Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant

Autobiography of Ulysses S. Grant

The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant are an autobiography, in two volumes, of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States. The work focuses on his military career during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War. The volumes were written during the last year of Grant's life, amid increasing pain from terminal throat cancer and against the backdrop of his personal bankruptcy at the hands of an early Ponzi scheme. The set was published by Mark Twain shortly after Grant's death in July 1885. Twain was a close personal friend of Grant and used his fame and talent to promote the books. Understanding that sales of the book would restore the Grant family's finances and provide for his widow, Twain created a unique marketing system designed to reach millions of veterans with a patriotic appeal just as the famous general's death was being mourned. Ten thousand agents canvassed the North for orders, following a script that Twain had devised. Many were Union veterans dressed in their old uniforms, who went door to door offering the two volume set at prices ranging from $3.50 to $12, depending on the binding ($3.5 in 1885 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years to $12.0 in 1885 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years in ). These efforts sold 350,000 two volume sets in advance of the book's actual printing. This made the Memoirs one of the bestselling books of the 19th century, in its first year outselling even the publishing behemoth Uncle Tom's Cabin—an extremely unusual result for a non fiction book. By way of comparison, the memoirs of Grant's colleague William Tecumseh Sherman, published in 1876, were an immense financial success for their author, selling 25,000 copies during its first decade in print. In the end Grant's widow, Julia, received about $450,000 ($450000.0 in 1885 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years in ) from Twain during the first three years of publication, suggesting that Grant received around 30% of each sale (i. e., a 30% royalty rate). Despite being explicitly written for money, and with a focus on those aspects of Grant's life most likely to induce sales, the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant received universal acclaim on its publication and has remained highly regarded by the general public, military historians, and literary critics. The combination of an honest man exploited and then marked for death by throat cancer lent the Memoirs immense contemporary interest. Positive attention is often directed toward Grant's prose, which has been praised as lean, intelligent and effective. He candidly depicts his battles against both the Confederates and his internal Army foes.

Grant and his wife Julia took a trip around the world in 1877 after his second term in office. Personally financed, this tour left him short on liquid assets on his return. He was nearly 60 and he looked for something to engage his time and replenish his finances. In 1878, he moved to New York City and entered into business with his son Buck (Ulysses S. Grant, Jr.) and Ferdinand Ward. Ward was a young investor and personal friend of the junior Grant. Ward was described by his great grandson Geoffrey Ward as "a very plausible, charming, unobtrusive, slender person with a genius for finding older people and pleasing them, which he learned early on."

The firm of Grant & Ward did well at first, bolstered by Ward's skills and Grant's name. The former president bragged to friends that he was worth two and a half million dollars, and family members and friends poured money into the firm. But Grant was largely disengaged from the company's business, often signing papers without reading them. This proved disastrous, as Ward had used the firm as a Ponzi scheme, taking investors' money and spending it on personal items, including a mansion in Connecticut and a brownstone in New York City. Grant & Ward failed in May 1884, leaving Grant penniless. That fall, the elder Grant was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer.

Long before his diagnosis Grant wrote a series of articles analyzing many of the battles he had overseen. The Century Company published these articles in their flagship periodical, Century Magazine. Century paid Grant a flat author's fee of $500 (more than $ in 2022) per article. The essays were well received by critics and in 1876 the editor of Century Magazine, Robert Underwood Johnson, suggested Grant expand them into a memoir, as William Tecumseh Sherman had recently done to great acclaim. Facing his own mortality and the prospect of his family's destitution after his death, Grant approached Century with a proposal to publish his personal memoirs, serially and then in bound volumes. Century agreed to publish the work and drew up a contract in which the dying man would receive 10% of every sale of the book.

Grant's personal friend Samuel Clemens (better known under his pen name Mark Twain) soon heard news of this publishing deal and was unable to conceal his disapproval at how little money, he thought Grant stood to earn if he agreed to Century's terms. Twain dropped everything and rushed to New York City from his home in Hartford, Connecticut. When Twain entered the Grant home on 66th St. he noticed Grant's eldest son, Frederick reviewing the Century contract one final time before his father signed it. Twain recalled that Grant was on the point of picking up his pen as the novelist arrived.

