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U This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories. 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 are 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 to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to hillsdale.edu. And now, This is the story of our 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant. 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 Monty Montgomery on the story.
Ulysses S. Grant was born on April 27, 1822, in the small town of Point Pleasant, Ohio. to parents Jesse Root Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant. Here's Dr. John Marzalak of the Ulysses S.
Grant Presidential Library. With more. Um His mother and father were very, very important people in his life in different ways. His father is more or less an abolitionist, and he also wrote for a newspaper which leaned in an abolitionist direction.
So he's very outgoing. The mother, she is a very, very shy person. She 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, etc., etc., etc. Grant is much more like his mother than he is like his father.
So this whole idea of Grant being a quiet person, I think you can 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 in 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. And there's a very famous story of his experience with that where he really wanted this horse and his father thought it was just The horse just wasn't worth it. He shouldn't do that.
So Grant kept working on him, working on him, 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 the 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, 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 no more than I think it was $25. 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 has to live down for the rest of his life.
And while Grant was busy developing a love for horses, Jesse Root Grant was busy developing a roadmap. for his son's education. 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. But he was very much of a real supporter, 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, his most important child as he saw it, to have as much education as possible. Here's Eddie Rangel of the Ulysses S. Grant Museum with more on Jesse Root Grant's drive to have his son properly educated.
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 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. And so I think this drive that his father instilled in him, although they didn't have a great relationship, is 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. 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 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're going to do something or they will major in this, and their child sort of says, Why? He thought it was a terrible mistake. He'd be a terrible soldier.
He thought, but he just disliked the military all his life. Even when he was a famous general, he didn't particularly care about this. But the reason why his father really secures this appointment from him is because Jesse Root 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 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 that degree, he doesn't have to spend a lot of time in the military 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 for his future and for his benefit, so to speak. 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. And he did it because his father.
In fact, he said. Since my father said I should go, I guess I better go. I better change my mind and go. And you're listening to the story of Ulysses S. Grant.
Oh, my goodness. Without his dad's influence, the world could have been changed. Certainly, Ulysses S. Grant's world. When we come back more to this remarkable life, the early life, the life before the life most of us know about Ulysses S.
Grant. here on Our American Story. Lee Habib here, and I'm inviting you to help Our American Stories celebrate this country's 250th birthday coming soon. If you want to help inspire countless others to love America like we do and want to help us bring the inspiring and important stories told here about a good and beautiful country, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to ouramericanstories.com and click the donate button.
Any amount helps. Go to ouramericanstories.com and give. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt.
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That's public.com/slash podcast. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc., member Finra and SIPC. Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool.
Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com/slash disclosure. disclosures. Uh Life gets messy. Spills, stains, head accidents, and kid chaos.
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Grant's backstory. When we last left off, Grant's father, Jesse Root Grant, had secured him an appointment at West Point. an appointment Grant would rather not have taken, and here's doctor John Marzalac. With more. Yeah.
Grant is not a very popular figure at West Point. He doesn't make 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 everywhere they're going to say, yeah, that Grant boy, when he gets in the Army, he's going to be a terrific person, etc., etc. But it doesn't really work out.
But even at West Point, he's tried to stay. They 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. 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 the Mexican War and in the Civil War as well, are going to be important. 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. I think two of the most important things that happened to him is he met two people. One person was a fellow named Fred Dent, and Dent was his roommate.
Dent said, Look, you're going to be going to the St. Louis area. My father and my family has a place there, and you're welcome to come anytime. And so he does go there, and he meets his future wife, Julia. 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 the slave economy, whereas Grant's is not.
Now, Julia's father was not very thrilled with the idea of her, you know, being courted by Grant. And Grant's father, Jesse Rude Grant, was certainly not. Thrilled with the idea of his son courting the daughter of a slave owner. It's my understanding that the Grant family, no members of the Grant family, showed up to the wedding. 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, he on his horse and she on her horse along the plantation. And that, I think, helped bring them together. And interestingly enough, Julia. is one of the few people who thinks that that Grant is going to amount to anything. Most people say, nah, he's not going to be good.
In fact, the father, her father, didn't like Grant at all and thought he was going to be, he's an absolute loser. 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 in the eyes of Grant. Yeah. 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 supposed to do. And so you have a situation where Grant, in numerous occasions, is willing to do the quartermaster work, even though he doesn't like it, but he'll do it anyway.
But yet, when he gets a chance, he sneaks into battle. He really learns a lot from General Zachary Taylor. He sees the way he commands troops, the way he inspires, the way he leads his men from the front, not from the back. These moments are really important for Grant, even though Grant opposed the Mexican War. He saw it as a war of aggression towards a neighboring state.
He thought it was unjust. He understood that the political motivations behind it from President James K. Polk to essentially start a war with Mexico to gain this territory that Mexico would refuse to sell and continue to expand west. Fulfill manifest destiny. Grant finds a problem with this, but nevertheless, his Time in the Mexican War really becomes this really important moment for Grant.
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. Yeah. In fact, one of the children he doesn't even see until several years later. When he shows up back at his house in St.
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. 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. 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 Grant doesn't want to resign, but he has no choice. This is where these. Rumors really that'll follow him for the rest of his life originate of him being being a drunk.
