The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant are considered one of the best military commentaries ever written. Yet rumors persisted for many years that Mark Twain helped write and edit them. Detractors doubted that the lucid prose used in the papers couldn’t possibly have been penned by the former president. However, the claim – first suggested by a disgruntled aide to Grant – proved untrue. The original hand-written manuscript still survives and is entirely penned in Grant’s own handwriting. What’s more, though the two men were indeed friends, Twain was not even involved with the project when Grant began writing.

In 1884, near the end of his life, Grant was struck by financial disaster. He had invested most of his assets with a firm headed by one of his sons, which was later involved in a scam that lost all of the investors’ money. Now broke and with no source of income on the horizon, Grant was concerned about providing for his beloved wife Julia. He reluctantly accepted an offer from a magazine to write articles about his experiences during the Civil War and soon decided to turn the effort into writing his personal memoirs. Although the magazine offered to publish the memoirs, his friend Mark Twain made him a much more lucrative offer through Twain’s own publishing company. Grant eventually accepted Twain’s offer, hoping the memoirs could secure Julia’s financial future.

At about this time, the former president was diagnosed with advanced throat cancer, no doubt a result of his lifelong cigar habit. He was left in near-constant pain, unable to drink or sleep. Yet from his sickbed he churned out page after page. Twain was a frequent visitor, proof-reading the manuscript and sometimes passing notes back and forth when Grant was eventually unable to even speak.   

Grant’s last days were spent on his porch with pencil and paper, wrapped in blankets, determined to finish his memoirs before he succumbed to his disease. He completed his memoirs just days before his death on July 23, 1885. 

The book was sold in two volumes and became an instant bestseller. Twain said that the book was one of the best written he had ever seen. The publisher presented a check for $200,000 to Julia Dent Grant in early 1886 – the biggest royalty check written up to that time. Grant’s Personal Memoirs are still in print today and are often considered one of the best written ever produced by a former president.