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

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Chapter 48:

Grant in his family.

I first saw Grant at Nashville soon after the battle of Chattanooga; his wife and his youngest child were with him, and this was typical of all I knew of him. It is hard for me to think of him apart from his family. All through the war, Mrs. Grant visited him whenever he remained for a while in a town, and even in the field she often shared his tent or cabin when the armies were not engaged in active operations. In 1877 I wrote to him asking for information in regard to her visits, for my history of his campaigns, and he answered from Paris:

I cannot give you definite information as to dates when Mrs. Grant visited me at City Point. She went there, however, soon after my headquarters were established there. She returned to Burlington, N. J., after a short visit, to arrange for the children's schooling, and went back to City Point, where she remained with the exception of two short visits to New Jersey until Lee's surrender and my return to the national Capital. Mrs. Grant made a short visit to me—the first time after leaving Cairo—at Corinth, next at Jackson, Tenn., then at Memphis, where I left her when I went to Young's Point, one or two days before running the Vicksburg batteries, and at Vicksburg after the surrender. She again visited me at Nashville.

I venture to add what I wrote after this in my history. It was submitted to General Grant and read to his wife, and approved by both. Indeed, every line in my history was read by him before it finally went to the printer, and had his sanction [408] as completely as any portion of his more ‘Personal Memoirs.’ With this knowledge the following passage has a peculiar significance. It is what he was willing should be said to the world:

The wife of the Commander-in-Chief had often spent a few weeks with him in camp or siege or when he was quartered in a captured town. At Memphis, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Nashville, she had joined him, and now again in front of Petersburg. His children, too, visited him, the eldest only fourteen years of age at this time [1864], the youngest seven; and the man who directed the destinies of armies, and was unalterable in his decisions when he believed them right, who ordered the devastation of the Valley of Virginia, and went unshrinking through the Wilderness campaign, was as bland and playful with his wife and children as the humblest soldier in the ranks before he went to war. All the simplicity and gentleness of his nature came out in this companionship. He had been married sixteen years, and still seemed to find his greatest solace in the domestic relations, while, like a true woman, the wife was interested in whatever concerned him, anxious to relieve him from petty cares, proud of his success, but never trenching beyond her proper sphere, exercising all her woman's influence to soothe and support, never to vex, or annoy, or disturb.

I have no word to withdraw from this picture now. It was written ten years ago, and I spent many hours in close companionship with its subjects afterward, in a still greater intimacy with each than I had then enjoyed. I saw them in all the pageantry of their European tour; I accompanied them to palaces and arranged their invitations and their travels; I was with them in America amid the aspirations after a third term, in the defeat of those desires, and in the retirement to comparative privacy; I was their frequent guest both at Long Branch and in New York. Mrs. Grant said to me more than once that the General wished me to consider his house one of my homes. I went to them in the [409] first distress after the failure of Grant & Ward, and I spent seven months under their roof in the last year of General Grant's existence, when the terrible shock of the cancer came, during the prolonged suspense, and when we all thought that the end had arrived; so that at the crises of their double life for nearly twenty years I was a witness, as close and intimate, when all the circumstances are considered, as that life ever knew; and I venture—I trust without indelicacy, for General Grant's private life is a matter of importance to mankind—I venture to testify.

There is nothing that the survivor should be unwilling to disclose or that I need shrink to reveal. No more beautiful domestic life can ever be known. General Grant's regard for his wife was constant, tender, true; the worthy love of a worthy nature; trustful, absolute, unceasing; in great things and small anxious for the happiness of its object. He would do anything to gratify his wife in her merest fancy or most momentary whim; while, in important affairs, Mrs. Grant did not overstep the line which both perceived, though possibly neither ever indicated it to the other. She did not strive to affect or change her husband's judgment in matters of strategy or public policy. She never dreamed of influencing his military decisions or his political ones, except in regard to individuals.

