Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year

For some reason, despite the fact that the title is not “Memoirs” and the author is not named Ulysses S. Grant, I thought this was Grant’s autobiography and the description was telling us he wrote it in the last year of his life. That is totally not the case and makes me think I am either losing it or reading things too fast.

This is the account of Grant’s final year of life, the year he wrote his “Memoirs” and the struggles involved in doing so due to his ill health.

The account starts with Grant being swindled. Grant wasn’t the only one who lost money in the theft, he had persuaded other family members to invest with him and everyone lost everything. Grant was an honorable man, his mistake was in trusting the wrong people. Because he was honorable, he had many people willing to help him out. Since he was an honorable man, he was determined to pay these people back and also support his family. He was approached to write 4 articles about the war for a magazine and this led to the idea to write a book of his life.

Once again his family and friends rallied around to help, with gathering information and giving him the medical care he needed. There was a huge show of support from the country, people sent him money, they wrote him letters, many of those letters have been saved and are reprinted here, retired soldiers from both sides of the conflict showed their respect in many ways.

A very informative account, taken from letters, diaries and other published works. This was very interesting read that I recommend. ( )

Historian Charles Bracelen Flood has come full circle. Many years ago he wrote a best-selling volume on Robert E. Lee's life after the Civil War. Now he offers a book focusing on the end of the life of the most famous Union general: "Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year."

After losing most of his money in a failed investment, which Flood describes as an early pyramid scheme, the retired general and former president is diagnosed with throat cancer. Desperate to provide financially for his family, in an age before presidential pensions (and at a time where he surrendered his military pension to hold the civilian office of President), Grant agrees to publish articles about his remembrances of the Civil War.

This writing, which begins with an inauspiciously bland first draft, quickly became a proper memoir. But from that initial criticism, Grant found the approach that would ultimately win popular and literary acclaim for his two-volume autobiography, which he completed only days before his death.

If this part of the story is reasonably well known, at least to most history buffs of the era, Flood discovers details and characters surrounding Grant to craft a compelling and poignant portrait of the reluctant author who approached his work more with military discipline than with artistic flair. Here is a gentle spirit who is susceptible to those who ingratiate, seeking their own advancement, but who also attracts the most famous author of the age, Mark Twain, as a friend and promoter. Here is a man hard at work who takes significant time to show his affection to his family and also to the soldiers whom he led as they now meet for various reunions. And as his health declines dramatically in the final weeks, here is a campaign whose successful conclusion is more improbable than any military victory.

Flood capably presents the fleshed-out story, with an eye for engaging details, seeking to demonstrate the full personality of a man who was famously stoic in battle and in public. The result is an enjoyable and enlightening page-turner, reminding even the best-read history buffs of the unique personality of the man regarded, by his contemporaries, as one of the great men of his time. ( )

The much deserved fame and prestige that Ulysses S. Grant gained during America’s Civil War carried him all the way to the White House where he served two terms as President of the United States (1869-1877). Prior to the war, most who knew Grant probably considered him a failure. Within a few years of the end of his presidency, however, the Grants were in good financial shape, confident that they had the means to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.

Grant had very little personal understanding of investing, but at his son’s recommendation, he associated himself with two men whose judgment he trusted: Ferdinand Ward and Hamilton Fish. Grant’s contribution to the firm they created, Grant and Ward, was strictly that associated with his personal fame and reputation. He had almost nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of the company. Consequently, he was as surprised as anyone else when, in 1884, he learned that all the money supposedly invested by the firm for others was gone. And, like all the rest, Grant was left penniless. Not only was Grant suddenly broke, he still owed thousands of dollars in personal debt that he was determined to repay.

But even worse news was to come, for Grant was soon to learn that he was suffering from incurable throat cancer. Grant’s chief concerns were twofold: how to finance his beloved wife’s remaining years, and how to repay his existing debts. Recognizing that he could earn the kind of money he needed only one way, Grant began a race against the clock to complete his personal memoirs before his illness could claim him. With the help of key players like Mark Twain and William Vanderbilt, Grant would win that race and complete his work only three days before he died on July 23, 1885.

Grant’s Final Victory offers a detailed look at what Ulysses S. Grant’s last year of life was like, a year during which he continued to write and edit daily despite his ever worsening physical condition. The book explores Grant’s personal relationships with the rich and famous of his day, as well as with the members of his immediate family. Fortunately, most of those who found themselves in Grant’s inner circle during those final months were there to help him achieve his goal of providing for Julia. Particularly selfless were men like Mark Twain who published the memoirs and made sure that Grant got the largest royalty payday imaginable and William Vanderbilt who continued to support the Grants financially despite all the money they already owed him. Of course, there would also be hangers-on who were there simply to increase their own fame and fortune by association with Grant during his final days.

