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

[457] owner, Mr. Joseph W. Drexel. His strength had so far lapsed that the physicians afterward declared he could not have lived a week longer in the heats and sultriness of New York. When the fatigues of the journey were over, however, and there was time for the fresh and reviving air of his new situation to affect him, his spirits rallied, and he resumed his literary labor with extraordinary energy for a man in his condition.

I was not with him at Mount McGregor, but I know that his effort there must have been prodigious. He probably dictated or composed more matter in the eight weeks after the first of May than in any other eight weeks of his life; while in the eight weeks immediately preceding that date he did not compose as many pages. But the dying General seemed to summon back his receding powers, and expression, memory, will, all revived and returned at his command. His voice failed him, however, after a while, and he was obliged to desist from dictation and to use a pencil, not only in composition, but even in communicating with his family and friends. This was doubtless a hardship at the moment, but was fortunate in the end for his fame; for the sentences jotted down from time to time were preserved exactly as they were written, and many of them are significant. They especially indicate his recognition of the magnanimous sympathy offered him by Southerners. This recognition was manifest in a score of instances. He was visited at Mount McGregor by General Buckner, the Confederate commander who had surrendered to him at Fort Donelson, and he declared to his former enemy, ‘I have witnessed since my sickness just what I wished to see ever since the war—harmony and good feeling between the sections.’ To Dr. Douglas he expressed the same sentiment in nearly the same words: ‘I am thankful for the providential extension of my time, because it has enabled me to see for myself the happy harmony which so suddenly sprung up between those engaged but a few short years ’