Article: What if? Hiram Ulysses Grant gets a new name

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, ...

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