The Man Who Saved the Union (96 page)

Editors, recognizing his straits, renewed their interest in his life story. The
Century
magazine’s
Robert Johnson sought an article on Shiloh,
a battle that remained as controversial as when it had been fought. Johnson would pay five hundred dollars.
Grant didn’t relish revisiting the war, especially the battles for which he had been criticized, but he now lacked the luxury of declining good money.

To his surprise he discovered that the writing came easily. The episodes of the war had stuck in his head, and he could envision the placement and movement of forces almost as readily as he had amid the smoke and noise of the war. And there was something else. Returning in his mind to the scenes of his greatest challenges and victories distracted him from his current distress. He was young again and at the height of his powers; the cares of the present fell away before the freedom and singleness of purpose of war.

He finished the piece and gave it to Johnson, who suggested making it more personal. Grant resisted at first but, for the money, did as told. He found a rhythm, and while the Shiloh article went to press he set to work on three others: on Vicksburg, the Wilderness and Chattanooga. Meanwhile he began to think about a book. Johnson and the
Century
’s publisher,
Roswell Smith, offered him a contract. He thanked them for the offer but said he wanted to start writing the long-form manuscript before he made a commitment.

I
n the summer of 1884 Grant felt a scratchiness at the back of his throat. This wasn’t the first time his throat had bothered him; he had recurrently experienced the heavy smoker’s dryness and irritation. But the scratchiness persisted, then grew painful. He noticed a swelling visible on the outside of his throat. Julia insisted that he see his doctor, who summoned a specialist. The latter prescribed gargles and ointments and said the situation should be monitored closely.

Grant suspected more than the doctors were telling him, and he decided to sign a contract for his memoir. He let Roswell Smith know he was willing and terms were discussed. He had the signing pen almost in hand when Samuel Clemens heard of the negotiations and pushed himself into the middle of them. Clemens declared that the contract Smith was offering didn’t do justice to such a distinguished figure as Grant. Clemens had a second, less altruistic motive: he had just entered the publishing business with his nephew-in-law
Charles Webster and wanted to publish Grant’s memoir himself. Clemens knew the book business better
than magazine man Smith did, and he calculated that the life story of the greatest hero of the age would be a publishing coup.

He approached Grant indirectly. “
I pointed out that the contract as it stood”—the
Century
contract—“had an offensive detail in it which I had never heard of in the ten per cent contract of even the most obscure author,” he recalled. “This contract not only proposed a ten per cent royalty for such a colossus as General Grant, but it also had in it a requirement that out of that ten per cent must come some trivial tax for the book’s share of clerk hire, house rent, sweeping out of the offices, or some such nonsense as that.” Grant should insist on much better terms. “I said he ought to have three-fourths of the profits and let the publisher pay running expenses out of his remaining fourth.”

Clemens’s words upset Grant, who felt an obligation to Smith but nonetheless had his and especially Julia’s financial future to consider. Fred Grant happened to be present and suggested that his father sleep on the matter. Grant agreed.

Overnight Clemens developed his business plan. He would sell the Grant memoir by subscription, requiring readers to pay in advance of publication and enlisting subscription agents to drum up interest. The plan diminished the risk to the publisher, in that every book would be presold. And it perfectly suited an icon like Grant, as most purchasers would buy the book simply because they liked Grant and what he stood for. Of the millions who had served under Grant or voted for him, at least several hundred thousand ought to be willing to pay a few dollars to buy his book.

The next day he found Grant skeptical. Grant had talked to William Sherman, who said he had made twenty-five thousand dollars from his memoir. Grant doubted he could do that well. Clemens asked why. Grant said he had offered to sell his memoir for that amount to Roswell Smith and Smith had nearly fainted.

Clemens saw his opening. “
Sell
me
the memoirs, General,” he said. “I am a publisher. I will pay double the price. I have a checkbook in my pocket; take my check for fifty thousand dollars now and let’s draw the contract.”

