April 28, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Dr. John Marszalek and Eddie Rangel of the Grant Presidential Library share the story of how Ulysses S. Grant went from selling firewood on a street corner to leading the U.S. Army to victory in the Civil War.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between. And we love telling stories about
history as always. All of our stories about American history
have brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
where you can go to study and learn about all
the things that matter in life and all the things
that are beautiful in life. And if you can't get
(00:35):
to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free
and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu. And
now this is the story of our eighteenth President of
the United States, Ulysses S.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Grant.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
But this story isn't about his time as commander in chief,
but rather the events in his life up to that
point that shaped and molded him as a man. Here's
our own Monte Montgomery on the story.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Ulysses S. Grant was born on April twenty seventh, eighteen
twenty two, in the small town of Point Pleasant, Ohio,
to parents Jesse Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant. Here's doctor
John Marslac of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential library with more.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
His mother and father were very very important people in
his life in different ways. His father is more or
less of an abolitionist, and he also wrote for a
newspaper which leaned in the abolitionist direction, So he's very outgoing.
The mother, she is a very, very shy person. She
(01:43):
doesn't give Grant the kind of love or support that
you might expect for a mother to give. The father
was always a presence in his life and always told
him what to do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Grant is much more like his mother than he is
like his father. So this whole idea of Grant being
(02:06):
a quiet person, I think you could trace back to
the time when he's living at home. Grant is pretty
much not interested in anything but farming, and not interested
in doing much of anything else. He's certainly not one
of these people who wants to follow his father and
(02:27):
his father's footsteps, because one of the things his father
did was his father worked in a tannery or owned
a tannery actually, and Grant hated it. Grant loved horses.
He reacted very well to horses, and he knew how
to train them. He knew how to get them to do.
He could do things with horses that nobody else could do.
(02:49):
And there's a very famous story of his experience.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
With that where he really wanted.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
His horse and his father thought it was just the
horse just wasn't worth it.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
He shouldn't do that.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Grant kept working on him, working on and working on him.
So finally the father said, Okay, go in there, but
what I want you to do is make an offer
for that horse. If a neighbor who owns this horse
doesn't accept the offer, then raise it up a little
bit and raise it up again. And so what Grant
did actually he went to this neighbor and he said, well,
(03:23):
my father told me that I should come and talk
to you, and I should offer you this much, and
if you didn't take that, I should up it a
little bit. And if you didn't take that, I should
finally pay and pay no more than I think it
was twenty five dollars. And so you have a situation
where Grant actually gets what he wants, but he does
it in such a way that it's something that he
(03:44):
has to live down for the rest.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
Of his or the rest of his life.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And well, Grant was busy developing a love for horses.
Jesse Grant was busy developing a roadmap for his son's education.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
His father is a great believer in education, and so
Grant was sent off out of town to schools where
he learned, and he learned I think more about abolitionism
than he learned about anything else.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
But he was a very, very much of a real supporter.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Was the father of Grant and getting as much education
as he possibly could. He was obsessed with education. He
wanted his children, and particularly Grant, you his most important
child as he saw it, to have as much education
as possible.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Here's Eddie ring Gau of the Ulysses a Sque Grant
Museum with more on Jesse root Grant's drive to have
his son properly educated.
Speaker 6 (04:46):
I think one of those important moments was his father's
drive to push him to think, to read, to be educated,
so to speak. This is sort of unusual at the
time for Grant's upbringing. He's he was an average person.
He would have been expected to take over the family farm,
but his father wanted him to study, to continue to learn,
(05:07):
and so I think this drive that his father instilled
in him, Although they didn't have a great relationship. It's
something that Grant is going to carry through the rest
of his life as he develops at West Point. And
then after that he didn't want to go to West Point.
His father shows up one day and basically tells him,
I have secured an appointment for you to West Point.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
There was somebody in that town that didn't make it,
flunked out, basically, and so there was an opening and
Grant's father was willing to go for.
Speaker 6 (05:35):
And Grant is like, what, you know, it's sort of
that typical scenario that has happened over the centuries where
parents tell their child that they are going to do
something or they will major in this.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And their child sort of says why.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
He thought it was a terrible mistake. He'd be a
terrible soldier, he thought. And if he just disliked the
military all his life, even when he was a famous general,
he didn't particularly care about this.
Speaker 6 (06:01):
But the reason why his father really secures his appointment
from him is because Jesse Ruth Grant knows that West
Point will be free. He won't have to pay for
this education when he gets that appointment, and so you know,
that's that's reason number one. And then reason number two,
and perhaps most important is that this education that West
Point is going to provide for him will secure his
future for the rest of his life. Once Grant completes
(06:24):
that degree, he doesn't have to spend a lot of
time in the military and then and then he can
go and do whatever he wants with a world class education.
