From "THE TRUE ULYSSES S. GRANT." Chapter XXXVIII. Copyright,
1914, by J. B. Lippincott Co.
Long months before the melancholy failure of that ill-omened bank, the
General had told Badeau of the fabulous profits the firm was
realizing, and Badeau went to their old comrade of the war and White
House days--to Horace Porter--and asked that reticent but experienced
soldier-citizen his opinion, and Porter solemnly shook his head. Such
profits, he said, were impossible in a business honestly conducted.
But Grant saw on every side men by the dozen who had started with less
than his modest capital and had gathered fortunes in Wall Street. He
was so confident in the sagacity and judgment of Ulysses, Jr., that he
invested his every dollar with the firm and reinvested every penny of
the profits which he did not lavish on his loved ones or on his
followers and friends. Like Thackeray's most lovable hero, Colonel
Newcome, he thought to share his good fortune with many of his kith
and kin and urged their sending their savings to be invested for them
by brilliant young "Buck" and his sagacious partner--that wonderful
wizard of finance, Mr. Ward. Aside from the chagrin of seeing some of
his recommendations disregarded, and certain of his opponents regarded
first by Mr. Garfield and later by Mr. Arthur, General Grant was
living in those years a life of ease, luxury, and freedom from care as
never before he had enjoyed. Julia Dent was as ever first and foremost
in his world, but the children were the source of pride and joy
unmistakable. Devoted, dutiful, and loyal they unquestionably were,
but Grant believed of his first born that he was destined to become
renowned as a general, and of "Buck" and Jesse that they were born
financiers and business men. As for Princess Nellie, the father's love
and yearning for that one daughter of his house and name was beyond
all measure. No man ever loved home, wife, and children more tenderly,
more absorbingly.
Although widely scattered at the time, this heart-united household had
been anticipating a blithe and merry Christmas at the close of the
year 1883. When he was alighting from his carriage just before
midnight, with the welcoming chimes pealing on the frosty air, the
General's foot slipped on the icy pavement, he fell heavily, a muscle
snapped in the thigh, possibly one of those injured twenty years
earlier, the day of that fateful stumble at Carrollton, and he was
carried into the house, never thereafter to leave it in health or
strength.
Crutches again, and later a cane, long were necessary. In March, they
took him to Fortress Monroe so that he could hobble about in the soft
air and sunshine. In April he was back again in Gotham, able to drive
his favorite team, but not to walk. On Sunday, the 4th day of May, the
wizard partner, Ward, came into their home and quite casually
announced that the Marine Bank of New York, in which Grant & Ward had
large deposits, needed perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
to tide them over a temporary difficulty. If General Grant could
borrow that much over Monday, Grant & Ward would not have to lose a
cent; otherwise they stood to lose perhaps fifty or sixty thousand. Of
course the lender would lose nothing, said Ward, as there was a
million, at least, of securities in the vaults.
The world knows the rest--how unsuspiciously our General called on his
friend and fellow horseman, Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, said that he
needed one hundred and fifty thousand for a day or so, and came away
with a cheque for that amount. For no other man probably would Mr.
Vanderbilt have parted unsecured with such a sum. The cheque was
promptly endorsed and turned over to Mr. Ward, who took it
unconcernedly and then his leave.
Tuesday morning, May 6th, believing himself a millionaire and the
brief indebtedness to Vanderbilt already cancelled, Grant alighted at
the Wall Street office to find an ominous gathering. "Father, you had
better go home--the bank has failed," said Ulysses, Jr., with misery
in his eyes, but Grant stayed to investigate. Badeau, the faithful,
hastening in at noon, found the old chief seated in the rear office,
calm in the midst of stress and storm. "We are all ruined here," he
simply said. Ward had vanished, the key of the vaults with him, and
when they were finally opened, the boasted "securities" were found to
be but shadows. The ruin was complete.
