gilda_elise

The moving story of Ulysses S. Grant's final battle, and the definitive account of the national memorial honoring him as one of America's most enduring heroes

The final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant, the victorious general in the Civil War and the eighteenth president of the United States, is a colossal neoclassical tomb located in the most dynamic city in the country. It is larger than the final resting place of any other president or any other person in America. Since its creation, the popularity and condition of this monument, built to honor the man and what he represented to a grateful nation at the time of his death, a mere twenty years after the end of the Civil War, have reflected not only Grant's legacy in the public mind but also the state of New York City and of the Union.

In this fascinating, deeply researched book, presidential historian Louis L. Picone recounts the full story. He begins with Grant's heroic final battle during the last year of his life, to complete his memoirs in order to secure his family's financial future while contending with painful, incurable cancer. Grant accomplished this just days before his death, and his memoirs, published by Mark Twain, became a bestseller. Accompanying his account with numerous period photographs, Picone narrates the national response to Grant's passing and how his tomb came to the intense competition to be the resting place for Grant's remains, the origins of the memorial and its design, the struggle to finance and build it over the course of twelve years, and the vicissitudes of its afterlife in the history of the nation up to recent times.

I don’t know whether to feel proud of the Americans who wanted to honor the man who saved the Union by building a monument where his body would reside. Or to feel great shame because Americans would then turn around and allow that monument to fall into such drastic disrepair.

In hind site, it would have been better to bury him at West Point, at Arlington National Ceremony, or the Old Soldiers’ Home in Washington, D.C., where the grave would get the respect, and the upkeep, it so richly deserved. But New York was eager for him to be buried in New York City, which also lined up with what the family preferred, as Julia Grant, his wife, wished to be buried next to him when her time came.

The book covers the years from Grant’s death until the present in almost minute detail. In some ways, perhaps too minute, as the story can at times be painful to read. What it does show is how little most Americans know, much less revere, their own history.

It appears that the disrepair has finally been addressed. Lighting has been added, and the tomb taken back from the gangs and homeless who had claimed it. I’ve often wished to visit the monument, but, given how fast things can turn around, am rather afraid at what I might find.