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

[445] when the first month's pay was due the cheque was handed him. At first he insisted that one of his sons should go at once to the bank to have the cheque cashed; he wanted to handle the money. But at this juncture his sons were unwilling to leave the house even for an hour, and he finally consented that Mr. Chaffee should draw the money. When it was handed him he divided it among Mrs. Grant and his children, saying it was all he had to leave them. This was on the 31st of March, when he was expecting to die within forty-eight hours.

During the month of March his daughter arrived, and although, of course, her coming was a solace, yet he knew too well by this time that she had come to see him die. The gathering of other friends also had significance. He ceased now to leave his room except at rarest intervals. One physician always slept in the house.

His suffering at last became so poignant that anodynes, the use of which had long been postponed, were indispensable. The pain was not of that violent character which had been so sorely dreaded, and which the progress of the disease did not even yet induce; it was rather an intolerable nervousness, as unlike as possible the ordinary phlegmatic calm of General Grant,—a physical excitement and an excessive sleeplessness, combined with a weakness that was spasmodic. These sensations were the cause of a consuming wretchedness, but they were not cancerous pains. The physicians constantly declared that although the cancer was making irresistible advance, it was not the cancer that produced the exhaustion and the nervousness, which, unless arrested, would bring about death very soon. It was only too plain that the mental, moral disease was killing General Grant,—it was the blow which had struck him to the dust and humiliated him before the world, from which he could not recover. He who was thought so stolid, so strong, so undemonstrative, was dying for a sentiment—because of the injury to his fame, the aspersions on his honor.