Ulysses S. Grant – Appomattox
Courthouse, VA & Grant’s Tomb, NYC
November 22, 2014 & March 18, 2015
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| U.S. Grant |
On
the afternoon of April 9, 1865, the future president of the United States, Ulysses
S. Grant, rode his mud-splattered horse four miles through the rain toward Appomattox
Courthouse, Va. His destination, the Appomattox
Courthouse. His purpose, to meet with
General Robert E. Lee to discuss the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant, just 42 years old, wore a
private’s uniform, only his
shoulder straps demonstrating his insignia:
Lieutenant General of the U.S.
Army, a rank to date held only by General George Washington.
His choice of uniform stemmed
from his college days at West Point. The first time he left the academy to
travel home, he proudly wore his full uniform. But he was mocked by a child as
he rode through Cincinnati as well as by
a stable man in his hometown. As he wrote in his memoirs, the incident “…gave
me a distaste for military uniform that I never recovered from” (Grant, 1894). Hence, his dressing in a private’s uniform
when he met with Lee.
As
he trotted toward Appomattox Courthouse, Grant was perhaps remembering that he
had never intended to become a soldier and that his record at West Point — aside
from an equestrian award — was undistinguished, while Lee, 16 years his senior,
was the only person to graduate from West Point without any demerits and would later
become the superintendent of the military academy. Perhaps he was thinking that it was a few
days shy of the four-year anniversary of the start of the Civil War and that more
than 600,000 men had died since the shelling of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Perhaps
he was thinking of the complete end of slavery.
He once said that he fought, “Not only to save the Union, but destroy
slavery” (Achenbach, 2014).
* * *
The
Appomattox Courthouse was our goal as well.
We drove south from Kensington, Md., on US-15 the weekend before
Thanksgiving. We cruised down a two-lane
road through small towns, passing gun
stores and shooting ranges — the few remaining autumn leaves well past
their peak. We munched on peanut butter and peach butter sandwiches. Three and a half hours later we passed a
sign: “Welcome to Appomattox County.
Where our Nation Reunited.”
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| It's a Southern Thing |
We
pulled into the parking lot of the Appomattox Courthouse National Historical
Site and parked next to a black Ford pickup with a faded bumper sticker of an
odd flag. It looked like an American
flag, except it had a circle of 11 white stars in a field of blue in the top
left corner and three wide bars of alternating red and white to the right. The logo read: “It’s a Southern thing, you wouldn’t
understand.” And we didn’t. So we asked
the driver, who told us in a Virginia drawl that this was the first flag of the
Confederacy. The stars represented the
seceding Southern states. (This is
actually not the first flag; the
Confederacy produced several “national” flags as the number of seceding states grew. There were also a number of battle flags.)
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| McLean House |
But the main attractions are the
visitor center, which is in the courthouse itself, and the McLean House, where Lee
surrendered to Grant. Why the McLean House? Because when Lee decided to
surrender, the Union troops began asking the townspeople if they could use
their homes. George McLean was walking
around town and agreed.
(Interestingly, McLean also he
owned a farm in Manassas, which was where the First Battle of Manassas was
fought. He moved to Appomattox because he operated a successful sugar business
and was closer to the railroads there. McLean
liked to tell people that the war started in his back yard and ended in his
parlor. And then he charged them $2 for an autograph.)
* * *
On that day in 1865, 58-year-old
General Robert E. Lee waited in the McLean House’s first floor parlor for Grant
to arrive. His Army was in perilous
shape. His men had been surviving on
half rations for six months and were hungry. They had been under a tightening noose for
almost a year. Now they were totally surrounded
and running out of supplies. They still had some meager rations but not the
time to build fires nor prepare warm meals. They fought by day and marched by
night.
Our volunteer park ranger told us that Lee felt he had a duty to surrender. If he had chosen to fight, it would have been
“mass suicide,” His troops had already fought the day before the surrender and
suffered hundreds of casualties. During that fight, the Union’s cavalry, commanded
by George Armstrong Custer, kept firing and moving around, which made the
cavalry look much bigger than it was.
