If the circumstance which led to that result is not worth a tablet-then what is?

In the inside pocket of his faded blue uniform coat Captain Grant carried a package of time-worn letters. When his coat was buttoned they made a bulging rectangle on his chest. Letters from Julia, all of them. Their endearments clothed his loneliness with a soft warmth. At times he would take them out, smooth their creases on his knee, and reread them. Once he went about the post showing a letter-sheet with the inky print of a baby's hand on it. . . the hand of Ulysses, Jr., his second son, whom he had never seen.

On the verge of heartbreak with homesickness and hatred of the army, his inner life slowly became a gray emptiness, like a rugged landscape covered with fog. Glibness of speech, combined with a sharp introspective egotism, might have saved him, for men who can talk for hours on end about themselves are able to endure any amount of desolation. But he was too inarticulate, and too shy, to be relieved by any such mental catharsis, so he sat gloomily staring into space. It was only when liquor was in his veins that he became sociable and told stories of the Mexican War and showed the near-by settlers how to tame horses.

As Captain Grant grew melancholy and inattentive, Colonel Robert Buchanan's eyes lingered on him. Regimental commanders like officers who are jolly and red-faced, whose clothes are always neat, who laugh loudly and swear heartily. They give tone to a regiment and make things hum. But what can one do with an officer who wears a soiled uniform, speaks in monosyllables and neglects his work?

On one

Moody as he was, there were hilarious moments. occasion according to local tradition-he went dashing through the village, driving three horses tandem, with a string

Out of the Army

121

of three buggies, tied together, whirling and bouncing along after him. He must have stayed at Ryan's store a long time that day.

The colonel began to think that Grant was, perhaps, not fitted for a military career .. that the whole thing was a mistake. Anyway, he had his regiment to consider... nothing breaks down the morale of a military command like inefficient and drunken officers. The colonel spoke to the captain about his drinking habits, and Grant wrote out his resignation and placed it in the colonel's hands, with the understanding that it was not to be forwarded to the War Department if he stopped drinking.

His resolutions were excellent, but they did not last long. One day he was so intoxicated while paying off his men that the whole regiment noticed it, and he made himself a little ridiculous. Then and there the colonel washed his hands of the captain and vowed never to try to reform anybody else. The resignation was drawn out of its envelope, dated to take effect on July 31, 1854—and Grant found himself out of the army, out of money, out of a job, and a long way from home.

A quartermaster in San Francisco lent him enough money to pay his passage to New York, where he arrived with a few dollars in his pocket; and there he was stuck, for he did not have the railroad fare to get to his father's home in Ohio. In this seedy condition he went to see Captain Simon B. Buckner, a classmate, who was stationed in New York, on recruiting service. Captain Buckner advanced the money for his expenses while he waited for a remittance from his father.

(We shall hear of Captain Buckner again. He became General Buckner in the Confederate service, and commanded at Fort Donelson, which Grant captured in 1862, with fifteen thousand prisoners, including General Buckner.)

I think Grant felt a relief at getting out of the army, though he was crestfallen because of his summary dismissal-for his resignation amounted to nothing else. On leaving Fort Hum

boldt he said to a friend: "Whoever hears of me in ten years will hear of a well-to-do Missouri farmer."

"Whoever hears of me in ten years." In ten years he commanded half a million men, and through fire and smoke was battering the Southern Confederacy to its doom.

Among the five hundred thousand men was his former regimental commander, Colonel Buchanan, a model soldier who never got drunk. He stood far down in the list of brigadiergenerals.

§ 3

It was a sorry home-coming. Old Jesse Grant was mortified at his son's failure, and went around clenching his hands, and beating the air with gestures. He wrote to Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of War at that time, and begged him to take Ulysses back in the army. "I never wished him to leave the servis," Jesse wrote. "I think after spending so much time to qualify himself for the army and spending so many years in the servis, he will be poorly qualified for the pursuits of private life."

