The Making of an American Pantheon: Grant's Tomb

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Take it away, Louis. Grant was the most popular man in America, but he was also perhaps the one figure that was admired by all sections and was really a unifier. And this was a time when America was still greatly divided after the Civil War.

This was only 15, 18 years after the Civil War. But he was beloved by Democrats and Republicans, by Northerners and Southerners, by whites and African-Americans, by men and women. In the North, he was the savior of the Union. He was a liberator of four million enslaved. But even in the South, he was beloved.

And it's just it's fascinating to think about that because he was the victorious general that defeated the South in the Civil War. But he was beloved because he was magnanimous. He had given generous terms to Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, but also all throughout the war. He was known for treating Southerners with compassion, whether they were captured soldiers or whether they were Southern citizens. But he was diagnosed with inoperable throat and tongue cancer, which at the time, a diagnosis of cancer was pretty much a death sentence.

He died on July 23rd. He was surrounded by all of his loved one. He was surrounded by his children, by his wife, Julia, by his doctors who he had grown so close with. It was what's considered a good Victorian death. The country was united. There was outpourings of grief and notes of condolence that came in from the North and the South and all throughout the world. Even before he had died, Confederate generals that he had been friendly with at West Point before the Civil War had come to visit him on his deathbed to say their final goodbyes. But the public's outpouring of grief was immense.

It was something that had never been seen before because, one, he was beloved by the North and the South, unlike Abraham Lincoln of years earlier. And also, the public had this long time to prepare for this, kind of like this long, drawn-out saga of basically reading about and watching Grant die. So it was really an immense outpouring of grief that would then manifest itself first in the funeral, but then later in the tomb. So the opening act of Grant's funeral, first his body was taken by train to Albany, and he was placed in a public space where he could lie in state. And thousands and thousands of people lined up to see the remains of Grant. Because at the time, even with Lincoln, it was an open coffin funeral that was held. That was kind of the expectation at the time, that the public would get to look upon the remains one final time.

After the public viewing in Albany, the body was again placed on a funeral train that brought the remains to New York City. An interesting side note, just to show how popular Grant was, there was a coffin company that had created a one-of-a-kind beautiful coffin that Grant would be buried in. And it was shipped ahead of Grant's body, it was shipped to New York City. So the funeral company that had handled Grant's funeral had put the empty coffin on display in their storefront window. And 70,000 New Yorkers lined up just to see the empty coffin of Grant.

And that kind of gives a taste of what the funeral would be like in a couple days. First, the procession marched seven miles. And it included 60,000 marchers. If you were sitting on a bench in New York City at the time, it would have taken five hours for the funeral procession to pass you from beginning to end.

There were 60,000 marchers. Many of those were Union veterans. But there was also more than a handful of Confederate veterans that had traveled to pay their respects to Grant.

Two of the pallbearers were Confederate generals as well. The funeral had this permeation of reunification and reconciliation throughout it. It was the largest funeral that had ever been held for any president up until this time. One and a half million people witnessed the funeral, which is more than the population of New York City at the time. The population was about 1.3 million people. One and a half million people saw the funeral. So much larger than a concert in Madison Square Garden.

Even if the Beatles came to Madison Square Garden, they wouldn't have got that many people crammed into New York City to see them. And the phrase that was repeated all throughout the funeral event, whether it was in speeches or whether it was held in banners, was Grant's campaign slogan of reunification. Let us have peace. They were almost repeated as if they were Grant's final words. And that let us have peace kind of became the hallmark of his death and his tomb. So the remains were placed in a temporary crypt in Riverside Park. And there was reports that the designer had basically sat down to design the crypt and 20 minutes later he was done. And if you see images of it, that's pretty easy to believe.

It kind of looks like a pizza oven. But the intentions were he's not going to be there for long because right away after he died, that's when the mayor, Mayor William Grace, had gathered together Gilded Age elites. President Chester Arthur, former President Chester Arthur, New York City former and past mayors and governors, Titans of Industry, J.P. Morgan and Joseph Pulitzer and Astor and Vanderbilt.

