ALS as president, one page both sides, 5.5 x 9, Executive Mansion letterhead, May 31, 1873. Letter to his sister, Mrs. Mary Cramer, concerning the imminent death of his father, in full: “I am just in receipt of your letter speaking of fathers rapid decline. Of course I will go home at any day that it may be necessary for me to do so. I have been absent so much this Spring that business has accumulated so that I cannot go very well just now and next Thursday I have arranged to take us all to Long Branch. Any time after that I can go as well as not, and would not let that interfere if there should be a necessity. Don’t fail to keep me advised of father’s condition. Jesse you know is in California, alone feeling very big. Buck has returned from Europe and is at Harvard preparing for his examination. Fred is about starting for the Yellow Stone region where he will be gone all Summer, with an expedition for the protection of surveyors and builders of the Northern Pacific rail-road.” In fine condition.
The “business” that occupied Grant when he wrote to his sister about his father’s rapid decline was that of a replacement for Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who had just died. He ‘was going to nominate [Roscoe] Conkling [who was so talented and so honorable). But the New York senator disappointed his champion and declined the offer, as did Senator Timothy Howe of Wisconsin…Rebuffed, Grant had no other grand choice in mind. Instead, personal matters crowded in on him. Old Jesse Grant died in Covington at seventy-nine. He had been born in the same year as Justice Grier; ancient ties to the eighteenth century were breaking. We can only speculate about the sense of relief, mingled with guilt, that Grant must have felt at being at last not beholden to a father. Grant went to the funeral and then to Long Branch; meanwhile, all spring and summer and into the fall, rumors spread about whom he would name as chief justice.’ (William S. McFeely, Grant). After offering the seat to a myriad of candidates, Grant appointed the little-known Morrison Waite on January 19, 1874. Jesse, Buck and Fred were Grant’s three sons.
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