REVERSES OF FORTUNE--ILL HEALTH--HIS LAST VICTORY--THE END
General Grant now made his home in the city of New York. He was not
wealthy, and he desired to be. The only persons he seemed to envy, and
particularly to court, were those who had great possessions. He coveted
a fortune that should place his family beyond any chance of poverty.
This weakness was his undoing. He became the private partner of an
unscrupulous schemer and robber, and intrusted to him all that he had,
and more, to be adventured in speculation. His name was dishonored in
Wall Street by association with a scoundrel whom prudent financiers
distrusted and shunned. He was warned, but would not heed the warnings.
The charitable view is that he was deceived by repayments which he was
told were profits. On May 6, 1884, a crisis came and Grant was ruined.
He gave up everything he possessed in the struggle to redeem his honor,
even the presents and trophies which had been lavishly bestowed upon
him. This savior of his country and recipient of its grateful
generosity, who was but lately the guest of the princes of the earth,
became dependent upon pitying friends for shelter and bread, until
enterprising editors of magazines began competing for contributions from
his pen.
And, as if his misfortunes were not yet sufficiently desperate, illness
came. A malignant, incurable cancer appeared in his mouth. He stood face
to face with the last enemy, the always victorious one, and realized
that the rest of life was but a few months of increasing torture. Then
the magnificent courage of his soul asserted itself in fortitude
unequaled at Donelson, or Vicksburg, or Chattanooga, or the Wilderness.
No eye saw him quail; no ear heard him complain.
It was suggested that if he would write a book, an autobiographical
memoir, the profit of it, doubtless, would place his family above want.
Nothing can be imagined more unacceptable to General Grant's native
disposition than the narration for the public of his own life story. But
in his circumstances, the question was not one of sentiment, but only of
duty to those who were dependent upon him. The task was undertaken
resolutely, and, in spite of physical weakness and suffering, was
carried on with as high and faithful energy as he had shown in any
campaign of the war. On March 3, 1885, he was restored to the army with
the rank of general on the retired list with full pay. He was glad; but
in his feebleness joy was as hard to bear as grief. He began failing
more rapidly.
In June he was taken to the sweet tonic air of a cottage on Mount
McGregor, near Saratoga. Here, in pleasant weather, he could sit in the
open air and enjoy the agreeable prospect. But whether indoors or out,
he toiled at the book in every possible moment, writing with a pencil on
tablets while he had strength, then dictating in almost inaudible
whispers, little by little, to an amanuensis. So, toilsomely, through
intense suffering, sustained by indomitable will, this legacy to his
family and the world was completed to the end of the war. His last
battle was won. Four days after the victory, he died, July 23, 1885. The
book had a success beyond all sanguine expectations, and accomplished
the purpose of its author. To his countrymen it was a revelation of the
heart of the man, Ulysses Grant, in its nobility, its simplicity, and
its charity, that has endeared him beyond any knowledge afforded by the
outward manifestations of his life.
His conversations in his last days, as reported by visitors to Mount
McGregor (among these was General Buckner, who surrendered Fort
Donelson), show a soul serene and cheerful, devoted to his country, to
humanity, and to peace. No experiences of malevolence and injury had
shaken his trust in the goodness of the great majority of mankind.
When the great soldier died he owned no uniform in which he could be
suitably attired for the grave, no sword to be laid on his coffin. His
body lies in the magnificent tomb, erected by the voluntary
contributions of admiring citizens, the commanding attraction of a
beautiful park overlooking the broad Hudson as it sweeps past the
nation's chief city. Already this resting place has become a veritable
shrine of patriotism. Military and naval pageants make it their proper
goal, as when, after Santiago, the returning battleships moved in
stately procession up the Hudson to the tomb of our national military
hero, there to thunder forth the triumphant salute, like a summons to
his spirit to bestow an approval.
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The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
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