He gathered them together to form the Grant Monument Association, whose mission was to build a magnificent Gilded Age monument for Grant. And indeed, he was a warrior and his mantra, let us have peace. Many a warrior has that as their mantra. Nobody knows the price of war better than warriors.

Reunification, reconciliation were his themes. And when we come back, more of the story of Grant's tomb with Louis Pecone here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith, are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.

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Any monthly withdrawals or transfers reduce earnings. And we return to our American stories and the story of Grant's tomb. When we last left off, Grant had succumbed to his cancer and had a massive funeral in New York City. He was then placed in a temporary crypt as Gilded Age elites worked to create his marvel of a tomb. But while the idea for a tomb had been around for a while, where to bury him was another story.

Let's continue with Louis Pecone. Well, the idea for a grand tomb to honor this great man started to come back while he was still alive. There was talk about that even before he had died.

But several weeks before he had died, he had tried to speak with his family about his thoughts about where he should be buried. He had mentioned several different locations. He had mentioned St. Louis. They had lived there and he had a cemetery plot that he owned there. He had mentioned Illinois. He had mentioned West Point. But he had also mentioned New York City. But ultimately, his family wouldn't speak to him about it.

They were still in denial and Julia just couldn't bring herself to have the conversation with Grant. So when he died, it was still undetermined about where he would be buried. And it seemed like everyone in the public had an opinion. Most people felt that Grant should be buried on national ground. He was a national hero.

West Point or Arlington Cemetery or the old soldier's home. It kind of became almost like a national competition where cities were vying for the honor. But Julia ended up choosing New York City really for three reasons. One is that she still lived in New York City. That would be a close location where she can go visit the grave. Number two was the mayor of New York City. He aggressively lobbied the family for the honor of hosting Grant's tomb.

He had sent a telegram just a couple of hours after it was announced that Grant had died to the family. Again, offering his city, offering to take the family on a tour anywhere throughout the city. They can choose the location. And he also promised this grand, unprecedented, gilded age tomb would be built in his honor. Perhaps the most important reason why Julia had chosen New York City was that she could be buried by Grant's side. Now in West Point, Arlington Cemetery, the old soldier's home which was kind of like the summer White House in Washington, D.C. All of those locations had regulations that only members of the military could be buried there and spouses couldn't be buried there.

So for Julia, that was a showstopper. And that was really the primary reason why she ended up choosing New York City. They had settled on Riverside Park. Riverside Park is very far north in the city. If a tourist goes to New York City and they go to the Empire State Building and they go to Rockefeller Center or the Broadway show, Times Square, Riverside Park is about 70, 80 blocks north of that.

It's pretty close to Columbia University. But the mayor of New York City had kind of sold the family on that location for several different reasons. At that time, there was very little population.

One reporter had said that there was more goats than people. But the mayor had felt that eventually the population would keep moving further and further north and Riverside Park would become the cultural and population center of the city. Now the population moved further and further north, but that never really happened where it became the cultural center of the city. Another reason was that the mayor had convinced the family that since this was so unpopulated that when they built this magnificent tomb for Grant, the architects would really have a blank slate to work from. They started fundraising right away. But a monumental Gilded Age tomb really cost a monumental amount of money. And the Grant Monument Association had set an extremely aggressive target, ambitious target of one million dollars.

Nothing like that had ever been raised through public subscription before. That's how Lincoln's tomb had been funded and that's how Garfield's tomb had been funded. But those tombs were much, much less than a million dollars.

So the million dollar target was really just an astronomical ambitious target that they'd had. There was some efforts to capitalize on the fact that there was so many people in New York City for the funeral. So there was some canisters that were set up throughout the city to raise money.

Children held fairs and bake sales. They were getting little articles written about them in the newspapers. And it was also perfect timing. If Grant had died 10 years earlier, the country would have still been too greatly divided to really focus on the cause of building this Grant's tomb. Really celebrating Grant's death or memorializing his death in such a universal fashion. If he had died 10 years later, the Civil War would have kind of passed a little bit more into history.

