Images and More: Passed Presidents - # 18

Imagine Ulysses Grant at age 38 in the beginning of 1861. He was out of the army for seven years, having risen only to the rank of captain in the eleven years he served following graduation from West Point. He resigned his commission rather than face court martial for repeated drunkenness. In the time since his discharge, he failed at farming and real estate ventures and was now a clerk in his father’s leather goods store. He was content to make a steady wage and support his wife and four children.

Then, boom...the Civil War breaks out. Never say war does not present opportunity. When the war began, he organized volunteers from his home state of Illinois. Four years later, General Grant commanded the entire Union army and accepted General Lee’s surrender to end the war. He was the first ‘General of the Armies’ since George Washington. Three years after that, he was elected president...at 46, our youngest one up to that time. Store clerk to president in seven years...with none of those annoying elected offices in between. Is this a great country, or what?

Grant's Tomb, New York City (1 November 2005)

Administration scandals and a poor economy marred his second term and his presidency was considered unsuccessful. There is disagreement as to whether his attempts to elevate the rights of former slaves was too much too soon and counterproductive. In 2014, I would consider it a compliment. Biographer H. W. Brands, in his biography, ‘The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace’, concluded that, “Nearly a century would pass before the country had another president who took civil rights as seriously as Grant did.”

Grant’s Tomb, New York City (1 November 2005)

That probably explains why African Americans contributed significantly to the construction of Grant’s Tomb. Richard Greener, the first black to graduate from Harvard, was the first Secretary of the Grant Monument Association and helped raise funds for what became the largest mausoleum in North America. Lincoln may have emancipated (some of) the slaves but it was Grant’s army that sealed the deal.

Grant’s Tomb, New York City (1 November 2005)

The panel depicts the Gentlemanly Generals,

Lee and Grant, agreeing to end the conflict.

After the presidency, Grant retired to New York and opened a brokerage firm which, true to form, failed. In his last year of life, he wrote what many consider one of the finest presidential autobiographies. It was completed days before he died and the royalties supported his widow for the rest of her days.

Ulysses Grant is the only president who died of cancer. His 20-cigars-a-day habit was his undoing as throat cancer claimed him, 129 years ago today, at age 63. There’s no doubt The Man Who Saved the Union was a popular guy. He was the only president between #7 Andrew Jackson and #28 Woodrow Wilson to serve two full terms. His funeral in 1885 brought out over a million viewers. The procession was seven miles long and included 60,000 marchers. Twelve years later, his memorial was complete. In northern Manhattan, it sits high on a rocky bluff overlooking the Hudson River. The magnificent Riverside Church is across the street.