April 28, 2025 • 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 the former president's final resting place in New York City.
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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.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
But he was also perhaps the one figure that was
admired by all sections and was really a unifier.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
And this was a.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Time when America was still greatly divided after the Civil War.
This was only fifteen eighteen 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
(01:06):
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 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 2 (01:31):
But he was diagnosed with inoperable throat.
Speaker 3 (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.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
But the public's.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Outpouring of grief was immense. 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
(02:42):
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 take can buy train to Albany and
he was placed in a public space where he can
(03:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Funeral that was held.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
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
(03:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
It was shipped to New York City.
Speaker 3 (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 permeation
of reunification and reconciliation throughout it. It was the largest
(04:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
At the time, the population was about one point three
million people.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
One and a half million people saw the funeral, so
much larger than a concert a Madison Square Garden. Even
if the Beatles came to Madison Square Garden, they wouldn't
have got that many people crammed into.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
New York City to see them.
Speaker 3 (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 this eye the crypt and twenty
minutes later he was done.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
And if you see images of it that that's pretty
easy to believe. It kind of looks like a pizza oven.
Speaker 3 (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. Were Unification,
reconciliation where he 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):
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stories of America's rich past, know that all of our
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(07:51):
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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 3 (08:38):
Well, the idea for a grand tomb to honor this
great man, it started to coming back while he was
still alive.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
There was talk about that even before he had died.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
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 laws 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 2 (09:12):
But ultimately his family wouldn't speak to him about it.
Speaker 3 (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.
Most people felt that Grant should be buried on national ground.
He was a national hero. West Point or Arlington Cemetery
(09:36):
or the Old Soldier's Home, and it kind of became
almost like a national competition where cities were vying for
the honor.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
But Julia ended up choosing New.
Speaker 3 (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
he 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 2 (10:21):
Gilded Age tomb would be built in his honor.
Speaker 3 (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 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
(10:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
They had settled on Riverside Park. Riverside Park is it's
very far north in the city.
Speaker 3 (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.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
At that time, there was very little population.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
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.
(11:49):
The other 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 fund
raising right away, but a monumental Gilded Age tomb really
(12:10):
costs a monumental amount of money, and the Grant Monument
Association had set an extremely aggressive target, ambitious target.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Of one million dollars.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
But those tombs were much much less.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
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 in New York City for the funeral,
so there was some canisters that were set up throughout
the city to raise money. Children held fares and bake sales,
they were getting little articles written about them in the newspapers.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
And it was also perfect timing.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
If Grant had died ten years earlier, the country would
have had still been too greatly.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Divided to really focus.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
On the cause of building this Grant's tomb, or really
celebrating Grant's death or memorializing his death in such.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
A universal fashion.
Speaker 3 (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 by that point.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
But after that.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
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 morning Black Morning ribbons and the
banners were taken down off the homes, fundraising kind of
started to dry up. At about one hundred thousand dollars,
(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 fund raise 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 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,
(14:33):
in Philadelphia, in Chicago, there was these other Grant monument
funds or some of them are 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.
(14:55):
But also it wasn't until eighteen ninety 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
(15:15):
don't even know what I'm donating towards.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
So fundraising had started.
Speaker 3 (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 Hemenway 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.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Set the goal for.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
So several features in Duncan's original vision were end up
scaled back, like the tomb was shortened from one hundred.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
And sixty feet to one hundred and fifty feet.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
There was statuary that was eliminated so they can meet
the budget.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
So it wasn't until twelve years later that they had
the dedication.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
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 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
(17:32):
New York City. And when we come back, more of
this remarkable story, Grant's Tombs story here on Our American Stories.
(18:08):
Annri returned to Our American Stories and the story of
Grant's Tomb. In the nineteen fifties, Drautschow 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 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 Lewis Picone
telling us about that event.
Speaker 3 (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.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
As warships and other seacraft all throughout the country.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
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 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. 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.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Of New York City.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
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 twenty years after.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
It was dedicated.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
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 would further further attract people
to come see Grant's tomb when they came to America.
(21:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
There was movies made about it.
Speaker 3 (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 this 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 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.
(24:03):
So the wires were made more discreet.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
But there was also a troubling sign.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Other structures throughout New York City.