And Grant's star would have fallen just a little bit more by that point. But after that strong start, fundraising and donations began to taper off. After the funeral and after all the public sentiment had started to dissipate and public attention had looked to focus on other things. And the mourning, black mourning ribbons and the banners were taken down off the homes. Fundraising kind of started to dry up at about $100,000.

And a couple of years later, there was only about $150,000. So outside of New York City, very few funds ended up coming into the Grant monument, the Grant's tomb. Almost immediately there was an outcry for everyone outside of New York City. Feeling that New York City had basically stolen the tomb, that it wasn't the right location. The opinion was, you know what, New York City wanted this. They convinced the family, let them fundraise it.

I'm not sending them a dime. Another thing which is really hard to believe, at this time, 20 years after the Civil War, there wasn't even a statue of Grant in America. So after Grant had passed away, there was all of these other efforts to memorialize Grant that were popping up throughout the country.

In Leavenworth, Kansas, in Philadelphia, in Chicago. There was these other Grant monument funds, or some of them were actually named the Grant Monument Association, to even add to the confusion. But there was just all of these other efforts that were vying for the public's dollars to memorialize Grant.

Every dollar that went to the statue in Chicago was one less dollar that was coming to the tomb in New York City. But also, it wasn't until 1890, five years after Grant had died, that a design was finally chosen. And that was another reason why the fundraising had dried up, because people didn't know what they were donating towards. They had felt that after so many years, they don't even know what they're building, how come I'm donating to, I don't even know what I'm donating towards. So fundraising had started off strong, but it very quickly had turned into a challenge.

So finally, September 1890, a big milestone was achieved when John Hemingway Duncan, who was an architect from New York City, was chosen with the winning design. That wasn't the end of the difficulties. One, the original target that was set by the Grant Monument Association was in the fall of 1895 to complete the tomb. But there was stoneworkers strikes, there was the Panic of 1893, there was other issues. One of the big problems was with the leadership of the Grant Monument Association. These Gilded Age elites that were on the board of the Grant Monument Association kind of got distracted with their Gilded Age businesses. And they really didn't give the attention to the Grant Monument Association and the Grant's tomb that it really needed to help drive it forward. It turns out the fall of 1895 ended up getting pushed several times, and it wasn't until April 1897 when they finally completed and dedicated Grant's tomb. And even though they were able to raise the funds to complete the tomb, it wasn't the $1 million that they had originally budgeted or that they had originally set the goal for.

So several features in Duncan's original vision end up scaled back. Like the tomb was shortened from 160 feet to 150 feet, there was statuary that was eliminated, so they could meet the budget. So it wasn't until 12 years later that they had the dedication. And you might think by that point the public had forgotten about Grant, he's now been dead for 12 years.

But the affection and the public sentiment for Grant was still just as powerful and just as strong as it was at the funeral 12 years earlier. And you've been listening to Louis Poquon tell the story of Grant's tomb, which by the way still sits in a beautiful area in the Morningside Heights neighborhood very near Columbia University in the shadows of the George Washington Bridge, that famous bridge you see in movies up just ahead. It's a great place to bring your family to touch a piece of history. Visit if you ever get to New York City.

And when we come back, more of this remarkable story, Grant's tomb story here on Our American Stories. Judy was boring. Hello, then Judy discovered Chumbacasino.com.

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But in the 50s, not very many people knew that. But during the dedication of Grant's tomb, most people did. Grant was on the top of everyone's mind years after his death for the dedication of his tomb.

Let's continue with Louis Pecone telling us about that event. The public sentiment for Grant was still just as powerful and just as strong as it was at the funeral 12 years earlier. There was another dedication procession that was almost as large as the funeral march that had taken place 12 years earlier. Thousands attended the dedication, including the dedication address being made by President William McKinley at the time. Former President Grover Cleveland was there by William McKinley's side. The widow, Julia, was at the dedication.

As well as a very interesting friend that she had developed over the years, who was Jefferson Davis's widow, Verena Davis, which is just another interesting facet of this reunification and reconciliation sentiment. In addition to the funeral, there was also another feature, which was a massive gathering of ships from across the globe that had traveled to New York City for this international show of respect, as well as warships and other sea craft all throughout the country. So the Hudson River was almost like it almost looks like from the images that you can walk from from New York to New Jersey across the Hudson River, just jumping from one ship to the next. And the ships had covered about 70 blocks, probably about four miles of ships had gathered to be part of this dedication ceremony. And there was 21 gun salutes that were fired from the ships.