At the time, of course, and so he's going to
West Point sort of against his will, but this is
this is for his future and and you know, for
his benefit, so to speak.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
He only went because he liked traveling, and so he thought, well,
maybe this way I'll get to see some of the
country that I ordinarily won't see. He did it because
his father, In fact, he said, since my father said
I should go, I guess I better go.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
I better change him on their goal.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And you're listening to the story of Ulysses S. Grant,
and my goodness, without his dad's influence, the world could
have been changed, certainly Ulysses S. Grant's world. When we
come back more of this remarkable life, the early life,
the life before the life most of.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Us know about Ulysses S. Grant. Here on our American story.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
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And we continue with our American Stories, and we return
(08:12):
with our look into Ulysses S.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Grant's backstory.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
When we last left off, Grant's father, Jesse Root Grant,
that secured him an appointment at West Point, an appointment
Grant would rather not have taken.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And here's doctor John Marzilac with more.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Grant is not a very popular figure at West Point.
He doesn't make a lot of a lot of friends.
He is not somebody that people look up to as
one of the individuals who's going to really make a difference.
And every where they're going to say, yeah, that Grant
boy when he gets when he gets in the army,
he's gonna he's gonna be a terrific person, et cetera,
(08:50):
et cetera. But it doesn't it doesn't really work out.
But even at West Point, he's tired to stay never
read his lessons more than once because he just was
bored by it. He spent most of his time reading
novels more than anything else.
Speaker 6 (09:05):
One of the important moments I think for Grant, even
at a time where I think he's very unhappy, but
he begins to develop his love for horses a little
bit more into sort of a more useful skill. Grant
is actually a very good horseman. He breaks several records
that are going to stand for a long time at
West Point. This is a skill that later, especially in
(09:26):
the Mexican War and in the Civil War as well,
are going to be important.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Grant would graduate West Point in a middling position within
his class, twenty first out of some forty students, but
he would meet someone there who would change his life
and lead him to someone who would become very important
to him.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
I think two of the most important things that happened
to him as he met two people. One person was
a fellow named Fred Dent, and Dent his roommate dad said, look,
you're going to be going. You're going to be going
to the Saint Louis area. My father and my family
(10:09):
has a place there and you're welcome to come anytime.
And so he does go there and he meets his
future wife, Julia.
Speaker 6 (10:18):
Of course, Grant, like we said, comes from a very
modest abolitionist family from Ohio, and Julia is the daughter
of a relatively well to do plantation owner with a
pretty sizable number of enslaved persons working at the plantation,
and so her family is part of this slave economy,
(10:40):
whereas Grants is not. Now, Julia's father is not very
thrilled with the idea of her, you know, being courted
by Grant, and Grant's father, Jesse R. Grant, was certainly
not thrilled with the idea of his son courting the
daughter of a slave owner. Is my understanding that the
Grant family, no members of the grand family showed up
(11:03):
to the wedding.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
One thing that really did draw them together. The one
thing was Julia liked to horseback ride, and so they
would take rides together, you know, hey on his horse
and she had her horse along the plantation, and that
I think helped them bring them together and Interestingly enough,
Julia is one of the few people who thinks that
(11:27):
Grant is going to amount to anything. Most people say
he's not going to be a good effect the father. Her
father didn't like Grant at all and thought he was
going to be He's an absolute loser.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Grant would soon find himself in a more uncomfortable position
than simply dealing with an unimpressed father in law. He
would be shipped out to the front in the Mexican
American War, and Grant went despite his personal opinion on
the conflict and the fact he would be assigned to
a job which he didn't like. Quartermaster, a glorified paper pusher.
(12:01):
In the eyes of Grant.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
He's one of these people who believes that if you're
given an order, like with his father, if you're given
an order, you follow the order, you do what you're.
Speaker 5 (12:13):
Supposed to do.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
And so you have a situation where Grant, in numerous
occasions is willing to do the quartermaster work.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
Even though he doesn't like it, but he'll do it anyway.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
But yet, when he gets a chance he sneaks into battle.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
He really learns a lot from General Sachary Taylor. He
sees the way he commands streaps, the way he inspires,
the way he leads his men from the front and
not from the back. These moments are really important for Granted.
Even though Grant opposed the Mexican War, he saw it
as a war of aggression towards a neighboring state. He
(12:50):
thought it was unjust. He understood that the political motivations
behind it from President James K. Polk to esentially start
a war with Mexico to gain this terror that Mexico
would refuse to sell and continue to expand west to
fulfill manifest destiny. Grant finds a problem with this, but nevertheless,
his time in the Mexican War really becomes this really
(13:12):
important moment for Grant.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
And after the Mexican American War, Grant was sent all
across the expanded United States to remote forts in order
to protect settlers falling into a depression as a result
of being away from home and family for so long.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
In fact, one of the children he doesn't even see
until several years later when he shows up back at
his house in Saint Louis. The child doesn't even recognize
him and what Grant was doing. He was drinking during
that time, and the reason he was drinking was because
he missed his wife and his family so much. One
could almost argue that he's self medicating himself.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And this led to problems with his superiors, especially a
man by the name of Robert Buchanan, who would issue
him an ultimatum after finding Grant hung over on the job.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Buchanan says, you can't behave like that. We can't do that.
