Who is this person?

[David Lockmiller]

(11-05-2018 01:42 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I don't know much about U.S. Grant, but I'm pretty sure that he is the one who said this during the Mexican war. The story that I heard was that the army was so slow in advancing on Monterey that even the pack animals got lazy, and Grant had to get them moving -- and did so routinely and with no angry outbursts. Same method works on most children...

I remember thinking at the time that it was hard to believe that a military man never used profanity.

Laurie, this is the way that 2nd Lieutenant U. S. Grant described his experience in this regard in volume 1 of his personal memoirs at pages 104-106:

When Carmargo was reached, we found a city of tents outside the Mexican hamlet. I was detailed to act as quartermaster and commissary to the regiment. The teams that had proven abundantly sufficient to transport all supplies from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande over the level prairies of Texas, were entirely inadequate to the needs of the reinforced army in a mountainous country. To obviate the deficiency, pack mules were hired, with Mexicans to pack and drive them. I had charge of the few wagons allotted to the 4th infantry and of the pack train to supplement them. There were not men enough in the army to manage that train without the help of Mexicans who had learned how. (emphasis added in order to point out another example of Grant's humor) As it was the difficulty was great enough. The troops would take up their march at an early hour each day. After they had started, the tents and cooking utensils had to be made into packages, so that they could be lashed to the backs of the mules. Sheet-iron kettles, tent-poles and mess kits were inconvenient articles to transport in that way. It took several hours to get ready to start each morning., and by the time we were ready some of the mules first loaded would be tired of standing so long with their loads on their backs. Sometimes one would start to run, bowing his back and kicking up until he scattered his load; others would lie down and try to disarrange their loads by attempting to get on the top of them by rolling on them; others with tent-poles for part of their loads would manage to run a tent-pole on one side of a sapling while they would take the other. I am not aware of ever having used a profane expletive in my life; but I would have the charity to excuse those who may had done so, if they were in charge of a train of Mexican pack mules at the time.