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

[433] thwart the intentions of his other friends without the sanction of Mr. Vanderbilt, as their efforts would enable him to cancel his debt to Mr. Vanderbilt, but he preferred that the debt should be paid by the sale of the property, not by a new subscription.

Then came the correspondence which has been given to the world: first the munificent offer of Vanderbilt to make over all the property to Mrs. Grant, only providing that the presents should be held in trust during her life and that of the General, to be afterward transferred to the Government, as souvenirs of the glory which is national; then the letter from General Grant, accepting the offer so far as it concerned the disposition of the presents, but declining to receive the return of the property; the persistent pressure of the great millionaire; the acceptance of Grant under this pressure; Mrs. Grant's letter of an hour afterward recalling the acceptance, written, of course, with Grant's sanction, but signed by Mrs. Grant to save the General from the appearance of discourtesy; and the final abandonment of every particle of property he had in the world, to satisfy a debt incurred at the instance and through the outrageous falsity and guile of a monster in craft, who selected the people's hero as his victim and his decoy; the abandonment of the property, and the surrender—harder still—of those monuments to his fame which his deeds had won; surrendered, it is true, to the nation, which will guard them sacredly, as it will the fame of which they are the symbol and the seal.

All this wore on the frame torn by disease and the spirit racked by imputations, thrown off, it is true, but some of which still rankled, like poisoned arrows, that wound though they are extracted; all this told on that body which had endured so many sleepless nights and prolonged marches, which had suffered fatigue and hunger and watchings, and that soul which had withstood cares and responsibilities and torturing anxieties such as have fallen to the lot of no other