Presidents in Retirement: Ulysses Grant
Before Ulysses Grant became President, some made comparisons to George Washington, and how one great general became a great president, though this wasn't always the case. The esteem that many held Grant in lessened when it became known that many of Grant's friends, who had been appointed to positions of responsibility in his administration, were crooks. In his second term Grant's administration became a scandal-plagued one. Between this, and the tradition started by Washington that a President did not serve more than two terms in office (not yet law), Grant knew that four more years in the White House was not in the cards for him, and he wisely declined a third term in office, for the time being.
Grant was ready for a break from politics, especially after the controversial Presidential election of 1876, in which it took a Congressional Committee to figure out who had actually won, and in which Grant had to post extra troops at the inauguration because of the possibility of an insurrection. After he left, Grant said he "was never so happy in my life". The Grants left Washington and went to New York, to attend the birth of a grandchild, their daughter Nellie's. Grant jokingly referred to himself and his wife Julia as "waifs" and the two of them first went on a tour of some US cities including Cincinnati, S
t. Louis, Chicago, and Grant's old home of Galena, Illinois. They had not yet decided where they would finally settle.
The Grants then embarked on a bold plan. They liquidated their shares in a Nevada-based mining company, which made them about $25,000 (equivalent to $720,000 today.) They used the money to pay for a world tour that would last for almost two and a half years. On May 16, Grant and his wife left for England aboard the SS Indiana. During the tour, the Grants made stops in Europe, Africa, India, the Middle East and Asia. They met with many notable dignitaries and world leaders, including Queen Victoria, Tsar Alexander II, Pope Leo XIII, Otto Von Bismarck, Emperor Meiji of Japan, and the Chinese General Li Hongzhang. President Rutherford Hayes gave approval for Grant and his party to travel aboard three U.S. Navy ships: the USS Vandalia for a five-month tour of the Mediterranean, the USS Ashuelot for his travel from Hong Kong to China, and the USS Richmond for his travel from China to Japan. The Hayes administration encouraged Grant to assume an unofficial diplomatic role in order to strengthen American interests abroad during the tour.
By the end of the tour, the Grants were homesick for the USA. They left Japan aboard the SS City of Tokyo and arrived in San Francisco on September 20, 1879. There they were met by cheering crowds. who seemed to have forgotten any resentment they had against Grant for the scandals of his administration.
One branch of the Republican party was known as the Stalwarts, and they were led by Grant's political ally, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. Conkling considered Grant's renewed popularity as an opportunity to regain greater influence. He sought to nominate Grant for the presidency in 1880. Many were critical of the move, seeing it as a violation of the unofficial two-term rule followed since George Washington's time. Grant kept mum publicly, but privately he wanted his old job back. Conkling and Illinois Senator John Logan began to organize delegates who supported Grant. The Republican Convention was held in Chicago in June of 1880, and Grant had more delegates pledged to him than any other candidate, though not enough for a majority.
At the convention, Conkling nominated Grant with an eloquent speech, in which he said, "When asked which state he hails from, our sole reply shall be, he hails from Appomattox and its famous apple tree." Grant needed 378 votes for the nomination, and on the first ballot he received 304. James G. Blaine of Maine (leader of the other faction in the party known as the "Half-Breeds") was in second place with 284 votes, and Senator John Sherman of Ohio was in third place with 93. The rest of the votes were split among minor candidates. After thirty-six ballots, Blaine's delegates combined with those of other candidates to nominate a compromise candidate, Congressman James Garfield of Ohio. During the Presidential campaign that followed, Grant gave speeches for Garfield but he refused to criticize the Democratic nominee, former General Winfield Scott Hancock, who had served under Grant during the Civil War. Garfield won the election and Grant gave Garfield his public support.
On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by an assassin and died on September 19. While Garfield was attempting to recover, Grant had tried to reassure Garfield's wife Lucretia that Garfield would recover from his wound. On learning of Garfield's death from a reporter, Grant wept.
Grant had no presidential pension to fall back on, and his investments netted him a personal income of $6,000 a year. Grant's world tour had depleted most of his savings. Wealthy friends bought him a house on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and to make an income, Grant, Jay Gould, and former Mexican Finance Secretary Matias Romero chartered the Mexican Southern Railroad. They planned to build a railroad from Oaxaca to Mexico City. Grant urged President Chester Alan Arthur to negotiate a free trade treaty with Mexico. Arthur and the Mexican government agreed, but the United States Senate rejected the treaty in 1883. The railroad fell into bankruptcy the following year.
