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April 10 - April 27, 2017
When the Grants’ train arrived in Philadelphia at the Broad Street Station, a messenger waited with a telegram from the War Department. Grant read it in silence: THE PRESIDENT WAS ASSASSINATED AT FORD’S THEATRE AT 10:30 TONIGHT & CANNOT LIVE, THE WOUND IS A PISTOL THROUGH THE HEAD. SECRETARY SEWARD & HIS SON FREDERICK WERE ALSO ASSASSINATED AT THEIR RESIDENCE & ARE IN A DANGEROUS CONDITION. THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES THAT YOU RETURN TO WASHINGTON IMMEDIATELY.
For the rest of his life, Grant agonized over what might have happened if he had been sitting in the box at Ford’s Theatre with Lincoln. Could he have prevented Lincoln’s death?
When Julia questioned her husband about who could have done it and why, he said he did not know, but that “this fills me with the gloomiest apprehension.” She asked, “This will make Andy Johnson President, will it not?” Grant replied, “Yes, and for some reason, I dread the change.” — GRANT RETURNED TO Washington immediately and saw that Ford’s Theatre was draped in black.
During the April 19 funeral services in the East Room of the White House, Grant stood alone in tears at the head of the flower-covered catafalque.
Four days later, Grant watched Lincoln’s casket be placed on a funeral train that would follow almost the same route—in reverse—that brought Lincoln from Springfield to Washington in February 1861.
Upon returning to Washington after Lincoln’s assassination, Grant saw Ford’s Theatre draped in black.
Despite the opposition of Sherman and other military leaders, Grant invited Indian leaders Red Cloud and Spotted Tail to meet with him in Washington.
Photographer Mathew Brady took this full-length portrait of Grant, early in his presidency, seated at a table with books.
I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the Executive…for the purpose of securing to all citizens of the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws. —ULYSSES S. GRANT, Proclamation, May 3, 1871
African American leader Frederick Douglass approved of Grant’s efforts on behalf of African Americans and campaigned for his reelection in 1872.
Grant won an overwhelming reelection with 56 percent of the vote—a larger margin than his election in 1868 and the highest winning percentage of any president between Andrew Jackson in 1828 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1904.
To Grant’s embarrassment, Secretary of War William Belknap was charged with profiting from kickbacks in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Blind artist Johnson M. Mundy’s bust of Frederick Douglass was proudly displayed at the Centennial Exposition—from which African Americans were largely absent.
Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York Tribune, praised his “public and patriotic service,” telling his readers that Grant’s services “in war and peace” deserved the nation’s “respect and gratitude.”
Future president James Garfield, who earlier expressed misgivings about Grant’s presidency, confided to his diary, “I was again impressed with the belief that when his Presidential term is ended, Gen. Grant will regain his place as one of the very foremost of Americans.”
Reports of Grant’s enthusiastic welcome in country after country would cause many back home to take a fresh look at their ex-president.
Precisely because of his love of horses, Grant believed horse-racing a cruel sport.
IF GRANT FELT surprised by his reception in Great Britain, his welcome was also a revelation in the United States. Thanks to Young’s reports, Grant became front-page news. Additionally, some of his private letters were published. He wrote George Childs, “I appreciate the fact,—and am proud of it—that the attentions which I am receiving are intended more for our country than for me personally.”
Although Grant had been disappointed by the crassness encountered at many historic sites, his visit to Pompeii was an exception.
The Wall Street Panic of 1884 swept Grant up in its massive losses.
Deeply humiliated, he told Julia all that had happened. Then he opened his wallet and removed its contents: $81. She had $130. All his dreams for retirement had vanished.
Mark Twain recognized Grant’s literary abilities and would become his friend and advocate.
The last photo of Grant shows him reading three days before his death.
Early on the morning of July 23, all who best loved and admired the general gathered at his bedside. The reporters, alerted, lined up outside at a respectful distance. Julia, who had held his hand on every day they were together for more than forty years, held it one last time. At eight A.M., the general surrendered to death.
This August 1 illustration captured Grant’s death at Mount McGregor for a grieving nation.
The column of mourners who accompanied Grant’s body in New York City on August 8, 1885, was seven miles long.
Gore Vidal, one of America’s foremost men of letters, averred, “It is simply not possible to read Grant’s Memoirs without realizing that the author is a man of first-rate intelligence….His book is a classic.”
The first edition of Grant’s Personal Memoirs, in two volumes, was published in December 1885.
ON APRIL 27, 1897, Julia traveled to New York City’s Riverside Park for the dedication of the Grant Monument, on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of her husband’s birth.
Five years later, Julia would be buried beside her husband at the majestic tomb. Her best obituary might well be the concluding words of her Personal Memoirs. For nearly thirty-seven years, I, his wife, rested and was warmed in the sunlight of his loyal love and great fame, and now, even though his beautiful life has gone out, it is as when some far-off planet disappears from the heavens; the light of his glorious fame still reaches to me, falls upon me, and warms me.
Frederick Douglass, foremost African American leader of the nineteenth century, offers a final lens to our effort to refocus the life of Ulysses S. Grant: “To him more than any other man the Negro owes his enfranchisement and the Indian a humane policy….He was accessible to all men….The black soldier was welcome in his tent, and the freedman in his house.”