Grant, a master at logistics, had
built a 1.5-mile-long wharf on the James
River so that ships could bring in supplies. He also built a bakery that could
produce 100,000 loaves per day and distributed the bread to his troops via a
light rail system. While this was a morale-booster for Union troops, it was a
morale-killer for the famished Confederate troops who could smell the
fresh-baked bread from their trenches—sometimes as close as 25 yards away.
Once
Grant arrived at the McLean House, he and Lee chatted about the War with Mexico
in which they had both served. While Grant,
being 16 years younger than Lee, was lower ranking in Mexico, Lee said that he
had some recollection of Grant. They
created an odd sight — the tall, gray-bearded Lee in his dress uniform with a
jewel-studded sword, towering four inches over the brown-bearded Grant in his dirty
private’s uniform.
Grant then sat at a small table in the parlor and wrote out the surrender terms extemporaneously. The terms included the provision that the Confederates had to surrender all public property, but officers could keep their personal horses and sidearms, terms that were quite generous and unusual. And they were free to return to their homes, undisturbed by the Union troops.
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| Lee's Table |
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| Grant's Table |
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| Surrender Scene |
Watching the proceedings were
Grant’s staff—including Lincoln’s son, Robert—as well as a doll left on the
sofa by one of the McLean daughters. That doll, which became known as the “silent
witness” to the surrender, now sits in the visitor center.
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| The Silent Witness |
Lee
surrendered only the Army of Northern Virginia that day but according to one of
the park rangers, “it was the beginning of the end.”
Lee and Grant also met the next
day, when Lee asked if the Confederate soldiers could have parole papers so
that they would have documentation proving that they were surrendered soldiers.
That also would give them free
transportation on federal railroads as well as free rations. The
next day the presses worked all day to produce 28,000 paroles. A ceremony was held on April 12 when the
Confederates turned in all of their combat arms and battle flags. In honor of their vanquished foes, Union
troops “presented arms” as the Confederate troops laid down their arms. It was an emotional scene. Grant ordered
the typical post-battle victory 100-gun salute halted because he didn’t want to
rub it in.
April
12 was exactly four years after the Battle of Fort Sumter began.
* * *
During this and countless
other instances, Grant, who grew up in Point Pleasant, Ohio, demonstrated his kindness
and generosity. But there was a dark,
maniacal side to Grant as well. His
famous stubbornness helped him achieve victory but it came at the expense of tens
(if not hundreds) of thousands of deaths.
One of his officers wrote: he
“habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head
through a brick wall, and was about to do it” (Achenbach, 2014). Grant himself said, “One of my superstitions
had always been when I started to go anywhere, or to do anything, not to run
back, or stop until the thing intended was accomplished” (Grant, 1894). He was called a butcher by some — particularly
after the 12,000 casualties suffered at the Battle of Cold Harbor in Virginia
in 1864 — because he would keep
throwing more men into desperate situations.
Mary Todd Lincoln called him that, too.
He also demonstrated another
dark side of this character. During the
early part of the war, Grant issued an order (General Order #1) expelling all
Jews from his military district (which consisted of Tennessee, Mississippi and
Kentucky) ostensibly because Jewish merchants were profiteering from the volatile
cotton market. The order forced “all Jewish people to depart within
twenty-four hours, leaving horses, carriages, and other valuables behind.” (Goodwin, 2005). Some say that Grant was upset because his
father — with whom he had a strained relationship — was representing merchants,
including some Jewish ones, who were seeking licenses to trade cotton. It was after a visit from his father requesting
permission to trade that Grant issued his loathsome order. But when Lincoln heard of this, he quickly
reversed the order.
Still, Grant was wildly
popular, and so as the 1868 election approached, the politically inexperienced
Grant was the obvious choice to be the Republican nominee. Andrew Johnson, the
incumbent, was so unpopular that the Democrats did not nominate him, and his
only term resulted from the assassination of Lincoln. Grant’s opponent was Horatio
Seymour, a former governor of New York. Three of the former confederate states,
Texas, Mississippi, and Virginia, were not yet fully reinstated into the Union
and could not participate in the election.
In other Southern states such as Georgia and Louisiana, there was so
much anti-black and anti-Republican violence that the Republicans could not
campaign effectively. Nevertheless,
Grant won a landslide electoral victory (214-80) but only 53 percent of the
popular vote. The vote was seen a validation
of Reconstruction policies so far. Later, like Lincoln, Grant was re-elected,
winning all of the states north of the Mason-Dixon line.
