[In 1843, at the age of twenty-one, Ulysses S. Grant was graduated
from West Point with the rank of brevet second lieutenant. He was
appointed to the 4th Infantry, stationed at Jefferson Barracks near
St. Louis. In May, 1844, he was ordered to the frontier of Louisiana
with the army of observation, while the annexation of Texas was
pending. The bill for the annexation of Texas was passed March 1,
1845; the war with Mexico began in April, 1846. Grant was promoted to
a first-lieutenancy September, 1847. The Mexican War closed in 1848.
Both this war and the Civil War he characterizes in his _Memoirs_ as
"unholy."
Soon after his return from Mexico he was married to Julia Dent. The
next six years were spent in military duty in Sacketts Harbor, New
York, Detroit, Michigan, and on the Pacific coast. He was promoted to
the captaincy of a company in 1853; but because of the inadequacy of a
captain's pay, he resigned from the army, July, 1854, and rejoined his
wife and children at St. Louis. In speaking of this period Grant says,
"I was now to commence at the age of thirty-two a new struggle for our
support."
The first chapter in this new struggle was farming. The following
letter was written to his youngest sister Mary, then sixteen years
old, afterward Mrs. M.J. Cramer. "Jennie," afterward Mrs. A.R. Corbin,
was the second sister, Virginia.]
St. Louis, Mo.,
August 22nd, 1857.