Ulysses S. Grant enters American life as a contradiction that grows truer the closer one looks: shy but unflinching, ordinary in bearing yet relentless in execution, a man who disliked blood and became the general who ended the bloodiest American war, a president whose name is still dragged through the mud of scandals and still stands under the clean architecture of civil rights written into law and enforced by federal will. He begins as Hiram Ulysses in Ohio, the son of a tannery owner whose vats taught a boy the smell of hides cured with acid and labor. The family moves to Georgetown, and the boy learns horses as if he were learning a language—balance, patience, the quiet command that persuades a nervous animal to lower its head. When a local congressman obtains an appointment to West Point, a clerical error prints “Ulysses S.” on the papers; the letter S, borrowed from his mother’s maiden name, never stands for anything and ends up standing for everything. At the Academy he is neither scholar nor swashbuckler; he ranks high in horsemanship, low in demerit points, and middle in reputation. He is smallish, spare, averse to boast, and possessed of two talents that will not announce themselves until the world is ready to listen: the ability to see the essential position on a map and the ability to keep moving toward it when other men’s nerves begin to tremble.

Selenius Media