Grant refused. He said the book might be a failure. He considered Clemens a friend and didn’t want him to carry all the risk.

Clemens explained the subscription model and how it reduced the risk. He specified terms: “Seventy-five per cent of the profits on the publication
go to you, I to pay all running expenses such as salaries, etc., out of my fourth.”

Grant asked what Clemens thought would be left out of his fourth. “A hundred thousand dollars in six months,” Clemens replied confidently.

Grant was startled by the number. He and Clemens spoke further and Clemens’s confidence gradually persuaded him. But before he signed he called in
George Childs, a friend who knew the publishing business. Childs queried Clemens about the capacity of his publishing firm,
Webster & Co., to produce a book of the magnitude he projected for Grant’s memoir. Satisfied at the answers he received, Childs told Grant: “Give the book to Clemens.” And Grant did.

86

N
OW HE HAD TO WRITE THE BOOK
. H
E BEGAN WORKING SEVERAL
hours a day at his Wall Street office. The drafting went smoothly, with the pieces of his past falling into their logical and narrative places.
Adam Badeau helped with the research; Fred Grant located documents and checked facts.
Clemens received chapters and at first read them without comment, since he didn’t presume to tell the great general how to write about war. But he heard that Grant was taking his silence amiss, as indicative of literary disapproval. Clemens had been reading
Caesar’s
Commentaries
, and he told Grant that his manuscript compared favorably in its directness, balance and honesty with that model of the military memoir. “
I learned afterward that General Grant was pleased with this verdict,” Clemens remarked. “It shows that he was just a man, just a human being, just an author. An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency.”

A
merica followed his progress, and it followed the course of his illness. The papers got his medical status wrong about as often as they got it right. In February 1885 the
New York Times
scooped the
Medical Record
by quoting an article about to appear in that journal giving Grant a promising prognosis. His symptoms were diminishing and the responsible tumor was not malignant, the article said. “
It is a matter for great congratulation that all fear of grave complications are for the present at an end and that our beloved ex-President is spared an affliction the bare contemplation of which would be distressing in the extreme.”

At that very moment Grant’s throat specialist was reaching the opposite
conclusion.
John Douglas discovered that the tumor was malignant and said the symptoms would get only worse. Just days after its buoyant piece, the
Times
headlined the grim truth: “
Sinking into the Grave. General
Grant’s Friends Give Up Hope. Dying Slowly from Cancer.” The article recounted the course of Grant’s affliction, the consultations of his various doctors and the diagnosis of inoperable cancer. “The doctors, of course, make no predictions as to the rapidity with which the disease will work,” the paper said. “But their opinion seems to be that the gallant old warrior has at the most only a few months to live, and that his death may occur in a short time.”

The paper appended a progress report on Grant’s writing. “Throughout his troubles General Grant has worked constantly on his literary projects. Of late his attention had been given to his own autobiography, feeling that if it was to be completed it must be done at once.”

S
ince Vicksburg the eyes of the nation had been on Grant. For more than two decades the country had followed its hero through war and peace. Now it followed him into his final battle, the one he couldn’t win. Or perhaps he could, for even as the cancer pronounced his mortality, his manuscript proclaimed his immortality—
if
he could finish it. Most of the papers, not wishing to appear impertinent, didn’t play the story as a race, but that was what it seemed: Grant against death.

For a time death appeared to have the advantage. It nearly carried him off in late March when a coughing spell briefly stopped his heart. His doctor revived him with an injection of brandy and ammonia and administered digitalis thereafter. The crisis passed but the pain persisted. Swallowing was agony; he lost twenty pounds, then thirty and forty. He resorted to opiates, which rendered him too groggy to work. He had been dictating the manuscript to a stenographer, but speaking often became so difficult that he turned to writing by hand.