They were blowing their horns in support. The Kansas City Journal had written about the magnitude of the day, and they said, Never before in the history of the of the United States has such a tribute been paid to the noble dead. So it was really a phenomenon that had never been seen before all throughout American history, the dedication. The tomb that had been created was the largest tomb in American history before or since. It's 150 feet tall.

It's 8100 cubic feet. So it's much larger than Lincoln's tomb, much larger than Garfield's tomb. Immediately after the tomb was dedicated, it became the number one tourist attraction in New York City.

Now recall that I said that the tomb is located well outside of the tourist area of New York City. So if you were going to see the Statue of Liberty, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated a year after Grant had died. And Grant's tomb was more popular than the Statue of Liberty. It was such an attraction. It was the number one tourist attraction for 20 years after it was dedicated. And one of the interesting facets of the story that right around the time that Grant had died, postcards became popular.

And it's kind of like what's known as the Golden Age of the postcard. So Grant's tomb was was a prominent image on postcards and those postcards would be sent all over the world and that would further further attract people to come see Grant's tomb when they came to America. But it also became an important site for reunification. It was really the only site in the country where African Americans, white citizens, union and Confederate veterans would come to make a pilgrimage often at the same time to pay their respects to Grant.

So it was really unique. There was movies made about it. Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison's production company made a movie about Grant's tomb where it was kind of featured as like the central point in this romantic comedy that is almost like Sleepless in Seattle years later. It's a silly film, but it shows the popularity and the draw of Grant's tomb.

So by the late 1920s, in the roaring 20s, they had finally decided that it was time to complete Duncan's vision. All of those features that were stripped out when there was fundraising issues, it was decided to begin fundraising to complete Grant's tomb. That's the way that it was phrased in the newspapers at the time, that it wasn't complete when it was finished, even though most of the public kind of felt this was complete, even members of the Grant Monument Association after the 12 years of struggle. But there was still a large portion, a large enough portion of the Grant Monument Association that felt that it wasn't complete.

And very quickly, over one hundred thousand dollars was raised. But then October 1929, stock market crashes and that kind of became the death knell for completing Grant's tomb. With the Great Depression also came a new focus on historic sites.

One of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal organizations was the WPA, and the WPA had funded both the money and the labor to do enhancements and to do repairs at historic sites. So there was repairs to the floor. The floor had been damaged over the years. There was repairs to the electricity because electricity had been installed. But if you had gone to Grant's tomb at the time and looked up, you would see all of these wires that were snaked across the ceiling.

So the wires were made more discreet. But there was also a troubling sign. There was a post office that was demolished over by City Hall, and there was these two eagle statues that used to be at the post office. They were placed at Grant's tomb. And it's just kind of disturbing because we'd gone from this grand vision to now Grant's tomb was being adorned with hand-me-downs from other structures throughout New York City. Also, Grant's reputation really started to crater at this point.

The Southern cause revisionism, the Lost Cause ideology that really started right after the Civil War had started to really take hold in the early 1900s, right around the time of the movie Birth of a Nation. And by the 1950s, where Grant had once been the magnanimous hero alongside Washington and Lincoln, now he was criticized as corrupt. He was drunk.

He was a butcher. It was right about that time, too, that crime in New York City started to rise. And there's even an article in the late 1950s about a massive gang fight, the biggest gang fight that's ever been seen in New York City that was in Riverside Park at Grant's tomb. Going into the 1960s, by this point, the National Park Service had taken over ownership and authority of Grant's tomb, where once thousands of people had visited every day.

Now that number had started to dwindle down to the dozens. And Riverside Park and Grant's tomb started to become more popular with gangs and prostitutes and addicts and just criminals of all stripes. People started to become scared to go to Grant's tomb. It was desecrated by graffiti and it was damaged by vandals.

