December 5, 2023 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, presidential historian and author of Grant's Tomb: The Epic Death of Ulysses S. Grant and the Making of an American Pantheon, Louis Picone shares the story of the creation, degradation, and revitalization of Grant's Tomb.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
And up next to the story of Ulysses S. Grant,
our eighteenth president. But this isn't a story about his
Civil War victories or his presidency. It's about his final
resting place. Here to tell the story is Lewis Picone,
author of Grant's Tomb, Take it Away.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Lewis 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 fifteen eighteen years after
(00:52):
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 a 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.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Defeated the South in the Civil War. But he was
beloved because he was magnanimous.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
He had given generous terms to Roberty 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.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
But he was diagnosed with inoperable throat.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And tongue cancer, which at the time, a diagnosis of
cancer was pretty much a death sentence. He died on
July twenty third. 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 was considered a good Victorian death.
(01:56):
The country was united. There was outpourings of grief and
notes of condolence that came in from the North, in
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.
(02:18):
But the public's outpouring of.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Grief was immense.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It was something that had never been seen before, because one,
he was beloved by the North in 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
(02:44):
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 he.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Can lie in state and thousands and thousands.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
That was kind of the.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
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
(03:40):
of a kind, beautiful coffin that Grant would be buried in,
and it was shipped ahead of Grant's body.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It was shipped to New York City.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
So the funeral company that had handled Grant's funeral had
put the empty coffin on display in their storefront window,
and seventy thousand 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
(04:10):
a couple days. First, the procession marched seven miles and
it included sixty thousand 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 was sixty thousand marchers.
(04:32):
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 this
permeation of reunification and reconciliation throughout it. It was the
(04:54):
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
one point three million people. One and a half million
people saw the funeral, so much larger than a concert
(05:16):
a Madison Square Garden. Even if the Beatles came to
Madison Square Garden, they wouldn't have got that many people
crammed into New.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
York City to see them.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
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.
(05:48):
So the remains were placed in a temporary crypt in
Riverside Park, and there was reports that the designer had
basically sat down to the designed the crypt and twenty
minutes later.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
He was done. And if you see images of it
that that's pretty easy to believe. It kind of looks
like a pizza oven.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
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, JP
(06:29):
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 Granted.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And indeed he was a warrior, and his mantra let
us have peace many a warrior, as that is their mantra.
Nobody knows the price of war better than warriors.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Were.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Unification, reconciliation where his themes and when we come back
more of the story of Grant's tomb with Lewis Pocone
here on our American stories, Folks, if you love the
(07:30):
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
(07:51):
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot Edu to learn more, and we
returned to our American stories and the story of Grant's tomb.
(08:13):
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 Lewis Picone.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Well, the idea for a grand tomb to honor this
great man, it started to coming 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
(08:59):
different locations. He had mentioned Saint 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.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
But ultimately his family wouldn't speak to him about it.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Most people felt.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
That Grant should be buried on national ground. He was
a national hero. West Point or Arlington Cemetery or the
Old Soldier's Home, and it kind of became almost like
a national competition where cities were vying for the honor.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
But Julia ended up choosing New.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
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
(10:08):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Gilded Age tomb would be built in his honor.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
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 is 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
(10:46):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Choosing New York City. They had settled on Riverside Park.
