Ulysses S. Grant had an unremarkable military career in peacetime before emerging as the leading Union general of the Civil War. After Grant’s important victories in 1863 at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Abraham Lincoln appointed him general-in-chief of all the Union armies. He was President of the United States, 1869–77. His 1880 bid for a third term was unsuccessful, and he moved to New York City. In 1884, his brokerage business having failed, he learned he had cancer of the throat. SLC, a longtime admirer, convinced him to dictate his memoirs, to be published as a subscription book with SLC’s firm, Charles L. Webster and Company. Grant died soon after completing work on the book. His heirs profited greatly by it: early sales of the Personal Memoirs brought Mrs. Grant what was then the biggest single royalty payment ever made ($200,000). The work ultimately earned the family over $400,000, the equivalent of over $8 million today. SLC eulogized Grant as “a very great man—& superlatively good.”