"Afore" [A-fore] Meaning: Before
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)
The military historian J. F. C. Fuller described Grant as ‘the greatest general of his age and one of the greatest strategists of any age’. If Abraham Lincoln was the Union’s political saviour, Ulysses S. Grant saved the Union militarily. Lincoln’s apt riposte to those who objected to Grant’s fondness for the bottle was: ‘I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals’. The 18th President of the United States, whose ancestors came from Ballygawley, County Tyrone, was a conspicuously more successful general than he was a politician. Although a man of great personal integrity, many of Grant’s acolytes subscribed to very lax standards.
Further Reading: Ronnie Hanna, Never Call Retreat: The Life and Times of Ulysses S. Grant (Lurgan, 1991).