![]() The visit just happened to occur on the November day that Grant was sitting with his eldest son, Fred, about to sign the Century contract. But shortly after his diagnosis, Grant received a visit from his old friend Mark Twain. As a contract was being drawn up, Grant determined to get to work on his writing and to cut back on cigars. He left the doctor’s office to meet with a publisher at the Century Co., who immediately offered a deal. Aware that his condition was terminal, and that he had no other way of providing for his family, Grant determined there was no better time to write his memoirs. The physician immediately began treating him with cocaine and a derivative of chloroform. The physician, observing carcinoma, remained silent. Pain at the base of his tongue had made it difficult for the 62 year-old to eat, and he visited a throat specialist in October of that year. (With Julia Grant’s consent, Vanderbilt later donated the hundreds of historical items to the Smithsonian Institution, where they remain today.)īankrupt and depressed, Ulysses S. Vanderbilt reluctantly accepted them and considered the debt settled. With no pension, Grant sold his home and insisted that Vanderbilt take possession of his Civil War mementos-medals, uniforms and other objects from Grant’s famous past. Yet Grant would not accept any more help from his friends-especially Vanderbilt, who offered to forgive the loan. After all was said and done, the investment firm had assets of just over $67,000 and liabilities approaching $17 million. He served a six-year sentence for fraud at Sing Sing Prison, but he left Grant in ruin. He gave him the benefit of his moderate fortune and the prestige of his name, and this is his reward.” Grant became a partner to give his son a good start in life. “There is no doubt,” one man told a reporter at the time, “that Gen. “I don’t see how I can trust any human being ever again.”Īs news of the swindle and Grant’s financial demise spread, he received a great deal of public sympathy, as well as cash donations from citizens who empathized and were grateful for his service to the nation. “I have made it a rule of life to trust a man long after other people gave up on him,” he said. Grant spoke glumly to the firm’s bookkeeper. The next morning, Grant arrived at his office only to learn from his son that both Marine National and Grant and Ward were bankrupt. The tycoon then made it clear that it was his relationship with Grant that mattered to him most, and he made a personal loan of $150,000, which Grant promptly turned over to Ward, confident the crisis would be averted. “What I’ve heard about that firm wouldn’t justify me in lending it a dime,” Vanderbilt told him. Grant’s friend Mark Twain published Grant’s memoirs just months after the former president’s death. Vanderbilt, richest man in the world, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Grant listened intently, then paid a visit to another friend- William H. A panic, Ward told him, would most likely follow. On May 4, Ward told Grant that the Marine National Bank was on the verge of collapse, and unless it received a one-day cash infusion of $150,000, Grant and Ward would be wiped out, as most of their investments were tied up with the bank. Ferdinand Ward, his dashing and smooth-talking partner-he was only 33 but known as the “Young Napoleon of Wall Street”-had been running a Ponzi scheme, soliciting investments from Grant’s wealthy friends, speculating with the funds, and then cooking the books to cover his losses. In truth, Grant had little understanding of finance, and by May 1884, he had seen yet another failure, this one spectacular and publicized in newspapers across the country. In New York, in the spring of 1884, things were about to get worse.Īfter putting up $100,000 in securities, Grant became a new partner, along with Buck, in the investment firm of Grant and Ward. Their son Buck had to send them $60,000 so they could continue on with their travels. Before the Civil War he’d failed at both farming and the leather business, and on the two-year, round-the-world tour he and Julia took after his presidency, they ran out of money when Grant miscalculated their needs. ![]() ![]() Morgan raised money to help Grant and his wife, Julia, make a home on East 66th Street in Manhattan, and after two decades at war and in politics, the Ohio-born son of a tanner approached his 60s aspiring to join the circles of the elite industrialists and financiers of America’s Gilded Age.īut the Union’s preeminent Civil War hero had never been good at financial matters. Grant settled in New York, where the most famous man in America was determined to make a fortune in investment banking. Photo: Library of CongressĪfter serving two terms as president, Ulysses S. Grant working on his memoirs just weeks before his death in 1885.
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