It was overrun with weeds and littered with all types of refuse. Every morning, people would come in there, the workers would come in there in a noble effort to try to clean up the tomb, and they would pick up the drug refuse and the bottles. And there was homeless that would gather at the tomb, and they would start to use the tomb almost as a toilet because there wasn't any public restrooms around there.

The eagles that were placed there, the vandals would break off the beaks from the eagles, and it was reported that the National Park Service had like a cache of eagle beaks ready to replace them when frequently they were being broken off. There was even congressional efforts to relocate the body of Grant. It was prominent in Illinois, and they had said that in Illinois we take care of Lincoln's tomb and we can take care of Grant's tomb too. So it had really gone from a joke, from Groucho Marx's joke, to just this horrible national joke of a site. And it's true just how rundown Grant's tomb was. I remember my dad bringing me there in my teen years during the late 70s and early 80s.

It was a disaster. When we come back, the story of Grant's tomb continues with Louis Pecone here on Our American Stories. Big bucks! New customers can score $150 instantly in bonus bets by betting $5 on any matchup. You know I love DraftKings Sportsbook, and you can get it on the action. With DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NFL, download the app now. Use the code BOBBYSPORTS. New customers can score $150 instantly in bonus bets for just betting $5 on the NFL. Only on DraftKings Sportsbook. The code is BOBBYSPORTS. Put that in please. In West Virginia, visit www.1-800-GAMBLER.NET.

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That's invite code GETDROP777. And we return to Our American Stories in our final portion of our story on Grant's Tomb with Louis Bacon, author of The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon. When we last left off, Grant's Tomb had fallen into a state of decay. The future of the tomb was hanging in the balance.

Let's pick up where we last left off. By the early 1990s, the outlook for Grant's Tomb looked very dire. This situation that I had been described about the vandalism and about the fact that no one was going there anymore and criminals gathering at the tomb.

This had been going on since like the mid 60s up until the early 1990s, almost 30 years this situation had been going on. And it really became a site that very few brave souls would actually go venture to go see it because it had been this dangerous location. So I've researched a lot of presidential sites in my writing. I've written three books about presidential locations, about their birthplaces. My second book included information about their graves and the location where presidents had died. So I've done a lot of research on presidential locations.

Many of them have been lost to history, but I've never seen an individual private citizen who has done so much to, frankly, save a presidential location that was almost on the path to certain doom. So Frank Scaturro was a student at Columbia University, which is really just like a stone's throw away from Grant's tomb. Now, for his whole life, he had been interested in the presidents and particularly became enamored with Grant and just felt that Grant hadn't been served correctly by historians and he felt that he deserved better.

But Frank enrolled as a law student. So just by happenstance, he ended up at Columbia. It wasn't the fact that Grant's tomb was so close that made him go to Columbia. But because of his interest in Grant, it was natural for Frank to start going to Grant's tomb and eventually he started giving tours at Grant's tomb. Now, first he started giving tours at Grant's tomb and then he started to volunteer at Grant's tomb.

So he had gone there so much, he just started to just give tours on his own. Now, what Frank saw at Grant's tomb really horrified him. Not just what was visible to the tourists that were going there, the graffiti, the stench. Overnight, homeless and vandals were using the site as a public restroom. People would come in every day, they'd clean it up, but the stench you couldn't get rid of.

The drug refuse. But also, when Frank started to look into the archives and look into what was behind the scene, he found that there was a bunch of archives of material from the Grant Monument Association that had been stored at Grant's tomb that had either been willfully destroyed, willfully discarded, or just destroyed through negligence. Like, for instance, there was a stack of paper archives from the Grant Monument Association, almost 100 years old, that had just been stored in the basement and had been damaged by water and it was basically garbage by this point. So Frank started to become, to say it in a nice way, almost a thorn in the side of the National Park Service.

And really didn't see anything changing. So he had taken the next step of writing a 325-page report to meticulously list all of the things that had been happening at Grant's tomb over the years that led to this sorry condition. And he sent this 325-page report to the mayor of New York City, to the governor of New York City, to all different types of politicians.