Charles Bracelen Flood truly does “bring to life” General Grant’s last year, a year during which Grant’s personal heroism is as sorely tested as it was even during the Civil War. His “final victory” may have been won just three days before his death when he signed off on his memoirs. Or, it may have been won by the bravery he displayed by dying in such a public manner, all the while maintaining his great personal dignity. Or, perhaps even more importantly, that victory might have been the way the all-inclusive tone of his memoirs helped to heal the remaining animosity between the northern and southern sections of the country. Whichever of these victories one chooses, there is little doubt that U.S. Grant was an American hero.

Rated at: 4.0 ( )

This book is not about Grant’s military campaigns; rather, it concerns his struggle to finish his still-celebrated memoirs before cancer killed him, so that his wife and children would have an income after he died. It is also a love story: about how so many people adored Grant for his goodness and unwavering trust in them. This made him, tragically, an easy mark for the many who would exploit that trust, but provided enduring inspiration for those who deserved it. At the end of the book, when the author describes how a bugler playing taps at Grant’s tomb caused General William Tecumseh Sherman to begin sobbing, I was sobbing right there with him.

Grant was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and throat in 1884. (Remarkably, considering the long hold tobacco has had on this country, Grant’s doctors quite quickly and confidently attributed the affliction to Grant’s life-long cigar habit.) At the time, Grant and his family were newly impecunious, following a huge financial swindle by his partners in an investment firm. All of Grant’s family had invested there also. It turned out Grant didn’t even own his house; one of his partner’s had offered to take care of the purchase, but had taken the money instead. Grant was furious; he had trusted these men, just as he had trusted so many in his presidential administration who also had succumbed to venality and graft. Grant, throughout his life, conducted his affairs as he had led the Union Army; he found men he thought worthy, delegated tasks to them, and then counted on them to carry out his directives. But too many men lacked Grant’s moral strength. In the end, Grant had no choice but to take care of his affairs on his own.

For the last year of his life, Grant struggled to put together a two-volume memoir that would prevent his family from financial ruin. He was in immense pain and eventually had a tumor the size of “two fists put together” on the side of his throat. He wrote that he was plagued by hemorrhaging, strangulation, and exhaustion. Nevertheless, he carried on valiantly. Three days after he was done, and months after the doctors thought he couldn’t live another day, he finally let go.

Grant was originally to publish his memoirs with Robert Underwood Johnson, but Mark Twain offered him better terms, and he went with Twain. Nevertheless, he remained on good terms with Johnson and prepared four articles for him that final year in addition to working on his book. Johnson came to see Grant shortly before his death, and later wrote:

"I could hardly keep back the tears as I made my farewell to the great soldier who saved the Union for all its people and to the man of warm and courageous heart who had fought his last long battle for those he so tenderly loved.”

Grant had been heralded for personal bravery in the Mexican War, leading attacks at San Cosme and moving soldiers across the cholera-infested Isthmus of Panama. And of course his valor in the Civil War is more widely known. But those who watched him in his final year contend that his bravest act of all was his perseverance and shear determination to stay alive until his memoir was in place for his family’s future. As one clergyman later said, “the sight of Grant at work while in pain was the finest sermon at which he had ever been present.”

Discussion: Grant was a remarkable figure whose generosity of spirit was rivaled only by Lincoln’s. Following “his simple, gracious, generous treatment of Robert E. Lee and his men at Appomattox Court House,” for the rest of his life Lee never allowed a negative word to be said about Grant in his presence. One of Lee’s great generals, James Longstreet (who also happened to be Julia Grant’s cousin and had been Grant’s best man at his wedding to Julia), remarked at Grant’s death:

"He was the truest as well as the bravest man who ever lived. … Grant was a modest man, a simple man, a man believing in the honesty of his fellows, true to his friends, faithful to traditions, and of great personal honor.”

There is a wonderful story in the book about how both former Federals and Confederates in Congress worked to get Grant’s military pension reinstated (he had to forfeit it when he became U.S. President), even physically turning back the clock in the U.S. Capitol before Congress adjourned so that the bill could be passed before Congress got dismissed.

Both Union and Confederate former generals served as pallbearers.

Evaluation: Although this is a work of nonfiction, under the able hands of the entertaining historian Charles Bracelen Flood, this book is a page-turner that has you not only reaching for the Kleenex box, but aching to get to Grant’s memoir itself, which has been lauded as one of the finest presidential memoirs ever written. (Mark Twain wrote, "General Grant's book is a great, unique, and unapproachable literary masterpiece.") I didn’t really see this book as a hagiography; it's really meant to be an examination of Grant's last year, taken at face value. From historical biographies, we know that Grant was human, and a man of his times. In other words, he had his flaws as do most people. But like Lincoln, he was also a man who could transcend his times and rise above them. I don’t think you can come away from this book with many negative impressions about the last year, at any rate, of one of our greatest public figures. ( )