Agonstinelli "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works."-Ulysses Simpson Grant On April 27, 1822, one of the most influential characters in American history was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio. Baptized Hiram Ulysses Grant, he was the eldest son of Jesse Root Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant. Hiram was one of six children, including his five younger siblings Samuel Simpson, Clara, Virginia Paine, Orvil Lynch and Mary Frances. Hiram came from a family that, he proudly declared, had been American "for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral." (Grant, 1) In 1823, Jesse Root Grant moved his tanning business to Georgetown, Ohio where Hiram, Commonly called “Lyss” spent his boyhood. Lyss spent many of his younger years being educated at many schools: a grammar school in Georgetown, at Maysville Seminary in Maysville, Ky., and at the Presbyterian Academy of Ripley, Ohio. Grant found all of his early education to be superficial and repetitious. “The schools, at the time of which I write, were very indifferent. There were no free schools, and none in which the scholars were classified. They were all supported by subscription, and a single teacher--who was often a man or a woman incapable of teaching much, even if they imparted all they knew--would have thirty or forty scholars, male and female, from the infant learning the ABC's up to the young lady of eighteen and the boy of twenty, studying the highest branches taught--the three R's, "Reading, `Riting, `Rithmetic." I never saw an algebra, or other mathematical work higher than the arithmetic, in Georgetown, until after I was appointed to West Point.” (Grant, 7) He showed no scholarly bent. One thing that Hiram did enjoy, though, and was in fact quite notable for, was his sturdy self-reliance and his ability to ride and control even the wildest horses. While schooling an...
