Virtual Trivia
Question 27: A Happy Birthday
April 27, 2021
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| Painting of Ulysses S. Grant's birthplace in Point Pleasant, OH. |
Which Civil War leader was born 199 years ago today, April 27, 1822. (On what was also the 45th anniversary of the Battle of Ridgefield.)
- Robert E. Lee
- Ambrose Burnside
- Abner Doubleday
- Ulysses S. Grant
Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, the eldest child of Jesse and Hannah Grant. The name Ulysses was chosen by being drawn from ballots in a hat. To honor his maternal grandfather, he was named Hiram Ulysses, though was always called Ulysses.
Grant became stuck with the name Ulysses S. due to a mistake by Ohio Congressman Thomas Hamer when writing Grant's nomination to attend West Point. Though some have wrongly suggested that the S. stands for Simpson, Grant's step-grandmother's name, as with President Harry S. Truman, the middle initial doesn't actually stand for anything. “Find some name beginning with “S” for me,” he joked in an 1844 letter to future wife, Julia Dent. “You know I have an “S” in my name and don’t know what it stands for.”