Riverside Park is it's very far north in the city.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
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 seventy eighty 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
(11:24):
for several different reasons. At that time, there was very
little population. One reporter had said that there's 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
(11:45):
never really happened where it became the cultural center of
the city. The other reason was that the mayor had
convinced the family that since this was so unpopulated, that
when they built this magnificent.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Tomb for Grant, the architects would really.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Have a blank slate to work from. They started fund
raising right away, but a monumental Gilded Age tomb really
costs a monumental amount of money, and the Grant Monument
Association had set an extremely aggressive target, ambitious target of
one million dollars.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Nothing like that had ever been.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
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 were so many people
(12:42):
in New York City for the funeral, so there was
some canisters that were set up throughout the city to
raise money.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Children held fares and bake sales.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
They were getting little articles written about them in the newspapers.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And it was also perfect timing.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
If Grant had died ten years earlier, the country would
had still been too greatly divided to really focus on
the cause of building this Grants tombor really celebrating Grant's
death or memorializing his death in such.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
A universal fashion.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
If he had died ten years later, the Civil War
would have kind have passed a little bit more into history,
and Grant's star would have fallen just a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
By that point.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
But after that strong start, fundraising and donations began to
taper off.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
After the funeral and after all the.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Public sentiment had started to dissipate and public attention had
looked to focus on other things, and the morning Black
Morning ribbons and the banners were taken down off the homes,
fundraising kind of started to dry up.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
At about one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
And a couple of years later there was only about
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, so outside of New
York City, very few funds ended up coming into the
Grant Monument to 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,
(14:10):
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,
twenty years after the Civil War, there wasn't even.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
A statue of Grant in America. So after Grant had
passed away, there was all of these.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
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
are actually named the Grant Monument Association.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
To even add to the confusion, but there was.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
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 eighteen ninety five, years after Grant
had died, that a design was finally chosen, and that
(15:04):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
So fundraising had started.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Off strong, but it very quickly had turned into a challenge.
So finally September eighteen ninety a big milestone was achieved
when John Hemanway Duncan, who was an architect from New
York City, was chosen with the winning design. That wasn't
the end of the difficulties on The original target that
(15:42):
was set by the Grant Monument Association was in the
fall of eighteen ninety five to complete the tomb, but
there was stone workers' strikes, there was the Panic of
eighteen ninety three, there was other issues. One of the
big problems was with the leadership with the Grant Monument Association.
These Gilded Age elites that were on the board of
the Grant Monument Association kind of got distracted with their
(16:04):
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 eighteen ninety five ended
up getting pushed several times, and it wasn't until April
eighteen ninety seven when they finally completed and dedicated Grant's tomb.
(16:25):
And even though they were able to raise the funds
to complete the tomb, it wasn't the one million dollars
that they had originally budgeted or that they had originally
set the goal for. So several features in Duncan's original
vision were end up scaled back, like the tomb was
shortened from one hundred and sixty feet to one hundred
and fifty feet. There was statuary that was eliminated so
(16:47):
they can meet the budget. So it wasn't until twelve
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 twelve years, but the affection
and and the public sentiment for Grant was still just
as just as powerful and just as strong as it
was at the funeral twelve years earlier.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
And you've been listening to Lewis picone 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
(17:33):
New York City. And when we come back, more of
this remarkable story, Grant's tombs story here on Our American Stories.
(18:08):
Henry returned to our American Stories and the story of
Grant's tomb. In the nineteen fifties, droutschow Marx had a
joke disguised as a question for contestants on his show
You Bet Your Life. It goes Who's buried in Grant's
tomb and the answer was no one, as Grant is
buried in a sarcophagus above the ground. But in the
(18:29):
fifties not very many people knew that, but during the
dedication of Grant's tomb.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Most people did. Grant was on the top of.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Everyone's mind years after his death for the dedication of
his tomb. Let's continue with Lewis picone telling us about
that event.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
The public sentiment for Grant was still just as just
as powerful and just as strong as it was at
the funeral twelve years earlier. There was another dedication procession
that was almost as large as the funeral march that
had taken place twelve years earlier. Thousands attended the dedication,
including the dedication address being made by President William McKinley
(19:11):
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
(19:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Seacraft all throughout the country.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
So the Hudson River was almost like it almost looks
like for 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 seventy blocks, probably about four miles of
ships had gathered to be part of this dedication ceremony,
(20:18):
and there was twenty one gun salutes that were fired
from the ships that 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 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.
