CHAPTER XIX
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.