by Ron Chernow
Twain knew he was muscling in on the Century’s cozy deal with Grant and could be accused of sharp practice as well. So he concocted a story about walking home in the rain from a lecture when he fleetingly overheard two shadowy figures mention Grant’s decision to publish his memoirs. If Twain had no scruples about stealing Grant from the Century, Grant was more honorable. When he told Twain that demanding such exorbitant royalties would place him in the position of a robber, the famous author was ready with a witticism: “I said that if he regarded that as a crime it was because his education had been neglected. I said it was not a crime, and was always rewarded in heaven with two halos.”33 When Grant asked what publisher would possibly accede to such conditions, Twain said any reputable publisher in America. Still Grant balked at deserting the Century. “To his military mind and training it seemed disloyalty,” recalled Twain.34 The next day, the author returned with a novel proposition: “Sell me the Memoirs, General.”35 He proposed a 20 percent royalty or 70 percent of net profits and offered to write a $50,000 check on the spot.
It took Grant time to fathom the wisdom and morality of Twain’s superior offer. Sweetening the terms, Twain offered to give Grant living expenses as he composed the book and even offered Jesse a place on the publishing house staff—no trifling incentive for Grant as he fretted about his family. As he mulled over Twain’s offer, Grant must have recalled how many times he had been fleeced in his life. For once he would not allow himself to be shortchanged. “On reexamining the Contract prepared by the Century people,” he told George Childs, “I see that it is all in favor of the publisher, with nothing left for the Author.”36 Grant leaned toward the 70 percent profit plan in which he would make money only if Twain did too, but the latter tried to convince him that the 20 percent royalty was a better deal for him. In the end, the honorable Grant insisted on the 70 percent profit arrangement.
By January, Grant’s condition had deteriorated and he required daily visits from Drs. Douglas and Shrady. When he meditated a therapeutic trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas, the doctors told him he was too weak to make the journey. Formerly robust and brawny, Grant began to lose flesh rapidly, shedding thirty pounds. At one point, Julia was told the “dreadful truth” by the doctors, but could not accept it: “I could not believe that God . . . would take this great, wise, good man from us, to whom he was so necessary and so beloved.”37 Her whole life had revolved around her husband and she tried to face the stark truth as bravely as she could. “Genl Grant is very, very ill,” she told a friend on February 28. “I cannot write how ill—my tears blind me.”38
With Julia having sold her property in Washington, the Grants lived in passable comfort again. Both Twain and Charles Webster visited constantly, preaching the virtues of their publishing house. They brought a leather-bound edition of Huckleberry Finn, inscribed to Fred’s daughter, Julia, who remembered Twain “with his shaggy mane of long white hair, waving or carelessly tossed about his low brow, and his protruding eyebrows, which almost hid the deep-set eyes shining beneath them.” She thought him a “crazy man, and I would draw close to one or another of the grown-ups when he was around.”39 Soon Fred Grant was paging through Huckleberry Finn by candlelight.
Behind closed doors, Twain and Webster went wild with excitement at the prospect of landing Grant’s memoirs. “There’s big money for us both in that book,” Webster told Twain, “and on the terms indicated in my note to the General we can make it pay big.”40 Returning from a lecture tour in late February, Twain was taken aback by how gray and haggard Grant had grown. “I mean you shall have the book—I have about made up my mind to that,” Grant reassured him, but he wanted to write first to Roswell Smith of the Century Company “and tell him I have so decided. I think this is due him.”41 Once again, Grant instinctively did the decent thing. As Twain was leaving, Fred pulled him aside and divulged that doctors thought his father might have only a few weeks to live—news that didn’t deter Twain from the deal.