(20:40):
The dedication, the tomb that had been created was the
largest tomb in American history before or since. It's one
hundred and fifty feet tall. It's eighty one hundred cubic feet,
so it's much larger than Lincoln's tomb, much larger than
(21:01):
Garfield's tomb.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Immediately after the.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
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.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
It was such an attraction.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
It was the number one tourist attraction for twenty years
after it was dedicated. And one of the interesting facets
to the stories 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 a prominent image on postcards, and those
postcards would be sent all over the world and that
(21:46):
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
(22:07):
the same time, to pay their respects to Grant, so.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
It was really unique. There was movies made about it.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
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.
(22:35):
So by the late nineteen twenties, in the Roaring twenties,
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
(22:56):
wasn't complete when it was finished, even though most of
the public kind of felt was complete, even members of
the Grant Monument Association after the twelve 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 nineteen twenty nine stock market
(23:20):
crashes and that kind of became the death knell for
a completing Grant's Tomb. But 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
(23:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Had been damaged over the years.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
There was repairs to the electricity because electricity had been installed.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
But if you had gone to Grant's tomb at the time.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
And looked up, you would see all 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.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
They were placed at Grant's tomb.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
From other structures throughout New York City.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
In the early nineteen hundreds right.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Around the time of the movie Birth of a Nation,
And by the nineteen fifties, where Grant had once been
the magnanimous hero alongside Washington and Lincoln, now he was
criticized as corrupt.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
He was drunk, it was a butcher.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
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 nineteen fifties about a massive gang fight,
the biggest gang fight that's ever been seen in New
York City, that.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Was in Riverside Park at Grant's Tomb.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Going into the nineteen sixties, 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 Tombs started to become more
popular with gangs and prostitutes and attics and just criminals
(25:44):
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,
(26:05):
and there was homeless that would gather at the tomb
and they would started to use the tomb almost as
a toilet because it wasn't any public restrooms around there.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
The eagles that were placed there.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
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,
(26:37):
we take care of Lincoln's tomb, and we can take
care of Grant's tomb too.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
So it had really.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Gone from a joke from Graucho Marx's joke to just
this horrible national joke of a sight.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
And it's true just how run down Grant's tomb was.
I remember my dad bringing me there in my teen
years during the late seventies and early eighties. It was
a disaster when we come back. The story of Grant's
Tomb continues with Lewis Picone here on our American Stories.
(27:37):
And we returned to our American Stories and our final
portion of our story on Grant's Tomb with Lewis Picone,
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.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
By the early nineteen nineties, 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 sixties.
Up until the early nineteen nineties, almost thirty years, this
situation had been going on, and it really became a
(28:26):
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
(28:48):
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.
(29:13):
So Frank Scuturo 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,
(29:36):
so just by happenstance, he ended up at Columbia. 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
to him, and eventually he started giving tours at Grant's
to him.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Now, first he started giving.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Tours at Grant's tomb, and then he started to volunteer
at Grants too, so he had gone there so much
he just started to just give tours on his own. Now,
what Frank sawed Grant's to him really horrified him. Not
just what was visible to the tourists that were going there,
(30:13):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
The drug refuse.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
But also when Frank started to look into the archives
and would 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
Grants to him that had either been wilfully destroyed, wilfully discarded,
(30:47):
or just destroyed through negligence, Like, for instance, there was
a stack of paper archives from the Grant Monument Association,
almost one hundred 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 it
started to become, to say, in a nice way, almost
(31:07):
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 three hundred and twenty
five page report to meticulously list all of the things
(31:28):
that had been happening in Grant's tomb over the years
that led to this sorry condition.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And he sent this three hundred and twenty.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Five 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,
(31:55):
and he had ended up on television and basically showed
on television all of the horrible conditions at Grant's tom Now,
but this point, you have to remember, not too many
people were even visiting Grants to him 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 Grants to him before, and now what
(32:16):
they were seeing on.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Television just horrified him. So that helped his cause.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
And then in nineteen ninety four, 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.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
I kind of look at.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
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 Grants Deats, Ulysses Grant's
great great grandson. So if Frank was the head and
(32:56):
Frank was the brains, I think.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
That Ulysses was the heart of the effort.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
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.
