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however, he plunged in, swam his horse through a raging torrent, and had to borrow dry civilian clothes when he arrived at the Dents’ home. This incident is notable not only because it underlines Grant’s fearless horsemanship and his determination, but also because it is the first known example of a very important peculiarity of his character: Grant had an extreme, almost phobic dislike of turning back and retracing his steps. If he set out for somewhere, he would get there somehow, whatever the difficulties that lay in his way. This idiosyncrasy would turn out to be one of the factors that made him a formidable general. Grant would always, always press on—turning back was not an option for him.
     
    The years of their engagement were those of a gathering storm—and here it is necessary to pause briefly and describe the political situation of the United States in the 1840s, as it was to affect Ulysses and Julia. In 1836 Texas, then largely populated by white Americans, had declared its independence of Mexico, and after a short and bloody campaign, seceded from Mexico and became an independent state. The Republic of Texas was soon recognized by the United States but not by Mexico, and American business interests moved quickly to finance the infant republic, while the administration of President Andrew Jackson surreptitiously provided the Texans with arms and volunteers.
    Demands for the annexation of Texas as a state increased—the loans made to the republic would be more secure if it became partof the United States, so Wall Street was in favor of annexation; but, more important, if Texas came into the Union, it would come in as a slave state—or perhaps more than one slave state, for it was so big that there was talk of carving it into as many as four entities. Four states would have added eight proslavery senators to the Southern bloc in the U.S. Senate, giving the South a decisive advantage over the Northern states on the highly charged question of expanding slavery in the West, and securing the survival of the “peculiar institution,” as it was referred to by Southerners.
    The skeleton of slavery had been rattling its bones in the closet of American politics ever since the Declaration of Independence—indeed the Declaration itself could never have been signed had not Jefferson found a way of evading the issue—and by the time Ulysses Grant went to West Point it was clear enough that while most people in the North did not condone slavery, they were prepared to live with it, if necessary, provided it was not expanded into the new territories to the West, or farther south.
    Southerners saw the matter differently, of course—slavery was legal, however uncomfortable it might make people in Massachusetts or New York, and the South was entitled to expand it into the new territories and farther south into Mexico and the Caribbean if it could. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had banned slavery from all territory west of the Mississippi River and north of a line drawn westward from the southern border of Missouri, but its constitutionality was under continuous challenge. In any event, the possible annexation of Texas was perceived as a threat by Northerners, and by Southerners as an opportunity to break out of what were increasingly seen as artificial restraints against the spread of slavery.
    In the North only a small minority argued for abolition, while in the South an equally small minority advocated the unrestrained growth of a slave empire, but as is so often the case, the extremists on both sides soon began to dominate, then to define the argument. The notion that the Negro might be freed and made the equal of the white man was hardly more popular in the North than in the South, and what was to be done with the slaves in the event that slavery could be ended (if possible by gradual, peaceful means, with the slave owners compensated) remained a vexatious if academic question in American politics. The idea of