So you have a choice. You either straighten out or
you resign. And so what actually happens is is Grant
doesn't want to resign, but he has no choice.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
This is where.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
These rumors really that will follow him for the rest
of his life originate of him being a drunk. He
was not addicted to alcohol in the same sense that
an alcoholic is as supposed to, perhaps more of an
abuse of alcohol to alleviate some of that depression or
angst that he has.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
That episode just made it so much more difficult for
him and he's had to battle that for the rest
of his life and even to the present day.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
After resigning from the military, Grant would return home and
return home broke.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
There's a couple instances where he's such bad shape that
he's got to sell firewood on the street corners of
Saint Louis, And there's a very famous, famous episode where
Grant and Sherman, who don't know each other all that well,
meet and I think Sherman says, well, heck of a
thing for former west Pointers, isn't it Grant? And Grant
(15:22):
just said, yeah, I guess it is. And that was
about it. So he did that, and he also had
to sell a favorite watch so he could buy his family,
his kids something for Christmas, So you have some of that.
So there's just a number of instances where Grant tries
things and usually, come to think of it, usually it
has something to do with farming, and that's something he
(15:44):
thinks he can really do well. But he doesn't do well.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
And with no other options, Grant would be forced to
ask his father for a job.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
What happened was he went to his father, which was
an incredibly difficult thing for him to do, to go
to his father and say, give me a job in
your store where we sell these tan goods. So Grant
doesn't like that. He's not involved, he doesn't do anything
to do with tanning, but he's involved in the selling
(16:21):
and he tours the Midwest, and he sells, and the
father is doing quite successfully.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
At this particular time.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
So yeah, Grant convinces his father, nuke, I can't make
it on my own, give me a job in the store.
And he's got a brother, an older brother who's ill,
and so he helps him. And it's a very very
confused thing. But the result is that Grant does work
for the father, and the father never lets him forget that,
(16:50):
and so for the rest of his life, even when
he's president, the father is still trying to get stuff
from Grant for some of his friends.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
What a rich and complicated early history. Grant going to
a college he doesn't want to go to, doesn't like
the military. But while there develops this craft, this skill horsemanship,
by the way, that mattered if you were a soldier
back in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Your ability to move and maneuver with a horse.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
And my goodness, the drinking, well, we can understand it
away from his kid. His kid didn't even recognize him
when he comes back to see him and ultimately chooses
to resign, knowing he won't be able to give up drinking,
comes back home selling firewood on a street corner, and
then in the end having to beg his dad for
a job he never wanted. When we come back more
of this remarkable life story, the early life of Ulysses S.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Grant.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
These were real life people, folks who walked around before us,
with real life stories and real life heartbreak. And when
we come back more of this remarkable story of Ulysses S.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Grant.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Here on our American stories, and we returned to our
American stories and our look into the life of Ulysses
as Grant. When we last left off Grant, he was
(18:16):
at his lowest point. It was at this time that
Grant would be given a slave by the name of
William Jones. Here's Eddie Rangel with Moore on that story.
Speaker 6 (18:29):
His father in law gives him a or I guess
gives him a slave. I guess what I'm trying to say.
And Grant works alongside him, which is something that would
have been frowned upon by you know, white slave owning
society of the time. However, eventually, you know, even at
his lowest, he realizes that well one, this is, this
(18:51):
is not for him, and so he emancipates or he
frees William Jones, probably at one of his lowest times.
When he could really have been fitted from the monetary
value that an enslaved person could have brought him. I
think it's an important part in the story of Grant
because you really get to see how he evolves over time.
(19:12):
I think his best to say that he felt he
was sort of ambivalent. He didn't really care about institution
of slavery, but he also didn't speak out openly against it,
at least in his early in his early years, and
so he's just kind of in between there, not really
caring for it and not really loving it. And so
that that's an important moment. While you know, before the
Civil War, for.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Grant, Julia thinks that slavery is wonderful. In factually even
holds on more or less holds on to a slave
throughout the throughout the Civil War, where Graham comes to see.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
That slavery is evil.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
And if you're going to understand why there is a
civil war, you have to understand that people are fighting
to a defense slavery. He thought the Civil war was
a terrible thing that there was, that it shouldn't happen.
There's no reason to split the country apart. Slavery was
(20:10):
not not worth doing it. Nothing was worth doing it.
