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Article: What if? Hiram Ulysses Grant gets a new name
- Article from:
- Telegraph - Herald (Dubuque)
- Article date:
- July 19, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 Telegraph - Herald (Dubuque). Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Occasionally I will indulge in one of my favorite historic
reveries, "What if such-and-such historic event had happened
differently, or hadn't happened at all?" How might the course of
history have been altered?
Today's "What if " ?" honors the great Civil War general and
better-than-advertised U.S. president, Ulysses S. Grant, who died
this week (July 23) in 1885.
What if, when Ulysses S. Grant arrived for his first semester at
West Point, his registration forms had identified him as Hiram
Ulysses Grant, which was his real name, instead of Ulysses S. Grant,
which was not? How might history have been different?
Our story begins in 1838 when Grant's father asked his
congressman, Tom Hamer, ...