“Give the Book to Clemens”: December 2000 American History Feature

In June, under the tightening grip of cancer, Grant traveled with his family to Mount McGregor, New York, to escape the city’s heat and to work in a more relaxing environment. Thousands of Union Army veterans also made the trip to Mount McGregor to catch a glimpse of their dying former commander. As they walked past his cottage, Grant acknowledged them with a nod or slight wave from the porch where he sat writing. Countless old friends, political allies, and Civil War officers from the North and South also dropped in to pay their respects.

Grant seemed almost able to put off his death, as he finished the final revisions and the preface to the book. On June 29 he wrote a letter to his wife, Julia, which he held in his coat until he died. "I had an idea that I could live until fall," he noted grimly, "I see now that the time is approaching more rapidly." If not for the remaining work, he wrote, he "would welcome the arrival of the Messenger of Peace, the earlier the better." On July 14, 1885, Grant wrote of his book, "There is nothing more I should do to it now, and therefore I am not likely to be more ready to go than at this moment."

Grant died on July 23, just days after completing his task. During a final visit with Clemens, the general, unable to speak, scrawled a note in pencil to ask if his book would make any money for his family. Clemens assured him that subscriptions were already pouring in and that his efforts had been worthwhile. The memoirs ultimately provided Julia Grant with between $420,000 and $450,000.

Clemens was quite pleased with the finished work and considered it on a level with Caesar’s Commentaries. Its emphasis was, as expected, on the Civil War, and most critics later agreed that it was a fine military work. The general wrote clearly with the preciseness of his old military dispatches and showed a more thoughtful and reflective intellect than many expected. Some even suggested that Clemens had penned the memoirs. Clemens, however, had contributed little to the writing, and he said that when Grant asked for his opinion on his work, he "was as much surprised as Columbus’s cook would have been to learn that Columbus wanted his opinion as to how Columbus was doing his navigating."

Clemens’ success in publishing Grant’s memoirs was a high point in the writer’s career. As the sales of the volumes first began piling up, he giddily told his wife, Livy, that he was "frightened at the proportions of my prosperity," and that "it seems that whatever I touch turns to gold." Clemens, however, who had made more than his share of bad business decisions, later claimed that the book "made money for everyone concerned but me."

Webster and Company’s earnings from Grant’s memoirs exceeded $150,000, a substantial sum in the 1880s. The company’s profits, of course, did not all go to Clemens, but the sales of the books brought him approximately $63,000. Clemens put some of it back into the company, but also continued to pour much of his income into the development of inventor James W. Paige’s typesetting machine. By 1887 Clemens had already spent more than $50,000 on this "mechanical marvel," as he once called it, and was still spending $3,000 a month on it. Clemens did not give up on the machine until 1894, after nearly 15 years of futile investment.

In the years following the success of Grant’s memoirs, Charles L. Webster and Company fell on hard times. The company published books by Civil War Generals Phillip Sheridan, George McClellan, and William T. Sherman and remembrances by the wives of Generals George Armstrong Custer and Winfield Scott Hancock. Civil War memoirs and narratives, however, had declined in popularity and sales lagged. The company’s fortunes received another blow in 1887, when famed clergyman and editor Henry Ward Beecher died just three weeks after signing on to write his autobiography. Webster and Clemens were left with an incomplete manuscript and an estimated loss of $100,000. At about the same time, company bookkeeper Frank M. Scott was caught after embezzling $25,000, only a portion of which was recovered.