On February 27, 1885, Grant signed a contract with Charles L. Webster and Company and Twain rushed a much-needed thousand-dollar check into his hands. “It was a shameful thing,” recalled Twain, “that a man who had saved his country and its government from destruction should still be in a position where so small a sum—$1000—could be looked upon as a godsend.”42 The news, announced a few days later, created a hubbub in the press. The memoirs would be sold by subscription in two-volume boxed sets, lessening reliance on reviews, and Twain mapped out a sales campaign worthy of Grant’s military efficiency. He divided the country into sixteen sections with as many general agents, who would oversee an army of ten thousand door-to-door canvassers. They would follow a sales manual that sounded like Twain shouting through a megaphone. They were told to eschew “the Bull Run voice” and “keep pouring hot shot” into the hapless customer until he signed on the dotted line. Not missing a trick, Twain would have retired veterans knocking on doors, asking people to help out their old general. Twain hailed this campaign as “the vastest book enterprise the world has ever seen.”43
On March 1, 1885, The New York Times ran a headline that robbed Ulysses and Julia Grant of any remaining hope: “Grant Is Dying.” The subhead continued: “Dying Slowly from Cancer; Gravely Ill; Sinking into the Grave; Gen. Grant’s Friends Give up Hope.”44 The article, not mincing words, quoted Grant’s doctors as saying that he had only a few months to live “and that his death may occur in a short time.”45 It pointed out that Grant had been advised by Dr. Da Costa to see his physician but had dangerously deferred the visit. By the next day, the national press corps had camped outside the East Sixty-Sixth Street residence. The extraordinary outpouring of bipartisan concern blotted out the scandals of Grant’s presidency and restored him to his rightful niche in the American pantheon. Hundreds of sympathetic messages piled up at the Grant residence, including telegrams from Jefferson Davis and the sons of Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston. A black man from Washington, George M. Arnold, told Fred Grant “to let Gen Grant know how the Colored people of this country feel towards him, how they love honir [sic] and pray for him.”46
Grant was stunned by the grim prognosis of the newspapers. “That his days were numbered was an intimation for which he was not prepared,” wrote Badeau.47 At times, he hobbled over to the window and gazed at the correspondents keeping a constant vigil outside his windows, offering them a wan smile. The power of the new mass media made Grant’s illness a national spectacle, with his doctors offering twice-daily updates on his condition. Grant had always been at his best when dealing with the hard realities of life and he accepted his plight with majestic fortitude.
Grant’s illness gave fresh impetus to efforts to relieve his financial distress. He still hoped to be placed on the army retired list with the rank and full pay of general, which would endow him with $13,500 per annum. When President Arthur proposed a special pension for him, he hotly resisted, believing this would tag him as an object of charity. William Tecumseh Sherman opposed Grant’s restoration to the army retired list, preferring an outright pension, telling Senator John Logan that “to give the president the right to place General Grant on duty as a full General on our small Peace Establishment, will lead to intrigues damaging to the Army, and making the situation of both Genl Sheridan & myself most uncomfortable.”48 Sherman’s view soon found its way into the press, and when Logan transmitted it to Grant, he grew indignant. “He is not looking after the interests of the Army,” Grant snapped, “nor do I believe he represents their feeling in regard to the bill you champion.”49 It was yet another proof of the private war Sherman had waged against Grant, usually without the latter’s knowledge. Perhaps embarrassed by the disclosure, Sherman began to lobby to restore Grant to the army list.
On February 16, the anniversary of Fort Donelson’s fall, the retirement bill was voted down, leaving Grant sorely disappointed. Then the New York Times story on his illness altered the political atmosphere in Washington, resuscitating t
he bill’s prospects. Time, however, was short: the new Democratic president, Grover Cleveland, would be sworn in at noon on March 4. When Congress adjourned on the night of March 3 without passing the bill, Grant despaired. “You know during the last day of a session everything is in turmoil,” he reflected. “Such a thing cannot possibly be passed.”50 On the morning of March 4, in an extraordinary sequence of events, the House approved the bill right before the noon deadline. Senators had already adjourned to the Capitol for the inauguration. They were abruptly rounded up and herded back into the Senate chamber, the hands of the clock were turned back twenty minutes, and, to tempestuous applause, they approved Grant’s bill. Chester Arthur hurried to the Capitol to sign it. As his last presidential act, he nominated Grant, and President Cleveland renewed his commission as general of the army. Chester Arthur instructed the president pro tempore of the Senate to send Grant a congratulatory telegram.
