Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

At this juncture General Sherman was in New York, and of course visited his old chief and comrade. I went to call on him the next day, and he asked me about the possibility of any annoyance to General Grant on this score. He was extremely anxious, and declared: ‘Grant must not be allowed to suffer this new disgrace.’ He would share his own income rather. I did not feel at liberty to tell what I knew, even to him, and General Sherman's talk in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington excited a great and general sympathy. The result was that a number of General Grant's friends, with Cyrus W. Field at their head, began to raise a fund to save the hero from this last indignity. A hundred thousand dollars were to be subscribed to pay off the debt to Vanderbilt, who it was supposed would compromise his claim for that amount.

But General Grant was weary of the repeated efforts to aid him. Congress had failed to place him on the retired list. A bill for this purpose had indeed passed the Senate at the preceding session, but President Arthur, it was known, would veto it, in order to preserve his consistency, having vetoed another intended to restore General Fitz-John Porter to the army. He forgot, apparently, that the cases were different. General Grant himself said: ‘I have not been court-martialed.’ Mr. Arthur proposed, it is true, a pension, but this Grant indignantly declined to receive. He disliked to appear to apply for public or private charity, and wrote now to Mr. Vanderbilt, informing him of the well-meant efforts in his behalf, but declaring that he preferred not to avail himself of them. He requested Vanderbilt to exercise his legal rights and offer for sale the whole of General Grant's property in his hands, including the presents and trophies of peace and war. He did not feel at liberty to