Speaker 3 (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 in the early nineteen hundreds, right around the
time of the movie Birth of a Nation, and by
the nineteen fifties, where Grant had once been the magnanimous
(24:54):
hero alongside Washington and Lincoln, now he was criticized as corrupt,
he was drunk, he as 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 nineteen fifties 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
(25:20):
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 of
(25:44):
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 a noble
effort to try to clean up the tomb, and they
would pick up the drug refuse and the bottles, and
(26:06):
there was homeless that would gather at the tomb and
they would started to use the tomb almost as a
toilet because there wasn't any public restrooms around them. 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
(26:27):
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 Graucho Marx's
joke to just this horrible national joke of a sight.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
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 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, and we
(27:38):
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 3 (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 has 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
tom and eventually he started giving tours at Grant's to him. Now,
first he started giving tours at Grant's tomb, and then
he started to volunteer at Grant's too, so he had
(29:58):
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, the graffiti, the stench overnight,
homeless and vandals were using the site as a public restroom.
(30:21):
People would come in every day, they'd clean it up,
but the stench you couldn't get rid of.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
The drug refuse. But also when Frank started to look.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
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 Grants to him that had either been wilfully destroyed,
wilfully discarded, or just destroyed through negligence, Like, for instance,
(30:50):
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 a thorn in the side of the National Park Service,
(31:12):
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
that had been happening at Grant's tomb over the years
that led to this sorry condition. And he sent this
(31:34):
three hundred and twenty 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, and he had ended up on television
(31:58):
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 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 they were seeing on.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Television just horrified. So that helped his cause.
Speaker 3 (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. I kind of
look at Frank as kind of like the brains and
the head of the efforts to really draw attention to
(32:42):
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 Frank was the brains, I think that Ulysses
was the heart of the effort. And it was one
(33:02):
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 ssuing 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
(33:24):
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 nineteen
ninety seven there was another rededication at the tomb, and
(33:44):
by this point it was really it was restored to
much of its former glory, and Ulysses Grant Beats had
spoken at the dedication.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Frank wasn't invited. After raising the.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Attention through the New York Times and through the TV show,
he was dismissed by the National Park Service, but Ulysses
Grant Beats, 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.
(34:19):
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 tomb and how it's
(34:40):
been restored, and how that parallels to Grant's reputation. Right
about the 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
(35:02):
the worst. The only president's worse than Grant were James Buchanan,
Warren G.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Harding, and Andrew Johnson.
Speaker 3 (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
(36:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
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 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. Great work is always by the way,
(36:49):
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 a 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.
(37:09):
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 Cars's tried to
run the story of Grant down into the ground. And
my goodness, thanks to the likes and works of Ron
(37:30):
Churno 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. 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.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
But he was also perhaps the one figure that was
admired by all sections and was really a unifier.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
And this was a.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Time when America was still greatly divided after the Civil War.
This was only fifteen eighteen 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
(01:06):
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 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 2 (01:31):
But he was diagnosed with inoperable throat.
Speaker 3 (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.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
But the public's.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Outpouring of grief was immense. 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
(02:42):
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 take can buy train to Albany and
he was placed in a public space where he can
(03:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Funeral that was held.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
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
(03:37):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
It was shipped to New York City.
Speaker 3 (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 permeation
of reunification and reconciliation throughout it. It was the largest
(04:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
At the time, the population was about one point three
million people.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
One and a half million people saw the funeral, so
much larger than a concert a Madison Square Garden. Even
if the Beatles came to Madison Square Garden, they wouldn't
have got that many people crammed into.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
New York City to see them.
Speaker 3 (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 this eye the crypt and twenty
minutes later he was done.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
And if you see images of it that that's pretty
easy to believe. It kind of looks like a pizza oven.
Speaker 3 (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. Were Unification,
reconciliation where he 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 3 (08:38):
Well, the idea for a grand tomb to honor this
great man, it started to coming back while he was
still alive.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
There was talk about that even before he had died.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
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 laws 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 2 (09:12):
But ultimately his family wouldn't speak to him about it.
Speaker 3 (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.
Most people felt that Grant should be buried on national ground.
He was a national hero. West Point or Arlington Cemetery
(09:36):
or the Old Soldier's Home, and it kind of became
almost like a national competition where cities were vying for
the honor.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
But Julia ended up choosing New.
Speaker 3 (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
he 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 2 (10:21):
Gilded Age tomb would be built in his honor.
Speaker 3 (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 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
(10:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
They had settled on Riverside Park. Riverside Park is it's
very far north in the city.
Speaker 3 (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.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
At that time, there was very little population.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
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.
(11:49):
The other 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 fund
raising right away, but a monumental Gilded Age tomb really
(12:10):
costs a monumental amount of money, and the Grant Monument
Association had set an extremely aggressive target, ambitious target.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Of one million dollars.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
But those tombs were much much less.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
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 in New York City for the funeral,
so there was some canisters that were set up throughout
the city to raise money. Children held fares and bake sales,
they were getting little articles written about them in the newspapers.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
And it was also perfect timing.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
If Grant had died ten years earlier, the country would
have had still been too greatly.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Divided to really focus.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
On the cause of building this Grant's tomb, or really
celebrating Grant's death or memorializing his death in such.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
A universal fashion.