And the way he really got into the war more
or less he got into the war was well, they
had a big town meeting in Galina, and he was
chosen as the person to run the town meeting simply
because he was the only west Pointer that any everybody.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
In town knew.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
And so the result is is that that you have
you have Grant running the meeting, and then once he
runs the meeting, and once he gets a company really
set up in Galina, then it doesn't much matter because
they say, well, that's that's nice. But nobody wants to
give Grant what he thinks he deserves because he's a
(20:56):
west Pointer that he that he get a regiment, until
finally the governor of Illinois, Yates, Robert Yates, gives him
the twenty first regiment because nobody else can make these
guys toe the line, and somehow Grant can, which is
an amazing thing in itself, that Grant would be the
(21:17):
one that could step in there and get these guys
in line, because normally he just doesn't really doesn't really
play much of a role in this sort of thing.
In fact, Yeates the job that Yates gives them is
based on his quartermaster skill, but in this case he
becomes the leader of the twenty first Illinois Regiment.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
And soon Grant would get his first taste of battle
in the American Civil War.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
Grant is leading this twenty first Regiment, which he's straightened
out pretty well, leading him into battle, but he's scared
to death. In fact, he says his memoirs how his
heart kept moving into his throat and until he gets
over this hill and he's expecting to find the Confederates
(22:10):
ready to clean his clock, and they don't.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
They they're they're gone.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
And he comes to the conclusion, you know, these guys
are as afraid of me as I am of them.
And this is something he never forgets for the rest
of the Civil War. I think one of the big
things that you have to understand is is that Grant
understood that the people he was fighting were just human beings.
(22:39):
They were some of the people he had met before.
They were some people that they were going to meet
later on. But he came to understand that Roberty Lee,
for example, who he had met. He's the League wouldn't
admit that he met him, but he did meet him
during the during the Mexican American War that Lee was
no superman, he was just the famous statement he says,
(23:02):
where somebody is worried about, well, what's Grant, What's Lee
going to do? And Grant says, look, don't worry about Lee.
You worry about yourself. You do what you keep indicating
that he's going to do a triple somersault and land
behind our lines. It's just not going to happen. I
know this guy, he's just another human being. And the
other secondly that these are fellow Americans that you're fighting against.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
Grant's demeanor was more like his mother as it pushed
his father. He was a calm individual. He didn't really
show a lot of emotion. And so if you take
his Mexican War experience, learning from Taylor, learning from Scott,
his own demeanor, you really see a very calm, calculated
individual in battles.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
He's also going back to his earlier time when he's
willing to act. Whether or not he has the power
to do it, he's just going to do it. The
whole idea is keep moving forward. You keep moving forward.
If you're going this way and your stop doesn't matter,
keep going, keep going, keep going, And that's what Lincoln
(24:08):
comes to.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Billion and after winning countless victory, after countless victory in
the West, Lincoln would promote Grant to general.
Speaker 6 (24:21):
When Grant is promoted and he's recalled back to Washington,
you know, no one really knows him. He's sort of
quietly been fighting in the West, just whipping the rebels,
so to speak. But he comes back to Washington and
when he checks into the hotel with his son, they
basically put him up in an attic. You know, Grant, again,
his personality was not flashy. He didn't really like attention
(24:42):
or anything like that. He was never known to be,
you know, have his uniform super clean or anything. And
so he just goes along with it until the clerk
after a few minutes, realizes who he is because they
had read about him, and certainly they could see pictures
of him, but they weren't accurate to what Grant looked like.
He sees that US Grant has signed in, and then
(25:05):
he realizes the mistake he's made, and so he very
quickly puts the hotel staff to I believe, get a
guest out of the room so the General Grant can
have a room. And then certainly when he goes to
the White House to meet President Lincoln. You know, it's
full of people. And so here it is again shy
Grant walking in into this room full of high society
(25:28):
Washington people. I don't want to say he shrinks in
the moment, but he's certainly taken by the moment of
Lincoln sort of presenting him to all these Washington elite.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
And at the end of the war and after seeing
so much bloodshed, Grant would show humility and respect to
his former enemies at Appomatics, allowing them to keep their
guns and horses provided they simply return home.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
He pretty much follows what Lincoln has said. Lincoln kept saying,
let them off, let them off easy. So one of
the things that happens at Appomattox is they get together
and Grant is willing to give lee and give the
Confederates and treat them fairly. And what he does is,
We're not going to put it to you, Confederates. We're
(26:16):
going to let you off easy, which Lincoln agrees with
and other Americans agree with, because after all, these are
all Americans.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
And great job to Monty Montgomery for putting that together.
And a special thanks to the Ulysses s Grant Presidential
Library in Starkville, Mississippi, with their contributions to this piece.
And what an American story, What a turnaround from selling
wood on a street corner, begging his dad for a
job as a grown man, to only a couple of
years later leading the US Army in the Civil War
(26:54):
and in the end becoming a US president. Just remarkable.
And my goodness is charged to always be moving forward.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And to take action.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Well, this is why Lincoln finally put him in command,
because he was just willing to fight. And also what
he said about all your enemy or something that you
might hear, and perhaps his greatest insight as a commander.
