whose informal dress and lack of military pretension he was to copy in later years. In 1847, Grant's regiment was transferred to the army of Gen. Winfield Scott, and he participated in all the battles that led to the capitulation of Mexico City--Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, where he was made first lieutenant for his bravery, and Chapultepec, where he was brevetted captain. Besides teaching Grant the practical lessons of warfare, the Mexican conflict gave him a personal acquaintance with most of the men who were later to command the Confederate armies.After the Mexicans surrendered, the American military establishment was drastically curtailed, and Grant was assigned to routine garrison duty. His four years at Sackets Harbor, N. Y., and Detroit, Mich., were pleasant, because Julia, whom he had married on Aug. 22, 1848, was with him. But in 1852, when the regiment was transferred to Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, his wife and young family had to be left at home. Grant's next two years, spent in barracks life on the West Coast, were the most miserable in his career. His duties were dull and routine; his superior officer, Col. Robert Buchanan, rode him hard; his income was inadequate, and efforts to increase it by farming and cattle raising were unsuccessful. Most of all, he missed Julia, the one woman in his life. Like so many other peacetime officers of the period, Grant began drinking. Though he was promoted to a captaincy, he continued forlorn and unhappy, and a quarrel with Colonel Buchanan helped to precipitate his decision, on April 11, 1854, to resign his commission.After resigning from his commission in 1854, Ulysses returned to Missouri where he tried working at a number of jobs, unsuccessfully. Among these jobs were selling cordwood, working his sixty-acre farm (a job that pointed towards a bleak future), real estate (where Ulysses proved to be completely worthless), and other small busin...
