Mark Twain Saved Ulysses Grant's Family

by

       M. Richard Maxson

      President Grant died on July 23, 1885, from throat cancer. Grant was a notorious, lifelong cigar-lover. He not only smoked them but chewed them – as many as a dozen a day by his own admission. Historians report that once the public discovered his love of cigars, he received more than 20,000 as gifts. Grant was also a heavy drinker at times during his life.

       During his presidency, Grant helped steer through Congress the 1870 Enforcement Act, which reduced the influence of the racist Democrat Ku Klux Klan, as well as the 1875 Civil Rights Act, which sought to desegregate such public places as restrooms, “inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement.” Grant also buttressed relations with Britain, which had been strained by London’s wartime links to the Confederacy. He won by a landslide in his second run for the White House. He was put up for another term. No president had ever served a third term before–and as it turned out, Ulysses S. Grant wasn't about to either.

Although factions within the Republican party supported the idea of Grant seeking an unprecedented third term, debate over this potential move came to nothing when Grant himself vetoed the idea. But that debate did leave the Republican party with a lasting symbol–the elephant. One hundred and forty-three years ago, the elephant gained its first association with the Republican party. It appeared in a Thomas Nast editorial cartoon in Harper’s Weekly, addressing Grant’s apparent campaigning for a third term in the midst of the midterm elections.

      After leaving the presidency, Grant entered business on Wall Street in New York City. It didn’t end well. The victim of a shady investment scheme, Grant found himself broke later in life. Thanks to a pyramid scheme operated by his unscrupulous partner, Ferdinand Ward, Grant’s investment firm had instantly collapsed, wiping out his life savings. “When I went downtown this morning I thought I was worth a great deal of money, now I don’t know that I have a dollar,” the swindled Civil War hero lamented to a former West Point classmate. In fact, Grant had all of $80 to his name. His wife, Julia, had another $130. Kind-hearted strangers responded by mailing Grant checks. Desperate to pay his bills, the former U.S. president cashed them.

      Grant that summer suffered from an excruciating sting in his throat as well. Grant’s wife Julia remembers her husband was eating peaches – a favorite of his –when he first noticed a problem with his throat. “He proceeded to eat the dainty morsel; then he started up as if in great pain and exclaimed, ‘Oh my. I think something has stung me from that peach.’” Unfortunately, he ignored that warning. When he finally visited a doctor in October, Grant learned he had incurable throat and tongue cancer, likely a product of his longtime cigar-smoking habit.

      Knowing he was dying of throat cancer, he accepted a lucrative offer from his longtime admirer Mark Twain to write and publish his memoirs. Despite Grant’s terrible pain and failing health, they worked together for five weeks in a cottage on the grounds of the Mount McGregor Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The house is now the Grant Cottage Historic Site, where several of his personal effects are on display.

      Perhaps the most interesting item at the site is the glass of cocaine hydro chlorate solution, which Grant called his “cocaine water.” Swallowing small amounts of the liquid was the only treatment available to him. By the time Grant sought medical help for the pain and swelling in his mouth, the cancer was untreatable. But the cocaine solution helped alleviate the pain in his throat. Over time, the cocaine in the solution has settled to the bottom of the glass. Tim Welch, director of the Grant Historic Site, says, “Every year the New York State Department of Parks and Recreation measures this and makes sure that none of it is gone.”

      Ulysses Grant passed away just a few days after his memoirs were completed. At more than 600 pages, it was a runaway bestseller. The family was saved from financial ruin. His family reportedly received more than $450,000 from the sale of 300,000-plus copies of his memoirs, an inordinately huge sum of money for this period of history. Even though his presidency was racked with corruption and scandal nothing tarnished him. He is now considered one of the better presidents who had his hands full with the Reconstruction chaos and the end of the first Civil War?