They feared us as much as we feared them. The
life of us Grant here on our American story
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history
and everything in between. And we love telling stories about
history as always. All of our stories about American history
have brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
where you can go to study and learn about all
the things that matter in life and all the things
that are beautiful in life. And if you can't get
(00:35):
to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free
and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu. And
now this is the story of our eighteenth President of
the United States, Ulysses S.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Grant.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
But this story isn't about his time as commander in chief,
but rather the events in his life up to that
point that shaped and molded him as a man. Here's
our own Monte Montgomery on the story.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Ulysses S. Grant was born on April twenty seventh, eighteen
twenty two, in the small town of Point Pleasant, Ohio,
to parents Jesse Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant. Here's doctor
John Marslac of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential library with more.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
His mother and father were very very important people in
his life in different ways. His father is more or
less of an abolitionist, and he also wrote for a
newspaper which leaned in the abolitionist direction, So he's very outgoing.
The mother, she is a very, very shy person. She
(01:43):
doesn't give Grant the kind of love or support that
you might expect for a mother to give. The father
was always a presence in his life and always told
him what to do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Grant is much more like his mother than he is
like his father. So this whole idea of Grant being
(02:06):
a quiet person, I think you could trace back to
the time when he's living at home. Grant is pretty
much not interested in anything but farming, and not interested
in doing much of anything else. He's certainly not one
of these people who wants to follow his father and
(02:27):
his father's footsteps, because one of the things his father
did was his father worked in a tannery or owned
a tannery actually, and Grant hated it. Grant loved horses.
He reacted very well to horses, and he knew how
to train them. He knew how to get them to do.
He could do things with horses that nobody else could do.
(02:49):
And there's a very famous story of his experience.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
With that where he really wanted.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
His horse and his father thought it was just the
horse just wasn't worth it.
Speaker 5 (02:58):
He shouldn't do that.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Grant kept working on him, working on and working on him.
So finally the father said, Okay, go in there, but
what I want you to do is make an offer
for that horse. If a neighbor who owns this horse
doesn't accept the offer, then raise it up a little
bit and raise it up again. And so what Grant
did actually he went to this neighbor and he said, well,
(03:23):
my father told me that I should come and talk
to you, and I should offer you this much, and
if you didn't take that, I should up it a
little bit. And if you didn't take that, I should
finally pay and pay no more than I think it
was twenty five dollars. And so you have a situation
where Grant actually gets what he wants, but he does
it in such a way that it's something that he
(03:44):
has to live down for the rest.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
Of his or the rest of his life.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And well, Grant was busy developing a love for horses.
Jesse Grant was busy developing a roadmap for his son's education.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
His father is a great believer in education, and so
Grant was sent off out of town to schools where
he learned, and he learned I think more about abolitionism
than he learned about anything else.
Speaker 5 (04:12):
But he was a very, very much of a real supporter.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Was the father of Grant and getting as much education
as he possibly could. He was obsessed with education. He
wanted his children, and particularly Grant, you his most important
child as he saw it, to have as much education
as possible.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Here's Eddie ring Gau of the Ulysses a Sque Grant
Museum with more on Jesse root Grant's drive to have
his son properly educated.
Speaker 6 (04:46):
I think one of those important moments was his father's
drive to push him to think, to read, to be educated,
so to speak. This is sort of unusual at the
time for Grant's upbringing. He's he was an average person.
He would have been expected to take over the family farm,
but his father wanted him to study, to continue to learn,
(05:07):
and so I think this drive that his father instilled
in him, Although they didn't have a great relationship. It's
something that Grant is going to carry through the rest
of his life as he develops at West Point. And
then after that he didn't want to go to West Point.
His father shows up one day and basically tells him,
I have secured an appointment for you to West Point.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
There was somebody in that town that didn't make it,
flunked out, basically, and so there was an opening and
Grant's father was willing to go for.
Speaker 6 (05:35):
And Grant is like, what, you know, it's sort of
that typical scenario that has happened over the centuries where
parents tell their child that they are going to do
something or they will major in this.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And their child sort of says why.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
He thought it was a terrible mistake. He'd be a
terrible soldier, he thought. And if he just disliked the
military all his life, even when he was a famous general,
he didn't particularly care about this.
Speaker 6 (06:01):
But the reason why his father really secures his appointment
from him is because Jesse Ruth Grant knows that West
Point will be free. He won't have to pay for
this education when he gets that appointment, and so you know,
that's that's reason number one. And then reason number two,
and perhaps most important is that this education that West
Point is going to provide for him will secure his
future for the rest of his life. Once Grant completes
(06:24):
that degree, he doesn't have to spend a lot of
time in the military and then and then he can
go and do whatever he wants with a world class education.
