Grant Dies After Finishing Memoirs: A Final Victory
He finished the last sentence four days before he died. Ulysses S. Grant had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 1884, was nearly bankrupt from a financial fraud, and raced against the disease to finish his memoirs and save his family from poverty. Mark Twain published them on commission. Grant died in July 1885 at Mount McGregor, New York, one week after completing the manuscript. The Personal Memoirs sold 300,000 copies in the first years and paid his wife enough to live comfortably. Twain considered them the finest military memoirs ever written in English.
July 23, 1885
141 years ago
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