Mark Twain was with Grant when it arrived and witnessed the tremendous tonic it administered to his spirits, likening it to “raising the dead.”51 All those present knew it was Grant’s fervent wish to die a full general and they stood there brimming with emotion. Only Grant could contain his emotions. “He read the telegram, but not a shade or suggestion of a change exhibited itself in his iron countenance,” Twain said. “The volume of his emotion was greater than all the other emotions there present combined, but he was able to suppress all expression of it and make no sign.”52 Typically laconic, Grant said, “I am grateful the thing has passed.” Julia was ebullient: “Hurrah, they have brought us back our old commander.”53 That same day, the army’s adjutant general officially notified Grant of his reappointment and, in his own hand, Grant slowly scrawled his reply. “I accept the position of General of the Army on the retired list.”54
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EVEN AS HIS ENERGY EBBED, and despite gruesome pain, Grant applied himself to his manuscript with steady dedication, his memory unfailingly retentive. Sometimes he napped and returned to writing when he awoke and often lengthened his working day by writing after dinner. Observing his ardor, Edwards Pierrepont speculated that Grant “wanted to take advantage of every moment to hasten the work that will probably be the last labor of his life.”55 Now a regular visitor at Grant’s house, Twain prevailed upon him to hire the stenographer Noble E. Dawson, who set to work and admired how Grant “made very few changes and never hemmed and hawed.” As he dealt with sharp mouth pain, Grant tried to master a new but laborious way of speaking without moving his tongue. The day Dawson showed Twain the manuscript of the first volume, the writer was “astonished . . . and said there was not one literary man in one hundred who furnished as clear a copy as Grant.”56 As a result, Twain’s editing was mostly restricted to trivial matters of grammar and punctuation.
Grant took time out to settle one score. Elihu Root, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, was prosecuting Grant & Ward partner James D. Fish for violating national banking laws and Grant was eager to give a deposition. When lawyers arrived at East Sixty-Sixth Street on March 26, they found Grant in an armchair, ensconced before a hickory wood fire, wearing a skullcap and dressing gown. He testified for three-quarters of an hour, sometimes flinching with pain. If harsh in denouncing Fish and Ward, Grant was toughest on himself, admitting he had never perused the firm’s monthly statements. Asked whether he had ever mistrusted Ferdinand Ward, he replied, “I had no mistrust of Mr. Ward the night before the failure, not the slightest . . . It took me a day or two to believe it was possible that Ward had committed the act he had.”57
At the close of the deposition, the lawyers lingered to chat with Grant. “You’re certainly looking remarkably well,” one said, but Grant disagreed, ruefully shaking his head. “I am conscious of the fact that I am a very sick man.”58 His testimony, read aloud in court, made a huge impression. Fish was sentenced to ten years in Auburn Prison, later commuted to four years; Ferdinand Ward would serve six years in Sing Sing. By forcing Grant to relive the Grant & Ward nightmare, the deposition exacted a terrible bodily toll and within hours he experienced a wrenching cough and had to be doused with cocaine and morphine.
On March 29, Grant awoke gasping from a restless sleep, couldn’t clear his throat secretions, and succumbed to violent coughs. It took two hours before the doctors arrived and Grant’s family thought he might expire in the interim. Doctors plied him with injections of brandy and ammonia—national temperance groups objected to the brandy—and dislodged objects wedged in his throat, but he underwent another terrifying episode two hours later, crying out in a strangled voice, “I can’t stand it! I am going to die!”59 Doctors applied chloroform to quiet him and mitigate the pain. Dr. Fordyce Barker blamed the deposition for weakening Grant, whose deeply lined face showed complete exhaustion. Dr. Shrady gloomily informed the press, “It is doubtful if the General’s health could stand another choking attack.”60 By April 4, Grant had bounced back unexpectedly and Dr. Douglas teased him, “General, we propose to keep to this line if it takes all summer,” which elicited a smile from Grant.61
Around this time he performed a ceremony that he had contemplated for some time. He asked Fred to compose a letter requesting a future president of the United States to appoint his grandson Ulysses (Fred’s son) as a West Point cadet. Grant summoned family members and doctors as witnesses before he affixed his signature to the document. It was such a solemn gesture for him that as he folded the paper, a hush gripped the room. In 1898 President William McKinley would honor the request by appointing Ulysses S. Grant III, later a major general, to the academy.