At the time, of course, and so he's going to
West Point sort of against his will, but this is
this is for his future and and you know, for
his benefit, so to speak.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
He only went because he liked traveling, and so he thought, well,
maybe this way I'll get to see some of the
country that I ordinarily won't see. He did it because
his father, In fact, he said, since my father said
I should go, I guess I better go.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
I better change him on their goal.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And you're listening to the story of Ulysses S. Grant,
and my goodness, without his dad's influence, the world could
have been changed, certainly Ulysses S. Grant's world. When we
come back more of this remarkable life, the early life,
the life before the life most of.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Us know about Ulysses S. Grant. Here on our American story.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Folks, If you love the great American stories, we tell
and love America like we do. We're asking you to
become a part of the our American Stories family. If
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(07:51):
and go to the donate button and help us keep
the great American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com.
And we continue with our American Stories, and we return
(08:12):
with our look into Ulysses S.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Grant's backstory.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
When we last left off, Grant's father, Jesse Root Grant,
that secured him an appointment at West Point, an appointment
Grant would rather not have taken.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And here's doctor John Marzilac with more.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Grant is not a very popular figure at West Point.
He doesn't make a lot of a lot of friends.
He is not somebody that people look up to as
one of the individuals who's going to really make a difference.
And every where they're going to say, yeah, that Grant
boy when he gets when he gets in the army,
he's gonna he's gonna be a terrific person, et cetera,
(08:50):
et cetera. But it doesn't it doesn't really work out.
But even at West Point, he's tired to stay never
read his lessons more than once because he just was
bored by it. He spent most of his time reading
novels more than anything else.
Speaker 6 (09:05):
One of the important moments I think for Grant, even
at a time where I think he's very unhappy, but
he begins to develop his love for horses a little
bit more into sort of a more useful skill. Grant
is actually a very good horseman. He breaks several records
that are going to stand for a long time at
West Point. This is a skill that later, especially in
(09:26):
the Mexican War and in the Civil War as well,
are going to be important.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Grant would graduate West Point in a middling position within
his class, twenty first out of some forty students, but
he would meet someone there who would change his life
and lead him to someone who would become very important
to him.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
I think two of the most important things that happened
to him as he met two people. One person was
a fellow named Fred Dent, and Dent his roommate dad said, look,
you're going to be going. You're going to be going
to the Saint Louis area. My father and my family
(10:09):
has a place there and you're welcome to come anytime.
And so he does go there and he meets his
future wife, Julia.
Speaker 6 (10:18):
Of course, Grant, like we said, comes from a very
modest abolitionist family from Ohio, and Julia is the daughter
of a relatively well to do plantation owner with a
pretty sizable number of enslaved persons working at the plantation,
and so her family is part of this slave economy,
(10:40):
whereas Grants is not. Now, Julia's father is not very
thrilled with the idea of her, you know, being courted
by Grant, and Grant's father, Jesse R. Grant, was certainly
not thrilled with the idea of his son courting the
daughter of a slave owner. Is my understanding that the
Grant family, no members of the grand family showed up
(11:03):
to the wedding.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
One thing that really did draw them together. The one
thing was Julia liked to horseback ride, and so they
would take rides together, you know, hey on his horse
and she had her horse along the plantation, and that
I think helped them bring them together and Interestingly enough,
Julia is one of the few people who thinks that
(11:27):
Grant is going to amount to anything. Most people say
he's not going to be a good effect the father. Her
father didn't like Grant at all and thought he was
going to be He's an absolute loser.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Grant would soon find himself in a more uncomfortable position
than simply dealing with an unimpressed father in law. He
would be shipped out to the front in the Mexican
American War, and Grant went despite his personal opinion on
the conflict and the fact he would be assigned to
a job which he didn't like. Quartermaster, a glorified paper pusher.
(12:01):
In the eyes of Grant.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
He's one of these people who believes that if you're
given an order, like with his father, if you're given
an order, you follow the order, you do what you're.
Speaker 5 (12:13):
Supposed to do.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
And so you have a situation where Grant, in numerous
occasions is willing to do the quartermaster work.
Speaker 5 (12:23):
Even though he doesn't like it, but he'll do it anyway.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
But yet, when he gets a chance he sneaks into battle.
Speaker 6 (12:30):
He really learns a lot from General Sachary Taylor. He
sees the way he commands streaps, the way he inspires,
the way he leads his men from the front and
not from the back. These moments are really important for Granted.
Even though Grant opposed the Mexican War, he saw it
as a war of aggression towards a neighboring state. He
(12:50):
thought it was unjust. He understood that the political motivations
behind it from President James K. Polk to esentially start
a war with Mexico to gain this terror that Mexico
would refuse to sell and continue to expand west to
fulfill manifest destiny. Grant finds a problem with this, but nevertheless,
his time in the Mexican War really becomes this really
(13:12):
important moment for Grant.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
And after the Mexican American War, Grant was sent all
across the expanded United States to remote forts in order
to protect settlers falling into a depression as a result
of being away from home and family for so long.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
In fact, one of the children he doesn't even see
until several years later when he shows up back at
his house in Saint Louis. The child doesn't even recognize
him and what Grant was doing. He was drinking during
that time, and the reason he was drinking was because
he missed his wife and his family so much. One
could almost argue that he's self medicating himself.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And this led to problems with his superiors, especially a
man by the name of Robert Buchanan, who would issue
him an ultimatum after finding Grant hung over on the job.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Buchanan says, you can't behave like that. We can't do that.
