The Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant | Page 7

Ulysses S. Grant
his own education.

CHAPTER II.
WEST POINT--GRADUATION.
In the winter of 1838-9 I was attending school at Ripley, only ten miles
distant from Georgetown, but spent the Christmas holidays at home.
During this vacation my father received a letter from the Honorable
Thomas Morris, then United States Senator from Ohio. When he read it
he said to me, "Ulysses, I believe you are going to receive the
appointment." "What appointment?" I inquired. "To West Point; I have

applied for it." "But I won't go," I said. He said he thought I would,
AND I THOUGHT SO TOO, IF HE DID. I really had no objection to
going to West Point, except that I had a very exalted idea of the
acquirements necessary to get through. I did not believe I possessed
them, and could not bear the idea of failing. There had been four boys
from our village, or its immediate neighborhood, who had been
graduated from West Point, and never a failure of any one appointed
from Georgetown, except in the case of the one whose place I was to
take. He was the son of Dr. Bailey, our nearest and most intimate
neighbor. Young Bailey had been appointed in 1837. Finding before
the January examination following, that he could not pass, he resigned
and went to a private school, and remained there until the following
year, when he was reappointed. Before the next examination he was
dismissed. Dr. Bailey was a proud and sensitive man, and felt the
failure of his son so keenly that he forbade his return home. There were
no telegraphs in those days to disseminate news rapidly, no railroads
west of the Alleghanies, and but few east; and above all, there were no
reporters prying into other people's private affairs. Consequently it did
not become generally known that there was a vacancy at West Point
from our district until I was appointed. I presume Mrs. Bailey confided
to my mother the fact that Bartlett had been dismissed, and that the
doctor had forbidden his son's return home.
The Honorable Thomas L. Hamer, one of the ablest men Ohio ever
produced, was our member of Congress at the time, and had the right of
nomination. He and my father had been members of the same debating
society (where they were generally pitted on opposite sides), and
intimate personal friends from their early manhood up to a few years
before. In politics they differed. Hamer was a life-long Democrat, while
my father was a Whig. They had a warm discussion, which finally
became angry--over some act of President Jackson, the removal of the
deposit of public moneys, I think--after which they never spoke until
after my appointment. I know both of them felt badly over this
estrangement, and would have been glad at any time to come to a
reconciliation; but neither would make the advance. Under these
circumstances my father would not write to Hamer for the appointment,
but he wrote to Thomas Morris, United States Senator from Ohio,

informing him that there was a vacancy at West Point from our district,
and that he would be glad if I could be appointed to fill it. This letter, I
presume, was turned over to Mr. Hamer, and, as there was no other
applicant, he cheerfully appointed me. This healed the breach between
the two, never after reopened.
Besides the argument used by my father in favor of my going to West
Point--that "he thought I would go"--there was another very strong
inducement. I had always a great desire to travel. I was already the best
travelled boy in Georgetown, except the sons of one man, John Walker,
who had emigrated to Texas with his family, and immigrated back as
soon as he could get the means to do so. In his short stay in Texas he
acquired a very different opinion of the country from what one would
form going there now.
I had been east to Wheeling, Virginia, and north to the Western
Reserve, in Ohio, west to Louisville, and south to Bourbon County,
Kentucky, besides having driven or ridden pretty much over the whole
country within fifty miles of home. Going to West Point would give me
the opportunity of visiting the two great cities of the continent,
Philadelphia and New York. This was enough. When these places were
visited I would have been glad to have had a steamboat or railroad
collision, or any other accident happen, by which I might have received
a temporary injury sufficient to make me ineligible, for a time, to enter
the Academy. Nothing of the kind occurred, and I had to face the
music.
Georgetown has a remarkable record for a western village. It is, and has
been from its earliest existence, a democratic town. There was
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