Ulysses S. Grant

 

  GRANT HOMEPAGE
  MESSAGE BOARD
  GRANT PHOTOGRAPHS
  NEWS
  INTERVIEWS
  GRANT FACTS
  CHRONOLOGY
  GRANT AND LINCOLN
  GRANT THE GENERAL
  GRANT THE PRESIDENT
  GRANT THE WORLD LEADER
  GRANT THE FAMILY MAN
  GRANT THE EQUESTRIAN
  GRANT THE AUTHOR
  GRANT THE ARTIST
  GRANT ON SLAVERY
  GRANT'S GENIUS
  N.Y. TIMES ARTICLES
  BIBLIOGRAPHY
  COLLECTIBLES
  GRANT'S LAST STAND
  GRANT ARCHIVES.COM
   

 

NEW YORK TIMES
March 25, 1885

ULYSSES S. GRANT AT HIS HOME. GENERAL HORACE PORTER'S DAILY SKETCH OF THE SUFFERER'S DAILY LIFE.

One of the most frequent callers at General Grant's is General Horace Porter. They were together in the war and have been on terms of close and uninterrupted intimacy ever since. Speaking last night in admiration of the heroism with which General Grant has borne his many ills, General Porter said: "I presume no man in this century has had the mental strain that was put on General Grant from 1861 to 1876. An important command devolved upon him soon after the war began, and he was always weighted down with many heavy military responsibilities. For four years he endured constant application in a climate to which he was unused and which was highly malarious. After the war he was given no rest and heaped upon all that were eight exciting and important years of the Presidency. Few men could have stood it.

The effect of it on him did not appear, however, until his physical sufferings began with his fall on the ice a year ago last December. Since then he has suffered terrible; no one knows how much, for he never complains. After that fall, when he injured his hip, pleurisy set in. It was a severe attack. Then he began to suffer from neuralgia, with intense pains to the head. His system had been shocked by the fall. The neuralgia helped to reduce it. As a means of relieving his neuralgia he had several teeth drawn and he refused to take an anesthetic, and they had to be drawn all at one siting. That exercise of his wonderful will, in his then debilitated condition, gave his system another shock, from which it could not rally. Then this terrible disease of the tongue appeared. It has been a steady drain upon him, reducing his flesh rapidly, and weakening him beyond any former experience. But he has stood it all without a murmur, just as he has taken all the reverses and trials of his life. To see him wasting and sinking this way is more touching and excites deeper sympathy among his friends than if he made some signal of his sufferings, as ordinary men do, by grumbling and complaint.

The thing from which he has suffered late is insomnia. He has always been a remarkably good sleeper. I reminded him that on the field, no matter what the weather was, or how heavily charged the next day might be with responsibilities, sometimes with a battle ion his hands for the next day, he still slept soundly. I have seen him drop down in the mud and rain and be sound asleep in two minutes. He meant always to get eight hours sleep. He said it was a strange thing to him that he could not sleep, and that he regretted nothing so much. During my calls I have seen him more often in his sleeping room than elsewhere. He usually sits in an easy chair. Another is rolled up close to it, facing it. On the second chair he stretches his legs.

As the neuralgia pains still trouble him, he wears a knit cap all the time. When the pains are especially severe, very hot cloths are applied to the head. They bring him relief quicker than anything else. In talking he tries to speak without moving the tongue. This interferes with enunciation, but it saves him pain. He could enunciate well enough if it were not for the effort to keep the tongue motionless. Of course, talking is tiresome. He tries to do a good deal of it, but is discouraged by the family and physicians. It is impractical for him to proceed with the book by dictation. I have seen him leave his chair and walk about the second story. He cannot walk without a cane. His crutches, however, have not been brought again into use.

He has spoken to me, as he has to others, about his great desire to finish the book. His work on the book is performed with the assistance of his sons. he has voluminous notes and records which they have to look up for him. But his memory is often as good as his notes. I never knew so faithful and retentive a memory. he can fix his mind on a certain march and describe just how the lines were former. Work on the book has proceeded as far as the crossing of the James, in the summer of 1864. It is the most important period of the war, and General Grant is naturally anxious to cover it as he believed it should be treated. No treatise on the war can possibly be so valuable as this, and although his notes would enable another to complete the volume, he feels no one can do it as carefully as he.

I have noticed a change in his appearance during the months of his confinement. His face is much as it was, but he looks weak and his frame has lost its sturdy bearing. There has been no attempt by him or any of his family to hide the physical changes by allowing his beard or hair to grow long. The beard is kept closely trimmed and the hair is short. In all his sickness he has been careful, as he was in health, to avoid giving trouble to anyone. His son and his attendant usually sleep in the same room with him, but when he awake at night, wanting anything, he will rise and get it himself, rather than disturb them.

He says little about his condition, although I think he fully realizes its gravity. I think that the good will of his countrymen as it's uttered gives him his highest gratification. He has suffered the usual mental and physical depression which follows the use of opiates - which have been discontinued on this account - and although he must endure terrible agony of which no one knows, I have not heard him uttering one syllable to indicate that it was becoming unendurable, or that he wished it were all over. His enormous will-power sustains him like a hero, as it ever did."

Dr. Douglas called yesterday at noon and they thought the General's throat was better than for several days and found his pulse and temperature "good for a sick man." The General felt like going for a walk, and the carriage had been sent for, and waited by the door to furnish the next best thing to a walk, but Dr. Douglas said the day was too chilly to venture out of the house. The General dozed during the afternoon, not feeling equal to work on his book. In the evening he went downstairs and then dozed.

 

 

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2006 The Ulysses S. Grant Homepage™. All rights reserved.
All text, photographs, graphics, artwork and other materials contained on this sight are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without prior written consent of The Ulysses S. Grant Homepage™.