Easter Day that year dawned bright and clear, and large crowds promenaded along Fifth Avenue, many pausing at the corner of East Sixty-Sixth Street to gaze concernedly at Grant’s town house. From the bay window, Dr. Shrady observed the swelling crowd mingling on the sidewalk below. The scene abounded with reporters, but ordinary citizens also gathered there, often weeping. Grant took his cane, shuffled to the window, and, screened by curtains, pondered the multitude. “I am very grateful to them,” he told the doctor, who suggested, “Why not tell them so, General?”62 Shrady pointed out that newspaper readers might appreciate a direct message from him. “Very well,” said Grant. As Shrady grabbed a yellow paper, Grant dictated: “General Grant wishes it stated that he is very much touched by, and very grateful for, the sympathy and interest manifested for him by his friends and by those”—here he momentarily wavered—“who have not been regarded as such.”63 Adam Badeau cheered, “Splendid! Splendid! Stop right there, General Grant! I would not say another word.” After minor edits, the statement went out to newspapers across America.
As cancerous sores spread in Grant’s mouth, Dr. Shrady studied his courteous, gentlemanly patient, the “far-off look” in his eyes and his meditative mood.64 “He had the gentlest disposition, like that of an unspoiled young girl.”65 Shrady said Grant knew his disease was terminal and that he could only look forward to more grisly pain. Nonetheless, he discussed his symptoms clinically, even taking his own pulse, a scientific detachment that had served him well in battle. “Brave though he had been on the battlefield, his courage in facing death from an incurable disease was not only a revelation but an inspiration,” Shrady wrote.66
A couple of days after Easter, Grant was “seized with a severe fit of coughing . . . followed by a hemorrhage of arterial blood,” reported one newspaper, which didn’t think he would survive the night.67 Grant awoke to a telegram from Queen Victoria, inquiring anxiously after his health, followed two weeks later by one from Prime Minister William Gladstone. As Grant approached the twentieth anniversary of Appomattox, he suffered no illusions. “My chances, I think, of pulling through this are one in a hundred.”68 Privately, Fred Dent sounded even more dubious, writing that his brother-in-law was “going to die soon unless a miracle saves him.”69
Neither morbid nor mournful, Grant faced his mortality in clear-eyed fashion and his sensible nature never deserted him
. A lifelong Methodist, he had always viewed religious excess with a certain irony, having once told a clutch of ministers that America boasted three parties: Democrats, Republicans, and Methodists. The Reverend John P. Newman now became a familiar face at East Sixty-Sixth Street. When he led the family in evening prayers, Grant found the experience a bit trying. Fred said his father was a good Christian but “not a praying man,” yet Grant allowed Newman to pray for him to soothe Julia. Grant had never been baptized. On the night of April 1, when he had a terrible ordeal that required morphine, Julia asked Dr. Newman to baptize him. When Grant awoke, Newman informed him that he was about to baptize him—“Thank you, Doctor,” the patient replied, “I intended to take that step myself”—and applied water to Grant’s brow from a silver bowl. Jesse Grant insisted his father was unconscious when baptized and grew “annoyed and indignant” when he found out what had happened, but said nothing for fear of upsetting Julia.70
Dr. Newman became a controversial figure as he issued grandiose pronouncements on the state of Grant’s soul, crediting his recovery from the April 1 crisis to the power of prayer. A foe of cant, Mark Twain was aghast at Newman’s statements and wrote him off as a mountebank: “It is fair to presume that most of Newman’s daily reports originated in his own imagination.”71 Buck’s father-in-law, former senator Chaffee, also condemned Newman’s shameless efforts to distort Grant’s religiosity: “General Grant does not believe that Doctor Newman’s prayers will save him. He allows the doctor to pray simply because he does not want to hurt his feelings.”72 When Newman told Grant that God wanted to employ him for “a great spiritual mission,” Grant deflated his rhetoric by inquiring, “Can he cure cancer?”73
