Grant's Last Battle

The Story Behind the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

Chris Mackowski, Kristopher D. White

• Publisher: Savas Beatie
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781611211603
• eBook ISBN: 9781611211610
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

The remarkable story of how one of America's greatest military heroes became a literary legend.
 
The former general in chief of the Union armies during the Civil War . . . the two-term president of the United States . . . the beloved ambassador of American goodwill around the globe . . . the respected New York financier—Ulysses S. Grant—was dying. The hardscrabble man who regularly smoked twenty cigars a day had developed terminal throat cancer. Thus began Grant's final battle—a race against his own failing health to complete his personal memoirs in an attempt to secure his family's financial security. But the project evolved into something far more: an effort to secure the very meaning of the Civil War itself and how it would be remembered.
 
In this maelstrom of woe, Grant refused to surrender. Putting pen to paper, the hero of Appomattox embarked on his final campaign: an effort to write his memoirs before he died. The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant would cement his place as not only one of America's greatest heroes but also as one of its most sublime literary voices.
 
Authors Chris Mackowski and Kristopher D. White have recounted Grant's battlefield exploits as historians at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, and Mackowski, as an academic, has studied Grant's literary career. Their familiarity with the former president as a general and as a writer bring Grant's Last Battle to life with new insight, told with the engaging prose that has become the hallmark of the Emerging Civil War Series.
 

The Fall

CHAPTER ONE

MAY 4, 1884

Ferdinand Ward was a sociopath, but no one knew it at the time. The charismatic 30-year-old would spend the whole rest of his life swindling, bullying, and scheming people out of their money. He would be, says historian—and descendant—Geoffrey C. Ward, “perpetually unrepentant, uninterested in anyone’s troubles but his own.”

But on the morning of Sunday, May 4, as he knocked on the front door of 3 East Sixty-Sixth Street, in midtown Manhattan everyone still thought of Ward as “The Young Napoleon of Wall Street.” Tall, thin, unconquerably charming, he had enjoyed a meteoric rise in Manhattan’s financial circles and, in the process, had made many men rich—very rich. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. He regularly offered investors returns as high as 40 percent, and his investment firm held the highest possible ranking.

On this morning, he had come to the townhouse of one of his business partners, former president of the United States and savior of the country, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Grant, who had given up his military pension to take the presidency and who had, subsequently, retired from the office with virtually no money, now enjoyed a plush lifestyle thanks to Ward’s financial genius. Grant’s initial $100,000 buy-in into their joint venture, the investment firm Grant & Ward, had ballooned to $750,000. The former general’s newfound wealth and his enduring prestige allowed him to move among the highest circles of the country’s rich and powerful.

Grant himself did little more at the firm than sign whatever papers Ward put in front of him, pay attention to his other business, and entertain visitors. “By the contract of copartnership Mr. Ward alone had the right to sign the firm name and he alone had the key [and] combination to the vault,” Grant later explained to a friend. Grant had contributed his considerable reputation to the firm but left the finances to his young partner. “I am willing that Mr. Ward should derive what profit he can for the firm that the use of my name and influence may bring,” Grant once said.

“Mr. Ward insisted that the business management should be left solely to him,” said another of the firm’s partners, Grant’s son, Ulysses S., Jr.—“Buck.” “I had the greatest confidence in him and I consider him to be a very able man.” He was, after all, the Young Napoleon of Wall Street, credible and incredible at the same time. No one disputed his authority, Buck said; no one questioned his judgment.

Ward explained the potential embarrassment that faced Grant & Ward while Ulysses (sitting) and Buck (standing) listened. As usual, Grant took the news stoically with a mind toward fixing the problem as he understood it. The Grants had no idea that Ward himself was the real problem. (gip)

Daily, Ward lined up 20 cigars on Grant’s desk—a smoking tradition the general had started 20 years earlier during the Civil War—and otherwise left Grant to his own devices. “[He] sat in his familiar chair and smoked his cigar,” one visitor later recounted. “He was so hearty and genial in his manner that no one could fail to like him and feel drawn to him.”

But today, Ward needed Grant’s help. Ushered into the first-floor parlor, Ward broke Grant’s Sunday morning calm.

The firm was in trouble.

New York City’s treasury had withdrawn a considerable amount of money from Marine Bank, owned by another of Grant & Ward’s partners, James D. Fish. “We have six hundred and sixty thousand dollars on deposit there,” Ward explained. “It would embarrass us very much if the bank should close its doors.”

To ensure the bank opened on Monday morning, and thus avoid embarrassing the firm, Ward had, thankfully, rallied some $250,000 to help cover the bank’s shortfalls. Could Grant somehow secure the other $150,000? Fish, embattled as he was by the treasury’s withdrawal, could not. The firm’s fourth partner, Grant’s son, dabbled in the office’s day-to-day operations, but mostly, he attended to his own law practice. In any event, he didn’t have the ability to leverage so much money in such a short time under such troubling conditions.

Ferdinand Ward’s baby face belied a brilliant mind—although it wasn’t brilliant in the “financial wizard” kind of way people believed. Rather, he was a brilliant con. (gc)

Only Grant could do it.

Grant was famously impassive in the face of troubling news of any sort. As Ward outlined the firm’s financial pinch, Grant listened stoically, then assented to help. Grant left his young partner in the parlor as he sallied forth. He’d see what he could do.

On that same day 20 years earlier—May 4, 1864—Grant set forth from his field headquarters near Culpepper Court House, Virginia, to begin the campaign that would ultimately define his career. Now, he had no way to know that he was once more setting forth on another campaign—one that would ultimately define his legacy.