But
under his administration, the nation struggled with Reconstruction, particularly
the future of the freedmen. In many ways, the future of the blacks was
promising immediately following the war. The U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen
and Abandoned Lands (also known as the Freedmen’s Bureau) was created in 1865
and provided support funds, legal support and schools throughout the
South. In 1866, the Civil Rights Act was
passed guaranteeing citizenship to anyone born in the United States without
regard to race — except for untaxed Indians. All citizens had the right to “make
and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit,
purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full
and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and
property." The Reconstruction Act of 1867 granted blacks the right to vote
for first time. In 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified guaranteeing equality
to all citizens and stipulating that states must reduce their congressional
representation in proportion to males denied the vote. And in 1870, the 15th
Amendment was ratified forbidding denial of voting privileges to any citizen
based on race or color.
One
would think that blacks had achieved near full equality and that the path to
the future was bright. Indeed, 2,000 blacks
held political office during Reconstruction, including 130 former black former Union
officers. And in Mississippi, Hiram Revels became the first black U.S. senator,
ironically winning Jefferson Davis’ old seat. In all, blacks won one governorship,
two Senate seats and 14 House seats in the former Confederate states.
But all was not well.
For
example, land redistribution was not popular even among most Radical
Republicans. They believed that all
citizens should accumulate wages and buy land — even though generations of
enslaved persons had been forced to work that same land for no pay. Thus, sharecropping became common with black
tenants leasing the land and splitting crop yield with the white owners, who
often cheated them. Later, many blacks could
not pay owners and became indebted and de facto re-enslaved.
Among white Southerners, the
racial animosity toward the black population was deep. In addition to the higher virtue of altruism,
the Radical Republicans used the enfranchisement of blacks — and the
disenfranchisement of many of the “disloyal” whites — as a cudgel to punish the
South. In response, racist terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan were
formed to intimidate and kill blacks and Northern “carpetbaggers.”
To
combat the terrorism of blacks, Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which
stipulated that the federal government could use the Army to dismantle the KKK
and that members could be held without charge.
The act helped squelch KKK in the early 1870s, but it was replaced by
similarly heinous groups such as the White Brotherhood, the Knights of the
White Camelia, and the Red Shirts. Grant
pushed Congress to pass the Enforcement Acts, which gave him the authority to
send federal marshals into the South to protect blacks.
In April 1873 in Colfax,
Louisiana, a disputed gubernatorial election turned into a riot and then into a
massacre. Between 70 and 150 blacks were
killed by agitated whites. The massacre
included the deliberate burning of a building with people inside and the summary
execution of about 50 black prisoners. Grant sent federal investigators.
In
September of that year, the nation’s post-war over-expansion turned sour and the
economy fell into the worst depression in the nation’s history (at that point).
Eighty-nine railroads went bankrupt, 300 of 700 iron and steel mills closed, cotton
prices fell by half, and the unemployment rate hit 14 percent. The nation’s
focus began to turn away from the racial troubles in the South.
In
1874, Grant once again sent troops to New Orleans to quell the White League
from violently trying to upend the Republican governor of Louisiana. But his enthusiasm was flagging. In 1875, when Mississippi Gov. Adelbert Ames
asked for troops to quell a disturbance, Grant refused: “The whole public are
tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South… [and] are ready
now to condemn any interference on the part of the government.” (Without the federal
protection, the Republican government of Mississippi was finished. Governor
Ames said: “A revolution has taken place
by force of arms, and a race are disenfranchised. They are to be returned to a condition of
serfdom, and era of second slavery.”) (Foner & Brown, 2005)
The
racial wars and the depression were not Grant’s only challenges. He also fought the corrupt Boss Tweed and his
Tammany Hall New York City political machine. He made a play to annex Santa
Domingo (Dominican Republic) partially as a place for four million freedmen to
emigrate to — but there was little support in Congress for the idea. He
negotiated contentious post-Civil War issues — Congress wanted damages because
England built some Confederate vessels and even partly staffed them — with
England and signed the Treaty of Washington (1871). In 1870, he created the Department of
Justice. One of Grant’s more pleasant
tasks was creating the first the National Park in the world, Yellowstone, on
more than one million acres in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho in 1872.
