Personal memoirs

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1. iokevinsApr 2017
   The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1, has an extended section, "About General Grant’s Memoirs"[1], describing Grant's financial particulars, at the end of his life.

   The "Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant"[2] cover his life through the end of the Civil War. It's a great read.

   [1]http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=works/MTDP103...

   [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Memoirs_of_Ulysses_S....

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2. kuharichAug 2023
   Grant, a paper millionaire prior, discovered that he had lost his entire fortune in a Ponzi Scheme. Realizing that he needed to find a way to pay back the loan and support his family, Grant turned to writing. Mark Twain convinced Grant to sign a contract with his nephew’s new publishing firm, Charles L. Webster and Company, to write his memoirs. To sweeten the deal, Twain offered Grant a seventy percent royalty from the profits. The need to write the memoirs quickly became more urgent when Grant was diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer that worsened with time. Grant worked vigorously throughout early 1885 to write the memoirs. He and his wife Julia also relocated in June to a friend's cottage in upstate New York at Mount McGregor to continue writing in a peaceful setting. Grant spent upwards of five to seven hours a day working on the book, aided by his son Frederick and other assistants who checked facts. His servant Harrison Terrell and Doctor John Hancock Douglas also played a crucial role by tending to Grant’s medical needs and provided comfort during moments of great pain. Grant finished the Memoirs three days before his death on July 23, 1885. When "The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant" were published later that year, they became an instant best-seller. The first paycheck to his widow, Julia Dent Grant, was for $200,000, providing long-term financial stability to the Grant family.
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3. metabagelJun 2020
   Ulysses S. Grant mentioned this technology in his personal memoirs, in the context of his childhood.

   "I kept the horse until he was four years old, when he went blind, and I sold him for twenty dollars. When I went to Maysville to school, in 1836, at the age of fourteen, I recognized my colt as one of the blind horses working on the tread-wheel of the ferry-boat."

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4. smacktowardOct 2019
   The way I phrase it is "the fear of the thing is usually worse than the thing itself."

   In his Personal Memoirs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Memoirs_of_Ulysses_S....), Ulysses S. Grant wrote of how he learned this lesson one of the first times he led troops into battle in the Civil War:

   I received orders to move against Colonel Thomas Harris, who was said to be encamped at the little town of Florida[, Missouri], some twenty-five miles south of where we then were...

   Harris had been encamped in a creek bottom for the sake of being near water. The hills on either side of the creek extend to a considerable height, possibly more than a hundred feet. As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris' camp,and possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on. When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view I halted. The place where Harris had been encamped a few days before was still there and the marks of a recent encampment were plainly visible, but the troops were gone. My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards.

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