It was the sort of letter that one might write about a boy who had been dismissed from school. Old Jesse did not realize that his son had grown up. To this pleading letter the War Department replied that nothing could be done, as the resignation had already been accepted, and the episode was closed.

Colonel Dent let his son-in-law have eighty acres of land near St. Louis, and Grant's career as a Missouri farmer began. It was a rather discouraging start. He called his farm "Hardscrabble," in anticipation of the hard times he expected to have there-and it must be said that he was not deceived by his expectations. The land had no house on it, and Grant had no money to build a house, or to buy cattle, or even to live while he was tilling the soil. He applied to his father for aid, but Jesse's hard fist had shut tight.

For a year the Grants lived with Julia's family, while

A Failure in Life

123 Ulysses cleared the land and put in his first crop. To obtain spending money he would cut firewood, load it on a wagon and take it to St. Louis for sale. Years afterward, while he was President, there were many people in St. Louis who remembered him well. They said he sat perched on his wagon in a worn blue army coat. Stoop-shouldered, bearded, and streaked with country mud, he looked much older than he was.

In the summer of 1855 he built a log cabin on his farm, felling the trees and dressing the timber himself. When the time for raising the house arrived, the neighbors came and helped, and it was put up in a couple of days. Grant worked hard, plowing in the field and hoeing corn like any hired farmhand, but he was utterly lacking in the penny-gripping instinct that poor people must have to make a financial success of anything.

In the meantime Julia was supplying him with children-four in all. The first of these was Frederick, who was born in St. Louis in 1850, before his father left for California. Then came Ulysses, Jr. (called "Buck" as a nickname), who arrived in 1852, while Grant was on the Isthmus of Panama; Nellie, the only daughter, who was born in 1855; and Jesse Root, the youngest, born in 1858.

The farm was a failure. He was not able to make a living as a farmer, and his father had to lend him about two thousand dollars in numerous small sums during the four years he was engaged in trying to make the farm pay.

In the fall of 1858 he sold his live stock and farming utensils at auction and paid a few of his debts with the money. When he left "Hardscrabble" he was in debt, and poorer than he had been when he came out of the army. He was thirtysix years old, a confirmed failure in life, and with a growing family to look after. His hands were hard and his shoulders bent with toil. Defeat was written large all over him.

Then came the Boggs episode.

Henry Boggs was in business as a real estate agent. He

had known the Dents a long time, and had been present at Grant's wedding. Colonel Dent persuaded Boggs to take his son-in-law into the little firm as a partner. He knew so many people, especially army officers, said the persuasive Colonel Dent, that he ought to be able to find purchasers for houses. It seems that Boggs was not enthusiastic over the partnership, but he finally consented, and the firm of Boggs & / Grant began business on January 1, 1859.

There were many things that Grant could not do, and for which he was totally unfitted by nature. Near the top of the list one must put the real estate business. The urbanity, the polite wheedling, the shrewd sizing up of other people's pocketbooks, the capacity to gloss over obvious defects in the habitations of men none of these existed in Grant's arsenal of

ability.

He realized his own unfitness, but he had to have a job, so he went into the partnership and tried to do his best. He rented a house in a poor neighborhood for himself, at twentyfive dollars a month, and brought Julia and the children to the city.

His failure was pathetic, for he labored early and late, and hoped that diligence would take the place of business sense -which it never does. Among the many incidents of this period is one concerning a Mr. White. This gentleman wanted to buy a house, and Captain Grant tried to sell him one. The sale was almost made, when it fell through because some other real estate man got to Mr. White and sold him a different house. White met Grant on the street, and after the usual handshaking and polite discussion of health and politics, Mr. White said, "By the way, Captain, I think I shall not be able to take the house for the present, and I intended to see you about it."

One of White's friends, who was with him at the time, said that Grant's face quivered with disappointment, and he turned away silently like a stricken man.