d obtaining an education, Hiram found himself doing a lot of work on his family farm and not at his father’s ten yard, a place in which he found a true dislike. While growing up, Hiram did not find many friends due to his constant changing of schools and his never-ending work on the farm.In 1839, Jesse Grant, Hiram’s father, was able to secure an appointment for his son to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. In one of most famous lines in his Memoirs, Grant recalled that he told his father he wouldn't go to West Point, but "he said he thought I would, and I thought so too, if he did." (Grant, 14) Hiram was seventeen years old when he arrived at West Point. On his arrival at the academy, Hiram learned that he was on the muster roll as Ulysses Simpson Grant. This was an error that was accidentally produced by the congressman who nominated Hiram. Finding this mistake one that was impossible to correct, seeing as how he would have to go through a long and arduous procedure to change the official listing, Hiram accepted the inevitable and dropped Hiram from his name and became Ulysses Simpson Grant.Grant was not a spectacular student at the academy and did not care much for his studies. "A military life had no charms for me," Grant said later, and his only purpose at the academy was "to get through the course, secure a detail for a few years as assistant professor of mathematics at the Academy, and afterwards obtain a permanent position as professor at some respectable college." (Catton, 18) Understandably, his West Point record was not spectacular. Ulysses Grant graduated in 1843 with a rather unremarkable record, ranking twenty first in his class of thirty-nine. Although Ulysses was not a great student, he was undoubtedly the finest horseman at the academy during his four-year stay there.In his later years, Ulysses was fond of the academy and frequently enjoyed visiting the campus and th...
