Painting by Cadet Ulysses Hiram Grant photograph

This image is a black-and-white photographic reproduction of a watercolor painting by Ulysses S. Grant in 1841, when he was a cadet attending the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. Grant was an average student, although he excelled in mathematics and horsemanship. He also studied art and painting at West Point and completed many sketches and paintings as a cadet. In this painting Grant portrays a trade bargaining session between two men, one of them a Native American. A Native American woman holding an infant stands behind the man who is wearing a cap and holding a light-colored blanket. This painting is displayed in the West Point Museum.Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-1885) was a U.S. military leader and the eighteenth President of the United States. He was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio. In 1823, his family moved to Georgetown, Ohio. Grant lived there until he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in July 1839. The congressman who appointed Grant submitted his name as Ulysses Simpson Grant rather than Hiram Ulysses Grant. It was because of this mistake that Grant changed his name.Grant graduated from West Point in 1843. He ranked twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine students. His first assignment was in the Southwest. Grant served under General Zachary Taylor in the Mexican-American War. He remained in the West following the war. In 1852, after quarreling with a higher-ranking officer, Grant resigned his commission.At the outbreak of the Civil War he organized a company in Galena and later accepted command of the 21st Illinois Regiment. In August 1861, President Abraham Lincoln made Grant brigadier general of volunteers. In March 1864, President Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general and named him supreme commander of all Union forces. Under his leadership the Union Army emerged the victor in April 1865.Grant served as U.S. president from 1869-1877. He spent his last years in New York, writing his memoirs. He died on July 23, 1885, of throat cancer.