Perched on the side porch of the Drexel Cottage in the bracing air of Mt. McGregor, New York, a terminally ill Ulysses S. Grant spent his final day on earth on July 23, 1885. Suffering from excruciating throat cancer and entirely bankrupt due to a catastrophic Wall Street swindle, the former President and Civil War savior had spent his remaining, painful months frantically writing his memoirs. This quiet photograph, capturing the general in profound repose alongside his physician Dr. Douglas and his son Colonel Fred Grant, marks the absolute end of an American epic.
The extraordinary, unspoken victory of Grant’s final hours is that he passed away knowing his family’s future was secure. Just days before his death, Grant completed the final manuscript pages of his personal memoirs, writing long after he had lost the ability to speak. The publishing deal, orchestrated by his close friend Mark Twain, became an unprecedented literary phenomenon that completely rescued his family from poverty, ensuring that the man who had accepted the surrender of the Confederacy won his last, most personal battle against time and destitution through the power of his own pen.
