Excerpt from Ulysses Simpson Grant: Unconditional SurrenderWhen Ulysses was about a year old, his father moved to George town and set up in business for himself as a tanner. Here the Grants lived until Ulysses went to school. The home had few material comforts. The small brick house, which was enlarged from time to time as the Grant business and family grew, had bare walls, crude furniture, and a great Open fireplace. Save for a few sermons, hymn-books, and a Life of Washington, there were no books in the household. But it was a happy and contented family. Later Grant wrote: I have no recollection of ever having been punished at home either by scolding or by the rod. He never heard a harsh word from either father or mother, or knew either to do an unjust act.The elder Grant soon purchased a farm near the village, and before Ulysses was eight years old, he hauled all the wood used in the house and at the tannery. Like most lads of the frontier, Grant's boyhood days were full of outdoor activity. He was an expertswimmer, diver, and rider. He loved horses. At nine he had a horse of his own. At ten he often drove a team of horses alone to Cincinnati, forty miles away, and brought home a load of passengers. At eleven he earned his first money by hauling a load of rags to Cincinnati and selling it for fifteen dollars. He performed stunts when riding, taught horses to pace, and broke them to harness. If I can mount a horse I can ride him, was his truthful boast. Of his life between the ages of eleven and seventeen, Grant writes I did all the work done with horses, such as breaking up the land, furrowing, ploughing corn and potatoes, bringing in the crops when harvested, hauling all the wood, besides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, and sawing wood for the stove.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.