(33:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
There was security that was added, but also just New
York City was changing during this time. So by nineteen
ninety seven there was.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Another rededication at the Tone, and by this point it
was really it was restored to much of its former glory,
and Ulysses Grant Dats had spoken at the dedication.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Frank wasn't invited.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
After raising the attention through the New York Times and
through the TV show, he was dismissed by National Park Service,
but Ulysses Grant 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
(34:17):
a century ago. So he had felt that that Grant
and Grant's tomb can still inspire that sense of reunification
in nineteen ninety seven, 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
(34:39):
tomb and how it's been restored, and how that parallels
to Grant's reputation.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Right about the.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Time, Frank Scaturo was really was making noise about saving
Grant's tune about the horrible conditions there. Grant's reputation was
at that all time low in presidential rankings. In nineteen
ninety four, he was considered the fourth from the worst.
The only president's worse than Grant were James Buchanan, Warren G.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Harding, and Andrew Johnson.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
But during this time that Grant's tomb has come back,
so is Grant. There has been been much more of
a focus on Grant's presidency in 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
(35:32):
the KKK was really crushed. It wasn't until the early
nineteen hundreds 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
(35:54):
overdue focus on Grant's presidency. And I'd mentioned nineteen ninety four,
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 twenty, so he's well above the halfway mark.
(36:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
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 Ouramerican 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.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Great work is always by.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
The Way by Monty Montgomery and his special thanks to
Lewis Picone, 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. And by the way, this is
another history story that's always brought to us by the
great folks at Hillsdale College.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
Go to Hillsdale dot.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Edu to sign up for their free and terrific online courses.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
The story of Ulysses S.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Grant's Tomb and the story in the end about America,
American life, and American history. The Lost carsers tried to
run the story of Grant down into the ground, And
my goodness, thanks to the likes and works of Ron
Churno and so many other historians, Grant's back.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
He's moving up in the rankings and.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
The correct history, the correct story of this great general,
this great leader, Well it's back and in shape. Ulysses S.
Grant's story, Grant's tombs story. Here on our American story.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
And up next to the story of Ulysses S. Grant,
our eighteenth president. But this isn't a story about his
Civil War victories or his presidency. It's about his final
resting place. Here to tell the story is Lewis Picone,
author of Grant's Tomb, Take it Away.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Lewis 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 fifteen eighteen years after
(00:52):
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 a 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.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Defeated the South in the Civil War. But he was
beloved because he was magnanimous.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
He had given generous terms to Roberty 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.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
But he was diagnosed with inoperable throat.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And tongue cancer, which at the time, a diagnosis of
cancer was pretty much a death sentence. He died on
July twenty third. 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 was considered a good Victorian death.
(01:56):
The country was united. There was outpourings of grief and
notes of condolence that came in from the North, in
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.
(02:18):
But the public's outpouring of.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Grief was immense.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It was something that had never been seen before, because one,
he was beloved by the North in 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
(02:44):
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 he.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Can lie in state and thousands and thousands.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
That was kind of the.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
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
(03:40):
of a kind, beautiful coffin that Grant would be buried in,
and it was shipped ahead of Grant's body.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It was shipped to New York City.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
So the funeral company that had handled Grant's funeral had
put the empty coffin on display in their storefront window,
and seventy thousand 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
(04:10):
a couple days. First, the procession marched seven miles and
it included sixty thousand 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 was sixty thousand marchers.
(04:32):
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 this
permeation of reunification and reconciliation throughout it. It was the
(04:54):
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
one point three million people. One and a half million
people saw the funeral, so much larger than a concert
(05:16):
a Madison Square Garden. Even if the Beatles came to
Madison Square Garden, they wouldn't have got that many people
crammed into New.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
York City to see them.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
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.
(05:48):
So the remains were placed in a temporary crypt in
Riverside Park, and there was reports that the designer had
basically sat down to the designed the crypt and twenty
minutes later.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
He was done. And if you see images of it
that that's pretty easy to believe. It kind of looks
like a pizza oven.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
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, JP
(06:29):
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 Granted.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And indeed he was a warrior, and his mantra let
us have peace many a warrior, as that is their mantra.
