Famous American Statesmen

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

On his return to America, at San Francisco and Sacramento, thousands gathered to see him. At Chicago, he said, in addressing the Army of the Tennessee, "Let us be true to ourselves, avoid all bitterness and ill-feeling, either on the part of sections or parties toward each other, and we need have no fear in future of maintaining the stand we have taken among nations, so far as opposition from foreign nations goes." In Philadelphia, where he was royally entertained by his friend Mr. George W. Childs, he said to the Grand Army of the Republic, "What I want to impress upon you is that you have a country to be proud of, and a country to fight for, and a country to die for if need be.... In no other country is the young and energetic man given such a chance by industry and frugality to acquire a competence for himself and family as in America. Abroad it is difficult for the poor man to make his way at all. All that is necessary is to know this in order that we may become better citizens." On his return to New York, he was presented by his friends with a home in that city, and also with the gift of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

He was soon prevailed upon to enter a banking firm with Ferdinand Ward and James D. Fish. The bank failed, Grant found himself financially ruined, and the two partners were sent to prison. He was now to struggle again for a living, as in the early days in the Galena leather store. A timely offer came from the Century magazine, to write his experiences in the Civil War. Very simply, so that an uneducated person could understand, Grant modestly and fairly described the great battles in which he was of necessity the central figure. Unused to literary labor, he bent himself to the task, working seven and eight hours a day.

On October 22, 1884, cancer developed in the throat, and for nine months Grant fought with death, till the two great volumes of his memoirs could be completed and given to the world, that his family might not be left dependent. Early in June, 1885, as he was failing rapidly, he was taken to Mt. McGregor, near Saratoga, where a cottage had been offered him by Mr. Joseph W. Drexel. He worked now more heroically than ever, till the last page was written, with the words: "The war has made us a nation of great power and intelligence. We have but little to do to preserve peace, happiness, and prosperity at home, and the respect of other nations. Our experience ought to teach us the necessity of the first; our power secures the latter.

"I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federal and Confederate. I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy; but I feel it within me that it is to be so. The universally kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last seemed to me the beginning of the answer to 'Let us have peace.'"

Night and day the nation watched for tidings from the bedside of the dying hero. At last, in July, when he knew that the end was near, he wrote an affectionate letter to the Julia Dent whom he had loved in his early manhood, and put it in his pocket, that she might read it after all was over. "Look after our dear children, and direct them in the paths of rectitude. It would distress me far more to think that one of them could depart from an honorable, upright, and virtuous life, than it would to know that they were prostrated on a bed of sickness from which they were never to arise alive. They have never given us any cause for alarm on their account, and I earnestly pray they never will.

"With these few injunctions and the knowledge I have of your love and affection, and of the dutiful affection of all our children, I bid you a final farewell, until we meet in another, and, I trust, a better world. You will find this on my person after my demise." Blessed home affection, that brightens all the journey, and makes human nature well-nigh divine!

On July 23, 1885, a few minutes before eight o'clock in the morning, the end came. In the midst of his children, Colonel Frederick, Ulysses, Jesse, and Nellie Grant-Sartoris, and his grandchildren, his wife bending over him, he sank to rest. In every city and town in the land there was genuine sorrow. Letters of sympathy came from all parts of the world. Before the body was put in its purple casket, the eldest son placed a plain gold ring upon the little finger of the right hand, the gift years before of his wife, but which had grown too large for the emaciated finger in life. In his pocket was placed a tiny package containing a lock of Mrs. Grant's hair, in a good-bye letter. Sweet and beautiful thought, to bury with our dead something which belongs to a loved one, that they may not sleep entirely alone!

"We shall wake, and remember, and understand." Let the world laugh at sentiment outwardly—the hearts of those who laugh are often hungering for affection!

The body, dressed in citizen's clothes, without military, was laid in the casket. Then, in the little cottage on the mountain-top, Dr. Newman, his pastor, gave a beautiful address, from the words, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." "His was the genius of common-sense, enabling him to contemplate all things in their true relations, judging what is true, useful, proper, expedient, and to adopt the best means to accomplish the largest ends. From this came his seriousness, thoughtfulness, penetration, discernment, firmness, enthusiasm, triumph.... Temperate without austerity; cautious without fear; brave without rashness; serious without melancholy, he was cheerful without frivolity. His constancy was not obstinacy; his adaptation was not fickleness. His hopefulness was not utopian. His love of justice was equalled only by his delight in compassion, and neither was sacrificed to the other.... The keenest, closest, broadest of all observers, he was the most silent of men. He lived within himself. His thought-life was most intense. His memory and his imagination were picture galleries of the world and libraries of treasured thought. He was a world to himself. His most intimate friends knew him only in part. He was fully and best known only to the wife of his bosom and the children of his loins. To them the man of iron will and nerve of steel was gentle, tender, and confiding, and to them he unfolded his beautiful religious life."

After the services, the body of the great soldier was placed upon the funeral car, and conveyed to Albany, where it lay in state at the Capitol. At midnight dirges were sung, while eager multitudes passed by looking upon the face of the dead. Arriving in New York, the casket was laid in the midst of exquisite flowers in the City Hall. On this very day memorial services were held in Westminster Abbey, Canon Farrar delivering an eloquent address.