INTERESTING HISTORY NEWSLETTER
May 4, 2009
Julia and Hiram
Julia Boggs
Dent was born near St. Louis, Missouri on January 26, 1826. She
was the daughter of Colonel Frederic Dent and Ellen
Wrenshall-Dent and grew up on a plantation called White Haven
in a rather southern atmosphere. The somewhat plain looking
cross-eyed Julia attended the Misses Mauros’ boarding school in
St. Louis for seven years.
One day her brother Frederick
brought home a friend and fellow West Point classmate named
Hiram. Before long Julia took a liking to young Hiram and
agreed to wear his West Point ring despite her parents
reservations. In 1844, Julia and her handsome young Lieutenant
became engaged but unfortunately the Mexican war prevented them
from being married until August of 1848. When he was ordered
West in 1852, Julia moved in with Hirams parents.
Two years later Hiram would
resign his commission and try his hand at farming and other
business ventures in St. Louis. When those ventures failed he
took his family including their four children back to his home
in Galena, Illinois and began working in his fathers’ leather
goods store but that wouldn’t last long. The following year,
the Civil War broke out and he found himself back in uniform
with his state’s volunteers.
Within five months of the
beginning of the Civil War, Hiram went from training recruits
in Illinois to a brigadier general in command of the District
of Southeast Missouri. Early the next year Hiram, in a daring
counterattack, forced the surrender of over 12,000
confederates. This was one of the first major Union victories
of the war and it quickly got President Lincoln’s attention who
promoted him to Major General of the volunteers.
During the Civil War, Julia
joined her husband as often as she could. Hiram knew that Julia
was a positive influence on him and helped him stay focused,
something he struggled with when he had spent his time in the
West. In fact during his time out West, without his family he
was often depressed and had developed somewhat of a reputation
for being a drunk.
After a few setbacks in the
winter of 1862-1863, Hiram once again impressed Lincoln with
his willingness to fight and was once again promoted, this time
to Lieutenant General in the regular army and then to
General-in-chief of all the armies of the United States. In
spite of his rise to the top, the name Hiram was not well
known. It wasn’t because they hadn’t heard of his successes.
They just knew him by a different name. When he was at West
Point an error had occurred and instead of being enrolled as
Hiram Ulysses Grant, he was enrolled as Ulysses Simpson
Grant.
Ulysses S. Grant would go on to
become one of the most famous Generals in American history as
well as our 18th president (1869-1877) and Julia Dent-Grant
would be our first lady.
Mark Bowman
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