This is damn interesting.

Headphones recommend it.

In the second half of the 19th century, few Americans were better known and revered

than the man whose face looks out today from the $50 bill.

Ulysses S. Grant led Union troops to victory in the American Civil War,

then thwarted attempts by President Andrew Johnson to suppress fundamental civil rights

of newly freed Black Americans.

Twice elected President himself, Grant stewarded a war-torn nation as it struggled to reunify. After leaving the

White House, he invested his name an entire life savings to a Wall Street brokerage firm. It would

make him rich, he was told, and afford him a comfortable retirement. Instead, it would leave him penniless.

Like any Army commander, Grant had lost battles and had known the pain of defeat,

but this loss hit personally.

Never before had he found himself in straits so dire, literally destitute.

Fortunately, the former president and retired general had one more fight at him,

which is a good thing

because his real troubles had just begun.

I'm Michael Durbin, and this is damn interesting.

Hiram Ulysses Grant was born in 1822 to Ohio tannery form in Jesse Grant and his wife Hannah.

In 1839, Jesse secured a place for his son at West Point, not so much for its esteem as a military academy, but because it was free.

On his first day there, the young man found his name listed by mistake as Ulysses Simpson Grant.

He had always disliked his given initials, H-U-G, or Hug,

so he came to rather like his new name with its patriotic abbreviation, U.S. Grant.

...