On the Trail of Grant and Lee | Page 8

to duty was a principle with him and his serious purpose soon
won respect.
Rigid discipline was then, as it is to-day, strictly enforced at West Point,
and demerits were freely inflicted upon cadets for even the slightest
infraction of the rules. Indeed, the regulations were so severe that it was
almost impossible for a cadet to avoid making at least a few slips at
some time during his career. But Lee accomplished the impossible, for
not once throughout his entire four years did he incur even a single
demerit--a record that still remains practically unique in the history of
West Point. This and his good scholarship won him high rank; first, as
cadet officer of his class, and finally, as adjutant of the whole battalion,
the most coveted honor of the Academy, from which he graduated in
1829, standing second in a class of forty-six.
Men of the highest rating at West Point may choose whatever arm of
the service they prefer, and Lee, selecting the Engineer Corps, was
appointed a second lieutenant and assigned to fortification work at
Hampton Roads, in his twenty-second year. The work there was not
hard but it was dull. There was absolutely no opportunity to distinguish
oneself in any way, and time hung heavy on most of the officers' hands.
But Lee was in his native state and not far from his home, where he
spent most of his spare time until his mother died. Camp and garrison
life had very little charm for him, but he was socially inclined and,
renewing his acquaintance with his boyhood friends, he was soon in
demand at all the dances and country houses at which the young people
of the neighborhood assembled.
Among the many homes that welcomed him at this time was that of Mr.
George Washington Parke Custis (Washington's adopted grandson),
whose beautiful estate known as "Arlington" lay within a short distance
of Alexandria, where Lee had lived for many years. Here he had,
during his school days, met the daughter of the house and, their
boy-and-girl friendship culminating in an engagement shortly after his
return from West Point, he and Mary Custis were married in his
twenty-fifth year. Lee thus became related by marriage to Washington,
and another link was formed in the strange chain of circumstances
which unite their careers.
A more ideal marriage than that of these two young people cannot be
imagined. Simple in their tastes and of home-loving dispositions, they

would have been well content to settle down quietly to country life in
their beloved Virginia, surrounded by their family and friends. But the
duties of an army officer did not admit of this, and after a few years'
service as assistant to the chief engineer of the army in Washington,
Lee was ordered to take charge of the improvements of the Mississippi
River at St. Louis, where, in the face of violent opposition from the
inhabitants, he performed such valuable service that in 1839 he was
offered the position of instructor at West Point. This, however, he
declined, and in 1842 he was entrusted with the task of improving the
defenses of New York harbor and moved with his family to Fort
Hamilton, where he remained for several years. Meanwhile, he had
been successively promoted to a first lieutenancy and a captaincy, and
in his thirty-eighth year he was appointed one of the visitors to West
Point, whose duty it was to inspect the Academy and report at stated
intervals on its condition. This appointment, insignificant in itself, is
notable because it marks the point at which the trails of Grant and Lee
first approach each other, for at the time that Captain Lee was serving
as an official visitor, Ulysses Grant was attempting to secure an
assistant professorship at West Point.


Chapter IV

The Boyhood of Grant
Deerfield, Ohio, was not a place of any importance when Captain Noah
Grant of Bunker Hill fame arrived there from the East. Indeed, it was
not then much more than a spot on the map and it has ever won any
great renown. Yet in this tiny Ohio village there lived at one and the
same time Owen Brown, the father of John Brown, who virtually began
the Civil War, and Jesse Grant, the father of Ulysses Grant, who
practically brought it to a close.
It is certainly strange that these two men should, with all the world to
choose from, have chanced upon the same obscure little village, but it
is still stranger that one of them should have become the employer of

the other and that they should both have lived in the very same house.
Such, however, is the fact, for when Jesse Grant first began to earn his
living as a tanner, he worked for