From that time forward his one thought was to live long enough to complete this task, and to it he devoted himself with almost superhuman courage and persistence, in the hope of being able to provide for his wife and family after he had gone. Indeed, in this daily struggle against disease and death he showed, not only all the qualities that had made him invincible in the field, but also the higher qualities of patience and unselfishness with which he had not been fully credited. Uncomplaining and considerate of everyone but himself, he looked death steadily in the face and wrote on day after day while the whole nation, lost in admiration of his dauntless courage, watched at his bedside with tender solicitude. At last, on July 23, 1885, the pencil slipped from his fingers. But his heroic task was done and no monument which has been or ever will be erected to his memory will serve as will those pages to insure him immortality, for "Grant's Memoirs," modest as the man himself, have become a part of the literature of the world. Authorities The following is a partial list of the authorities relied upon in the text: Grant's Personal Memoirs; Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (Captain R. E. Lee); Life of Robert E. Lee (Fitzhugh Lee); Robert E. Lee--Memoirs of His Military and Personal History (Long); Military History of U. S. Grant (Badeau); Grant in Peace (Badeau); R. E. Lee--The Southerner (Page); Robert E. Lee (Trent); Robert E. Lee and the Southern Confederacy (White); McClelland's Own Story; Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (Henderson); The Story of the Civil War (Ropes); The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (Davis); History of the United States (1850-1877 Rhodes); The Campaign of Chancellorsville (Bigelow); Personal Memoirs (Sheridan); Memoirs of General Sherman; Reminiscences of Carl Shurz; From Manassas to Appomattox (Longstreet); Abraham Lincoln--A History (Nicolay and Hay); The Army Under Pope (Ropes); The Antietam and Fredericksburg (Palfrey); The Virginia Campaign of 1864 and 1865 (Humphreys); Chncellorsville (Doubleday); Life and Letters of Robert E. Lee (Jones); Ulysses S. Grant (Wister); Ulysses S. Grant (Garland); Campaigning with Grant (Porter); Autobiography of O. O. Howard.