Everything they had--all the beautiful gifts, trophies, souvenirs,
even the little houses owned by Mrs. Grant in Washington, and the
repurchased Dent property about St. Louis--had to be sold. Grant
insisted, though it left them, for the time at least, absolutely
penniless. It had dragged down others with them; it involved his
honored name in a whirlpool of censure, criticism, and calumny that
well-nigh crushed him. Fallen from such supremely high estate, the
insults and indignities that beset him now far outweighed the slights
and sneers that had been his portion in the days of his earlier
humiliation. Over the depths of the misery that had come to him in his
old and recently honored age let us draw the curtain. No man on earth
could know the suffering it cost him. Only one woman could faintly
see. Helping hands there were outstretched to him instanter, and money
to meet the immediate need. Then, as the storm subsided and the extent
of Ward's villainy and Grant's innocence became known, new measures
were taken to provide against absolute want. A trust fund had already
been raised. A measure was speedily set on foot to restore to Grant
the rank and pay which he had surrendered on assuming the presidency,
and a modest competence would thus be insured him and those he loved.
There was a home in which to live. They could even spend the summers
at the seashore. There were offers of congenial occupation that might
have proved mildly lucrative. There was measurable return to hope and
possible health. There had never been complaint or repining. To all
about him he had been gentleness, consideration, kindliness itself.
There was just one cause of new, yet slight anxiety:
All through that summer of '84, while at Long Branch, his throat had
been giving him pain, and a Philadelphia physician, examining it for
the first time late in September, advised, even urged, says Badeau,
his consulting a specialist on returning to town. For a time he took
no heed. He was writing now, long hours each day, but at last he
called, as further urged by his own physician, upon that distinguished
expert, Dr. J. H. Douglas, and that evening calmly admitted that the
trouble in his throat was cancerous in tendency. And that this was
true, the fact that he suddenly dropped the luxury of all the days
that had followed Donelson--his cigar--and the sufferings that
followed in November and December proved beyond possibility of
doubt....
And meanwhile a nation stood with bated breath and watched and prayed.
Crowds gathered about the house and importuned the physicians for
tidings. Congress had passed amid scenes of emphatic popular approval
a bill restoring him again to the generalship of old--almost the last
act signed by Mr. Arthur before leaving, as it was almost the first
commission signed by Mr. Cleveland after entering, the White House.
Then presently, for quiet and for better air, as all remember, they
bore him to the Drexel cottage at Mount McGregor, near Saratoga
Springs, and here, his voice utterly gone, compelled to make his
wishes known by signs, compelled to complete the pages of his Memoirs
with pad and pencil, our stricken soldier indomitably held to his
self-appointed task, once more "fighting it out on this line if it
took all summer." Never even at Shiloh, in front of Vicksburg, or in
the fire-flashing Wilderness was he more tenacious, determined,
heroic, for now intense suffering accompanied almost every move and
moment. Physicians were constantly at hand; Fred, the devoted son,
ever at his side. Here there came to see him and to sympathize old
comrades--even old enemies--of the war days, all thought of rancor
buried now. Here, just as thirty years earlier he had hastened to
offer aid, came Buckner (and this time unprotesting) in unconditional
surrender; for beneath the shadow of that hovering wing the last
vestige of sectional pride gave way to fond memories of the old and
firm friendship. Here, almost as the twilight deepened into the gloom
of night eternal, they bore him the tribute of honor and respect from
men whom he had vehemently opposed--foeman-in-chief to the Union,
Jefferson Davis, and soldier-candidate and political foe, Winfield S.
Hancock. Here they read him letters, telegrams, editorials from every
corner of the Union he had striven to weld and secure, every line
telling of worldwide sympathy, honor, and affection. Here, almost at
the last, he penciled those farewell pages of those fruitful volumes,
which, whatever his earlier defects in style, have been declared
classic in modern literature. Here, ere the light went out forever, he
wrote the pathetic missive, his final words of love, longing, and
devotion to the wife whom he held peerless among women, to the
children whom he loved with infinite tenderness, and for whose future
comfort, even in the face of such persistent torment and impending
death, he had labored to the very last.
And then, as he completed the final paragraph--the story of his
soldier-life and services--and with faltering hand signed the final
letter, he closed his wearied eyes upon the group that hovered ever
about him, eager to garner every look and whisper, and so the long
fight ended, even as it had begun, almost without a sigh. Apparently
without consciousness of pain, certainly without struggle or
suffering, surrounded by that devoted household--wife, sons, and only
daughter--the greatest of our warriors passed onward into the valley
of shadows, and to immortality.