Like all women, she was full of personal feeling, but it was feeling about and for her husband. If she wanted a man deposed or supported, it was because she believed him true or false to Grant; and her instincts were sometimes nearer right than his judgment. She, of course, may have erred, but her motive was pure. In personal matters, up to a certain point, her influence was undoubtedly great; but after the point was reached, even in personal matters, Grant was immovable. Mrs. Grant wanted many things done which she was unable to accomplish. There came times when the General distrusted her judgment, thought her prejudices or [410] partialities affected her unreasonably, and then he did not yield, at least ever to do injustice. He may sometimes have gratified her by advancing a friend whom she favored higher than he would otherwise have done, but he also supported others whom he believed that Mrs. Grant unjustly disapproved. He would not overthrow a man in whom he trusted, though there were occasions when it would have been better for him had she succeeded.

In greater than personal matters she always simply urged him to follow his own judgment and conscience. I know of more than one instance when political or other important influences were brought to bear, and almost warped his judgment, and she simply but strongly advised him to do what he thought right, and perhaps induced him to do it; though he, as little as any man, I believe, required such inducement.

Mrs. Grant shared many of her husband's secrets, but not all; and never those of others which were meant for him alone. He more than once spoke to me of matters which he said he had not disclosed to her. He used to say, to tease her, that after his first election to the Presidency, he had to get up in the night and examine the waistcoat he had put under his pillow, lest she should have discovered the list of his Cabinet that he kept in the pocket. But this was only to tease her; he had as much confidence in his wife as any man that ever lived. In nearly every letter he wrote to me, he sent a message from her, who was indeed my faithful friend. He read to her every page of my history that I used to send him in advance, and many a time has he written that she commended lines about which he would only say, ‘They are so personal that I can make no comment.’ She shared his interest in my work and his approval of its character.

In the first years of my intercourse with Grant I was greatly impressed with this influence of his wife, and the impression deepened until the last. Nobody can understand his character or career who fails to appreciate this; no one [411] who did not know him intimately can ever say how much Mrs. Grant helped him; how she comforted him, and enabled him to perform his task, which, without that help and solace, I sometimes thought might never have been performed. She deserved of the country all the honor and deference it ever paid her, and all the comforts it ever bestowed. She soothed him when cares oppressed him, she supported him when even he was downcast (though he told so few); she served him and nerved him at times when he needed all she did for him.

But in those early years during the war and the first portion of his Presidency, indeed during all the period in which General Grant achieved his greatness, his children were only playmates and objects of affection for him. They were too young to understand his efforts and duties and anxieties. Jesse, the only one whom I ever saw much with him in the field, was a child of only seven years, a toy, a delight to his father, and of course was cherished deeply, but that was all; the others were at school; he hardly saw them, and when he did, of course they could not influence his action or perceive its object or results. In Washington, all through the terrible anxieties of the Andrew Johnson time, they were still children. He was fond of them, but he did not then impress me as more tender than many other fathers, though deficient in no parental duty or sentiment.

I left his side after the first months of his Presidency, and saw little of him for the next seven years, but I met all of his children in Europe—the daughter first. She was then just seventeen, the sweetest, most natural, most delightful of American maidens. She was received almost as a princess in England. General Schenck was American Minister at London at the time, and he determined that the daughter of the President should be treated with respect according to English rules. He called on the Minister for Foreign Affairs and announced that the daughter of the President of the United States had arrived in London. In a day or two the Foreign [412] Secretary replied that the Lord Chamberlain had informed him Her Majesty would be happy to receive Miss Grant at a private audience at Buckingham Palace, together with the lady who accompanied her, and the Minister of the United States.

Now ‘Nellie Grant,’ as the country called her, had been sent abroad by her mother to take her out of the way of half-grown admirers; she had never worn a long gown in her life till she arrived in England, but as the President's daughter she was the object of a very natural attention. Mr. Borie, Grant's former Secretary of the Navy, was sailing for Europe with his wife, and Mrs. Grant requested Mrs. Borie to take ‘Nellie’ with her. It was a great favor on Mrs. Borie's part, but she was happy to consent. She thought, however, that she was to take a schoolgirl, and she found she had a half-fledged princess on her hands. She did not want to go to Buckingham Palace, and inquired if the daughters of the Minister could not accompany Miss Grant. But the Queen had not invited those young ladies, and they could not propose themselves. Then, too, Mrs. Borie had no gown to wear to court, but this difficulty was overcome, and she went to the palace, like a lady ‘in attendance’ on the little girl she had expected to chaperone.

