It was a freezing February visit to NYC; nighttime temperatures down to -8C and daytime only up to -1C in the sun, -10 with windchill taken into account. I wanted to visit Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn and I would happily have braved the subarctic weather conditions. But I could hardly expect the mother of my children to risk frostbite trailing around after me. We compromised and went to visit the tomb of General Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States, which was a short ride on the IRT up to 125th Street Station in Harlem (‘Up to Lexington, one-two-five’, the Velvet Underground playing in my head the whole way) and a 15-minute walk to Riverside Drive and Grant’s Mausoleum. To get inside you have to go to the General Grant National Memorial Visitor Centre across the road and ask one of the Park Rangers if they will let you in. There were only three us wanting to see the mausoleum on a bitterly cold midweek morning; the Ranger told us that we could only stay in there for 10 minutes for health and safety reasons, the temperature being so low. To be honest, out of the freezing wind the chilly mausoleum felt almost balmy.
The National Park Service leaflet about the mausoleum says that Grant was “a plain-spoken unassuming man who studiously avoided pomp and ceremony.” It is ironic then that the nation decided to honour him by entombing him in a mausoleum of a grandeur usually considered more appropriate for the last resting places of Emperors, Kings and Pharaohs. General Grant, who was born in Ohio, is credited with winning the Civil War for the Union after struggling to get himself recruited at a suitable rank in the early stages of the conflict. Lincoln eventually promoted him to Lieutenant General after his victory at Chatanooga and he defeated the confederate General Robert E. Lee after a 13-month campaign at the battle of Appomattox. He fell out with Lincoln’s unpopular successor, Andrew Jackson, and became the Republican candidate for the Presidency in 1868. Reconstructing and reuniting the war-ravaged US was an even bigger job than winning the war and Grant struggled with what was an almost impossible task but is now generally considered to have done a creditable job under difficult circumstances. He won re-election to the Presidency in 1872 in a landslide victory but his second term was a struggle and he stood aside for the 1876 election. In 1877 he commenced a two-year world tour, starting in England before moving onto Europe, then India and the rest of Asia, before travelling back to the US via Hawaii. In England he was the guest of the Prince of Wales at Epsom races (where he also met the Duke of Wellington) and he had breakfast with Matthew Arnold, Anthony Trollope and Robert Browning. He was received by Queen Victoria at Windsor, though there were issues about protocol as no one knew how to treat an Ex-president (the then prime minister Benjamin Disraeli thought that he was just a ‘commoner’) and his son Jesse, much to his disgust, was seated at the official banquet with the Royal servants.
His later years were overshadowed by financial worries. With an income of only $6000 dollars a year and no presidential pension, Grant felt obliged to involve himself in business speculations starting with the ill fated Mexican Southern railroad which went bankrupt in 1884. He then invested $100,000 dollars in his son’s Wall Street brokerage firm, not realising that his son’s partner, a man called Ferdinand Ward, was essentially running a Ponzi scheme. When the scheme eventually crashed Grant not only lost all his money, he found himself in personal debt of $150,000 to William Henry Vanderbilt from whom he had borrowed the money, at Ward’s insistence, to try and save the floundering firm. Vanderbilt offered to forget the debt but Grant refused and repaid all the money by signing over his house to the multi-millionaire and selling off most of his personal possessions. His integrity was heroic; he already knew that he was suffering from the throat cancer that would kill him the following year. Desperate for cash to try and secure the finances of his soon to be widow Julia, Grant began writing articles on his civil war campaigns for The Century Magazine at $500 a time. These were so well received that he accepted an offer for a book from the magazine to write his memoirs with a 10% royalty. At this point his friend Mark Twain stepped in and made him an alternative offer for the memoir, with a royalty of 70%. Grant spent his last months writing his memoirs, completing them on 18 July 1885, just five days before he died on July 23rd.
News
of General Grant’s death was widely reported in the British and Colonial press.
One of the first full reports came in the Colonial Standard and Jamaica
Despatch published in Kingston on the first of August and drawing heavily
on a report in the New York Herald which gave extensive details of the General’s
dying moments;
Death of General Ulysses Grant.
THE TWICE ELECTED PRESIDENT OF
THE UNITED STATES.
The
"New York Herald," of the 24th July announces the death of General
Grant; which took place after nine months of suffering, from cancer on the
tongue, at Mount McGregor shortly after eight o'clock on the morning of the
preceding day. From scenes at his death bed published in the
"Herald," we take the following pathetic example;
The
wife almost constantly stroked the forehead and hands of the dying General, and
at times, as the passionate longing to prevent the event so near would rise
within her, Mrs. Grant pressed both his hands, and, leaning forward, tenderly
kissed the face of the sinking man, colonel Fred Grant sat silently, but with
evident feeling, though his bearing was that of a soldier at the death-bed of a
hero father. U. S. Grant, Jr., was deeply moved, but Jessie bore the scene
steadily, and the ladies, while watching with wet cheeks. were silent as
befitted the dignity of a life such as was closing before them. The morning had
passed five minutes beyond 8 o'clock and there was not one of the strained and
waiting watchers but who could mark the nearness of the life tide to its final
ebbing. Dr. Douglas noted the nearness of the supreme moment and quietly
approached the bedside and bent above it, and while he did so the sorrow of the
grey haired physician seemed closely allied with that of the family. Dr Shrady
also drew near. It was seven minutes after eight o'clock and the eyes of the
General were closing.
His
breathing grew more hushed as the last functions of the heart and lungs were
hastened to the closing of the Ex-President's life. A peaceful expression
seemed to be deepening in the firm and strong lined face, and it was reflected
as a closing comfort in the sad hearts that beat quickly under the stress of
loving suspense. A minute more passed as the General drew a deeper breath.
There was an exhalation like that of one relieved of long and anxious tension.
