Grant, Ulysses S., Eighteenth President, as Lieutenant General, United States Army

Autograph letter signed ("U. S. Grant | Lt. Gen"), 2 pages (9 7/8 x 7 3/4 in.; 253 x 198 mm) on a sheet of Head Quarters Armies of the United States letterhead, City Point, Virginia, 19 December 1864, to W. R. Bergholz; several neatly repaired fold separations.

Autograph letter signed ("U. S. Grant | Lt. Gen"), 2 pages (9 7/8 x 7 3/4 in.; 253 x 198 mm) on a sheet of Head Quarters Armies of the United States letterhead, City Point, Virginia, 19 December 1864, to W. R. Bergholz; several neatly repaired fold separations.
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Grant offers assistance to a secret agent for intelligence reports "from the interior of the so called Confederacy."

William R. Bergholz was a civil engineer from South Carolina. Because of Union sympathies, or perhaps just from the circumstances of their travel, he and his wife, Mary, found themselves residents of New York City during the Civil War. Bergholz somehow obtained an interview with Ulysses S. Grant and, convincing him of his sincerity, became a paid agent of the General. In the fall of 1864, Bergholz was arrested by Union troops, but was released on the order of Grant, who also directed that Bergholz receive $200 "for information given the Lieutenant General, and secret services rendered the Government" (Papers, ed. Simon, 15:15 note).

Grant here assures Bergholz that he will continue to help him find suitable employment with the Union military: "Your letter of the 8th inst. is received. I regret Gen. [Richard] Delafield declining to let you retain the letter of recommendation which I had given you addressed to him. Appreciating as I do your services in giving information from the interior of the so called Confederacy, voluntarily, and the value of the information given, it would afford me the greatest pleasure to assist you in obtaining a situation during the time you must remain absent from your property and means in the South. If you are fortunate enough to find such a place, take it. If you do not get employment within a few weeks I will employ you in the public Service, as Engineer, and send you to the Sea Coast either with Sherman or [Robert Sanford] Foster. I must wait to see the development of Sherman's campaign and determine upon the next before sending you. Of course it will depend upon whether this will be agreeable to you."

Grant was true to his word. On the same day that he reassured Bergholz, Grant wrote to William Tecumseh Sherman, requesting that he attach Bergholz as an assistant engineer: "There is probably no gentleman in the South better acquainted with the roads, fortifications, and feelings of the people from Charleston to Richmond than Mr. Bergholz. He is at this time a refugee from his home and all his property" (Papers, ed. Simon, 13:138 note).

It is uncertain, however, if Bergholz returned to the South before the end of the War—if at all. On 24 December 1864, General John Dix telegraphed to Grant, asking to detain Bergholz a few days in New York City in order to testify against a suspected Confederate agent.

Not in Paper of Ulysses S. Grant, ed. Simon, and evidently unpublished. (However several references to Bergholz appear in volume 13 of the Papers, as do two letters from Grant to Mary Bergholz.)