Twain moved in to Grant's New York City townhouse and remained literally at Grant's side while the dying man wrote up his life. Twain provided literary and copy editing at all stages of the book's composition, often offering advice on a page by page basis as he sat next to his furiously scribbling friend. Despite his worsening condition and the constant pain it produced, Grant wrote as a man possessed. During the evenings Twain would read all pages produced during that day and make suggestions to enhance consistency and tone. These evening readings often amounted to an astonishing fifty pages of draft, a pace that Grant maintained for more than four months. In calm moments during the Civil War he often spoke of his recent experiences, typically "in terse and often eloquent language." Grant had told and retold his war stories so many times that writing his Memoirs was often simply a matter of repetition and polish instead of the more typical summarization of his recollections. This fact, as much as any reticence to discuss his childhood or presidency, may account for the Memoirs' overwhelming focus on the Mexican American and Civil Wars. Grant suffered greatly in his final year. He was in constant pain from his illness and sometimes had the feeling that he was choking. Despite his condition, he wrote at a furious pace, sometimes finishing 25 to 50 pages a day. The cancer spread through his body and at his doctor's urging in June 1885 the family moved to a cottage in Mount MacGregor, New York, to make his last weeks more comfortable. He worked at finishing the book, propped up on chairs and too weak to walk. Friends, admirers, and even a few former Confederate opponents made their way to Mount MacGregor to pay their respects. Grant finished the manuscript on July 18; he died five days later.

The press and public followed Grant's symptoms throughout his final year, and his work on the book was well known. While interest in his memoirs would have been high had Grant not been ill, his struggle to finish it before his death gave it even more attention. On release, the book received universal critical praise. Twain compared the Memoirs to Julius Caesar's autobiographical Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. British cultural critic Matthew Arnold praised both Grant and his book in an 1886 essay. Twain, however, felt Arnold's tone was condescending, and the two authors feuded until Arnold's death in 1888. Writer Gertrude Stein also admired the book, saying she could not think of Grant without weeping. The Memoirs quickly became a best seller. Ulysses S. Grant sought to deliver his moral, political, economic and social argument for waging the war against the South in his Personal Memoirs. As the commander of the Union army and a two term president, he had a unique perspective on the war that interested both the public and historical scholars, as they wanted to hear his side of the story. Although he was a clear figure in the public eye, Grant was unknown to many people. After the war, Grant's close colleague, General William T. Sherman remarked that, although he had known Grant for decades, "to me he is a mystery, and I believe he is a mystery to himself." Grant goes to the point of declaring himself as "unmilitary" while continually stressing his simple nature. Grant stated that he did not even want to attend West Point, only going because his father thought it would be best, as Grant believed "a military life had no charms for me." Grant wrote of his participation in the Mexican War of 1846–1848, a war he did not support. Grant believed it was very unjust for the larger, stronger United States to pick on a weaker country as they were doing. Grant used his Personal Memoirs as a way to respond to negative criticism immediately following the war, especially present in his description of the Battle of Shiloh. The two leading generals of the Union army at Shiloh were Grant and General Don Carlos Buell and they had very differing accounts of the battle. Many criticized Grant for being tremendously unprepared and Buell goes as far as to credit himself for the victory, while Grant proclaims the opposite story, stating the Union win was inevitable. Grant was able to use this book to portray his own personal memories of the events of the war and dispute any negative press he may have received. Grant also used his Personal Memoirs to explain his battlefield action and his motives for the way he led. After the war, Grant was portrayed as a ruthless leader who stopped at nothing to make sure the South was destroyed. However, Grant felt this was a harsh evaluation and sought to improve the public opinion of himself and defend the fact he believed he was a simple and fair man. Grant felt he was being abused by newspaper coverage that he believed was shoddy, inaccurate and defeatist. He stated, "Up to the Battle of Shiloh, I, as well as thousands of other citizens, believed that the rebellion against the Government would collapse suddenly and soon, if decisive victory could be gained over any of its armies. After Shiloh, I gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest. The Northern troops were never more cruel than the necessities of war required." Geoffrey Perret, the author of Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier and President staunchly disagreed with Grant's assertion that he was acting out of necessity and declared Grant's wartime conquests were against his Northern virtues. In Perret's eyes, Grant was "above all a soldier, and not a reluctant one." Perret argued that Grant in fact liked West Point, had few reservations at the time about the Mexican War and was a very good junior officer. Perret backs these accusations with the fact Grant, while appointed the General in Chief, "evolved the future of the United States Army" by applying "maximum firepower, maximum mobility" while relying on "the wide envelopment" as his principal form of maneuver. Given over a century of favorable literary analysis, according to reviewer Mark Perry, the Memoirs are "the most significant work" of American non fiction.

I had been comparing the memoirs with Caesar's Commentaries. I was able to say in all sincerity, that the same high merits distinguished both books—clarity of statement, directness, simplicity, unpretentiousness, manifest truthfulness, fairness and justice toward friend and foe alike, soldierly candor and frankness, and soldierly avoidance of flowery speech. I placed the two books side by side upon the same high level, and I still think that they belonged there.

On October 16, 2017, the first completely annotated edition of the memoirs was published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Titled The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant: The Complete Annotated Edition, it was edited by John F. Marszalek (Executive Director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association from 2008 to 2022), with David S. Nolen and Louie P. Gallo. They completed the project in order to contextualize the memoirs for the modern reader. In 2018, The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, edited by Elizabeth D. Samet, was published by Liveright Publishing Corporation.