KansasFreestater
1st Lieutenant
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2014
On July 23, the anniversary of Grant's death (1885), a remembrance:
Ulysses Grant spent his final year of life writing his memoirs – something he’d never intended to do, but was forced into by financial circumstances, having lost everything he and his family owned to a Wall Street con artist. Shortly after that catastrophe, he received a diagnosis of terminal throat cancer. A lesser man might have felt suicidal -- but not the man whose tenacity had saved the Union and ended the Civil War.
As Grant raced against the clock to finish writing the book whose royalties would provide for his widow after he was gone, many old friends came to visit him, first in New York City, then at a beautiful upstate country cottage that friends loaned him and his family. Some of these visitors had been friends with Grant since their days together at West Point and in the Mexican War afterward -- but had later joined the Confederacy and even fought against Grant. One such visitor was Simon Bolivar Buckner, who had surrendered his 10,000 men to Grant at Ft. Donelson in 1862, the first major Union victory in the war, and one that rocketed the relatively unknown U.S. Grant to national fame.
The tables had truly turned, for Buckner was the friend who, at the lowest point of Grant’s life, eight years earlier, had given him crucial financial and moral support. In 1854, Grant had been stationed in Ft. Humboldt, CA, where he was languishing from boredom and from being separated by over a thousand miles from his wife and children (the youngest of whom Grant had never even seen). He’d taken to drinking, been reported, and had chosen to resign rather than face court-martial. He was shipped back as far as New York, but lacked money to get back to his wife in St. Louis. Simon Buckner, an old army buddy of Grant’s who was in New York at the time, loaned him the money to get home. Eight years later, after Buckner surrendered Ft. Donelson to Grant, Grant in turn offered Buckner all the “travel money” he might wish from Grant’s own funds.
Of all the visitors Grant received in his final weeks, Buckner stayed the longest. Grant could no longer talk and had to write his responses on a pad. He wrote: “I have witnessed since my sickness just what I wished to see ever since the war: harmony and good feeling between the sections. . . . I believe myself that the war was worth all it cost us, fearful as it was. Since it was over, I have visited every state in Europe and a number in the [Middle and Far] East. I know as I did not before the value of our inheritance.”
Buckner stayed until Grant tired. Buckner then took both of Grant’s hands in his, and the two of them parted with the only words they could manage by this point: “Grant.” “Buckner.”
Ulysses Grant spent his final year of life writing his memoirs – something he’d never intended to do, but was forced into by financial circumstances, having lost everything he and his family owned to a Wall Street con artist. Shortly after that catastrophe, he received a diagnosis of terminal throat cancer. A lesser man might have felt suicidal -- but not the man whose tenacity had saved the Union and ended the Civil War.
As Grant raced against the clock to finish writing the book whose royalties would provide for his widow after he was gone, many old friends came to visit him, first in New York City, then at a beautiful upstate country cottage that friends loaned him and his family. Some of these visitors had been friends with Grant since their days together at West Point and in the Mexican War afterward -- but had later joined the Confederacy and even fought against Grant. One such visitor was Simon Bolivar Buckner, who had surrendered his 10,000 men to Grant at Ft. Donelson in 1862, the first major Union victory in the war, and one that rocketed the relatively unknown U.S. Grant to national fame.
The tables had truly turned, for Buckner was the friend who, at the lowest point of Grant’s life, eight years earlier, had given him crucial financial and moral support. In 1854, Grant had been stationed in Ft. Humboldt, CA, where he was languishing from boredom and from being separated by over a thousand miles from his wife and children (the youngest of whom Grant had never even seen). He’d taken to drinking, been reported, and had chosen to resign rather than face court-martial. He was shipped back as far as New York, but lacked money to get back to his wife in St. Louis. Simon Buckner, an old army buddy of Grant’s who was in New York at the time, loaned him the money to get home. Eight years later, after Buckner surrendered Ft. Donelson to Grant, Grant in turn offered Buckner all the “travel money” he might wish from Grant’s own funds.
Expired Image Removed
Of all the visitors Grant received in his final weeks, Buckner stayed the longest. Grant could no longer talk and had to write his responses on a pad. He wrote: “I have witnessed since my sickness just what I wished to see ever since the war: harmony and good feeling between the sections. . . . I believe myself that the war was worth all it cost us, fearful as it was. Since it was over, I have visited every state in Europe and a number in the [Middle and Far] East. I know as I did not before the value of our inheritance.”
Buckner stayed until Grant tired. Buckner then took both of Grant’s hands in his, and the two of them parted with the only words they could manage by this point: “Grant.” “Buckner.”