Nobody knows the price of war better than warriors.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Were.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Unification, reconciliation where his themes and when we come back
more of the story of Grant's tomb with Lewis Pocone
here on our American stories, Folks, if you love the
(07:30):
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
(07:51):
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot Edu to learn more, and we
returned to our American stories and the story of Grant's tomb.
(08:13):
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 Lewis Picone.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Well, the idea for a grand tomb to honor this
great man, it started to coming 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
(08:59):
different locations. He had mentioned Saint 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.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
But ultimately his family wouldn't speak to him about it.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Most people felt.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
That Grant should be buried on national ground. He was
a national hero. West Point or Arlington Cemetery or the
Old Soldier's Home, and it kind of became almost like
a national competition where cities were vying for the honor.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
But Julia ended up choosing New.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
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
(10:08):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Gilded Age tomb would be built in his honor.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
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 is 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
(10:46):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Choosing New York City. They had settled on Riverside Park.
Riverside Park is it's very far north in the city.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
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 seventy eighty 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
(11:24):
for several different reasons. At that time, there was very
little population. One reporter had said that there's 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
(11:45):
never really happened where it became the cultural center of
the city. The other reason was that the mayor had
convinced the family that since this was so unpopulated, that
when they built this magnificent.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Tomb for Grant, the architects would really.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Have a blank slate to work from. They started fund
raising right away, but a monumental Gilded Age tomb really
costs a monumental amount of money, and the Grant Monument
Association had set an extremely aggressive target, ambitious target of
one million dollars.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Nothing like that had ever been.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
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 were so many people
(12:42):
in New York City for the funeral, so there was
some canisters that were set up throughout the city to
raise money.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Children held fares and bake sales.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
They were getting little articles written about them in the newspapers.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And it was also perfect timing.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
If Grant had died ten years earlier, the country would
had still been too greatly divided to really focus on
the cause of building this Grants tombor really celebrating Grant's
death or memorializing his death in such.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
A universal fashion.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
If he had died ten years later, the Civil War
would have kind have passed a little bit more into history,
and Grant's star would have fallen just a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
By that point.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
But after that strong start, fundraising and donations began to
taper off.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
After the funeral and after all the.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Public sentiment had started to dissipate and public attention had
looked to focus on other things, and the morning Black
Morning ribbons and the banners were taken down off the homes,
fundraising kind of started to dry up.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
At about one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
And a couple of years later there was only about
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, so outside of New
York City, very few funds ended up coming into the
Grant Monument to 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,
(14:10):
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,
twenty years after the Civil War, there wasn't even.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
A statue of Grant in America. So after Grant had
passed away, there was all of these.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
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
are actually named the Grant Monument Association.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
To even add to the confusion, but there was.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
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 eighteen ninety five, years after Grant
had died, that a design was finally chosen, and that
(15:04):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
So fundraising had started.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Off strong, but it very quickly had turned into a challenge.
So finally September eighteen ninety a big milestone was achieved
when John Hemanway Duncan, who was an architect from New
York City, was chosen with the winning design. That wasn't
the end of the difficulties on The original target that
(15:42):
was set by the Grant Monument Association was in the
fall of eighteen ninety five to complete the tomb, but
there was stone workers' strikes, there was the Panic of
eighteen ninety three, there was other issues. One of the
big problems was with the leadership with the Grant Monument Association.
These Gilded Age elites that were on the board of
the Grant Monument Association kind of got distracted with their
(16:04):
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 eighteen ninety five ended
up getting pushed several times, and it wasn't until April
eighteen ninety seven when they finally completed and dedicated Grant's tomb.
