The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1920-09-22

A tanners boy, who was born in
two-room house on the banks Of the
Ohio, was named Hiram Ulysses
Grant. Although simple and modest
by nature, he preferred the classical
Ulysses to the homely 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 Ulysses around, making it
Ulysses H. On his arrival at the
military academy he found that his
name had been changed again by the
congressman who had appointed him
to the cadetship; this neighbor of the
family having guessed that Ulysses
middle name was Simpson, because
| his mother was Simpson. Since the
government never corrects a mistake,
| U. S. Grant he had to remain ever
after.
| Cadet William Tecumseh Sherman
was struck by those suggestive ini-
tials when he first read on the acad-
envy bulletin board the name of the
newcomer, and all the cadets straight
away hailed the shy, stumpy, freckled.
blue-eyed, brown-haired. big-headed
plebe to Uncle Sam, until familiarity
reduced it to Sam. And 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 Kentucky had no
idea that one day this still little fel
low from Ohio would send him a
letter under a flag of truce at Fort
Donelson, which would arouse admir-,
ing millions to rise up and call the
writer Unconditional Surrender Grant.
| Before becoming cadet the boy S
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 that it was bet.
ter training than West Point gave
him. 1t taught him to see the thing
through, to stick to a job until he
had finished it. And that was all
Grant ever knew.
When his father obtained for him
the unwished-for appointment to a
cadetship, Ulysses had never seen an
algebra, and he said that il the class
had been turned the other end fore
most, I should have been near the
/ head. That was hardly fair, for he
graduated from West Point twenty
first among eighty-nine in his class.
Grants first conquest, after entering
unon military career, was of the
heart of the seventen-year-old Julia
Dent, a sister of one of his classmates.
But he did not reveal his conquering
powers in the Mexican-war, which in
terrupted the courtship. Going in as
lieutenant, he came out as a lieu
tenant.
After the war, there was wedding
and a parting, the young husband ex-
lied to barrack life in far-off Oregon
and California. Idle, lonely, homesick
for wife and baby, and Indifferent "
books, the man, whose life and speech
were as clean as a woman's, foun
the only possible excitement in q
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 thirst, hard
drinking was the common diversion
Of army officers at the dreary from
tier posts. Their legs may have been
hollow, but Grants were not, and
those betrayed him so badly that his
! captain gave him the choice of re-