I gave Mademoiselle a garden party while she was in London and was delighted with her ease and self-possession. She stood by my side and smiled with democratic grace on duchesses and marchionesses as they made her the same curtesy they made to royalty; for the higher their own rank the more profound the prostration they performed.

On the return voyage, the young lady met her fate. Mr.Borie and Mrs. Borie were both ill and kept their staterooms while Miss Nellie remained on deck. There she fell in with a young Englishman, Algernon Sartoris, and before they reached America the mischief had been done that she was sent to Europe to avoid. ‘Nellie Grant’ was engaged— [413] and to an Englishman. Sartoris told me how he asked General Grant for the young lady's hand. With all the awe of an Englishman for the Head of a State, he was invited to dinner at the White House, knowing what was expected of him. After dinner the President led the way to the billiard-room and offered him a cigar. ‘Then,’ said Sartoris. ‘I knew my time had come. I waited and hoped the Presi dent would help me, but not a word did he say. He sat silent, looking at me. I hesitated, and fidgetted, and coughed, and thought I should sink through the floor. Finally, I exclaimed in desperation— “Mr. President, I want to marry your daughter.” ’ It took a bold man to say that to General Grant, but doubtless the boldness recommended him, for Sartoris carried away the prize.

His mother, Adelaide Kemble Sartoris, said something to me once which, as she is no longer living, I may repeat; it shows the English notions so completely. I paid the young couple a visit soon after their marriage. They were living with the father of Sartoris, in the south of England; and one afternoon when the pair were together in the garden, for the honeymoon lasted a long while, Mrs. Sartoris, the elder, was telling me how much she liked her daughter-in-law. ‘Nellie is not at all bumptious,’ she said. ‘Soon after her arrival we were making five o'clock tea, and Nellie asked to help. I consented, of course, and she exclaimed: “I never made tea before in my life.” ’ Then Mrs. Sartoris gravely remarked, ‘It had not occurred to me before, but of course a President's daughter had never made tea!’I said, ‘Certainly not! I suppose she had never before made tea’; but I didn't explain that five o'clock tea was unknown in America at that time. I was not going to take down my princess a peg.

Another of General Grant's children visited England while I was there. ‘Buck,’ as we called Ulysses junior, was a law clerk in New York, and went to London with one [414] of the firm with whom he was studying. The lawyer had business in England and took Ulysses to do the copying, but when they arrived he was worse off than Mrs. Borie. The son of the President and ‘the gentleman who accompanied him’ were invited everywhere. When they drove out ‘Mr. Grant’ was put on the front seat, and ‘the gentleman’ behind; when they were announced at dinners and parties in English fashion, it was Mr. Grant who preceded; and their real relations were reversed in the most ridiculous manner. I was having a holiday at the time, and they took my house off my hands for a month or two. They went about a great deal in London, I was told, and were both more than popular, and ‘the gentleman who accompanied Mr. Grant’ made the most of his opportunities.

But all this passed away. The children of General Grant had their day. Then came sorrow and humiliation. Every one knows that the beloved chief went into business and was wronged; that he and his lost their all; that the sense of his disgrace rather than the loss of fortune, struck to the soul the man who had been honored by the world. The long and terrible story has been told. The nation is familiar with it. And then in the sorrow that was worse than a cancer, General Grant clung to his family. Then I—and I believe even they—first fully discovered how dear they were to him. His love for his wife remained what it had always been; all that the love of a husband could be for the partner of his greatness and his poverty, his joys and his griefs, during more than thirty years; a beautiful spectacle of domestic affection in as great and striking vicissitudes as earth can ever know. But the passion for his children was now developed into something exceptional and almost unreasoning. He admired the talent of his sons as if it had been extraordinary; he declared Ulysses had a marvelous business capacity; that Colonel Grant was fit to command armies; that Jesse was a mathematical genius. All the world knows [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.