Grant's Greatest Battle

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Some models, trims and features may not be available or may be subject to change. And we continue with our American stories. And up next, a story about Ulysses S. Grant by Louis Picone, author of Grant's Tomb, the epic death of Ulysses S. Grant and the making of an American pantheon. Today, Louis shares with us the story of how Grant's memoirs, considered the best presidential memoirs ever written, came to be.

Take it away, Louis. After his presidency, Grant almost immediately departed on a tour that was supposed to be just for Europe. He was going to travel all around Europe, basically as long as his interest and money held out. He ended up extending that trip all through Europe, into Africa, all through Asia. And for two and a half years, he had traveled the world, never came back to America from May 1877 until September of 1879 is when he landed back in America. And everywhere he went, Grant was treated like a global celebrity, like royalty. There was parades, there was military honors given to him, he met with kings, he met with royalty.

So he was really given a hero's welcome wherever he went. And when he came back to America, his popularity was as high as it's ever been. And this was a time when America was still greatly divided after the Civil War. This was only 15, 18 years after the Civil War.

Reconstruction had ended when Rutherford B. Hayes had taken office, but the North and South were still greatly divided. But Grant was the most popular man in America, and really perhaps the world due to this tour. But he was also perhaps the one figure that was admired by all sections and was really a unifier. He was beloved by Democrats and Republicans, by Northerners and Southerners, by Whites and African Americans, by men and women. In the North, he was the savior of the Union, he was a liberator of four million enslaved. But even in the South, he was beloved, and it's fascinating to think about that because he was the victorious general that defeated the South in the Civil War. But he was beloved because he was magnanimous. He had given generous terms to Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, but also all throughout the war.

He was known for treating Southerners with compassion, whether they were captured soldiers or whether they were Southern citizens. But presidents didn't have pensions until Truman, and Grant had spent most of his money that he earned as presidency in entertaining at the White House. Presidents usually used to pick up most of the tab for entertaining at the White House. When he left office and took his worldwide tour, most of that was paid for by investments with a Virginia mining company that he had done very well with after the Comstock loads. But he was by no means wealthy. He had wealthy patrons that had been very generous with him. They had given him a home in Long Branch, as well as given him a home in New York City, which in the Gilded Age, that didn't really raise any eyebrows as it would nowadays.

But in 1884, Grant had suffered two traumatic setbacks. In the spring, he was healthy and wealthy. Besides his generous benefactors, he had received enormous Gilded Age profits from his investments with a firm, Grant and Ward.

So one of the partners was his son, and the other one was a man named Ferdinand Ward, and the profits they had achieved were really astronomical. So Grant was the wealthiest that he ever was in his life at the beginning of 1884. But by the fall, he was not only bankrupt, but he was mortally ill. He had found out that the investments were part of a Ponzi scheme, and Grant had gone almost instantaneously from being wealthy and having no concerns about money to now he was bankrupt. And not only bankrupt, he was deeply in debt.

And then in October, just a couple months later, he was diagnosed with inoperable throat and tongue cancer, which at the time, a diagnosis of cancer was pretty much a death sentence. So Grant's number one concern at this point became to make sure that he didn't die leaving his family financially destitute. So Grant decided to publish his memoirs with the number one goal to raise that money for his beloved wife, Julia, and his children. By this point, Civil War memoirs had become somewhat of a cottage industry. They were very popular and privates all the way up to generals were writing their memoirs and making profits.

But Grant was like the white whale. He was the victorious general that people most wanted to hear from, and publishing companies were after him to write his memoirs, but he had always declined. He didn't consider himself to be a very good writer, and he didn't need the money before, but now his situation had totally changed. So immediately after getting that diagnosis, he went straight to the Century Publishing. Now for years, Century Publishing had been after Grant to write his memoirs. Now he had a relationship with Century Publishing over the years.

He had written some small articles about individual battles. So he went to them. He didn't tell them why, but he said, I'm ready to write my memoirs, and they were thrilled. But they presented Grant with a publishing contract that was pretty much a standard contract at the time. It was the same contract they probably would have given any author that they worked with at the time. So Grant luckily didn't sign the contract.

What he did is that he took the contract home. Now by this point Grant had developed a friendship with Mark Twain, who was probably perhaps the second most popular man in America at this time. It's kind of like an interesting friendship because Twain had actually briefly served in the Confederate Army. So Twain came to visit Grant at his New York City brownstone, and Grant showed him the contract. Now Twain had recently started his own publishing company, which was Charles L. Webster and Company. Twain looked at the contract and was astonished that Century would have offered such a meager contract, such a standard meager contract to someone like Grant. So Twain had told him, why don't you publish your book with my publishing company?

I will give you a much better contract and really do as much as possible to guarantee that Julia was well taken care of after you died. So it turns out the first book that Twain's publishing company ever published was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the second book that he published was Grant's Memoirs. Right away Grant started to write, and as he was writing his health began to deteriorate. Over the next eight months he continued to write as he was in great physical pain. Soon he was struggling to swallow and his weight plummeted.

He was struggling to speak. He got to the point that he could no longer dictate his memoirs, so he had to write his thoughts and his memoirs by hand. After a while his doctors started to grow concerned that writing the memoirs were the only thing that were keeping Grant alive. They became his will to live, and this was really the final and perhaps the greatest battle of Grant's life, to finish these memoirs with an impending death. So after eight months of writing, he finally put his finishing touches on his memoirs on July 19th, and just four days later Grant died.

The entire country was basically on death watch with Grant. Once the press found out about Grant, about the fact that he was sick, which a family tried to keep it secret, the press had had some clues and they started to gather outside of his home. This became national front page news almost every day, where the public was kept apprised of Grant's health, and they knew he was writing his memoirs to gain this financial security. But the fact is, if the book wasn't good, it wouldn't have sold. There was no great revelations in the book, it's not like Grant had told anything that the public really wasn't aware of, but it was Grant's voice. It was his authentic, plain speaking voice, his humility, his humor that was in there, that had never been conveyed by a president before, and was just so much better than the other Civil War memoirs due to his perspective as the victorious general. I mean, it wasn't only considered a great Civil War memoir, it is widely considered the greatest presidential memoir, or memoir by a president, that's ever been written in history. And it's just fascinating because he'd never written before, he never wrote a book before. Well, it was the largest amount that had ever been earned by an author up until that time. No other author in history had ever earned what Julia had earned on behalf of Grant. The royalties ended up being between about $420 to $450,000.

Now, in today's money, that's about $12 to $13 million. What this meant was that Julia, who lived another 17 years after Grant, never had to worry about money for the rest of her life. All because of Grant's final battle in writing his memoirs.

And a great job on the production by Monty Montgomery, and a special thanks to Louis Picone. His book, Grant's Tomb, go to Amazon or the usual suspects and pick it up. What a life, and what a way to end life. My goodness, looking at an impending death, pushing out a book that Mark Twain publishes. And my goodness, not a bad track record for Mark Twain, his first two. Huck Finn and then Grant's memoirs. And by the way, pick up Grant's memoirs. You can't stop reading them.

It's not like reading presidential memoirs today with five ghost writers. Grant's memoirs here on Our American Story. Art exhibits, interactive installations, and more.

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