As all of this was going on, Grant's son Buck had opened a Wall Street brokerage house with a man named Ferdinand War. Ward was a con man who had swindled numerous wealthy men, but he was also considered to be a rising star on Wall Street. The two formed a firm called Grant & Ward, and it was successful at first. In 1883, Ulysses Grant joined the firm and invested $100,000 (equivalent to $2.8 million today) of his own money. Ward paid investors a high interest rate by pledging the company's securities on multiple loans in a process equivalent to a Ponzi scheme. Ward, in collusion with banker James D. Fish kept the scheme secret from his partners and from bank examiners. He retrieved the firm's securities from the company's bank vault and when a number of stock trades went bad, multiple loans came due, all backed by the same collateral. Ulysses Grant was likely unaware of Ward's intentions, but it is unclear how much Buck Grant knew. In May 1884, enough investments went bad that it appeared that the the firm would soon be bankrupt. Ward falsely assured Grant that this was only a temporary shortfall. Grant approached businessman William Henry Vanderbilt for a personal loan of $150,000 and he invested the money in the firm, but it was not enough to save it. The fall of Grant & Ward led to the Panic of 1884. Ward was later arrested and sent to prison for 10 years.
Vanderbilt offered to forgive Grant's debt, but Grant refused. Though not a wealthy man, he repaid what he could by selling off his Civil War mementos and other assets. Vanderbilt took title to Grant's home, but he allowed the Grants to continue to reside there. He pledged to donate the souvenirs to the federal government and insisted the debt had been paid in full. In March 1885, Grant testified against both Ward and Fish.
Grant attended a service for Civil War veterans in Ocean Grove, New Jersey on August 4, 1884, for what would be his last public appearance. In the summer of 1884, Grant complained of a sore throat but put off seeing a doctor until late October. At that time he found out that he had throat cancer, likely caused by his frequent cigar smoking. Grant kept the seriousness of his condition to his wife Julia, but shesoon found out from Grant's doctor. In March 1885, the New York Times announced that Grant was dying of cancer. Knowing of Grant's financial difficulties, Congress restored him to the rank of General of the Army with full retirement pay. (When he was elected President, Grant was required to resign his commission and forfeit his and his widow's pension.)
Grant was worried about leaving his wife money to live on. He wrote a number of articles on his Civil War campaigns for the Century Magazine, and was paid $500 (equivalent to $17,000 in 2023) for each of these. The articles were well received by critics, and the editor, Robert Underwood Johnson, suggested that Grant write his memoirs. The magazine offered him a book contract with a 10% royalty. Grant's friend Mark Twain offered Grant an amazing 70% royalty. Grant worked intensely on his memoirs in New York City. His former staff member Adam Badeau assisted with the research, while his son Frederick located documents and did most of the fact-checking. As the summer heat intensified, Grant's doctors recommended that he move upstate to a cottage at the top of Mount McGregor that belonged to a family friend.
On July 18, 1885, Grant finished his memoir, which includes the events of his life to the end of the Civil War. Entitled the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, the book was a critical and commercial success. Julia Grant eventually received about $450,000 in royalties (equivalent to $15,300,000 today).
Soon after completion of the memoirs, Grant's cancer took its toll. He died at 8:08 a.m. in the Mount McGregor cottage on July 23, 1885. General Philip Sheridan, who had served under Grant and who was then Commanding General of the Army, ordered a day-long tribute to Grant on all military posts, and President Grover Cleveland ordered a thirty-day nationwide period of mourning. After private services, the honor guard placed Grant's body on a funeral train, which traveled to West Point and New York City. A quarter of a million people viewed it in the two days before the funeral. Tens of thousands of men, many of them Civil War veterans, marched with Grant's casket drawn by two dozen black stallions to its final resting place at Riverside Park in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, current site of Grant's Tomb. Grant's pallbearers included Union generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan, Confederate generals Simon Bolivar Buckner and Joseph E. Johnston Admiral David Dixon Porter, and Senator (and former General) John A. Logan. Following the casket in the seven-mile-long procession were President Cleveland, two former living presidents Hayes and Arthur, all of the president's cabinet, and justices of the Supreme Court. Over 1.5 million people attended the funeral. Ceremonies were held in other major cities around the country.