In May 1846, Ulysses S. Grant, a 24-year-old lieutenant in the U.S. Army’s Fourth Infantry only three years out of West Point, saw his first action in Palo Alto, Mexico, in the opening engagement of the Mexican War. “I do not know that I felt any particular sensation,” he told a friend. “War seems much less horrible to persons engaged in it than to those who read of the battles.” The war, in which he served until its conclusion a year later, was a valuable school in which he observed at close hand, and learned much from, two great generals, Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, and solidified his friendships with other young officers, some of whom he fought with — and against — a decade and a half later in the Civil War.
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