So you have a choice. You either straighten out or
you resign. And so what actually happens is is Grant
doesn't want to resign, but he has no choice.
Speaker 5 (14:19):
This is where.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
These rumors really that will follow him for the rest
of his life originate of him being a drunk. He
was not addicted to alcohol in the same sense that
an alcoholic is as supposed to, perhaps more of an
abuse of alcohol to alleviate some of that depression or
angst that he has.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
That episode just made it so much more difficult for
him and he's had to battle that for the rest
of his life and even to the present day.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
After resigning from the military, Grant would return home and
return home broke.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
There's a couple instances where he's such bad shape that
he's got to sell firewood on the street corners of
Saint Louis, And there's a very famous, famous episode where
Grant and Sherman, who don't know each other all that well,
meet and I think Sherman says, well, heck of a
thing for former west Pointers, isn't it Grant? And Grant
(15:22):
just said, yeah, I guess it is. And that was
about it. So he did that, and he also had
to sell a favorite watch so he could buy his family,
his kids something for Christmas, So you have some of that.
So there's just a number of instances where Grant tries
things and usually, come to think of it, usually it
has something to do with farming, and that's something he
(15:44):
thinks he can really do well. But he doesn't do well.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
And with no other options, Grant would be forced to
ask his father for a job.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
What happened was he went to his father, which was
an incredibly difficult thing for him to do, to go
to his father and say, give me a job in
your store where we sell these tan goods. So Grant
doesn't like that. He's not involved, he doesn't do anything
to do with tanning, but he's involved in the selling
(16:21):
and he tours the Midwest, and he sells, and the
father is doing quite successfully.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
At this particular time.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
So yeah, Grant convinces his father, nuke, I can't make
it on my own, give me a job in the store.
And he's got a brother, an older brother who's ill,
and so he helps him. And it's a very very
confused thing. But the result is that Grant does work
for the father, and the father never lets him forget that,
(16:50):
and so for the rest of his life, even when
he's president, the father is still trying to get stuff
from Grant for some of his friends.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
What a rich and complicated early history. Grant going to
a college he doesn't want to go to, doesn't like
the military. But while there develops this craft, this skill horsemanship,
by the way, that mattered if you were a soldier
back in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Your ability to move and maneuver with a horse.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
And my goodness, the drinking, well, we can understand it
away from his kid. His kid didn't even recognize him
when he comes back to see him and ultimately chooses
to resign, knowing he won't be able to give up drinking,
comes back home selling firewood on a street corner, and
then in the end having to beg his dad for
a job he never wanted. When we come back more
of this remarkable life story, the early life of Ulysses S.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Grant.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
These were real life people, folks who walked around before us,
with real life stories and real life heartbreak. And when
we come back more of this remarkable story of Ulysses S.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Grant.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Here on our American stories, and we returned to our
American stories and our look into the life of Ulysses
as Grant. When we last left off Grant, he was
(18:16):
at his lowest point. It was at this time that
Grant would be given a slave by the name of
William Jones. Here's Eddie Rangel with Moore on that story.
Speaker 6 (18:29):
His father in law gives him a or I guess
gives him a slave. I guess what I'm trying to say.
And Grant works alongside him, which is something that would
have been frowned upon by you know, white slave owning
society of the time. However, eventually, you know, even at
his lowest, he realizes that well one, this is, this
(18:51):
is not for him, and so he emancipates or he
frees William Jones, probably at one of his lowest times.
When he could really have been fitted from the monetary
value that an enslaved person could have brought him. I
think it's an important part in the story of Grant
because you really get to see how he evolves over time.
(19:12):
I think his best to say that he felt he
was sort of ambivalent. He didn't really care about institution
of slavery, but he also didn't speak out openly against it,
at least in his early in his early years, and
so he's just kind of in between there, not really
caring for it and not really loving it. And so
that that's an important moment. While you know, before the
Civil War, for.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Grant, Julia thinks that slavery is wonderful. In factually even
holds on more or less holds on to a slave
throughout the throughout the Civil War, where Graham comes to see.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
That slavery is evil.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
And if you're going to understand why there is a
civil war, you have to understand that people are fighting
to a defense slavery. He thought the Civil war was
a terrible thing that there was, that it shouldn't happen.
There's no reason to split the country apart. Slavery was
(20:10):
not not worth doing it. Nothing was worth doing it.
