of the President, which changed that rejoicing to mourning. The death of Lincoln left Grant the foremost American in the hearts of the people. In the political turmoil which followed the accession of Johnson to the Presidency, and in the period of "reconstruction," while much of the South was under martial law, Grant, as head of the army, necessarily held a prominent place. His popularity increased, and his nomination for the presidency in 1868 was a fore gone conclusion. In 1872 he was re-elected, this time over Horace Greeley. His popularity was so general that the opposition to him was insignificant.

At the close of his second term he was succeeded by Rutherford B. Hayes, who was declared elected by the famous Electoral Commission, after the disputed election of 1876.

Grant was by nature and training a soldier, not a civil administrator; and while there was much to admire in his career as President, there is also much that has been severely criticised. Accustomed to repose absolute confidence in his friends, he was deceived and made use of by adroit and unscrupulous men,

HONORS FROM ALL NATIONS.

291

against whom he was powerless to defend himself. The unsettled state of the country after the civil war, the political and race prejudices which disturbed the South, the ignorance and helplessness of the freedmen, and the denial of their rights, all combined to make the task of government a most difficult and delicate one. But whether Grant's civil career be considered successful or not, it soon became evident that he had not lost his hold on the affectionate admiration of the people, and that his fame abroad was as great as at home. After the close of his second term, in May, 1877, he sailed from Philadelphia for a tour around the world, which for over two years was made one long-continued ovation, more like the triumphal progress of a great monarch than the journey of a private citizen. By all the great nations of Europe and Asia he was received with every mark of the highest honor. He was the guest of emperors, kings, and municipalities, and welcomed with tokens of good-will equally by the proudest and the humblest of the people. Throughout Europe, Turkey, Persia, India, China, and Japan he journeyed, and when at last he landed at San Francisco, the demonstration in his honor surpassed anything before seen on the Pacific coast. It is perhaps not too much to say that until their eyes were opened by his reception abroad, the American people did not themselves appreciate Grant's real greatness and the extent of his fame.

GRANT'S TROUBLES AND HOW HE MET THEM.

But nothing in all his career did so much to fix Grant in the affection of the country as the events of the last year of his life. After his return from abroad he had, at the solicitation of his son, joined the firm of Ward & Fish, in New York, and put all his savings into it. The business seemed to go on prosperously, so prosperously that Grant believed himself worth a million dollars. He himself gave no attention to the business, confiding entirely in the active partners. A sudden and appalling exposure followed in May, 1884. One morning Grant went down to the office in Wall Street, and found that Ward had absconded, and that he and his children were utterly ruined. Only a few days before, Ward had induced him to borrow one hundred thousand dollars, under the pretence that this sum would enable him to discharge some pressing claims upon a bank in which the firm had large deposits. Grant went to W. H. Vanderbilt and asked for the money as a loan. Vanderbilt sat down and drew a check for it, and handed it to his visitor. Grant had no idea that the firm with which his name had been identified existed upon sheer roguery. But all the papers were soon full of the shameful story. The famous soldier saw but too clearly that he had been used as a decoy by an abominable swindler. House, money, books, furniture, his swords, and other presents-the money of his children and many of his friends-everything was gone, including, as he thought, his honor. It was afterward clearly seen that he had no complicity whatever in

FINISHING HIS "MEMOIRS."

293

the frauds committed by his partners,—that he was the chief of the sufferers, not in any way a culprit. The sympathy of the people went out to him ; once more he rallied from enfeebled health and a wounded spirit, and he began to believe that in time he might recover from this disastrous blow.

But another great calamity was hanging over him. A few months after the failure of the firm, he began to complain of a pain in his throat. Gradually it grew worse; and at last the dread fact could no longer be concealed that his disease was cancer. He had already begun to write his "Memoirs," urged on by the one hope which now remained to him—the hope of making some provision for his family in place of that which they had lost. But the torment which now visited him, day and night, obliged him to stop. He could not lie down without bringing on fits of choking; he would sit for hours, as General Badeau has said, “propped up in his chair, with his hands clasped, looking at the blank wall before him, silent, contemplating the future; not alarmed, but solemn at the prospect of pain and disease, and only death at the end."

Then there came a change for the better. The kindly messages which were sent to him from all classes of his own countrymen, North and South, and which flowed in upon him from England-from the Queen herself-greatly cheered and consoled him. Again he set to work upon his book, determined to finish it before he died. He was further encouraged by the news that Congress had at last passed a bill placing him on the retired list of the army. His good name, he felt, was once more established. In June, 1885, he seemed to be a little better; but the great heat of the city distressed him, and a villa on Mount Macgregor, near Saratoga, was offered to him by a friend. He knew that he could not live. But three families were dependent upon him. If he could complete his "Memoirs," half a million dollars would be earned for them. Again and again he took up pencil and paper-for he could no longer dictate—and wrote, slowly and laboriously, as much as he could. No murmur escaped him. Great physical prostration, accompanied by inevitable mental depression, often assailed him, but he summoned all his energies, and came back from the very portals of the grave. That his children and grandchildren should not be left to the tender mercies of the world,—this was the solitary boon he craved.

And it was granted. He had just time to write the last page, and then, on the 23d of July, the end came gently to him. With his wife and family still around him, he passed away as an over-wearied child might fall asleep.

The body of the great soldier was laid at rest in Riverside Park, New York city, beside the Hudson river, after a funeral pageant such as had never been witnessed in America. The army, the navy, the militia, the soldiers of the Southern army, and hundreds of thousands of citizens, from the richest to the poorest, joined in the solemn procession, and bowed their heads around the tomb where his dust was laid. For weeks the whole country had eagerly

watched for the news from his bedside. Only four days before his death, when the darkness was closing in around him, he had finished his "Memoirs," undertaken that his debts might be paid and his loved ones provided for.

Now, when

all was over, and the memory of all the nation owed him came back, a united people gathered to render at his grave their tributes of love and gratitude.

When, in 1866, the bill to revive the grade of "General of the Army of the United States" was before the House of Representatives, Grant's friend, Henry C. Deming spoke these true and fitting words :

66

Time, it is said, devours the proudest human memorial. The impress we have made as a nation may be obliterated; our grandest achievements, even those which we now fondly deem eternal, those which embellish the walls of that historic rotunda, may all drop from the memory of man. Yet we shall not all perish. You may rest assured that three American names will survive oblivion, and soar together immortal: the name of him who founded, the name of him who disenthralled, with the name of him who saved the republic."