William A. Crafts, Life of Ulysses S. Grant: His Boyhood, Campaigns, and Services, Military and Civil.

Grant appreciated the advantages he enjoyed at West Point, and he was grateful to the country which afforded them. His youthful patriotism, too, received a new impulse from the associations with which he was surrounded, and the places celebrated in revolutionary history which lay all about him. Patriotism and duty to the country, which, as a cadet, he specially owed, were always acknowledged by him, and were the inspiring motives of his conduct in the day of the nation's peril. There were those with him there who never experienced such emotions; who daily saw the records of their country's heroes, and moved amid the scenes hallowed by the services and sacrifices of Washington and his compatriots, and yet never felt a throb of genuine patriotism, of love for the whole country, and never breathed a vow of fidelity to the government which educated them for its defence. Their pride was in their narrow states, and in the institution which made them rulers over an “inferior race.” When the hour of the country's trial came, these men were found on the side of the rebellion, false to their country, false to their early associations, false to their oaths. If they have not gone down to traitors' graves, they may learn from the nobler career of Grant that patriotism and fidelity are their own great reward, and are gratefully acknowledged by a loyal people.

On the 1st of July, 1843, Grant, having passed the final examination at West Point, graduated the twenty-first scholar in his class, which numbered thirty-nine. It was not a high rank, but he had profited by what he