Extended biography memoirs of Grant: There were no troops stationed between these two points, except a small force guarding a working party which was engaged in repairing the railroad. He was too old to be in the ranks himself he must have been quite seventy then but his means enabled him to be useful in other ways. In ordinary times the homestead where he was now living produced the bread and meat to supply the slaves on his main plantation, in the low lands of Mississippi. Now he raised food and forage on both places, and thought he would have that year a surplus sufficient to feed three hundred families of poor men who had gone into the war and left their families dependent upon the "patriotism" of those better off.