He was not addicted to alcohol in the same sense that an alcoholic is, as opposed to perhaps more of an abuse of alcohol to alleviate some of that depression or angst that he has. 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. After resigning from the military, Grant would return home. and return home broke. There's a couple instances where he's such bad shape that he's got to sell firewood.
On the street corners of St. 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 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 thinks he can really do well, but he doesn't do well. and with no other options. Grant would be forced to ask his father.
For a job. 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 tanned 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 and he tours the Midwest and he sells. And the father's doing quite successfully at this particular time.
So, yeah, Grant convinces his father, 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.
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. 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 his craft this skill, Horsemanship, by the way, that mattered. If you were a soldier back in the 19th century, your ability to move and maneuver with a horse, 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.
Grant. 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.
Grant here. on our American stories. Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt.
From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index, and lets you backtest it against the SP 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com/slash podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.
That's public.com/slash podcast. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc., member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory Services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool.
Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures are available at Public. Public dot com slash disclosures. Sink into affordable luxury. Anabay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out.
With stain-resistant slip covers and a cloud-like frame duvet, everything goes right in the wash. Plus, the modular design lets you change the look of your space anytime. Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home. Shop up to 60% off site-wide, with sofas starting at just $699 and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washable.com.
Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Protect your pet with insurance from PetsBest. Plans start from less than a dollar a day. Visit PetsBest.com. Pet Insurance products offered and administered by PetsBest Insurance Services LLC are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independence American Insurance Company.
For terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com backslash policy. Products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company, or MS Transverse Insurance Company, and administered by PetsBest Insurance Services LLC. $1 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans, pets aged 0 to 10. This is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. Ever wonder how to make hosting look effortless?
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Available in the Reynolds Wrap aisle at Walmart and Target. And we return to our American stories and our look into the life. of Ulysses S. Grant. when we last left off.
Grant He was 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 Wrangell with more on that story. His father-in-law gifts 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 white slave-owning society of the time.
However, eventually, even at his lowest, he realizes that, well, one, this 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 benefited 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. I think it's best to say that he felt, he was sort of ambivalent. He didn't really care about institutional slavery, but he also didn't speak out openly against it, at least in his early years.
And so he's just kind of in between there, not really caring for it, not really loving it. And so that's an important moment while, you know, before the Civil War for Grant. Julia thinks that slavery is wonderful. In fact, she even holds on, more or less holds on to a slave throughout the Civil War, where Grant comes to see that slavery is an evil. And if you're going to understand why there is a Civil War, you have to understand that people are fighting to defend slavery.
He thought the Civil War was a terrible thing, that it shouldn't happen. There's no reason to split the country apart. Slavery was 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 when they had a big town meeting in Galena.
And he was chosen as the person to run the town meeting simply because. He was the only West Pointer that everybody in town knew. And so the result is that you have Grant running the meeting, and then. Once he runs the meeting and once he gets a company really set up in Galena, then it doesn't much matter because they say, well, that's nice. But nobody wants to give Grant what he thinks he deserves because he's a West Pointer, that he get a regiment.
Until finally, the governor of Illinois, Yates, Robert Yates, gives him the 21st 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 one that could step in there and get these guys in line because normally he just doesn't really play much of a role in this sort of thing. In fact, Yates, the job that Yates gives him is based on his quartermaster skill. But in this case, he becomes the leader of the 21st Illinois Regiment. Yeah.
And soon, Grant would get his first taste of battle in the American Civil War. Grant is leading this 21st Regiment, which he's straightened out pretty well, leading him in into battle, but he's scared to death. In fact, he says in his memoirs how his heart kept moving into his throat until he gets over this hill. And he's expecting to find the Confederates ready to clean his clock. And they don't.
They're gone. 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 that Grant understood. that The people he was fighting were just human beings.
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 Robert E. Lee, for example, who he had met, Lee wouldn't admit that he met him, but he did meet him during the Mexican-American War, that Lee was no Superman. He was just, remember the famous statement he says 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. Grant's demeanor was more like his mother as opposed to 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 battle. 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: you keep moving forward, you keep moving forward. If you're going this way and you're stopped, it doesn't matter.
Keep going, keep going, keep going. And that's what Lincoln comes to believe. And after winning countless victory after countless victory in the West. Lincoln would promote Grant. Too general.
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 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 he realizes the mistake he's made.
And so he very quickly puts the hotel staff to, I believe, Get a guest out of their room so 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 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. And at the end of the war, and after seeing so much bloodshed.
Grant would show humility and respect to his former enemies at Appomattox. allowing them to keep their guns and horses, provided they simply return home. He pretty much follows What Lincoln has said. Lincoln kept saying, let them off easy, 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 going to let you off easy, which Lincoln agrees with and other Americans agree with, because after all, these are all Americans. And great job to Monty Montgomery for putting that together. And a special thanks to the Ulysses S.
Grant Presidential Library in Starkville, Mississippi for 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 and in the end becoming a US President. Just remarkable.
And my goodness, his charge to always be moving forward and to take action.
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 you might fear. and perhaps his greatest insight as a commander. They feared us as much as we feared them.
The Life of U. S. Grant Here. on our American story. Imagine winning game day before the whistle blows.
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And we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and yeah, healthy snack. At CVS, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters.
So visit us at cvs.com or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location.
