In the winter of 1845–6 the United States Army languished on the border waiting for an opportunity to provoke what would be the Mexican–American War, or, as the Mexicans would come to call it, La Intervención Americana. To break the dull monotony, the army turned to theatre. In January, Second Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant was cast as Desdemona in a production staged for the troops and the local community. Grant would later be the victorious general in the Civil War and the eighteenth president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. He was not yet that person. In 1846 he was a twenty-four-year-old, newly commissioned officer, only three years out of the US Military Academy. His peers, a cohort of junior officers who would become the senior military leadership on both sides of the Civil War, were also actors in the production, as well as its producers. The anecdote is humorous in large part because the Grant of national record and memory is the least Desdemona-like figure anyone can conceive. It has been repeated multiple times across the nineteenth century and still holds in the imagination almost two hundred years later.

1845-6 年冬天，美国陆军在边境苦苦挣扎，等待机会挑起美墨战争，或者用墨西哥人的话说，“美洲干涉”。为了打破沉闷的单调，军队转向戏剧。一月，尤利西斯·S·格兰特少尉在为部队和当地社区上演的一部作品中饰演苔丝狄蒙娜。格兰特后来成为南北战争中的胜利将军，并成为 1869 年至 1877 年美国第十八任总统。但他当时还不是那样的人。 1846 年，他 24 岁，刚刚入伍，刚从美国军事学院毕业三年。他的同僚是一群下级军官，后来成为内战双方的高级军事领导层，他们也是这部剧的演员和制片人。这则轶事在很大程度上很幽默，因为国家记录和记忆中的格兰特是任何人都能想象到的最不像苔丝狄蒙娜的人物。它在 19 世纪已被重复多次，并且在近 200 年后仍然存在于人们的想象中。