Between 1861 and 1865, Ulysses S. Grant (whose original name was Hiram Ulysses Grant, but who was given the name by which he is universally known as a result of an error by the War Department when he entered West Point, gained immortality in deeds as a result of his progressively greater responsibilities as as general for the Union, capturing three rebel armies through the course of the Civil War. For all of his immorality of deeds, though, he showed little interest at first in writing his memoirs after the Civil War. Being the sort of person who did not think himself an intellectual, nor having a great deal of confidence in his abilities, he preferred to let his deeds do his talking for him and to let more intellectual veterans and leaders write their memoirs.

However, after two terms in office as the last American president until the mid 1900’s to care passionately about the fate of civil rights for those freed from slavery by the thirteenth Amendment, he ended up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt as the result of a lack of financial savvy and a tendency to trust the wrong people. Worse, he found himself with a throat problem that was determined to be throat cancer as a result of his long addiction to smoking tobacco in pipes and cigars. Facing financial ruin and death, he desired to find a way to provide a decent and honorable legacy for his wife and children, and accepted an invitation to write his memoirs.

The first deal he made was for the fairly modest sum of $25,000, but his friend Samuel Clemens offered to give him a vastly better deal, assuming that the lasting favor of people to read the first-hand accounts of Grant of his own Civil War experience would earn him much more money. Knowing he was dying and in deep financial straits, Ulysses S. Grant began a race against time to write about his Civil War experiences [1]. Despite some drama with the person he initially contracted to help him, who ended up betraying him and seeking to blackmail Grant, and despite his own initial concerns and insecurities, he found he enjoyed writing and that his clear prose orders as a general prepared him well to write clear prose as an author, leading him to discover at the eleventh hour of his life a talent that would give him immortality in word as well as deed.

Technically speaking, Grant’s memoirs were not only of his Civil War experiences, but also include his commentary on events in the Mexican-American War as well, where Grant served as an intrepid quartermaster with insight on both Generals Taylor and Scott that also provides insight on himself. And although Grant could not defeat death, he could at least drive himself in failing health to write his life’s story before death took him, to leave something worth leaving behind for future generations. And he did. On July 16, 1885, Grant finished writing and editing his memoirs, and within a week he was dead. Though no man can cheat death, Grant’s memoirs remain an essential first-person account of the Civil War and one of the greatest military memoirs of all time. There is no greater immortality that a man can attain on his own efforts.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/book-review-the-man-who-saved-the-union/