The Weekly Spotlight

The Monthly Spotlight is a section of this Blog in which the focus is on a single former U. S. President or First Lady.  Each week, there will be several questions about one former President or First Lady, but the answers will not appear till the next week.  When the correct answers appear for the earlier questions, another new set of questions will focus on another person.

Week of October 11, 2010.
Extended until further notice.

The first President to be in the Monthly Spotlight is U. S. Grant.  It is interesting to note that that was not his given name at birth.  It was Hiram Ulysses Grant.  However, before he enrolled in West Point, he decided to change the order of his names and to call himself Ulysses Hiram Grant in order to avoid getting the nickname 'Hug' from Hiram Ulysses Grant.  But a government official who knew that his mother's maiden name was 'Simpson' inserted that in place of Hiram.  Rather than go to the trouble of explaining again how he wanted his name changed, he accepted the new name he had mistakenly been given.  So, at West Point, he got the nickname, 'Uncle Sam' or 'Sam', short for 'Ulysses Simpson'.  'All's well that ends well!'

Painting of General Ulysses S. Grant from the National Portrait Gallery

So here are the first questions...

We'll start with something easy!  But it could be a trick question.

1.  True or false.  Ulysses Grant, or 'Lyss' as he was often called by family and friends at that time, liked to go hunting with his friends as a youngster.
2.  As is commonly the case, officers might get promoted more quickly during wartime than during peace.  U. S. Grant began the Mexican-American War as a Lieutenant.  He fought under both General Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, two of that war's most well-known generals.  Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee also served as fellow officers.  What rank did Grant have at the end of the Mexican-American War?
3.  Grant's early career in the military was actually quite undistinguished.  His superior officers apparently encouraged him to resign his commission several years prior to the Civil War, and he did.  Who did he send his letter of resignation to in Washington, DC on July 31, 1854?
4.  U. S. Grant could be considered both a late bloomer and an early bloomer.  Explain the meaning of this paradox.
5.  When the Southern states seceded, U. S. Grant wrote a letter in 1861 to the War Department requesting to be recommissioned in the U. S. Army.  What was the reply he received?