Dodgeville Chronicle

Early Life of General Grant,

The General's father writes to the New York Ledger:

The leading passion of Ulysses, almost from the time he could go alone, was for horses. The first time he ever drove a horse alone he was about seven and a half years old. I had gone away from home, to Ripley, twelve miles off. I went in the morning and did not get back until night. I owned at the time a three-year-old colt, which had been ridden under the saddle to carry the mail, but had never had a collar on. While I was gone Ulysses got the colt and put a collar and the harness on him, and hitched him up to a sled. Then he put a single line on to him and drove off, and loaded up the sled with brush and came back again. He kept at it, hauling successive loads all day, and when I came home at night he had a pile of brush as big as a cabin.

He used to harness horses when he had to get up in the manger to put the bridle and collar on, and then turn the half bushel over and stand on that to throw the harness on.

At eight and a half years of age he had become a regular driver, and used to work my team all day, day after day, hauling wood. There would be a man in the woods to load, and another at the house to unload, but Ulysses would drive the team.

At about ten years of age he used to drive a pair of horses alone, from Georgetown, where we lived, forty miles, to Cincinnati, and bring back a load of passengers.

He always broke his own horses. Never knew a horse to balk with him. He used to get one colt perfectly broken, and then put another in by the side of him. He had a most wonderful faculty for breaking horses to pace; it became known in the neighborhood, and people used to apply to him to break their horses to pace; but he had an idea that it was degrading and would never undertake it, but to break to trot.