The effort required for him to continue made credible a story published by the
New York World
asserting that Adam Badeau had taken over the drafting. Badeau apparently inspired the story as part of an effort to negotiate better terms with Grant, from whom he demanded a larger stipend and a share of the profits of the book sale. Sam Clemens was outraged at the
World
’s story, which, if believed, would have diminished the book’s credibility and therefore marketability; he urged Grant to sue the paper for libel.

Grant had neither energy nor inclination to sue. He confined himself to a simple affirmation of his authorship. “
The composition is entirely my own,” he wrote in a letter to his publisher, which Clemens released to the
World
. But he did fire Badeau from the project.

He meanwhile put on a convincing show for a reporter from the rival
Times
, who described a day in the life of an author in firm command of his subject. “
It was a busy time at General Grant’s yesterday,” the paper explained. “The General resumed work on his book at an early hour. His easy chair was drawn up beside the library table, which was strewn with papers bearing on the records that he is compiling.” Grant spent part of the day organizing his material and part dictating to his stenographer. “At the close of the day he expressed himself fully satisfied with what he had done, the narrative having been carried forward to events preparatory to the Appomattox campaign.… All that is needed now is a straight narrative to join and explain the records that close and follow actual hostilities.”

B
ut he couldn’t keep it up. The approach of summer caused his doctor to recommend the slower pace and cleaner air of the country; he traveled in June to Mount McGregor, near Saratoga. The change of scenery didn’t much ease his pain but did promote reflection. “
Since coming to this beautiful climate and getting a complete rest for about ten hours, I have watched my pains and compared them with those of the past few weeks,” he wrote in a journal he commenced on arrival. “I can feel plainly that my system is preparing for dissolution in three ways: one by hemorrhages, one by strangulation, and the third by exhaustion. The first and second are liable to come at any moment to relieve me of my earthly sufferings; the time for the arrival of the third can be computed with almost mathematical certainty.… I have fallen off in weight and strength very rapidly for the last two weeks. There cannot be a hope of going far beyond this time. All any physician, or any number of them, can do for me now is to make my burden of pain as light as possible.” He didn’t want new doctors brought in on the case, although he realized his family and his doctor might insist. He wouldn’t refuse in that event. “I dread them, however, knowing that it means another desperate effort to save me, and more suffering.”

He continued to work, though he could feel the cost. “I presume every strain of the mind or body is one more nail in the coffin,” he recorded.
He monitored his reactions to the medicines he was given. “I do not feel the slightest desire to take morphine now. In fact when I do take it it is not from craving, but merely from a knowledge of the relief it gives. If I should go without it all night I would become restless, I know, partly from the loss of it and partly from the continuous pain I would have to endure.” His doctors had experimented with injections of cocaine, a new drug, but now were cutting back the dosage. “It is a little hard giving up the use of cocaine when it gives so much relief. But I suppose that it may be used two or three times a day without injury, and possibly with benefit when the overuse of it has been counteracted.” Eventually the positive effect wore off. “Cocaine is a failure in my case now. It hurts very much to apply it, and I do not feel that it does me much good.” The interactions among his medicines sometimes caused a nervous agitation. “I feel very badly probably because of a cross fire between opium and laudanum.… The alcoholic stimulants must absolutely be given up.… I feel as if I cannot endure it any longer.”

Yet he could recognize the humor in his situation. He knew the papers were conducting a death watch and had him hurtling toward the grave. “I see the
Times
man keeps up the character of his dispatches to the paper. They are quite as untrue as they would be if he described me as getting better from day to day.” For most of one week he felt less pain than usual, thereby spoiling the story line—or so he thought until he read the accounts. “The newspapers gave that as a sure indication that I was declining rapidly.” Visitors cherished whatever fragments he scribbled. “I will have to be careful about my writing. I see every person I give a piece of paper to puts it in his pocket. Some day they will be coming up against my English.” Even on the worst days he could joke with himself. “I do not sleep, though I sometimes doze off a little. If up, I am talked to and, in my efforts to answer, cause pain. The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be, to do, or to suffer. I signify all three.”