spiration was usually political. Jesse Grant saw difficulty ahead of him in the matter, for the Congressman from the district-a man named Thomas L. Hamer-was a Democrat, while Jesse Grant was a Whig of violent mind who had opposed Hamer's election with invective as well as argument.

After some indecision on the part of Jesse Grant, it was obvious that there was nothing to do but to write to Congressman Hamer and beg for the appointment. This was done by the father of Ulysses in a stark naked letter, entirely devoid of cordiality or the flowery graces. No matter. Mr. Hamer was the kind of man who has a Gift for Doing the Right Thing. Sitting at Washington in the seats of the mighty and thinking of his Ohio district and the next election, he saw a politician's chance to stop the mouth of at least one rabid opponent. So his reply was gracious enough. He said that there was a vacancy from his district and that he would be delighted to give the appointment to Ulysses.

Then he picked up another sheet of paper and wrote to the War Department that his choice for the vacancy at West Point was Ulysses . . . and there his pen paused. Ulysses must have a middle name, Hamer thought, and he wondered what it was. He had always heard him called Ulysses or "Useless." But this Congressman knew his constituency, and he remembered that Jesse Grant had married Hannah Simpson. The boy's middle name must be Simpson, so the hovering pen descended and wrote Ulysses Simpson Grant.

In this manner did the insignificant Mr. Hamer contribute his mite to the history of the world.

Now the beam-room with its bloody hides glides away, hopelessly foiled and grimacing in the foggy distance, but all through Grant's life he held in his soul the residue of its receding threat. He never could eat meat that had the least drop of blood exuding from it. Steaks had to be burned to a hard crisp before he would touch them. He was the lifelong despair of cooks.

Ulysses was sent again to school to prepare for West Point -this time to another "Institute" at Ripley, which is only ten miles from Georgetown. His career there was as blank as it was at Maysville. He says in the Memoirs: "I was not studious in habit, and probably did not make progress enough to compensate for the outlay for board and tuition."

He was, in truth, a vegetative youth, growing up like a stolid oak. Stolid on the outside; but on the inside, and buried deep, he was all sensitiveness and feeling. At school he was devoid of banjos, songs, and gaudy clothes; and the muscular arm of Grant was not among those that stole around the waists of pretty girls.

His fear of ridicule came out in curious ways. On the eve of his departure for West Point a handy man in the village made a trunk for him. As a finishing flourish to the job the trunkmaker had put on the initials H. U. G. (for Hiram Ulysses Grant) in brass tacks. A nice touch, and the man pointed to it with pride. But H. U. G. spells "Hug," and Ulysses, in fancy, heard the cadets shouting it to one another. He was through with nicknames-to drop "Useless" and become "Hug" would never do-so the tacks had to be pulled out.

Ulysses left with mingled joy and reluctance. He had no desire to become a soldier, but he was cheered by the thought that on his way to West Point he would pass through two large cities, and would have a chance to see them. Writing of this in his day of reminiscence, he said: "Going to West Point would give me the opportunity of visiting the two great cities of the continent, Philadelphia and New York. This was enough. When these places were visited I would have been glad to have had a steamboat or railroad collision, or any other accident happen, by which I might have received a temporary injury sufficient to make me ineligible, for a time, to enter the Academy. Nothing of the kind occurred, and I had to face the music."

A relative of the Simpsons, who lived in Philadelphia, kept him at her house for a few days, which he devoted to sightseeing. He was at that time, according to her, awkward and speech-bound. He wore a suit of butternut-colored jeans, woven on a backwoods hand loom. His shoes, she says, were rough and heavy-soled. His face was freckled; and though he had a look of strength, he seemed under-sized for his age. (He was only five feet two inches tall when he entered the Military Academy.)

It was a splendid adventure . . . this strolling about the big towns, all alone with money in his pocket. Some of the city people must have stared at him as hard as he stared at them—at his healthy, freckled face and coarse shoes and country clothes.

Though he was having a good time, he was not care-free. Beyond the buildings and the ships, beyond the glimpse of the ocean and Independence Hall and the grave of Franklin, and Broadway and Trinity Church, lay the shadow of West Point. There he would have to meet many strangers the other cadets... the gray-clad aristocrats . . . the bright boys from everywhere . . . the learned professors. They all stood before his vision in a disquieting picture.

The time-yellowed Adjutant's register at West Point shows that he registered thereon May 29, 1839, and this is how he signed his name:

Wygues Team Grant

By transposing his two names he had got rid of the menace of being called "Hug," but he did not know at that time, apparently, that his appointment to the Academy was in the name of Ulysses Simpson Grant.

There was, indeed, some little difficulty about the name. The Adjutant said that he expected a Ulysses Simpson-and

Changes Name

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here was a Ulysses Hiram. Young Grant explained it satisfactorily enough, but the Adjutant, tied up in red tape, declared that the papers would have to go back to Washington to have the name changed to Ulysses Hiram.

However, the papers did not go back. Grant knew a better method. He would, then and there, assume the name of Ulysses Simpson, and be done with it.

His gesture of straight-line directness in this inconsequential incident is characteristic of his entire military career. His mind moved always in the simplest geometrical patterns. All large problems became small ones in the distillation of his mental processes-small in the sense that he instinctively divested them of extraneous and unnecessary complications. His ideas, such as they were, fell on their objective as a hammer falls on an anvil.

Badeau, who served on Grant's staff for years and wrote the history of his campaigns, said: "All his military greatness came of the plainest possible qualities, developed to an astounding degree."

When such men are correct in their conclusions—that is, when they have the weight of public opinion and resources behind them they become enormously dynamic and successful. But when they are wrong their ideas strike like a hammer beating water, and then their failures are egregious beyond words.

T

HE seventeen-year-old Ulysses came up the Hudson to West Point, thinking of what wonderful things there are in the world. In wistful remembrance he thought, too, of the rough fields and the sinewy horses of the Ohio country that he had left behind him. There was more than a tinge of melancholy in his reflections, for the good Lord had not granted him the merciful salvation of a train wreck, and he felt that his prayers had not been answered. As the stone buildings of the West Point Military Academy showed their gray heads over the green summer of the river hills, he saw the gathering of his doom. "I had rather a dread of reaching my destination," he wrote.

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Gray-coated cadets loiter about the bulletin board at the door of the Academy guardroom. Slim young fellows, their movements graceful and fluid, they are living in a time-dimension that contains neither age nor youth. Their fresh contours have not been eroded to sharpness by the disillusion of life. Though they have ceased to be boys they have not yet become men. Their existence is happily suspended between ambition and achievement. They laugh a lot, for they are still to learn that ambition and achievement never meet.

In the throng is a vivacious youth named Sherman, slender, red-haired and blue-eyed. The world is to hear of him; and,