Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1885 — Grant’s Going to West Point. [ARTICLE]

Grant’s Going to West Point.

“It was a mere accident that put me into the army," said Grant to an old comrade. “I hadn’t much fight in me, and didn’t want to go to war. I thought of being a farmer, and I thought of going to sea; but of all the possible features I dreamed of when a boy, being a soldier was not one of them. I am not sure I had ever heard of West Point when my father told me to get ready to go on for my preliminary examination. This is the way it was: Our next neighbor’* boy got a chance from our Congressman to go to West Point. He went, and failed to pass the examination—for physical reasons, I believe. He did not come home after that, and the family did not allude to his failure; but his mother, who felt very sore about it, came and told my mother, confidentially, what was troubj ling her. Mother told father, and father wrote straight to our Congressman and got the chance for me. Oh, yes, I know that those who remember my boyhood tell about my firing a pistol without flinching when I was 2 years, and crying for more of it, but I don’t think such tendencies were strong. I never thought of being a soldier. Going to West Point was just the accident I have told you. ” “How came you to pass the examination ?” asked my informant. “Almost any boy can do that,” answered the' General. “I was 17 years old, and all that was required was some knowledge of reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic to decimal fractions. If I was superstitious I should think there was some fatality in my going to West Point,- for when the war was over I figured up, and as near as I could find out, the little country village of Georgetown, Ohio, from whidh I Went—a place of 200 people—sent to the war one full General (myself), three Major Generals, two Brigadier Generals, three Colonels, three or four line officers, and one private soldier! The private deserted, I think. I had no very easy time of it at West Point. In a class of more than a hundred I was behind them all in almost everything. I never succeeded in getting near either the head or the foot of the class. I was within three of the foot in languages, I believe, and within five of the head in mathematics, I was at the head in horsemanship, but that didn’t count. I graduated as No. 21, and was glad to get it.” “But ohly thirty-eight out of the hundred odd graduated,” said his visitor; “rather narder luck than our class had. 1 ”

“Not a few,” said the General, “who had to leave school because of a failure to keep up with the class have since taken commanding positions in life, and would probably have succeeded in the army if they had only got into it.” —New York letter.