Chapter 2:
https://civilwarchat.wordpress.com/2019/03/20/u-s-grants-failed-presidency-chapter-2-the-new-normal/ The following seems to be overly broad, seemly to brand Grant with letting all the CSA soldiers go..
Phil seems upset that a grateful nation presented the Grants with money. Perhaps Phil wishes the man who defeated the CSA end his days in poverty(actually Grant died penniless writing his memoirs in great pain until his last breath to provide for his wife after his death. What next? Phil gets jealsous that Grant has a fancy tomb.
The couple no longer depended upon Jesse’s charity for a home. Grant’s military rank paid enough salary to enable an independent and comfortable living. He and Julia would strive ever after to sustain, or improve, the family’s economic and social status as their “new normal.” Public adulation soon resulted in gifts that only intensified the couple’s appetite for more possessions and honorariums.
A month following Lincoln’s assassination, wealthy Philadelphians gave Grant’s family a grand home at 2009 Chestnut Street. It included closets full of snowy linen and dining tables set with fine silver. Grant planned to commute to Washington, but the five-hour train ride quickly rendered the plan impracticable. As a result, he temporarily accepted an offer from Henry Halleck, who was his predecessor as Army General-in-Chief, to use Halleck’s Georgetown Heights home. Still wanting a Washington residence of his own, in October he purchased a four-story structure for $30,000. A future brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, actually bought the home and gave Grant title in exchange for a note to pay Corbin $30,000 over ten years
Four months later former Major General Daniel Butterfield led a subscription for Grant among rich New Yorkers that resulted in a purse of $105,000, which was equivalent to about $1.7 million in 2018. Grant first used the money to repay his debt to Corbin. He then invested $55,000 in government bonds and took the last $20,000 in cash. Bostonians similarly gave him a personal library valued at $75,000. While living in Halleck’s home during the summer of 1865 he also accepted a $16,000 gift home back in Galena, Illinois. Four years later Butterfield and Corbin would teach Grant that there is no such thing as a free home.
Early in 1866 Horace Greeley’sNew York Tribune humorously wrote, “Since Richmond’s capitulation the stern soldier [Grant] spent his days . . . in conjugating the transitive verb to receive, in all its moods and tenses, but always in the first person singular . . . ” Soon thereafter the Georgetown Courier continued in form by adding that Grant had conjugated the verb for a total of $175,000, which biographer Hesseltine concluded was “obviously too low.”
Indeed $175,000 for saving the nation is cheap. Except for fro lost causers.