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

[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