"GIVE THE BOOK TO CLEMENS"

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in American History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Struggling businessmen and unlikely friends, Ulysses S. Grant and Samuel Langhorne Clemens joined forces to write the final chapter in Grant’s life.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens’ first meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant was less than memorable. The famed writer and humorist, better known as Mark Twain, had little in common with the stoic chief executive. As he shook hands with Grant during a visit to the White House in 1870, Clemens found himself uncharacteristically at a loss for words. After a few moments of awkward silence he said to his expressionless host, "Mr. President, I am embarrassed. Are you?" The president, Clemens later recalled, "smiled a smile which would have done no discredit to a cast-iron image and I got away under the smoke of my volley."

Nine years later, the two met again with the same awkward result, but this time Grant said to Clemens, "I am not embarrassed, are you?" Clemens was impressed by Grant’s "good memory for trifles as well as for serious things," and the two American standards eventually became friends. In 1884 the unlikely friendship would spawn a unique partnership.

"IF THE BOOK BUSINESS interferes with the dramatic business, drop the former, for it doesn’t pay salt," Clemens wrote in 1884 to Charles L. Webster, his niece’s husband. Though he had recently finished writing Huckleberry Finn and started a publishing company named for and directed by Webster, Clemens was in a financial bind. The source of his troubles was a lavish lifestyle and poor investments in such dubious inventions as a "patent baby clamp," designed to prevent infants from kicking off their blankets, and a typesetting machine that was never put into use. In November of that year, the 48-year-old Clemens reluctantly took to the lecture circuit and toured the Northeast with the popular Southern writer George Washington Cable. As one half of the "Twins of Genius," Clemens earned about $17,000 for the 15 weeks of work. More significantly, however, he stumbled upon an opportunity that changed his life.

After lecturing in New York City’s Chickering Hall one rainy November night, Clemens was walking down the street when, as he later recalled, "two dim figures stepped out of a doorway and moved along in front of me." Clemens overheard one of the men ask the other, "Do you know General Grant has actually determined to write his memoirs and publish them? He has said so today, in so many words." Clemens could not believe his luck. Grant’s disastrous financial affairs were widely known, and Clemens instantly recognized the financial bonanza a publishing collaboration could mean for both men.

One of the greatest military officers the United States ever produced, Ulysses S. Grant possessed traits of loyalty and political naiveté that caused him only grief as president. During his two terms Grant had more than once been the victim of deception. By 1884, however, the Credit Mobilier, Whiskey Ring, and other scandals associated with his presidency were fading from public memory. Grant had escaped the scandals with his reputation largely intact.

Life outside the White House, however, brought Grant to the brink of ruin. After failing in a third bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1880, Grant helped found the Mexican Southern Railroad. By 1884 the company was bankrupt. Grant scraped together $100,000 to invest in the promising Wall Street brokerage firm of Grant and Ward, in which his son Ulysses S. (Buck) Grant was a partner. Unfortunately, Ferdinand Ward’s illegal dealings soon helped destroy the firm. In 1884, at the age of 62, Ulysses S. Grant was destitute.

That summer, however, Grant entered into a new venture that held some promise for success. Century Magazine asked Grant to write a series of articles about his war experiences. Desperate for money, Grant accepted the assignment, and the $500 Century offered for each manuscript. Grand found the work relatively simple and, encouraged by the articles’ success, the two parties began to discuss terms for the publication of Grant’s memoirs.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to