Shrouded Veterans: Ulysses S. Grant’s Friend Finally Remembered

“Your letters was quite a feeling one. You have imagined me killed as I presume a thousand times  — I know Mother loves me as much as a Mother can love a son and you as much as a sister can love a brother, but then, let not this love cause you any sadness — Rejoice rather, for, although, I am far from home, yet I am not among strangers and I am doing well,” Robert Hazlitt wrote to his worried sister, Mary, from Matamoros, Mexico, on July 28, 1846. “I hold an office which hundreds of young men in our country would be proud to get. It is not profitable, but it is honorable. Now sister rejoice that you have a brother in an army that has covered himself with glory and let us all hope for the best.”

The 25-year-old lieutenant was killed in action less than two months later, after penning this uplifting letter.

Robert Hazlitt graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in July 1843, two places behind Ulysses S. Grant at West Point (Grant graduated 21st, and Hazlitt 23rd). The two young lieutenants were stationed at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis County, Missouri. Hazlitt regularly accompanied Grant on his visits to Frederick Dent’s plantation, “White Haven,” located only five miles from the barracks, during the time Grant began courting Dent’s daughter, Julia.

Julia once wrote to Grant, breaking the news that her parents opposed their marriage. “I supposed I will have to run off with the little document of else give up all notion of her,” Grant told Hazlitt, who was away at another post. “You must have done some little courting for yourself while in Missouri. It sticks out that you are more than ordinarily fond of the little one [Juila’s younger sister, Ellen] that is now at school. It’s no weakness, Bob, to fall in love with the like of her, but if you do we will have to run off together with our prettys, for Juila says that pa and ma are opposed to them coming into the army.”

Grant regularly mentioned his friend in his early Mexican War letters. Hazlitt asked to be remembered to Julia, Ellen — who had mailed him “play things” that were unfortunately lost on their journey — and the rest of the Dent family. “Mr. Hazlitt says he wishes you would write him just one letter,” Grant urged Julia. After the first two battles, Grant reassured her, “Mr. Hazlitt come out alive and whole.”

On September 21, 1846, Hazlitt was killed at the battle of Monterrey. After being ordered to charge into the city and pass through a gauntlet of enemy artillery and gunfire, Grant and Hazlitt met and shook hands, relieved to see each other unharmed. It was the last time Grant saw his friend alive.

“How very lonesome it is here with us now,” Grant wrote to Julia in mid-October, nearly a month after Hazlitt’s death. “I have just been walking through camp and how many faces that were dear to the most of us are missing now.”

Hazlitt’s brother, James, sent a letter from Philadelphia asking Grant to relay the particulars of his brother’s death. Grant responded to the letter on November 23.

“Lt. Hazlett and myself were classmates at West Point and have served at the same posts and the greater part of the time, in the same Regiment since our entry into the service. We have been intimate friends and confidential ones,” Grant revealed, “and no one but his relatives can feel more keenly his loss than myself.”

Grant went on to describe the events leading up to Hazlitt’s death, concluding the letter with, “The 21st of September 1846 will be remembered by all here present as one of the most melancholy of their lives.”

Immediately after the city surrendered, Hazlitt’s body was buried and a cross was placed over the spot by a caring soldier from his regiment. On November 25, the remains of several American officers killed in the battle — including Hazlitt — were reinterred in a cemetery built by soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry and enclosed by a 4-foot-high white limestone wall topped with a cross. Grant didn’t record how he felt during the funeral, but it’s hard to imagine he didn’t shed a tear for his fallen friend during the ceremony.

While many of these officers’ remains were later disinterred and returned to the United States, Hazlitt’s were not. The location of the cemetery in Monterrey has since been swallowed by urban expansion and buried beneath concrete. Even as late as 1850, Hazlitt’s father, William, attempted to recover his son’s personal possessions, but without success. William died in 1872 and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Warren, Ohio, alongside his wife and another son, but not Robert. His son’s remains remain entombed in Mexican soil.

In 1915, William L. Curry, a Civil War veteran and historian with the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, led an effort to erect a monument to Hazlitt’s memory in his hometown of Warren. However, the project was never completed. Since Hazlitt’s remains were lost or destroyed, he was eligible for a government-issued memorial headstone from the VA. In the spring of 2025, a marker was installed at Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery to finally honor Grant’s friend nearly 180 years after he was killed.

Shrouded Veterans is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to rescuing the neglected graves of 19th-century veterans, primarily Mexican War (1846-48) and Civil War (1861-65) soldiers, by identifying, marking, and restoring them. You can view more completed grave projects at facebook/shroudedvetgraves.com.