And the way he really got into the war more
or less he got into the war was well, they
had a big town meeting in Galina, and he was
chosen as the person to run the town meeting simply
because he was the only west Pointer that any everybody.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
In town knew.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
And so the result is is that that you have
you have Grant running the meeting, and then once he
runs the meeting, and once he gets a company really
set up in Galina, then it doesn't much matter because
they say, well, that's that's nice. But nobody wants to
give Grant what he thinks he deserves because he's a
(20:56):
west Pointer that he that he get a regiment, until
finally the governor of Illinois, Yates, Robert Yates, gives him
the twenty first regiment because nobody else can make these
guys toe the line, and somehow Grant can, which is
an amazing thing in itself, that Grant would be the
(21:17):
one that could step in there and get these guys
in line, because normally he just doesn't really doesn't really
play much of a role in this sort of thing.
In fact, Yeates the job that Yates gives them is
based on his quartermaster skill, but in this case he
becomes the leader of the twenty first Illinois Regiment.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
And soon Grant would get his first taste of battle
in the American Civil War.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
Grant is leading this twenty first Regiment, which he's straightened
out pretty well, leading him into battle, but he's scared
to death. In fact, he says his memoirs how his
heart kept moving into his throat and until he gets
over this hill and he's expecting to find the Confederates
(22:10):
ready to clean his clock, and they don't.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
They they're they're gone.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
And he comes to the conclusion, you know, these guys
are as afraid of me as I am of them.
And this is something he never forgets for the rest
of the Civil War. I think one of the big
things that you have to understand is is that Grant
understood that the people he was fighting were just human beings.
(22:39):
They were some of the people he had met before.
They were some people that they were going to meet
later on. But he came to understand that Roberty Lee,
for example, who he had met. He's the League wouldn't
admit that he met him, but he did meet him
during the during the Mexican American War that Lee was
no superman, he was just the famous statement he says,
(23:02):
where somebody is worried about, well, what's Grant, What's Lee
going to do? And Grant says, look, don't worry about Lee.
You worry about yourself. You do what you keep indicating
that he's going to do a triple somersault and land
behind our lines. It's just not going to happen. I
know this guy, he's just another human being. And the
other secondly that these are fellow Americans that you're fighting against.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
Grant's demeanor was more like his mother as it pushed
his father. He was a calm individual. He didn't really
show a lot of emotion. And so if you take
his Mexican War experience, learning from Taylor, learning from Scott,
his own demeanor, you really see a very calm, calculated
individual in battles.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
He's also going back to his earlier time when he's
willing to act. Whether or not he has the power
to do it, he's just going to do it. The
whole idea is keep moving forward. You keep moving forward.
If you're going this way and your stop doesn't matter,
keep going, keep going, keep going, And that's what Lincoln
(24:08):
comes to.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Billion and after winning countless victory, after countless victory in
the West, Lincoln would promote Grant to general.
Speaker 6 (24:21):
When Grant is promoted and he's recalled back to Washington,
you know, no one really knows him. He's sort of
quietly been fighting in the West, just whipping the rebels,
so to speak. But he comes back to Washington and
when he checks into the hotel with his son, they
basically put him up in an attic. You know, Grant, again,
his personality was not flashy. He didn't really like attention
(24:42):
or anything like that. He was never known to be,
you know, have his uniform super clean or anything. And
so he just goes along with it until the clerk
after a few minutes, realizes who he is because they
had read about him, and certainly they could see pictures
of him, but they weren't accurate to what Grant looked like.
He sees that US Grant has signed in, and then
(25:05):
he realizes the mistake he's made, and so he very
quickly puts the hotel staff to I believe, get a
guest out of the room so the General Grant can
have a room. And then certainly when he goes to
the White House to meet President Lincoln. You know, it's
full of people. And so here it is again shy
Grant walking in into this room full of high society
(25:28):
Washington people. I don't want to say he shrinks in
the moment, but he's certainly taken by the moment of
Lincoln sort of presenting him to all these Washington elite.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
And at the end of the war and after seeing
so much bloodshed, Grant would show humility and respect to
his former enemies at Appomatics, allowing them to keep their
guns and horses provided they simply return home.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
He pretty much follows what Lincoln has said. Lincoln kept saying,
let them off, let them off easy. So one of
the things that happens at Appomattox is they get together
and Grant is willing to give lee and give the
Confederates and treat them fairly. And what he does is,
We're not going to put it to you, Confederates. We're
(26:16):
going to let you off easy, which Lincoln agrees with
and other Americans agree with, because after all, these are
all Americans.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
And great job to Monty Montgomery for putting that together.
And a special thanks to the Ulysses s Grant Presidential
Library in Starkville, Mississippi, with their contributions to this piece.
And what an American story, What a turnaround from selling
wood on a street corner, begging his dad for a
job as a grown man, to only a couple of
years later leading the US Army in the Civil War
(26:54):
and in the end becoming a US president. Just remarkable.
And my goodness is charged to always be moving forward.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
And to take action.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Well, this is why Lincoln finally put him in command,
because he was just willing to fight. And also what
he said about all your enemy or something that you
might hear, and perhaps his greatest insight as a commander.
They feared us as much as we feared them. The
life of us Grant here on our American story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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