In
the meantime, years of rule had led to corruption in the Republican Party. This
included the involvement of Grant’s brother-in-law in Jay Gould’s and James
Fisk’s attempt to corner the gold market.
(Grant was not cooperative and ordered the sale of government-held gold,
causing the market to plunge.) Grant’s vice
president, Schulyler Colfax and several Republican senators and congressmen
were involved in the Credit Mobilier Scandal, accepting bribes in exchange for
legislation favoring a railroad construction company.
The
result was a disenchantment with the Republican Party. In 1874, the Republicans lost 93 House seats —
their biggest loss ever. The Democrats
were back in power after 16 years as the minority party.
And
the scandals continued.
In
the Whiskey Ring Scandal, members of the U.S. Treasury as well as Grant’s
personal secretary were found to have conspired with distillers to siphon off
liquor taxes. In addition, Grant’s secretary
of war, William Belknap, was impeached for accepting bribes from people wanting
rights to Native American trading posts.
Somehow,
Grant avoided being tainted by all the scandals and remained popular. So popular, in fact, that the House felt a
need to pass a resolution opposing a third term for Grant. (At that time, there were no term limits for
presidents.) But they needn’t have
worried. Grant couldn’t wait to be finished
with his presidency. He told a reporter, “I was never as happy in my life as
the day I left the White House” (Achenbach, 2014).
* * *
Following
his presidency, he began what many called his most noble effort, although it
didn’t start off well.
It
began with a failed investment in a Wall Street firm where he lost all of his
family’s money in a Ponzi-type scheme.
His family went from being wealthy to nearly destitute. Their bank
accounts were frozen.
Grant,
still popular, was approached to write his memoirs. The 48-year old Mark Twain won the right to
publish them. And he laid out terms very favorable to Grant — 70 percent of the
profits would go to Grant’s family. So in fall 1884, Grant began writing.
At
about the same time, Grant developed a soreness in the back of his mouth. He resisted seeing a doctor for four
months. By the time he had his mouth examined,
he learned that he had cancer on the roof of his mouth and the back of his tongue—and
that it was probably attributable to his habit of cigar smoking. During the early part of the war, Admiral
Samuel Foote had given Grant his first cigar, which Grant smoked as he rode
back to camp that day. But suddenly an
attack on his position was launched.
Grant and his troops fought back, Grant still holding the cigar. The newspapers carried the story of Grant leading
his troops with a cigar in his mouth.
Soon people were sending him cigars.
Boxes and boxes of cigars poured in, perhaps as many as 10,000. Grant
got hooked and chain-smoked sometimes 20 cigars a day.
Now
he had mouth cancer and it was very painful for him to swallow. “If you can
imagine what molten lead would be going down your throat, that is what I feel
when swallowing,” he said. (Bracelen,
2011). The cancer was treated with
cocaine swabs, but there was nothing more the doctors could do.
And
so he wrote every day, determined to complete his book and save his family before
he died. Twain was pleased with Grant’s
gift of concise writing and needed to provide only minor edits. During his
illness, Grant continued to smoke cigars but was told to limit them to three
per day. He finally puffed his last
cigar in November 1884 on the advice of doctors.
In
the summer of 1885, his family moved to a house in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.,
hoping the cool Adirondack Mountains air would be more comfortable for
him. He often sat on the porch writing,
wearing a large, baggy shirt, a scarf and a wool cap. By the time he finished writing on July 19,
1885, he had completed a two-volume tome—an intriguing narrative of his life in
the Mexican and Civil Wars.
He
died five days later.
That
the book came out while most of the veterans who had fought in the Civil War
still lived contributed to its huge success.
It was the most successful book in American literature to that day and
ultimately yielded $450,000 (a huge sum back then) for his family.
*
* *
The
question of where to bury Grant was broached even while he lived. He did not want to be buried in Washington,
since he said he had no happy memories there.
And his wife Julia sought a spot where she could be buried alongside
him. They were completely devoted to one another throughout their marriage.
Korda (2004) calls it “one of the great marriages of the nineteenth century.”
A
scenic site on Manhattan, overlooking the Hudson River, was selected. Ninety thousand people donated $600,000 to
build a gargantuan mausoleum. It was the
most money for a public monument up to that time.
