It’s often we hear how our leaders, as children, demonstrate a unique skill or interest that then lends itself to their career or struggle down the line. George Washington couldn’t tell a lie. Joan of Arc had her first vision at 13. Teddy Roosevelt overcame asthma. Franklin Roosevelt contracted polio. Hitler failed art school. Stalin robbed banks.

Well for Ulysses S. Grant, his thing was horses.

Grant preferred to travel on horseback. He courted his wife, Julia, on horseback. Much of his command during the Civil War was performed on horseback. His preferred cure for the headaches he experienced was driving horses fast. Typically reserved in mixed company, if the subject of conversation turned to horses, he would come alive.

Ulysses Under Fire is a podcast about the early life of civil war general and American President Ulysses S. Grant. This episode contains an interview with Denise Dowdall, author of From Cincinnati to the Colorado Ranger: The Horsemanship of Ulysses S. Grant (Historyeye).

Other sources for this episode include:

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Ulysses S. Grant)

U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Joan Waugh, UNC Press)

Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity 1822-1865 (Brooks Simpson, Zenith Press)

Grant (Ron Chernow, Penguin)

Hemlock and Hide: The Tanbark Industry in Old New York (Hugh O. Canham, Northern Woodlands, Summer 2011)

James B. Fry, the Ulysses S. Grant Homepage

The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox (John C. Waugh, Ballantine)

The Quartermaster's Department and the Mexican War (Alvin P. Stauffer, Quartmeraster Review)