Beschreibung:

GRANT, ULYSSES S., President Autograph letter signed ("U.S. Grant") as President, to former Secretary of Navy Adolph E. Borie, Long Branch, New Jersey, 3 July 1873, 2 1/2 pages, 8vo, written on a four page sheet of Grant's personal stationery , in good condition. [ With :] Autograph free frank ("U.S. Grant") on original envelope bearing stamp and circular cancellation. GRANT ON THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER A personal letter to a close friend and former Cabinet member (Borie, a Pennsylvania businessman, had served as Secretary of Navy in Grant's first administration, but stepped down in March). "I have just returned from Covington, Ky. after seeing my father deposited in his last resting place. For some time he has rather courted death, feeling that at his age recovery was impossible. He expressed himself to friends, for several weeks before his death, as entirely resigned, and did not hope for, or wish, strength to hold out longer, saying that he had reached a ripe old age without pain or sickness. He had been so long gradually failing that my mother and sister, who were with him, had discounted his death in advance so that they did not grieve as they would have done for me who had suddenly sickened and died or for me who was not entirely resigned to his fate..." Grant had a strained relationship with his father, one which was never fully reconciled. Jesse Grant, for the most part, considered Ulysses incompetent, and Grant was never able to alter his father's opinion, even though he had achieved the highest possible rank as a soldier and office as a politician. Jesse was a source of great embarrasment to Ulysses as president, so Grant is likely to have looked upon his death with mixed feelings of sorrow and relief.