Between 1 and 1.5 million
people attended Grant’s funeral on August 8, 1885. It was a day of national mourning. Because the mausoleum was years away from
construction, Grant’s body was placed in a temporary vault on the site.
*
* *
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| The largest mausoleum in North America |
On
a cold (30 degrees), blustery mid-March day, Tom drove to New York City alone
to visit Grant’s Tomb and visit his nieces.
(It was Tom’s last week between jobs and Cathy was busy at work.) Today the site in on the fashionable Upper
West Side. The mausoleum sits in a
grassy area, the Hudson River visible 150 feet down the bluff on one side of Riverside Drive while luxury apartments line the
other side of the street.
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| At Rest |
Thankfully, the inside of the
structure was warm. The interior consists
of a rotunda under a giant dome and two small rooms displaying replicas of
battle flags. The dark red granite
marble sarcophagi holding the bodies of Ulysses and Julia are visible below. When I descended to the crypt, I was struck
by how massive each of the sarcophagi was.
Within openings on the wall of
the crypt are busts of some of his most important generals: William T. Sherman, Philip Sheridan, Edward Ord,
George Thomas and James McPherson. According
to Park Ranger Don Stanko, the busts were added more recently and there were likely
candles flickering there before. Another
recent addition is three colorful murals high near the dome. One depicts Lee and Grant shaking hands. Lee’s head in bowed so that the tall Lee
appears to be the same height as the shorter, but straight-backed, Grant.
Once
completed, Grant’s Tomb became — and still is — the largest mausoleum in North
America. When the tomb was finally dedicated on Grant’s 75th
birthday, April 27, 1897, one million people attended the dedication.
I
enjoyed talking with Don, the park ranger.
He was a font of historical knowledge, from Alexander Stephen’s
Cornerstone Speech prior to the start of the Civil War to the adoption of
Grant’s battle techniques — overwhelming, relentless force — by modern
armies.
I next visited the visitor
center across the street and down the bluff.
It contained an original sign-in book for Grant’s last birthday in 1885,
a first edition of his memoirs, the official program for the 1897 dedication
ceremony, and a $5.05 contribution to the construction of the mausoleum from a
black newspaper called The Freeman.
Grant wrote in his memoir that
“It is probably well that we had the war when we did. We are better off now
than we should have been without it, and have made more rapid progress than we
otherwise should have made.” It’s
true. The ugly underbrush of slavery and
the uncertainty of federal and state’s rights needed be burned away in the
crucible of war to solidify and define the young nation.
When I left the visitor center, I
walked by the mausoleum for a final look.
The sun was now out and the American flag snapped in the breeze. Illuminated brightly above the entrance was
one of Grant’s quotes: “Let us have
peace.”
Directions
Appomattox
Courthouse
The
Appomattox Court House National Historical Park is about 275 miles south of Washington,
DC. It is on VA Rt. 24, 2 miles from the
town of Appomattox.
Grant’s
Tomb
Grant’s
Tomb is located in Manhattan on Riverside Drive and West 122nd Street. The mausoleum is open Wednesday through
Sunday. It has very strange hours; it is open 4 hours per day, but only every
other hour! Nobody seems to know why.
References
Achenbach,
J. 2014.
Unknown Soldier: A Beloved Hero in the 19th
Century, Ulysses S. Grant Became a Faded Figure in American History. Washington Post. April 27, 2014.
Brookhiser,
R. 2015.
Scratching the Six-Year Itch. American History. Vol. 50, No. 1, April 2015.
Flood,
Charles Bracelen. 2011. Grant’s
Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant’s Heroic
Last Year. Da Capo Press. Cambridge, MA.
Foner,
E. and Brown, J. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation
and Reconstruction. 2005. Alfred A. Knopf. New York, NY.
Goodwin,
D.K. 2005. Team of
Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham
Lincoln. Simone & Schuster. New York, NY.
Grant,
U.S. 1894. Personal
Memoirs of U.S. Grant. Charles L. Webster
& Company. New York, NY.
Korda,
Michael. 2004. Ulysses
S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero. HarperCollins Publishers. New York, NY.
Moore, K. 2007. The
American President. Fall River
Press. New York, New York.
Smith,
C. 2004.
Presidents: Every Question Answered. Hylas Publishing. New York, NY.
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