The members of the group were impelled each a step nearer the bed, and each
awaited another respiration, but it never came. There was absolute stillness in
the room, and a hush of expectant suspense, and no sound broke the silence save
the singing of the birds in the pines outside the cottage and the measured
throbbing of the engine that all night had waited by the little mountain depot
down the slope. “It is all over," quietly spoke Dr. Douglas and there came
then heavily to each witness the realization that General Grant was dead.
Then
the doctors withdrew, the nurse closed down the eyelids and composed the dead
General's head, after which each of the family group pressed to the bedside,
one after the other, and touched their lips upon the quiet face so lately
stilled.
 |
| From the Aberdeen Press and Journal - Tuesday 01 June 1897 |
Over
a decade later the British press followed with interest the building of the
General’s mausoleum. This is from the Saffron Walden Weekly News of Friday 09
April 1897;
GENERAL
GRANT'S TOMB. The inauguration of the Grant Mausoleum in New York on April 27th
promises be one of the most impressive ceremonies ever witnessed in the United
States. When General Grant died there was universal desire among his countrymen
that his services should be marked in some striking manner, and so long ago
1885 a, committee began to collect funds and inspect designs. The site selected
is at Riverside Park, on the banks of the river Hudson, near New York city. For
some years the project met with only moderate financial success, but in 1892
there was a great revival of popular feeling in New York city, and in single
month £40.000 was subscribed.
Altogether
the monument will cost £120,000. It consists of a granite structure 90 feet
square. This runs to height of 70ft. and then is surmounted circular cupola
70ft. in diameter which has a pyramidical top. The summit is 150ft. from the
base, and as the site selected is 130ft. above the waters of the Hudson, it
will form a conspicuous landmark for many miles.
The
interior is cruciform, ornamented with sculptures illustrating the life and
death of General Grant. These are the work of an American sculptor, Mr J.
Massey Rhind. The sarcophagus is porphyry, and the pedestal of dark bluish grey
granite. All the exposed faces of the sarcophagus are highly polished, the
finish being so smooth that the surfaces are like mirror, reflecting whatever
objects are close at hand. The pedestal is square in plan, measuring ten feet
ten inches each way. The lower course is made in pieces, with a simple
moulding, and is one foot eight inches thick. Above this is a five inch course,
also made in pieces. Under this rest two large blocks, ten feet long and five
feet wide, and on these rest the pillow blocks, which support the sarcophagus
proper and its cover. The total height above the floor the crypt will be seven
and half feet. The space inside is large enough to contain the metallic casket
of highly-polished copper inside the cedar coffin. The casket of Bessemer steel
which now encloses the coffin will be dispensed with, as it is no longer
needed, its place being taken by the stone sarcophagus, with I its heavy cover.
The only inscription the sarcophagus is: “Ulysses S. Grant.”
The Exeter
& Plymouth Gazette of 22 April 1897 focussed on the details of the General’s sarcophagus;
The sarcophagus, in which the remains of Ulysses S. Grant will be placed on the 27th inst. on the Riverside Drive, New York City, is a huge block of granite quarried at Montello, Wisconsin. When uncut, this stone is as being of “a pinkish chocolate colour dashed with specks of black and white,” and when polished, “it becomes indescribably beautiful, the pale pink taking a rich red lustre, and the fine hard grain reflects like a mirror.” The sarcophagus weighs 10 tons. Its dimensions are 10 feet 4 inches long, 5 feet 6 inches wide, and 4 feet 8 inches long. The lid is of marble. The sarcophagus is supported by two pillar blocks of granite resting on a slab of granite from Massachusetts, the grey of which contrasts admirably with the rich red tone of the sarcophagus. The inscription, with eloquent simplicity, consists only of the name, arranged in three lines, “Ulysses S. Grant.”
And
finally, from the Evening News of Wednesday 28 April 1897 details, supplied almost
instantly by Reuters via the latest technology of telegraphy, of the inauguration
ceremony held the previous day in New York;
(Reuter’s
Cablegram) New York, April 27.—The monument to General Grant which has been
erected by private subscription on the Riverside Drive, overlooking the Hudson,
was dedicated to-day, in presence of President M‘Kinley, ex-President Cleveland, the high officers of
the nation and of the various States, the members of the Diplomatic Corps, the
survivors of General Grant’s family, including Mrs Sertous and children, and a
vast concourse of spectators.
The
dedication was marked by splendid pageant on land and water. The weather was
favourable on the whole. Lying off the promontory were the American and foreign
warships participating in the ceremonies, All were decked with flags and fired
salutes in the morning. In the course of the forenoon the sons of Confederate veterans
laid a wreath (with crossed swords) on the tomb.
Shortly
after nine o'clock President M’Kinley and Mr Hobart, Mrs. Grant, and family,
and the official guests, accompanied by an escort, preceded to the
monument. The members of the diplomatic corps, headed by
Sir Juliam Pauncefote were also warmly greeted as they passed along. The ceremonies
began at half-pest eleven with a brief religious service.
President
M‘Kinley then delivered a short address. General Grant, he said, loved peace
and told the world that honourable arbitration was the best hope of
civilisation. Mr. Horace Porter transferred the monument to the sale-keeping of
the city. The march past of troops followed. In this there participated nearly 6000
regular troops, seamen, and marines. The troops were everywhere received with
ringing cheers. They were subsequently
received by Mr M’Kinley.
The
President afterwards went on board the Dolphin and reviewed the fleet. The city
was gaily beflagged and decorated, a feature in the decorative scheme being portraits
of General Grant, on which were inscribed his words, ‘Let’s have peace.’
In the evening there was a largely attended reception of foreign and naval officers at Waldorf House. Her majesty’s ship Talbot had a leading place in the foreign line of the international fleet.
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