Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant

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The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant are an autobiography, in two volumes, of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States. The work focuses on his military career during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War. The volumes were written in the last year of Grant's life, amid increasing pain from terminal throat cancer and in an effort to restore the Grant family's finances and provide for his widow after his bankruptcy at the hands of an early Ponzi scheme. The set was published by Mark Twain shortly after Grant's death in July 1885. Twain, a literary superstar and personal friend of Grant, created a marketing system to reach millions of veterans with a patriotic appeal just as the general's death was being mourned. Ten thousand agents canvassed the North for orders, following a script that Twain had devised. 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...

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