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For some of us, the earliest memories of the name Ulysses Simpson Grant may not have been from words spoken by scholars about his bravery on the battlefields during the American Civil War or his two-term presidency. It was, rather, the association made by comic, Groucho Marx, asking on his wild and wacky quiz show, "You Bet Your Life," the inevitable booby prize question: "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?" Despite the obvious answer, some contestants responded incorrectly, and the late general and 18th president of the United States probably rolled over many times in his mausoleum on Riverside Drive and 122nd Street in New York City.

But who was this reluctant soldier who became a general and an even more reluctant politician and president, and what legacy did he leave to his country?

Hiram Ulysses Grant was born in 1822, the son of an Ohio tanner. He became Ulysses S. Grant through some confusion during his tenure at West Point where he didn't want to attend and from where in 1843, he graduated 21 out of a class of 39 cadets. At the Academy, he developed a reputation as a fearless and consummate horseman.

He served as quartermaster during the Mexican War, fighting first under the command of General Zachary Taylor whom he greatly admired and then in Winfield Scott's army, which operated from the coast. Twice he was brevetted for bravery in the battles of Molino del Rey and Capultepec. With the resumption of peace, he was stationed in Mexico. Unhappy because he was separated from his wife, Julia Boggs Dent Grant whom he loved dearly, he tried unsuccessfully several times to raise enough capital for her to join him. He began to use whiskey as a companion on those lonely nights away from home. Although an exemplary soldier, Grant's heavy drinking caused him to resign from his post as captain in July of 1854. He was also known to be a heavy cigar smoker, and one tale asserts that he smoked more than 10,000 of them during the course of the Civil War. Although this seems exaggerated, if it is so, it may have contributed to the throat cancer that claimed his life some thirty years later.

As a civilian, Grant found it difficult to gain a foothold, and he failed at farming, real estate and other business ventures in St. Louis. His two younger brothers, who now ran the family tannery, gave him a job as a store clerk. Grant was working in his father's leather store in Galena, Illinois, when the Civil War broke out. He offered his services to the War Department and specifically

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