(16:25):
And even though they were able to raise the funds
to complete the tomb, it wasn't the one million dollars
that they had originally budgeted or that they had originally
set the goal for. So several features in Duncan's original
vision were end up scaled back, like the tomb was
shortened from one hundred and sixty feet to one hundred
and fifty feet. There was statuary that was eliminated so
(16:47):
they can meet the budget. So it wasn't until twelve
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 twelve years, but the affection
and and the public sentiment for Grant was still just
as just as powerful and just as strong as it
was at the funeral twelve years earlier.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
And you've been listening to Lewis picone 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
(17:33):
New York City. And when we come back, more of
this remarkable story, Grant's tombs story here on Our American Stories.
(18:08):
Henry returned to our American Stories and the story of
Grant's tomb. In the nineteen fifties, droutschow Marx had a
joke disguised as a question for contestants on his show
You Bet Your Life. It goes Who's buried in Grant's
tomb and the answer was no one, as Grant is
buried in a sarcophagus above the ground. But in the
(18:29):
fifties not very many people knew that, but during the
dedication of Grant's tomb.
Speaker 4 (18:34):
Most people did. Grant was on the top of.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Everyone's mind years after his death for the dedication of
his tomb. Let's continue with Lewis picone telling us about
that event.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
The public sentiment for Grant was still just as just
as powerful and just as strong as it was at
the funeral twelve years earlier. There was another dedication procession
that was almost as large as the funeral march that
had taken place twelve years earlier. Thousands attended the dedication,
including the dedication address being made by President William McKinley
(19:11):
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
(19:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Seacraft all throughout the country.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
So the Hudson River was almost like it almost looks
like for 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 seventy blocks, probably about four miles of
ships had gathered to be part of this dedication ceremony,
(20:18):
and there was twenty one gun salutes that were fired
from the ships that 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 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.
(20:40):
The dedication, the tomb that had been created was the
largest tomb in American history before or since. It's one
hundred and fifty feet tall. It's eighty one hundred cubic feet,
so it's much larger than Lincoln's tomb, much larger than
(21:01):
Garfield's tomb.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Immediately after the.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
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.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
It was such an attraction.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
It was the number one tourist attraction for twenty years
after it was dedicated. And one of the interesting facets
to the stories 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 a prominent image on postcards, and those
postcards would be sent all over the world and that
(21:46):
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
(22:07):
the same time, to pay their respects to Grant, so.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
It was really unique. There was movies made about it.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
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.
(22:35):
So by the late nineteen twenties, in the Roaring twenties,
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
(22:56):
wasn't complete when it was finished, even though most of
the public kind of felt was complete, even members of
the Grant Monument Association after the twelve 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 nineteen twenty nine stock market
(23:20):
crashes and that kind of became the death knell for
a completing Grant's Tomb. But 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
(23:40):
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.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Had been damaged over the years.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
There was repairs to the electricity because electricity had been installed.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
But if you had gone to Grant's tomb at the time.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
And looked up, you would see all 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.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
They were placed at Grant's tomb.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
From other structures throughout New York City.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
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.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
In the early nineteen hundreds right.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Around the time of the movie Birth of a Nation,
And by the nineteen fifties, where Grant had once been
the magnanimous hero alongside Washington and Lincoln, now he was
criticized as corrupt.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
He was drunk, it was a butcher.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
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 nineteen fifties about a massive gang fight,
the biggest gang fight that's ever been seen in New
York City, that.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
Was in Riverside Park at Grant's Tomb.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Going into the nineteen sixties, 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 Tombs started to become more
popular with gangs and prostitutes and attics and just criminals
(25:44):
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,
(26:05):
and there was homeless that would gather at the tomb
and they would started to use the tomb almost as
a toilet because it wasn't any public restrooms around there.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
The eagles that were placed there.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
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,
(26:37):
we take care of Lincoln's tomb, and we can take
care of Grant's tomb too.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
So it had really.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Gone from a joke from Graucho Marx's joke to just
this horrible national joke of a sight.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
And it's true just how run down Grant's tomb was.
