last in his West Point class

"The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity."
- Ulysses S. Grant [1822-1885]

move!

"The true course in conducting military operations, is to make no movement until the preparations are complete."
- General George McClellan, who was ousted by Lincoln for inaction and replaced by alcoholic, last in his West Point class Ulysses S. Grant who won the Civil War

Honor Code

"Cadets will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do."
- United States Military Academy at West Point motto

Image source here.

Cotton-Gin

Exterior of Eli Whitney workshop, Washington, Georgia

"When the institution [of slavery] became profitable, all talk of its abolition ceased where it existed; and naturally as human nature is constituted, arguments were adduced in its support. The cotton-gin probably had much to do with the justification of slavery."

- Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, pp.149-150

general observation

"General Taylor was not an officer to trouble the administration much with his demands, but was inclined to do the best he could with the means given him. He felt his responsibility as going no further. If he had thought that he was sent to perform an impossibility with the means given him, he would probably have informed the authorities of his opinion and left them to determine what should be done. If the judgment was against him he would have gone on and done the best he could with the means at hand without parading his grievance before the public. No soldier could face either danger or responsibility more calmly than he. These are qualities more rarely found than genius or physical courage."
- U.S. Grant in his Memoirs on "Old Rough and Ready" General Zachary Taylor

Out of 42 Presidents, historians rank Grant 23rd and Taylor 29th here.

shrewd

Cold Harbor, 1864

An eight-year-old Ulysses S. Grant [1822-1885] buys a horse, p.25

"Papa says I may offer you twenty dollars for the colt, but if you won't take that, I am to offer twenty-two and a half, and if you won't take that, to give you twenty five." It would not require a Connecticut man to guess the price finally agreed upon.

U.S. Grant's Memoirs is regarded as the nineteenth century's most important work of American non-fiction.