I rose at once and held out my hand, but he only gave me his hat, understandably confusing me with the absent secretary. To my surprise, only one hour later John Motley, our former Ambassador to the Austrians, came into the room followed within a few minutes by none other than General Lee and a civilian couple. Leaving me quite alone in the secretary’s anteroom, Grant went into his office and closed the door. Upon reaching his new home he inadvertently called the doorkeeper “Meade,” although that worthy servant politely corrected him to “Pendel” more than once as he slipped the chain to allow us entry to the second floor. As we walked the two blocks of the city, Grant confided in me that the best of his former army staff such as Rollins, Dent, Porter, and Badeau were either with him at the White House or were named Sherman, which he found vastly amusing.

The President was ensconced in the lobby at Willard’s and somehow espying me through the fog created by cigars and brandy even at such an early hour, insisted that I accompany him to the White House as he was expecting a person of great importance and of both our acquaintance. Speaking of Grant, I shall not soon forget the events of yesterday morning. He has always been quite the radical and remains a familiar of the Grant administration, for whom he heads the Bureau of Freedmen. The regular minister preached his final sermon on Sunday last and has since departed under a cloud, taking half the congregation with him and alleging many improprieties by Howard who claims the cause of the split is to be found in their different desires for the future of the negro race, a question of integration versus independent development. Today I accompanied General Howard, whom you will remember from West Point, to attend services at his church, the First Congregational at 10th and G streets. He currently is living in Bloemfontein South Africa working on a complimentary biography of General D. Copyright © 2007, 2008, All Rights ReservedĮditor’s note: In the more than 100 years since his decease, the General has been busy reconstructing from memory his secret, lost letters which shed new light on topics of great interest to the members of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.

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