I remember my dad bringing me there in my teen
years during the late seventies and early eighties. It was
a disaster when we come back. The story of Grant's
Tomb continues with Lewis Picone here on our American Stories.
(27:37):
And we returned to our American Stories and our final
portion of our story on Grant's Tomb with Lewis Picone,
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.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
By the early nineteen nineties, 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 sixties.
Up until the early nineteen nineties, almost thirty years, this
situation had been going on, and it really became a
(28:26):
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
(28:48):
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.
(29:13):
So Frank Scuturo 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,
(29:36):
so just by happenstance, he ended up at Columbia. 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
to him, and eventually he started giving tours at Grant's
to him.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Now, first he started giving.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Tours at Grant's tomb, and then he started to volunteer
at Grants too, so he had gone there so much
he just started to just give tours on his own. Now,
what Frank sawed Grant's to him really horrified him. Not
just what was visible to the tourists that were going there,
(30:13):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
The drug refuse.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
But also when Frank started to look into the archives
and would 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
Grants to him that had either been wilfully destroyed, wilfully discarded,
(30:47):
or just destroyed through negligence, Like, for instance, there was
a stack of paper archives from the Grant Monument Association,
almost one hundred 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 it
started to become, to say, in a nice way, almost
(31:07):
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 three hundred and twenty
five page report to meticulously list all of the things
(31:28):
that had been happening in Grant's tomb over the years
that led to this sorry condition.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And he sent this three hundred and twenty.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Five 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,
(31:55):
and he had ended up on television and basically showed
on television all of the horrible conditions at Grant's tom Now,
but this point, you have to remember, not too many
people were even visiting Grants to him 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 Grants to him before, and now what
(32:16):
they were seeing on.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Television just horrified him. So that helped his cause.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
And then in nineteen ninety four, 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.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
I kind of look at.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
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 Grants Deats, Ulysses Grant's
great great grandson. So if Frank was the head and
(32:56):
Frank was the brains, I think.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
That Ulysses was the heart of the effort.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
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.
(33:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
There was security that was added, but also just New
York City was changing during this time. So by nineteen
ninety seven there was.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Another rededication at the Tone, and by this point it
was really it was restored to much of its former glory,
and Ulysses Grant Dats had spoken at the dedication.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
Frank wasn't invited.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
After raising the attention through the New York Times and
through the TV show, he was dismissed by National Park Service,
but Ulysses Grant 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
(34:17):
a century ago. So he had felt that that Grant
and Grant's tomb can still inspire that sense of reunification
in nineteen ninety seven, 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
(34:39):
tomb and how it's been restored, and how that parallels
to Grant's reputation.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Right about the.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Time, Frank Scaturo was really was making noise about saving
Grant's tune about the horrible conditions there. Grant's reputation was
at that all time low in presidential rankings. In nineteen
ninety four, he was considered the fourth from the worst.
The only president's worse than Grant were James Buchanan, Warren G.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Harding, and Andrew Johnson.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
But during this time that Grant's tomb has come back,
so is Grant. There has been been much more of
a focus on Grant's presidency in 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
(35:32):
the KKK was really crushed. It wasn't until the early
nineteen hundreds 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
(35:54):
overdue focus on Grant's presidency. And I'd mentioned nineteen ninety four,
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 twenty, so he's well above the halfway mark.
(36:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
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 Ouramerican 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.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Great work is always by.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
The Way by Monty Montgomery and his special thanks to
Lewis Picone, 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. And by the way, this is
another history story that's always brought to us by the
great folks at Hillsdale College.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
Go to Hillsdale dot.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Edu to sign up for their free and terrific online courses.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
The story of Ulysses S.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Grant's Tomb and the story in the end about America,
American life, and American history. The Lost carsers tried to
run the story of Grant down into the ground, And
my goodness, thanks to the likes and works of Ron
Churno and so many other historians, Grant's back.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
He's moving up in the rankings and.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
The correct history, the correct story of this great general,
this great leader, Well it's back and in shape. Ulysses S.
Grant's story, Grant's tombs story. Here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com