared, with the stub of stogie in the corner of his lips. All over the north, people stopped what they were doing to read about the big Northern victory accomplished by this bearded bear of a guy they'd never heard of.

But they loved it, loved him so much they sent the new Major General gifts of thanksgiving--I'm serious! 5000 cigars, which provided Unconditional Surrender Grant enough. General U. S. Grant went crazy, sometimes smoking 20 a day.

But he was a winner. Useless Grant the rock star. There'd be more battles, more and more bloody death. But this Grant guy, pulled out of an office in Galena, Illinois--the guy with the stogie--he made the Yankees winners.