Financial reverses and the death of his grandmother broke up the family; and his father, Jesse Grant, was given the kindest of homes by Judge Tod of Ohio. Jesse, being as independent as he was grateful, turned his energies into the first business at hand, which happened to be a tannery at Deerfield owned by the father of that wild enthusiast John Brown. A great reader, an able contributor to the Western press, and a most public-spirited citizen, Jesse Grant was a good father to his famous son, who was born on April 27, 1822, at Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio.
Young Grant hated the tannery, but delighted in everything connected with horses; so he looked after the teams. One day, after swapping horses many miles from home, he found himself driving a terrified bolter that he only just managed to stop on the edge of a big embankment. His grown-up companion, who had no stomach for any more, then changed into a safe freight wagon. But Ulysses, tying his bandanna over the runaway's eyes, stuck to the post of danger.
After passing through West Point without any special distinction, except that he came out first in horsemanship, Grant was disappointed at not receiving the cavalry commission which he would have greatly preferred to the infantry one he was given instead. Years later, when already a rising general, he vainly yearned for a cavalry brigade. Otherwise he had curiously little taste for military life; though at West Point he thought the two finest men in the world were Captain C.F. Smith, the splendidly smart Commandant, and, even more, that magnificently handsome giant, Winfield Scott, who came down to inspect the cadets. Some years after having served with credit all through the Mexican War (when, like Lee, he learnt so much about so many future friends and foes) he left the army, not to return till he and Sherman had seen Blair and Lyon take Camp Jackson. After wisely declining to reenter the service under the patronage of General John Pope, who was full of self-importance about his acquaintance with the Union leaders of Illinois, Grant wrote to the Adjutant-General at Washington offering to command a regiment. Like Sherman, he felt much more diffident about the rise from ex-captain of regulars to colonel commanding a battalion than some mere civilians felt about commanding brigades or directing the strategy of armies. He has himself recorded his horror of sole responsibility as he approached what might have been a little battlefield on which his own battalion would have been pitted against a Southern one commanded by a Colonel Harris. "My heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois; but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do. When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view . .
. the troops were gone. My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him: This was a view of the question I never forgot."Grant's latent powers developed rapidly. Starting with a good stock of military knowledge he soon added to it in every way he could. He had the insight of genius. Above all, he had an indomitable will both in carrying out practicable plans in spite of every obstacle and in ruthlessly dismissing every one who failed. Not tall, not handsome, in no way striking at first sight, he looked the leader born only by reason of his square jaw, keen eye, and determined expression. Lincoln's conclusive answer to a deputation asking for Grant's removal simply was, "he fights." And, when mounted on his splendid charger Cincinnati, Grant even looked what he was--"a first-class fighting man."Grant marched straight across the narrow neck of land between the forts, which were only twelve miles apart. Foote of course had to go round by the Ohio--fifteen times as far. His vanguard, the dauntless Carondelet, now commanded by Henry Walke, arrived on the twelfth and fired the first shots at the fort, which stood on a bluff more than a hundred feet high and mounted fifteen heavy guns in three tiers of fire. Grant's infantry was already in position round the Confederate entrenchments; and when his soldiers heard the naval guns they first gave three rousing cheers and then began firing hard, lest the sailors should get ahead of them again. Birge's sharpshooters, the snipers of those days, were particularly keen. They never drilled as a battalion, but simply assembled in bunches for orders, when Birge would ask:
"Canteens full? Biscuits for all day?" After which he would sing out: "All right, boys, hunt your holes"; and off they would go to stalk the enemy with their long-range rifles.
Early next morning Grant sent word to Walke that he was establishing the rest of his batteries and that he was ready to take advantage of any diversion which the Carondelet could make in his favor. Walke then fired hard for two hours under cover of a wooded point. The fort fired back equally hard; but with little effect except for one big solid shot which stove in a casemate, knocked down a dozen men, burst the steam heater, and bounded about the engine room "like a wild beast pursuing its prey."Forty minutes later the Carondelet was again in action, firing hard till dark. Late that night Foote arrived with the rest of the flotilla.
The fourteenth was another naval day. Foote's flotilla advanced gallantly, the four ironclads leading in line abreast, the two wooden gunboats half a mile astern. The ironclads closed in to less than a quarter-mile and hung on like bulldogs till the Confederates in the lowest battery were driven from their guns.
