Keith Harris at Cosmic America
discusses how General Grant got the nickname Unconditional Surrender Grant at Ft Donelson, and reminds us that U.S. were not Grant's actual first and middle initials. He is quite correct.
At birth, Grant was named Hiram Ulysses Grant. Why, then, do we know him as Ulysses S. Grant?
Grant's appointment to West Point involved a bit of indirection. The Congressman for his district, Thomas L Hamer, was a former friend of Grant's father, the two of whom had fallen out over politics years before. Grant's father was unwilling to write to Hamer requesting the appointment, so he wrote to Senator Thomas Morris, who evidently forwarded the request to Hamer (the appointment was Hamer's to dispose of after all.) Hamer did make the appointment — but he didn't remember Ulysses's full name. He knew his mother was a Simpson, so he put U. S. Grant on the paperwork. When Ulysses reported at West Point, that is what was on the register. And so he became Ulysses S Grant.