* * *

In an era of extravagant beards, William Henry Vanderbilt had one for the ages. His mutton chops extended outward like two brillo wings that formed perfect triangles. Like nearly everything about him, they made him seem larger than life. Being one of the wealthiest men in America helped, too.

Vanderbilt would have had little opportunity to befriend a tanner’s son from Galena, Illinois—even one who’d become president of the United States—were it not for Grant’s financial success since settling in New York in 1881. That, coupled with Grant’s reputation as the general who’d saved the country, had earned Vanderbilt’s respect and, over the ensuing months, Vanderbilt’s friendship. “He is one of us,” Vanderbilt once declared.

Ulysses S. “Buck” Grant married Fannie Josephine Chaffee in 1880. Fannie was the daughter of Senator Jerome Chaffee of Colorado, and Buck’s marriage to her helped cement the Grant family’s reputation in social circles. (loc)

The palatial Vanderbilt mansion stretched from 51st to 52nd streets in Manhattan. (loc)

In the wake of Ward’s troubling news, Grant sought out Vanderbilt for assistance. He calmly and clearly laid out the problem.

“I care nothing about the Marine Bank,” Vanderbilt replied. “To tell the truth, I care very little about Grant and Ward. But to accommodate you personally, I will draw my check for the amount you ask. I consider it a personal loan to you, and not to any other party.”

Later, after the fall, Grant would refuse money from friends and strangers alike—his pride too staunch to accept charity. But here, now—Grant saw this as just a matter of business. He would be able to repay the loan in a day or two—a week at most. When Wall Street heard that Vanderbilt himself had floated the money to support Marine Bank, it would quiet all nerves, such was the strength of Vanderbilt’s reputation and pocketbook.

William Henry Vanderbilt, who was about to celebrate his birthday on May 8, was reportedly the world’s richest man. (loc)

Grant thanked him politely and headed back home, where his partner awaited.

* * *

I often wonder about Ward, sitting there in the Grant parlor as Grant sought out friends willing to help. Accounts don’t say how long Grant was gone, although he made at least one other stop before Vanderbilt’s. Nor do accounts say what Ward did during the time Grant was gone—only that Grant left him there when he set out and found him there on his return.

But Ward is slippery, as rogues are wont to be, difficult to pin down. One account has him riding in the carriage alongside Grant, coaching him where to go. Another has Grant giving him Vanderbilt’s check first thing Monday morning rather than Sunday afternoon on his return. Another has Buck delivering the check.

Ward was the kind of man whose wheels never stopped churning. Once, while poking through the house, he found a vase full of $20 gold pieces—$800 worth. He talked Mrs. Grant into investing the money in Grant and Ward rather than let it sit in the vase and not earn interest.

The Grant parlor resembled a fine arts museum, with vases, furniture, ornaments, and other knick-knacks they had assembled during their around-the-world voyage. (nypl)

The home was “laden with curios and rich gifts—the spoils of the Grants’ tour around the world,” Ward once said, describing an almost museum quality to the place. Gild-frame paintings hung on the walls, with cabinets and shelves to hold brick-a-brack. There were so many vases, some sat on formal parlor chairs, while others sat on the fireplace mantel. An ornate oriental rug filled the center of the floor.

When the Grants purchased the home, Ward brokered the deal. “It was a much larger and more expensive house than we had intended (or had the means) to buy,” Julia later wrote, “but it was so new and large that this quite outweighed our more prudential scruples—unfortunately, as later I had to pay out of the proceeds of General Grant’s book a mortgage of fifty-nine thousand dollars on it.”

Ward had taken the Grants’ house payment and, instead of buying the brownstone outright, spent only enough to leverage the mortgage. He misappropriated the rest—just as now, sitting in the parlor, he plotted to make off with whatever money Grant came back with.

How confident was he that Grant would succeed? What plan—if any—did he have for that money? Was he already cooking up his next scheme? Planning his next swindle? It’s perhaps too much to think of him twirling the tips of his moustache and, inside, laughing sinisterly, but his descendant, Geoffrey Ward, has planted the seed: “Ferdinand Ward appeared only as a stock villain,” the historian observed of Ward’s role, “insinuating himself onstage just long enough to ruin the ex-president and his family, then disappearing….”

But on some level—even if sparked only by self-concern—the frenetic strain of the shell game had worn Ward down. He felt frazzled. He’d lost weight. The air was being sucked right out of him.

* * *

On Monday, May 5, Grant pul...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Author’s Note
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Chapter One: The Fall
• Chapter Two: The Bottom
• Chapter Three: The New Disaster of Shiloh
• Chapter Four: The Writer
• Chapter Five: The Peach
• Chapter Six: Twain
• Chapter Seven: The Winter of Discontent
• Chapter Eight: Stage Five
• Chapter Nine: The Greatest Showman on Earth
• Chapter Ten: Twain’s Return
• Chapter Eleven: Turning Back
• Chapter Twelve: Crisis and Resurrection
• Chapter Thirteen: Bad “Water,” Bad Blood
• Chapter Fourteen: The Final March
• Chapter Fifteen: The Last Days of Ulysses S. Grant
• Chapter Sixteen: Victory and Loss
• Chapter Seventeen: Where Grant Rests
• Epilogue: The Last Word
• Appendix A: Grant’s Tomb
• Appendix B: Memorializing Grant
• Appendix C: The Myths of Grant
• Appendix D: The Grant Administration
• Appendix E: The Unlikely Friendship of Grant and Twain
• Suggesting Reading
• About the Author