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Fine Content U.S. Grant Signed Letter

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GRANT, Ulysses Simpson. (1822- 1885) Eighteenth President 1869- 77, Commander of all Union Armies during the Civil War. Brief Republican candidate for President again in 1880, Grant once claimed that he only knew two tunes. One was "Yankee Doodle", and the other wasn't. His best- selling Memoirs netted his destitute family almost $500,000 and was completed just four days before his death. Reputed to have smoked more than 20 cigars a day, Grant explained that he acquired his habit following the battle of Fort Donelson, Tennessee in February of 1862. Up to that point, he was only an occasional smoker. After published accounts of the battle portrayed him smoking in the midst of the great conflict, admirers deluged him with thousands of the finest cigars as gifts. He gave away as many as he could, but, as he recounted to General Horace Porter, "having such a quantity on hand, I naturally smoked more than I would have done under ordinary circumstances, and I have continued the habit ever since." Letter Signed, "U.S. Grant" 2p. separate octavo leaves, Mt. McGregor, July 15, 1885, addressed to the Editor Century Magazine, and reads: "My illness having prevented me from elaborating for my ‘memoirs’ the articles I have sent you on the campaign and siege of Vicksburg, and the battles about Chattanooga, I will be obliged if you will consent to the ommission from those articles, First: the detailed account of the Campaign of Vicksburg and Second: that part of the Chattanooga article which my son, Colonel Grant, will show you (and which has no special bearing upon the battles of Chattanooga), subsitituting in their places the resume preceding the siege of Vicksburg that I have sent you, and what I will send you, in place of the omitted part of the Chattanooga battles. This need not interfere with your publication in the collected volumes of your War series of the entire articles..." About VG...plus; Cabinet card photograph entitled "Last Photograph of Gen. Grant, Four Days Before Death." copyrighted July 22, 1885. VG. (2 items)

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