Parting Shot

Parting Shot

 

Ulysses S. Grant–The Man and His Horses

Ulysses S. Grant carried countless labels during his life: failed businessman, heavy drinker, military genius, scand-surrounded president, and… great horseman! History records Grant as one of America’s top equestrians.

 

As a young farm boy in the Midwest, Grant, shy and quiet, emotionally bonded to horses. At West Point, graduating 21st out of 39 in 1843, he had only one outstanding military skill. General James Longstreet said of Cadet Grant: “In horsemanship…he was noted as the most proficient in the Academy. In fact, rider and horse held together like the fabled centaur…” And through the years, he proved that time and again—on a wide variety of mounts.

 

Here are but a few.

At the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, one of Grant’s officers found an unattractive and scrawny horse left by the Confederates. As a joke, the officer sent the animal to a Colonel Lagow, a man of means who knew excellent horseflesh. Seeing the animal, Grant told Lagow it was a valuable Thoroughbred and he’d take it if Lagow didn’t want it. Named Kangaroo because of his appearance, the horse, with rest, feeding and good care became a superb mount. Grant rode Kangaroo throughout the Vicksburg, Mississippi campaign of 1863.

 

During the siege of Vicksburg, a Union cavalry raid captured a black pony at Joe Davis’ plantation. Davis was the brother of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, so the pony was aptly named Jeff Davis, and given to Grant’s son to ride. But Grant, suffering with a carbuncle and unable to ride his horse, borrowed Jeff Davis.  Enjoying the pony’s gait, Grant turned the horse over to the quartermaster as a spoil of war.

 

A board of officers appraised the animal and Grant purchased him, keeping him until the horse died, long after the Civil War.

 

After the fall of Vicksburg in August 1863, Grant, reviewing troops in New Orleans, was given an enormous, untamed and jumpy horse to ride.  The horse ran off with Grant, reared at a locomotive, and fell, pinning the general. Unconscious, Grant woke with swelling from the knee to the thigh and alongside his body to the armpit. He lay in the hotel for over a week with excruciating pain, unable to turn himself in bed.  Finally carried by litter to a steamer and taken to Vicksburg, he remained unable to move for some time and was on crutches for two months.

 

Following the November 1863 Battle of Chattanooga, Grant traveled to St. Louis where he received a letter from an “S.S. Grant.” The general had an uncle by that name who died in 1861. Confined to a hotel room by illness, this S.S. Grant asked the general to call upon him. Curious, Grant did. The gentleman told Grant he had “the finest horse in the world” and offered it as a present. The conditions upon the gift were the horse would be given a good home, tender care and never be ill-treated.  Grant graciously accepted the horse, naming him Cincinnati.

 

S.S. wasn’t exaggerating. Cincinnati was the son of the fastest four-mile Thoroughbred race horse in the United States at the time and a speed demon in his own right.

 

Once offered $10,000 in gold for him, the general refused. Grant affirmed Cincinnati was the finest horse he’d ever seen, and rarely permitted anyone to ride him, with two exceptions: Admiral Daniel Ammen, who saved Grant from drowning when a schoolboy, and President Abraham Lincoln

Cincinnati became Grant’s battle charger until the war’s end.  The horse was immortalized when he carried the general to Appomattox to accept Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender. During Grant’s second term as president, a statue of him on Cincinnati was made. Virtually all depictions of Grant in drawings, granite, and bronze, are astride Cincinnati, including the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial in Washington, D.C., at the base of Capitol Hill.

 

After his presidency, Grant toured the world. In March 1878, Abdul Hamid II, Sultan of Turkey, presented him with two magnificent dapple-grey Arabian stallions, named Leopard and Linden Tree. In the states, these horses were well-regarded; people sought nails, old shoes, and clippings of their hooves. Grant, who died in 1885, didn’t live to witness Leopard become the earliest Arabian stallion registered in the stud book of The Arabian Horse Club of America, founded in 1908. Leopard sired one pure Arabian son whose blood can be found today in many Arabians in the United States.

 

U.S. Grant—a fearless rider with exceptional stamina.  His horses, whose collective backs carried America’s destiny during one of the most crucial periods in the nation’s history.  As his mother once commented, “Horses seem to understand Ulysses.”  
 

Related posts:

1. Parting Shot   The Last Great Charge   The charge wasn’t...
2. Parting Shot     Grooming the Cavalry Way   “In basic training...
3. Parting Shot   Brad Paisley   While Brad Paisley’s career is...
4. Parting Shot   Toby Keith   When country superstar Toby Keith was...
5. Parting Shot   Kix Brooks - A love for horse and...
6. Parting Shot   Twang Brings George Strait Another Classic Album  ...
7. Traveller   Robert E. Lee’s Favorite Horse   The older...
8. The Last U.S. Calvary Charge Lieutenant Edwin Price Ramsey Leads The Charge   Enemy...
9. Horse Artillery   Confederate Major John Pelham eyed the advancing Union...