Vol. 114
THE LAST CAMPAIGN OF ULYSSES S. GRANT
BY DUSTY SANGGrowing up, I was privileged to hold Presidential documents signed by Ulysses S. Grant and to view photographs of him taken by Mathew Brady because my grandfather was the foremost collector of such things. I was always fascinated by Grant’s grit.
Somewhere along the way, I learned there was a special relationship between Grant and the great American writer and humorist, Mark Twain. Watching the latest Mark Twain Awards Ceremony the other night, I thought it time to do a little exploring and what follows is a tale of inspirational proportions.
In the final year of his life, Ulysses S. Grant fought one last fight. It was not against armies or rival generals, but against illness, financial ruin and time itself.
By 1884, Grant was sixty-two years old, widely respected as the Union general who had defeated the Confederacy and as the nation’s eighteenth president. Yet within months he would lose his entire fortune and learn that he was dying of throat cancer. The only way he believed he could protect his wife from poverty was to write the story of the Civil War before his strength ran out.
Standing beside him during this final struggle was an unlikely ally: Mark Twain. Twain would become editor, publisher, promoter and champion of the book that emerged from Grant’s last months, entitled Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.
The Presidency
Ulysses S. Grant served as the 18th President of the United States from March 4, 1869 to March 4, 1877. He entered the presidency as the most celebrated Union general of the Civil War, having accepted the surrender of Robert E. Lee at the Appomattox Court House. His administration focused heavily on Reconstruction, enforcing civil rights for formerly enslaved people, and attempting to stabilize the post-war South.
Although Grant personally maintained a reputation for honesty, his presidency was overshadowed by several major corruption scandals that involved members of his administration, including the Whiskey Ring and the Credit Mobilier scandal (which began during the previous administration but continued to affect Washington politics during Grant’s presidency).
Despite these controversies, modern historians often reassess Grant more favorably, particularly for his commitment to protecting the civil rights of Black Americans during Reconstruction.
After leaving office in 1877, Grant embarked on a world tour and later settled in New York.
Catastrophe on Wall Street
Grant’s financial reversal began in 1884 with the collapse of the brokerage firm Grant & Ward. The firm’s young financial wizard, Ferdinand Ward, promised extraordinary investment returns and cultivated the trust of prominent clients.
Grant became involved largely because his son, Ulysses S. Grant Jr., known as “Buck,” was a partner in the firm. The younger Grant had been drawn into the business and encouraged his father to invest. Ward eagerly used the former president’s name to reassure investors.
Behind the scenes, however, Ward was operating a massive financial fraud. When the scheme collapsed in May 1884, the elder Grant discovered that his savings had disappeared. Because he had borrowed heavily to support the firm, he suddenly found himself facing financial ruin.
The hero of Appomattox was on the verge of bankruptcy.
For a man who had spent his life in public service and had never been comfortable with money, the humiliation was profound.
A Deadly Diagnosis
Soon after the financial collapse, Grant began suffering severe throat pain. Doctors diagnosed cancer, almost certainly caused by decades of heavy cigar smoking. The disease advanced quickly. Eating became difficult. Speaking often required writing notes instead of using his voice. Grant understood that his time was limited.
But he also realized that his reputation still carried enormous weight. If he could write his account of the Civil War, it might produce enough income to secure his wife’s future. Grant decided to write his memoirs.
Mark Twain Intervenes
At this critical moment, Mark Twain stepped forward.
Grant had initially agreed to publish articles about the war in a magazine for modest payment. Twain immediately recognized that the arrangement undervalued Grant’s story. He visited Grant and proposed something radically different.
Through his own publishing firm, Twain offered Grant an unprecedented 70% of the book’s profits, an extraordinary royalty for the era.
Twain’s reasons were both personal and practical. He admired Grant and believed the nation owed him a debt. At the same time, Twain understood that a memoir written by the Union’s most famous general would be a publishing event of enormous scale.
Grant accepted the offer and his race against death began.
Writing Against Time
Grant started writing in late 1884 while living in New York. As his health worsened, he moved to Mount McGregor in the Adirondacks, hoping the cooler mountain air would ease his suffering.
Visitors who saw him there were stunned. Grant had grown thin and weak, often unable to speak above a whisper. Yet he continued writing every day.
He wrote with the same clarity and discipline that had defined his military leadership. The narrative covered the great campaigns of the Civil War, Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and the relentless campaign against Robert E. Lee that ended with Lee’s surrender.
There was little bitterness in Grant’s account. Instead, the prose was direct, calm and remarkably fair even toward former enemies. Writing became his final battlefield.
Twain the Publisher
While Grant struggled to finish the manuscript, Twain orchestrated the publishing effort.
He read drafts, encouraged Grant constantly and designed an ambitious national marketing strategy. Twain organized thousands of sales agents who would travel across the country taking advance orders through a subscription campaign.
The book would be issued in elegant two-volume editions, richly illustrated and handsomely bound. Twain promoted the memoir as the final words of a dying national hero.
Behind the scenes he carefully structured the finances so that Julia Grant would receive the full benefit of the book’s success.
Grant’s Final Victory
Grant completed the manuscript in July 1885. Three days later, on July 23, he died at Mount McGregor. The nation mourned. His funeral in New York City drew one of the largest public crowds in American history. But Twain’s campaign had only begun.
A Publishing Phenomenon
The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant appeared later that year, published by Charles L. Webster & Company, a subscription publishing company founded by Twain and managed by his nephew-in-law, Charles L. Webster, that also published Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
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| Personal Memoirs - U. S. Grant (First Edition) |
Twain’s strategy proved brilliant. The subscription campaign sold about 300,000 sets, an astonishing figure for the nineteenth century. The royalties generated roughly $450,000, the equivalent of many millions today. Julia Grant would never face poverty.
Twain later said that helping Grant’s family through the book was one of the proudest achievements of his life.
A Literary Surprise
The memoir’s success was not based solely on public sympathy. Readers and critics quickly recognized that Grant had produced something extraordinary. His writing was clear, honest and free of self-glorification. The book read less like propaganda and more like the measured report of a soldier explaining events as they happened. Mark Twain called it “a literary masterpiece.” Historians still regard it as one of the greatest military memoirs ever written.
The Last Campaign
Grant had spent his life fighting wars and crises from the battlefields of the Civil War to the political struggles of Reconstruction. His final battle, however, was fought with a pencil and a failing body.
With the help of Mark Twain, and with the tragic financial misjudgment that had drawn him into the investment scheme through his son, Grant turned disaster into legacy. He left the nation its clearest firsthand account of the Civil War. And he ensured that his wife would be secure.
It was the last campaign of Ulysses S. Grant that began with: “‘Man proposes and God disposes.’ There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice.”
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