Speaker 3 (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 by that point.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
But after that.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
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 morning Black Morning ribbons and the
banners were taken down off the homes, fundraising kind of
started to dry up. At about one hundred thousand dollars,
(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 fund raise 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 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,
(14:33):
in Philadelphia, in Chicago, there was these other Grant monument
funds or some of them are 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.
(14:55):
But also it wasn't until eighteen ninety 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
(15:15):
don't even know what I'm donating towards.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
So fundraising had started.
Speaker 3 (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 Hemenway 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.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Set the goal for.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
So several features in Duncan's original vision were end up
scaled back, like the tomb was shortened from one hundred.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
And sixty feet to one hundred and fifty feet.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
There was statuary that was eliminated so they can meet
the budget.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
So it wasn't until twelve years later that they had
the dedication.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
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 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
(17:32):
New York City. And when we come back, more of
this remarkable story, Grant's Tombs story here on Our American Stories.
(18:08):
Annri returned to Our American Stories and the story of
Grant's Tomb. In the nineteen fifties, Drautschow 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 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 Lewis Picone
telling us about that event.
Speaker 3 (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.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
As warships and other seacraft all throughout the country.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
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 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. 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.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Of New York City.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
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 twenty years after.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
It was dedicated.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
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 would further further attract people
to come see Grant's tomb when they came to America.
(21:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
There was movies made about it.
Speaker 3 (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 this 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 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.
(24:03):
So the wires were made more discreet.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
But there was also a troubling sign.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Other structures throughout New York City.
Speaker 3 (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 in the early nineteen hundreds, right around the
time of the movie Birth of a Nation, and by
the nineteen fifties, where Grant had once been the magnanimous
(24:54):
hero alongside Washington and Lincoln, now he was criticized as corrupt,
he was drunk, he as 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 nineteen fifties 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
(25:20):
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 of
(25:44):
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 a noble
effort to try to clean up the tomb, and they
would pick up the drug refuse and the bottles, and
(26:06):
there was homeless that would gather at the tomb and
they would started to use the tomb almost as a
toilet because there wasn't any public restrooms around them. 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
(26:27):
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 Graucho Marx's
joke to just this horrible national joke of a sight.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
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 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, and we
(27:38):
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 3 (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 has 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
tom and eventually he started giving tours at Grant's to him. Now,
first he started giving tours at Grant's tomb, and then
he started to volunteer at Grant's too, so he had
(29:58):
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, the graffiti, the stench overnight,
homeless and vandals were using the site as a public restroom.
(30:21):
People would come in every day, they'd clean it up,
but the stench you couldn't get rid of.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
The drug refuse. But also when Frank started to look.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
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 Grants to him that had either been wilfully destroyed,
wilfully discarded, or just destroyed through negligence, Like, for instance,
(30:50):
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 a thorn in the side of the National Park Service,
(31:12):
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
that had been happening at Grant's tomb over the years
that led to this sorry condition. And he sent this
(31:34):
three hundred and twenty 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, and he had ended up on television
(31:58):
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 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 they were seeing on.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Television just horrified. So that helped his cause.
Speaker 3 (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. I kind of
look at Frank as kind of like the brains and
the head of the efforts to really draw attention to
(32:42):
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 Frank was the brains, I think that Ulysses
was the heart of the effort. And it was one
(33:02):
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 ssuing 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
(33:24):
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 nineteen
ninety seven there was another rededication at the tomb, and
(33:44):
by this point it was really it was restored to
much of its former glory, and Ulysses Grant Beats had
spoken at the dedication.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Frank wasn't invited. After raising the.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Attention through the New York Times and through the TV show,
he was dismissed by the National Park Service, but Ulysses
Grant Beats, 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.
(34:19):
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 tomb and how it's
(34:40):
been restored, and how that parallels to Grant's reputation. Right
about the 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
(35:02):
the worst. The only president's worse than Grant were James Buchanan,
Warren G.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Harding, and Andrew Johnson.
Speaker 3 (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
(36:14):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
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 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. Great work is always by the way,
(36:49):
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 a 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.
(37:09):
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 Cars's tried to
run the story of Grant down into the ground. And
my goodness, thanks to the likes and works of Ron
(37:30):
Churno 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. Ulysses S. Grant's story, Grant's tombs story.
Here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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