Late in the morning of May 6, 1884, Ulysses S. Grant, former commanding general of the Union armies, twice president of the United States, and famous throughout the world, walked into New York City’s brokerage firm of Grant & Ward confident that he was now a millionaire and without financial cares. Two hours later, he left the building as a pauper worth only $80.
His young partner, Ferdinand Ward, was a con artist and possible psychopath who had lured first Grant’s son Buck and then Grant himself into what was a giant Ponzi scheme, with Ward paying off investors in the brokerage with money he made from newcomers. His association with Grant gilded Ward’s reputation as “the Young Napoleon of Finance,” but that Napoleon had now met his Waterloo. As one banker noted, “The transactions of Grant & Ward constituted the most colossal swindle of the age.”
Though the public soon learned the truth about Ward’s swindles, that Grant was in no way involved other than affixing his name to the firm, the former president was nevertheless devastated, not only financially but also personally. Once again, as had happened frequently while in the White House, Grant had trusted a dishonest man and was himself smeared by the scandal.
Mark Twain Saves the Day
In “Grant,” Ron Chernow, award-winning biographer of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, provides a harrowing account of Grant’s race against death. Though he had long eschewed writing his memoirs, with his money gone, Grant agreed to write four articles on battles of the Civil War for The Century Magazine. When the magazine’s editors and its president, Roswell Smith, pressed Grant to write a book-length memoir, he characteristically asked whether “anyone would be interested in a book by me.” Driven by his wish to care for his loved ones, however, he finally agreed to publish his story with Century.
It was here that Mark Twain stepped to the rescue. The two men were well-acquainted, and when Twain heard of the Century offer, he informed Grant that he was selling his time and reputation too cheaply. Looking for what he believed would be a massive profit for himself and for his friend at the same time, Twain offered Grant the services of his publishing house, essentially stealing the ailing general away from Century with promises of extravagant royalties and money to live on in the meantime.
Marching Through Hell
With the sophisticated medical treatments and pharmaceuticals available to us today, it is difficult to imagine the mental and physical pain Grant suffered in this final campaign. Though he and Julia lived more comfortably during these last months of his life, Grant surely felt tremendous pressure to complete his autobiography, both for his family’s welfare and for his backers. At this same time, he was making some effort to regain his rank and pay of general, which he had given up to become president. After outgoing President Chester Arthur signed a bill on his last day in office reinstating Grant’s rank, the new President Grover Cleveland restored Grant’s commission as general, delighting the general and guaranteeing him some needed additional income.His daily agonizing struggle with cancer, however, was worsening. As Mr. Chernow explains at length, Grant’s coughing and throat secretions affected his ability to breathe, and his difficulty swallowing made even liquid refreshment a torture—he once compared drinking water to swallowing “molten lead.” Unable to eat, at the time of his death, Grant weighed less than 100 pounds. Fatigue and sleeplessness brought on by his breathing difficulties plagued him. And as the tumor in his throat grew “as big as a man’s two fists put together,” even talking became, first, an arduous chore and then impossible.
Despite this constant torment, Grant kept his pen moving across paper, attacking his writing task as resolutely as he and his forces had moved on the Confederate works at Petersburg. When the stenographer, who for a time assisted Grant, was shown the manuscript of the first volume of the memoirs, he was astounded by his talent and his steady, largely unblemished handwriting. At one point, Twain reassured the dying general that his book would bear positive comparison to Caesar’s “Commentaries.”
A Legacy for Julia
“The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant” was a smashing success, in part because of Mark Twain. He “mapped out a sales campaign worthy of Grant’s military efficiency,” Mr. Chernow informs us, dividing the country into sales districts with general managers, each overseeing retired veterans who would go door-to-door asking “people to help out their old general.”
A Monument of Words
Since the early days of its publication, most historians and critics have hailed the genius and greatness of “The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.” William Dean Howells, for instance, a novelist and a prominent literary figure of the time, and a close friend of Twain’s, called Grant’s book “a great, unique and unapproachable literary masterpiece.” It has never gone out of print, and now, as then, is touted as one of the best of American reminiscences and a major contribution to military history.In her Editor’s Note to “The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant,” historian and professor Elizabeth Samet notes some of the qualities that set Grant’s account of his life apart from other such works. Here, we find the plain, forthright prose of a man accustomed to writing battlefield dispatches and reports. His account focuses almost entirely on his years as a soldier rather than as a private citizen or a president. Moreover, unlike so many of our autobiographies today, with their personal revelations and psychological delving, Grant comes across as a master of self-control, just as he so often was on the battlefield and in the sickbed. His is an old-fashioned American voice, magisterial, a bit removed, and refusing to indulge, as Ms. Samet points out, in the romanticism that often varnished the realities of the war in other accounts of the time.
It is in this austerity of emotion coupled with humility that we can perhaps take the mark of the man himself.
