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

[415] how he labored for them after he had been given up for dead; how he revived to struggle on their account. His passion was pathetic. It reached out almost from the grave toward those children for whom he was suffering. He never believed for a moment aught against their good name any more than against his own. He lived for them; he died for them.

All this was revealed in those last months of his existence, and I have no doubt the feeling was heightened by his illness; the protracted parting not only aggravated his sufferings but intensified his affection, until one was as harrowing as the other. He not only did not know until the last how profound his feeling was, but while he lingered, the feeling grew from day to day, as the cancer did, downward and inward into his nature, till at last it consumed him. At the end he forgot fame; he was past even patriotism; but his last glances and thoughts and heartbeats were for her with whom he had become one flesh, and for those who were bone of his bone. After his death a paper was found on his body addressed to his wife and containing his last injunctions to her regarding their children.