… was born on this date in 1822. The Writer’s Almanac has a fine essay on Grant, some of which is excerpted here:
But by that time, Grant had also been diagnosed with throat cancer and his health deteriorated rapidly. He realized that he didn’t have long to live, and wrote his memoirs as fast as he could. In extreme pain, and in a daze from pain medication, he still managed to write 275,000 words in less than a year. In the last few weeks of his illness, he couldn’t even speak, but he kept writing and revising, and checking everything he wrote against the official records to make sure it was all factual. He finished his memoirs in July 1885, and died four days later. …
Critics and writers of the time were shocked at how well Grant wrote. His book Personal Memoirs (1885) is one of the few books ever written by an American president that qualifies as great literature.
Among the most famous passages in the book is Grant’s description of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox Court House. Grant wrote, “What General Lee’s feelings were I do not know … [but] my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause (slavery) was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”
The Library of Congress has information on Grant and his White House biography is here.