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The Ulysses S. Grant Association |
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The Ulysses S. Grant Association |
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(Originally printed in Western Horseman, (Sept. 1977), 56-57. Used by the Ulysses S. Grant Association with the permission of Western Horseman and Fredie Steve Harris. This article is not to be reprinted or republished by any other source.)
Ulysses S. Grant was an accomplished horseman, and knew many horses in his lifetime. There were family horses in his youth, and the circus trick pony he once rode for a prize of $5. There were the horses of West Point, and nameless Texas mustangs during the war with Mexico. There was a Detroit race mare named Nellie that won a thousand-dollar race for Grant. There was Butcher's Boy, a speedy harness horse Grant purchased after becoming president. There were Civil War mounts named Jack, Fox, Kangaroo, and Charlie. Charlie nearly became a Confederate hero: he fell on Grant during a tour of military units near New Orleans, and almost ended the general's career and perhaps his life as well.
But of all Grant's many horses, three stand out. And thanks to some unknown Army photographer, all three are preserved in one Civil War-era photograph. The cavalry volume of Francis Miller's ten-volume work The Photographic History of the Civil War (1911) says of this photograph:
"They are the mounts used by General Grant in his final gigantic campaign that resulted in the out-wearing of the Confederacy. When photographed in June, 1864, they were 'in the field' with the General-in-Chief, after the ghastly battle of Cold Harbor, and before the crossing of the James River that sealed the fate of Lee's army." On the left is Egypt, presented to Grant by admirers in Illinois, and named for the district in which he was bred. The horse in the center is Cincinnati, a present from a St. Louis gentleman, who on his deathbed sent for Grant and presented him with this horse. The black pony to the right is Jeff Davis, captured in a cavalry raid near Vicksburg on the plantation of Joe Davis, brother of the Confederate President.
"The animal was worn out when it reached headquarters, but was a very easy riding horse.... With care he began to pick up and soon carried himself in fine shape.
"It was necessary for General Grant to visit the lines frequently, and one day he took this pony for that purpose. The gait of the pony was so delightful that he directed that he be turned over to the quartermaster as a captured horse and a board of officers be convened to appraise the animal. This was done and my father purchased the animal and kept him until he died.... This pony was known as Jeff Davis." Grant called him Little Jeff.
General Horace Porter described Jeff Davis as a "smooth little pacer" who "shuffled along at a gait which was too fast for a walk and not fast enough for a gallop, so that all the other horses had to move at a brisk trot to keep up with him." Riding Little Jeff, Porter said, was like riding a rocking chair.
The pony did have two shortcomings, though. First, Grant thought the commanding general might look a little silly charging along on a diminutive pony, so on conspicuous occasions he rode one of his large horses. Second, Little Jeff had hard going in rough country. Once, when asked if he wanted the pony saddled for that morning's duty, Grant replied, "No, we are getting into a rather swampy country, and I fear Little Jeff's legs are not quite long enough for wading through the mud. You had better saddle Egypt."
Egypt. Egypt was a large and beautiful bay given to Grant in early 1864 by a group of Illinois citizens. The horse got his name from the region around Cairo, Ill., at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. General Porter once described Grant's technique of mounting Egypt: "When the horse was brought up, the general mounted as usual in a manner peculiar to himself. He made no perceptible effort, and used his hands but little to aid him; he put his left foot in the stirrup, grasped the horse's mane near the withers with his left hand, and rose without making a spring, by simply straightening the left leg till his body was high enough to enable him to throw the right leg over the saddle. There was no 'climbing' up the animal's side, and no jerky movements. The mounting was always done in an instant and with the greatest possible ease."
Cincinnati. Frederick Dent Grant wrote of this fine horse: "After the battle of Chattanooga, General Grant went to St. Louis. During the time of his visit to the city he received a letter from a gentleman who signed his name S. S. Grant, the initials being the same as those of a brother of my father's, who had died in the summer of 1861. S. S. Grant wrote to the effect that he was very desirous of seeing General Grant but that he was ill and confined to his room.
"The name excited my father's curiosity and he called at the hotel to meet the gentleman who told him that he had, he thought, the finest horse in the world, and knowing General Grant's great liking for horses he had concluded, inasmuch as he would never be able to ride again, that he would like to give his horse to him.... General Grant accepted the horse and called him Cincinnati. This was his battle charger until the end of the war."
Cincinnati was a superior animal, a son of the great Lexington. Lexington was "with a single exception," wrote General James Grant Wilson in 1897, "the fastest four-mile Thoroughbred that ever ran on an American course. Cincinnati was a superb and spirited steed of great endurance, Grant riding him almost constantly during the Wilderness campaign...."
Grant rarely permitted anyone to ride Cincinnati. Two exceptions were his childhood friend Admiral Dan Ammen and President Lincoln. Grant said: "Lincoln spent the latter days of his life with me. He came to City Point in the last month of the war and was with me all the time. He was a fine horseman and rode my horse Cincinnati every day."
All three of these war horses entered the White House stables when Grant became President in 1869. It has been said that Cincinnati, Egypt, and Jeff Davis carried "a nation's destiny upon their backs."
For more information, contact John Y. Simon at jsimon@lib.siu.edu.