![]() ![]() Now facing his own mortality and the prospect of his family's destitution after his death, Grant approached Century with a proposal to publish his personal memoirs, serially and then in bound volumes. The essays were well received by critics and in 1876 the editor of Century Magazine, Robert Underwood Johnson, suggested Grant expand them into a memoir, as William Tecumseh Sherman had recently done to great acclaim. Century had paid Grant a flat author's fee of $500 (more than $14,000 in 2022) per article. These articles had been published by The Century Company in their flagship periodical, Century Magazine. Long before his diagnosis Grant had written a series of articles analyzing many of the battles he had overseen. That fall, the elder Grant was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer. Grant & Ward failed in May 1884, leaving Grant penniless. This proved disastrous, as Ward had used the firm as a Ponzi scheme, taking investors' money and spending it on personal items, including a mansion in Connecticut and a brownstone in New York City. ![]() But Grant was largely disengaged from the company's business, often signing papers without reading them. The former president bragged to friends that he was worth two and a half million dollars, and family members and friends poured money into the firm. The firm of Grant & Ward did well at first, bolstered by Ward's skills and Grant's name. Ward was described by his great-grandson Geoffrey Ward as "a very plausible, charming, unobtrusive, slender person with a genius for finding older people and pleasing them, which he learned early on." Ponzi scheme, personal bankruptcy and cancer diagnosis Ward was a young investor and personal friend of the junior Grant. In 1878, he moved to New York City and entered into business with his son Buck ( Ulysses S. He was nearly 60 and he looked for something to engage his time and replenish his finances. ![]() Personally financed, this tour left him short on liquid assets on his return. Grant and his wife Julia took a trip around the world in 1877 after his second term in office. Background World tour and money troubles He candidly depicts his battles against both the Confederates and his internal Army foes. Positive attention is often directed toward Grant's prose, which has been praised as lean, intelligent and effective. The combination of an honest man exploited and then marked for death by throat cancer lent the Memoirs immense contemporary interest. Grant received universal acclaim on their publication and have remained highly regarded by the general public, military historians, and literary critics. Äespite being explicitly written for money, and with a focus on those aspects of Grant's life most likely to induce sales, the Personal Memoirs of U. In the end Grant's widow, Julia, received about $450,000 ($13,600,000 in 2021) from Twain during the first three years of publication, suggesting that Grant received around 30% of each sale (i.e., a 30% royalty rate). By way of comparison, the memoirs of Grant's colleague William Tecumseh Sherman, published in 1876, were an immense financial success for their author, selling 25,000 copies during its first decade in print. This made the Memoirs one of the bestselling books of the 19th century, in its first year even outselling the publishing behemoth Uncle Tom's Cabin-an extremely unusual result for a non-fiction book. These efforts sold 350,000 two-volume sets in advance of the book's actual printing. Many were Union veterans dressed in their old uniforms, who went door-to-door offering the two-volume set at prices ranging from $3.50 to $12, depending on the binding ($110 to $360 in 2021). Ten thousand agents canvassed the North for orders, following a script that Twain had devised. Understanding that sales of the book would restore the Grant family's finances and provide for his widow, Twain created a unique marketing system designed to reach millions of veterans with a patriotic appeal just as the famous general's death was being mourned. Twain was a close personal friend of Grant and used all of his famous talent for promotion in selling the books. The set was published by Mark Twain shortly after Grant's death in July 1885. The volumes were written during the last year of Grant's life, amid increasing pain from terminal throat cancer and against the backdrop of his personal bankruptcy at the hands of an early Ponzi scheme. The work focuses on his military career during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War. Grant, the 18th President of the United States. Grant are two volumes of autobiography by Ulysses S. ![]()
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