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

[451] battling again, and this time harder than before, for the enemy was closer. He fairly grappled and wrestled now with Death. Once or twice his opponent got him down, but Grant arose almost stronger in his agony than the One who is stronger than us all. The terrible calm of the fight was exactly like the determination in the Wilderness or before Richmond, where I once heard him say: ‘I feel as sure of taking Richmond as I do of dying.’ There was no excitement, no hysterical grief or fear, but a steady effort of vital power, an impossibility for his spirit to be subdued. He was not resigned; neither was he hopeful. He simply, because he could not help himself, made every effort to conquer. After every paroxysm of mortal faintness the indomitable soul revived, and aroused the physical part.

I may not be thought to lift too far the veil from a dying chamber if I mention one circumstance which had for me a peculiar interest. During all of General Grant's illness, down to the hour when his partial recovery began, Mrs. Grant never could bring herself to believe that she was about to lose him. A woman with many of those singular premonitions and presentiments that amount almost to superstition, but which yet affect some of the strongest minds, and from which General Grant himself was certainly not entirely free, she declared always, even at the moment which every one else thought would prove the last, that she could not realize the imminence of the end. Her behavior was a mystery and a wonder to those who knew the depth of the tenderness and the abundance of the affection that she lavished on her great husband. Her calmness and self-control almost seemed coldness, only we knew that this was impossible. I did not presume, of course, to comment on this apparent stoicism, but once or twice she told me she could not despair; that there was a feeling constantly that this was not to be the last; and even when she wept at the gifts and the words that were thought to be farewells, she was putting up prayers that