[April 27th will mark the 200th birthday of Ulysses S. Grant, one of the more influential but also more misunderstood 19th century Americans. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of contexts for our 18th president who was also so much more!]
To celebrate
Grant’s bicentennial, three interesting and important facts about his heritage
and birth:
1)
A Legacy of Service: Grant wasn’t quite one of
those folks able (and often all too proud) to trace his American origins back
to the Mayflower, but he wasn’t far
off either: his ancestors Matthew and Priscilla
Grant arrived at the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. But that’s not the
part of Grant’s multi-century American heritage (about which he wrote at
length in his memoir) that interests me; I’d highlight instead the
multi-generational story of civic and military service, which includes his
great-grandfather (Noah) serving in the French and Indian War (as did Grant’s
great-granduncle Solomon) and his grandfather (also Noah)
seeing extensive action during the American Revolution. Grant’s choice to attend
West Point at the age of 17 was of course his own (as well as his father’s,
who wrote to his Congressman
Thomas Hamer requesting that his son be nominated for the academy), but it
was also very much in the steps of his ancestors, and would profoundly shape
every subsequent stage of his life.
2)
An Abolitionist Dad: That father, Jesse
Root Grant, didn’t serve in that particular way (he was only 18 at the time
of the War of 1812, so wouldn’t have had a lot of opportunity in any case), but
offered Ulysses another powerful model for civic engagement nonetheless. Jesse was a committed
member of the Whig Party who would later serve as mayor of two Ohio towns close
to Ulysses’ birthplace of Point
Pleasant, Georgetown and Bethel. But he was also, and most impressively for
the era, an even more committed
abolitionist, one who broke from the Jacksonian Democrats over the issue of
slavery and contributed a number of editorials on the subject to local and
state papers. Moreover, Jesse
lived in John Brown’s house when the two were both young and remained close
to Brown, linking him even more potently to radical abolition. As I wrote
Monday, Grant’s presidency was as progressive on issues of race as any in
American history, and that seems clearly related to his father’s influence and
legacy.
3)
A S-ymbolic Name: My final detail here is both
more well-known and less significant than those other two, but I think it’s
telling nonetheless. Jesse and his wife Hannah named their first child Hiram
Ulysses, with Hiram a family name from Hannah’s Simpson clan and Ulysses drawn
from a hatful of prospective names. Ulysses would be known throughout his
childhood by his middle name, however, and when Congressman Hamer put forward
the Grant family’s application to West Point, he called the young man Ulysses—and
then, for whatever erroneous reason, listed his middle initial as “S.” The
initial thus literally referred to nothing, but as a result Grant’s West Point
peers began calling him Sam, as “U.S.” was a common abbreviation for “Uncle Sam”
(a character first developed around
the War of 1812). Partly this detail reminds us that the public persona of
presidents is always distinct from the private realities; but partly it’s one
further proof that U.S. Grant was descended from and destined for civic service
and critical patriotism.
Next
GrantStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
Other Grant histories or contexts you’d highlight?
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