Amid this Grant mania, many newspaper readers noted that in reports of the final day's fighting at Fort Donelson, Grant was holding a cigar - the one he received from Foote. Until that point, Grant had been primarily a pipe smoker. Now admirers flooded him with "boxes of the choicest brands" of cigars "from everywhere in the North. As many as ten thousand were soon received." Before long, Grant smoked eighteen to twenty cigars a day and they became an inescapable part of his persona. While many people characterized him as even-tempered, the compulsive smoking bespoke a deeper tension bottled up inside him. "Smoking seemed a necessity to General Grant's organism," said Ely Parker, who "noticed that he smoked the hardest when in deep thought, or engaged in writing an important document." The gift of so many cigars bred an ultimately fatal addiction.
Ulysses S. Grant was to die of throat cancer in 1885.
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