Mount McGregor, NY. On July 11, 1885, Ulysses S. Grant, formerly General of the Army and President of the United States, knew he had only days or weeks to live before his painful throat cancer killed him.
In 1884, he started the major project of writing his memoirs. After having been bankrupted by a Wall Street charlatan, Grant hoped that sales of his memoir would restore his family to economic stability.
As related in The General’s Wife: The Life of Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant (1959), by Ishbel Ross:
July 11, Grant whipped off an agonized note: “I feel as if I cannot endure it any longer.” Julia [Grant, former First Lady,] was deeply upset that day, too, from the premonitory signals in the newspapers. Dr. [George Frederick] Shrady [Sr.] had been sent for and [Noble E.] Dawson, [stenographer and fellow Civil War veteran,] reported that “at last he had reached the end of all he could do.” No one was a better judge than the stenographer who had followed his heroic effort from the beginning, first fluent dictation, then his voice tapering off to a whisper, then silence and the work switching from dictation to notes. At the end he was able only to scratch down his ideas.
This unsurprising, unwelcome worsening of Grant’s condition followed a brief rally of sorts. Ross:
He felt well on the Fourth of July and the family talked about Vicksburg and the coincidence that [daughter Ellen Wrenshall “Nellie” Grant] and Ulysses [S. Grant III, first grandson,] both were born on this significant day [in 1855 and 1881]. He received a cablegram from the Emperor of Japan and a message from [American businessman and financier] Cyrus W. Field in London. He, [British statesman] John Bright, the Duke of Argyle and other friends were dining together that evening and would drink to his health.
. . . . .
Two days later Grant sank back in peace in his chair and wrote: “The pain left me entirely so that it was enjoyment to lie awake; but I got the enjoyment from the mere absence of pain.” Julia, as well as Dawson, realized that he no longer wished to make an effort. She hovered over him, tempting him to eat, arranging his pillows, touching him softly with her hands. “Eating is beginning to grow distasteful to me,” he reported on July 7, as he starved to death. In another of his notes he wrote: “How much may a man reduce in weight who ought to reach 180 pounds, but who has gone up to 195. I am down now to about 130. I was 140 Ibs. seven weeks ago.” But his own report of himself early on July 8 followed: “I am as bright and well now, for a time at least, as I ever will be.” After a visit from some Mexican editors that afternoon, however, he wrote less cheerfully: “I must avoid such afternoons as this. We had company since five and I was writing all the time.”
Grant would finally set aside his pencil on July 19, 1885, having deemed his memoirs complete. He died on July 23, 1885.
IMAGES
Above (colorized & cropped) and insert: [Gen. U.S. Grant writing his memoirs, Mount McGregor, June 27th, 1885], June 27, 1885. Albumen silver print. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/96522250/.
SOURCES
Kemp, Ben. “Take Note.” Ulysses S. Grant Cottage National Historic Landmark (website blog). June 6, 2019. Accessed July 11, 2022. https://www.grantcottage.org/blog/2019/6/6/take-note.
Ross, Ishbel. The General’s Wife: The Life of Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1959. Internet Archives scan. https://archive.org/details/generalswifethel010870mbp/page/n5/mode/2up.