Thirty years have passed since that which struck from our muster rolls
the name of our first and foremost general--thirty years, as these
pages are given to the light, since that summer day on which, with the
highest honors and the greatest retinue ever accorded to American
citizen or soldier, the flag-enshrouded casket was borne almost the
length of all Manhattan; Hancock, the superb on many a battlefield,
heading the league-long procession of soldiery, the world-garnered
dignitaries from every state and clime. Amidst the solemn thunder of
the guns of the warships moored along the Hudson, the farewell volleys
of the troops aligned along the heights, in the presence of the
President and cabinet, the supreme court and the diplomatic corps, the
governors of nearly every commonwealth, eminent soldiers, sailors,
veterans of the Civil War, the gray mingling with the blue, and all
engulfed in a vast multitude of mourners, the final prayers were said,
the last benediction spoken, and under the shadow of the beloved flag
he had served with such fidelity and to such eminent purpose, they
laid to rest the honored soldier whose valiant service had secured to
them and to their posterity the blessings of union, progress, and
tranquility, and whose crowning message to the nation he had restored
was the simple admonition, "Let us have peace."
And in those thirty years the people of our land have had abundant
time to study and to reflect. Each succeeding year adds to their
reverence for their greatest friend, leader, and statesman, Abraham
Lincoln. Each succeeding year seems to increase their appreciation of
their greatest soldier, Ulysses Grant, and yet it sometimes seems as
though in the magnitude of the obstacles overcome, the immensity of
the military problems solved, the supreme soldiership of the man has
blinded us for the time to the other virtues, less heroic, perhaps,
yet not less marked and true, virtues as son, as husband, father, and
friend, not often equalled in other men, if ever excelled....
And was not his a marvelous career? Cradled in the cottage, he spoke
for years from the seat of the mightiest. Chosen and trained for his
country's wars, he loved best the arts of peace. Schooled as a
regular, he to the fullest extent and from the very first believed in
the volunteer. Ignored by book and bureau soldiers at the start,
despite the fine record of the Mexican campaigns, indebted to a
Western governor for the opportunity refused him by the War
Department, he held his modest way, uncomplaining, asking only to be
made of use. One year had raised him from the twilight of a Western
town to the triumph of Donelson; two years made him the victor of
Vicksburg, the head of the armies of the West; three had set him in
supreme command, deferred to even by those who late as '62 had sought
to down him; four and the sword of the chivalric Lee was his to do
with as he would--the rebellion crushed, the war ended--and then, with
our martyred Lincoln lying in the grave ever watered by a nation's
tears, small wonder was it that twice the people held Grant long years
at their head, and when he had returned, from that globe-circling
triumphal progress, in large numbers would again have called him to
the White House, an uncrowned monarch, the chosen of sovereign
citizens. Was he greater then than in the chain of ills that followed?
Tricked by those he trusted, himself unskilled in guile, ruined
financially by those he had been taught to hold infallible, and
finally confronted by the dread conviction that, though barely beyond
the prime of life, his days were numbered--was he ever amid the
thunder of saluting cannon and the cheers of countless multitudes so
great as when, with the grim destroyer clutching at his throat, he
fought for life that through those matchless Memoirs he might earn the
means to wipe out every possible obligation and provide in modest
comfort, at least, for those he loved and must soon leave to mourn
him? In those last heroic days at Mt. McGregor he stood revealed in
his silent suffering, the ideal of devotion, endurance, and
determination, until, his great work done, his toil and trials ended,
his sword long since sheathed, his pen now dropping from the wearied,
nerveless hand, he could turn to the Peace Ineffable and sink to
rest--our greatest soldier--our honored President--our foremost
citizen. Aye, soldier, statesman, loyal citizen he was; and yet more,
for in purity of life, in love of home and wife and children, in
integrity unchallenged, in truth and honor unblemished, in manner
simplicity itself--though ever coupled with that quiet dignity that
made him peer among the princes of the earth--in speech so clean that
oath or execration never soiled his lips, unswerving in his faith, a
martyr to his friendships, merciful to the fallen, magnanimous to the
foe, magnificent in self-discipline, was he not also, and in all that
the grand old name implies, Grant--the gentleman?