Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-05-14
Flu Minutes A Day
With Our Presidents
A Failure At 80
BY JAMES MORGAN.


pie and modest by nature, he yet
preferred classical Ulysses to homeiy
Hiram, and SO he parted his name in
the middle. As he was starting for
West Point he became fearful that
the hazers would nickname him Hug.
and he turned III. Ulysses around.
1t Ulysses III. On his arrival at the
military academy ne found that his
name had been changed again by
the Congressman who appointed him
to the cadetship, this neighbor of the
family having guessed that Ulysses
middle name was simpson. because
his mother was a Simpson. Since
the Government never corrects a mis-
take. u. s. Gran he had TO remain
ever after.
Cadet William Tecumseh Sherman
was struck by those suggestive initials
when he first read on the Academy
bulletin board the name OF the new
tcomer. and all the cadets s~traightway
hailed the shy, stumpy, freckled face,
blue-eyed, brown-haired, big-headed
plebe as Uncle Sam, until familiarity
Produced Ii to Sam. ms Sam he was
to them always after. even when some
of them grew up to be Generals with
him or Generals on the other side
in the Civil War. Not being a prophet
| Cadet Simon Bolivar Buckner Of Ken
lucky had no idea that one day his
4 SNAAA ACAACW ALUM al NooA4
send him q letter under a flag of truce
at Fort Donelson, which would ous
admlring millions to rise up n call
, the writer Unconditional Surrender
lGrant.
Before becoming a cadet the boys
schooling had consisted mostly of hard
work hauling and saving
wood, blowing, harvesting, tending
horses and cows and driving stage.
Yet he insisted in after life hat 1t
was better training than West Point
gave him 1t taught him to see a
thing through, to stick to a job till
he had finished It. And hat was all
Grant yer knew.
When his father obtained for him
his unwished-for appointment to a
cadetship. Ulysses eve had seen an
algebra, and he said that IF the class
had been turne the other end fore
most / should have been near the
head" That was hardly fair, for he
graduated from West Point twenty
first among the eighty-nine in his
tclass.
Grants first conquest. after entering
upon a military career. was of the
heart of soventeen-year-old Julia Dent
a sister of one of his classmates. But
lhe did not reveal his conquering pow
ers in the Mexican War, which inter-
Irupted the courtship. Going in as q
lieutenant. he came out q lieutenant.
After the war there was a wedding
and then a parting, with the young
husband exiled to barrack life in far
off Oregon and California. Idle,
lonely. homesick for wife and baby,
and Indifferent to books, this man,
whose life and speech were as clean
as a woman's, found the only possible
excitement In a bottle.
In those days, when the best was
no better than the worst west OF the
Missouri, and where there was little
to do except to raise a thirst, hard
drinking was the common diversion
of army officers at the dreary frontier
| posts. Their legs may have been
hollow. but Grants were not, and
these betrayed him so badly that his
captain gave him the choice Of re-
signing or facing a court-martial.
Grant resigned-to Jefferson Davis,
Secretary of War-and sailed for New
York. Landing broke, he would have
had to sleep on a bench in Park Row
or on the Battery, Dc his classmate,
Simon Boliver Buckner, had not
opened his purse to this forlorn cap
tain out of a job.
On a little piece OF wild timber
land in Missouri. which Mrs. Grant
had received from her father as a
wedding gift, Grant built a log cabin
1T Is now proudly exhibited-and
he rave the place the well-deserved
name of Hard Scrabble. He hauled
into st. Louis and peddled around
town he wood he cut and the little
grain he could raise. But his false,
seductive friend, h bottle, still dog
ged hts heels. and, drifting into the
city. he turned first to a real estate
agency and next to a precarious little
Government job.
AS 1t would at least save express
charges on the money that his father
was RENTING to him. he went to
Galena. Ill, where the Grants were
prospecting in the hide business. Ar
irving there in an old, faded, blue
army o~yercoat, he became a clerk IN
der his younger brothers. The Union
was already breaking up; but he wrote
o a friend that he liked his new EN-
ployment and was sanguine of success
in the hide business.
|. When Lncoln's call for troops came
to Galena next spring. Grant still was
known to town only as the silent man
IN h old army overcoat. BY that
token of his military experience, he
was called to preside over the meet
ing to raise a company of volunteers,
and he went with it to Springfield.
Officers commissions were going
where the pull was strongest, and
lGrant did not know a politician at the
state tdplldi OF III me
only use the politicians in Springfield
had for him was to hire him at three
dollars a day>t do the paper work.
of the political majors and colonies.
When one of those colonies fell
down in handling an unruly regiment
other political aspirants shied at it
as a tough job and Grant got it. To
impress the registering youngsters who
had broken their colonel, two politi-
cal spellbinders were sent along to
introduce the new colonel, who had
not yet succeeded in borrowing the
money with which he finally pur-
chased his first uniform. While the
| orators RAJ the scales of bombast
he writhed two long hours in his
own oratorical inferiority, as he sat
there on the platform wondering what
In the world he could say. When
at last, with an eloquent flourish, he
was presented to the curious soldiers,
he took a step or two toward the
front. and then there rang in the
quiet but clear tones which won adj
miration OF the campus at West Point
Grants first command in the Civtl
War: Men. go to your quarters."