Given his position as a general, Ulysses S. Grant had surprisingly little interest in military affairs. On one occasion he was once introduced to the second Duke of Wellington: "They tell me," he remarked, "that your father was also a military man..."

[The Duke of Wellington, of course, was famed for his leadership of the British forces in the Peninsular War against Napoleon in Spain and Portugal (1808-14) and for his defeat of Napoleon (with General Blucher) at Waterloo on June 18th, 1815.]