He sent it to the Secretary of the Interior, who's in charge of the National Park Service, and he also sent it to President Bill Clinton. Now, eventually, he had gained attention of an NBC morning show and it had ended up on television and basically showed on television all of the horrible conditions at Grant's tomb. Now, by this point, you have to remember, not too many people were even visiting Grant's tomb anymore.

It almost became forgotten from public memory. So there was probably many people in New York City and throughout the country that hadn't even seen Grant's tomb before. And now what they were seeing on television just horrified them. So that helped his cause. And then in 1994, there was a New York Times article.

And it was a pretty short article, but it just described the horrible conditions that were happening. And that also helped galvanize public attention. I kind of look at Frank as kind of like the brains and the head of the efforts to really draw attention to Grant's tomb. But there was one other individual who ended up partnering with Frank, and that was Ulysses Grant's deets. Ulysses Grant's great-great-grandson.

So if Frank was the head and Frank was the brains, I think that Ulysses was the heart of the effort. And it was one thing to dismiss a private citizen who was trying to raise attention, but it's an altogether other thing to just dismiss and disregard the pleas of a family member. And they actually ended up suing the National Park Service at one point. But thanks to their efforts, things began to change and they began to change fast. The turnaround was really nothing short of miraculous. Over the next couple of years, there was repairs completed inside and outside at Grant's tomb. There was security that was added. But also, just New York City was changing during this time. So by 1997, there was another rededication at the tomb. And by this point, it was restored to much of its former glory. And Ulysses Grant's deets had spoken at Grant's tomb.

Frank wasn't invited. After raising the attention through the New York Times and through the TV show, he was dismissed by the National Park Service. But Ulysses Grant's deets, the great-great-grandson, was welcome at the dedication. And he had said, I believe that Grant's tomb could easily inspire that same sense of sympathy and hope and pride in a modern-day audience, an audience far bigger and far more complicated, than the one a century ago. So he had felt that that Grant and Grant's tomb can still inspire that sense of reunification in 1997.

And I'd contend that it can still inspire that now. And if you just think about the kind of like the more recent history of Grant's tomb and how it's been restored and how that parallels to Grant's reputation, right about the time Frank Scaturro was really was making noise about saving Grant's tomb, about the horrible conditions there, Grant's reputation was at that all-time low. In presidential rankings in 1994, he was considered the fourth from the worst. The only presidents worse than Grant were James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding and Andrew Johnson. But during this time that Grant's tomb has come back, so has Grant. There has been been much more of a focus on Grant's presidency and the Reconstruction period. And historians have started to look closer on Grant's swift and severe reaction to crushing the KKK that had formed during his presidency. Thousands of KKK members were arrested. And really, the KKK was really crushed.

It wasn't until the early 1900s that the KKK had come back. So that his commitment to Native American rights and the onset of his presidency, his working through international courts to solve a dispute with England with the first time that any president had done that before. There's really been a renewed and overdue focus on Grant's presidency. And I'd mentioned 1994, he was fourth from the bottom. You can see every several years when these presidential rankings are done, Grant has just, every couple of years, he just keeps rising more and more. Grant's reputation is coming back. And now Grant ranks at number 20.

So he's well above the halfway mark. I think it's just astounding. Grant's reputation and Grant's tomb have had this similar trajectory. It's just a heck of a fascinating story. And it is indeed a heck of a story. The story of Ulysses S. Grant and his tomb, but also his presidency and his life. In fact, we've told a couple of stories about Grant. Go to our American stories dot com and just do a search. And indeed, you will be spellbound at what a remarkable story and what an American story it is. Great work is always, by the way, by Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to Louis Bacon, author of Grant's Tomb, the epic death of Ulysses S. Grant and the making of an American pantheon. By the way, that's available on Amazon dot com and all the usual suspects. By the way, this is another history story that's always brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College.

Go to Hillsdale dot edu to sign up for their free and terrific online courses. The story of Ulysses S. Grant's tomb and the story in the end about America, American life and American history. The lost Carzers tried to run the story of Grant down into the ground. And my goodness, thanks to the likes and works of Ron Chernow and so many other historians, Grant's back. He's moving up in the rankings and the correct history, the correct story of this great general, this great leader. Well, it's back and in shape.

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