Category Archives: General Grant National Memorial (NPS)

The Prince of Wales’s arrival

18 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Great War centennial

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The Prince of Wales, later the Duke of Windsor after his abdication of the British Crown in the late 1930s, arrives in New York City on November 18, 1919.

This was the scene one hundred years ago today when the Prince of Wales, Edward Albert, stopped of a U.S. destroyer at Pier A on the Battery in Lower Manhattan to begin a five day goodwill tour of the city. The Prince of Wales by this times had been in North America for many months, crisscrossing British Canada before going to Washington D.C. for an audience with numerous political dignitaries in the U.S. capital. I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Alan Flusser’s new book about Ralph Lauren how Edward Albert, the future king who would quickly abdicate and become the Duke of Windsor, was one of the most photographed men of the twentieth century. This tour, coming as it did that first year after the Great War’s end, was very much a start of that process. The twenty-five year old prince was being groomed for the throne. The dapper, smiling young prince already represented the British Crown in a way his stiff, dour father, King George V, never could.

Developments in later decades showed aspects of Edward VIII’s judgment that were at best problematic, most obviously his sympathies for Nazi Germany. Those ties have never been fully explained nor likely ever will be by this point. Right now, twenty years prior to the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe, all of that was ahead. For five days in November 1919, just after the world had marked the first anniversary of the Armistice, the Prince of Wales came to New York City for five whirlwind days. About an hour after this photograph was taken he laid a wreath at Grant’s Tomb in Upper Manhattan.

(image/Library of Congress)

The 1902 Rochambeau Delegation

13 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by in Antietam, General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Henry Cabot Lodge, Horace Porter, Monuments and Statuary, New York City, Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Ulysses S. Grant (General and President), Washington, D.C., William McKinley

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One of the most famous moments in American diplomatic history was the Viviani-Joffre Mission to the United States in April-May 1917. This was when the French politician René Viviani and Field Marshal Joseph Joffre, among others, came to America to discuss military and diplomatic details after the United States declared war on Germany that spring. Viviani, Joffre and officials from other Allied governments toured the entire United States for several weeks to meet the American people, many of whom, especially in the South and Midwest, were suspicious of European leaders’ intentions. Fifteen years earlier there was a lesser known diplomatic mission: the 1902 Rochambeau Delegation.

The British Museum acquired this painting of General Joseph Brugère in 1902, the same year this French military leader led a goodwill tour to the United States solidifying Franco-American relations. Many of the individuals involved would go on tour serve in the Great War.

The event was so-called because the central moment of the mission was the May 24, 1902 dedication in Washington D.C.’s Lafayette Park of a memorial to Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, the French military leader who had fought with George Washington during the American Revolution. The early 1900s were an interesting moment in diplomatic relations. The United States had recently won the Spanish-American War and was becoming a true world power; the brutal Philippine Insurrection, the final phase in the Spanish-American War, ended on June 2, 1902. One month earlier, on May 6, General Joseph Brugère boarded Vice Admiral Ernest François Fournier’s Gaulois in Toulon and sailed for Washington. One of the driving forces of this mission was Horace Porter, the United States ambassador to France.

Porter had served under Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War and went on to serve in various capacities over the next several decades. He was the driving force to fund and build Grant’s Tomb, which finally came to fruition on April 27, 1897 when William McKinley dedicated his predecessor’s final resting place. Several weeks after that dedication Porter was off to Paris, where he would be President McKinley’s representative to France. Civil War veterans were still very much running American life; the president himself had been in the Battle of Antietam; his Secretary of State, John Hay, had been one of Lincoln’s personal secretaries; and right then in 1902 Secretary of War Elihu Root was putting Ambassador Porter in for the Congressional Medial of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Chickamauga.

Brugère, Fournier and a sizable contingent visited George Washington’s resting place at Mount Vernon on the afternoon of May 22 and were hosted that evening by Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. The big event came two days later when Ambassador Porter, President Roosevelt, General Brugère, Vice Admiral Fournier, scores of dignitaries, and thousands of others turned out at Lafayette Square Park for the Rochambeau statue dedication. Henry Cabot Lodge was the featured speaker. It was all a huge success.

A few days later the Brugère/Fournier contingent would be fêted across New York City. Among other things they got a look at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, dined with mayor Seth Low, and received a tour of Columbia University from college president Nicholas Murray Butler. Columbia is conveniently located next to Grant’s Tomb and on May 28 Ambassador Porter took Brugère, Fournier and the rest of the French delegates to the mausoleum that he had done so much to build. At the time the general public could not walk down to the sarcophagi as one can today. As leader of the Grant Monument Association however Porter was naturally able to take the Rochambeau delegates down the marble steps, where they all stood in hushed stillness for ten minutes. (At the time it was still only Ulysses; Julia passed away seven months later in December 1902.) After the visit, the delegation walked north of the tomb to the Claremont Inn, where several dozen people had a sumptuous meal.

(image/The British Museum)

 

 

No more of those hideous monuments!

19 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by in Chester A. Arthur, General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Monuments and Statuary, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President), Winfield Scott Hancock

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Puck magazine, August 19, 1885

I hope everyone is having a good weekend. Blogging will continue to be light for the next week as I squeeze out some last days of R&R before the academic year begins a week from tomorrow. We visited the Newseum in Washington yesterday. I will have more to say about it when I get back from vacation. Today I wanted to share this centerfold from the August 19, 1885 edition of Puck magazine. Grant had died three weeks previously and his funeral was now eleven days in the past when this hit the newsstands. Literally within hours after his death, discussion had begun about the size, location and type of monument he might receive. There was no shortage of ideas; suggestions ranging from the sublime to the surreal were pouring in from across the country.

It is difficult to tell how cheeky or sincere the Puck editors are being here with their recommendation in the lower right hand corner. My favorite part of the cartoon is the statue of William Seward on the left. The statue still stands where it was dedicated in Madison Square Park in 1876. President Grant himself donated to the construction of the statue. Chester Arthur, Grant’s appointee as Collector of the Port of New York, and Winfield Scott Hancock both attended the Seward dedication and also participated in Grant’s funeral nine years later, a few weeks before this Puck cartoon’s release. Arthur himself was the first leader of the Grant Monument Association but, like Hancock, died in 1886 the year after Grant did. The Grant Monument Association and American people would spend the next twelve years hashing out the scope and design of what became Grant’s Tomb.

(image/Library of Congress)

Three quick stories from one Sunday at Grant’s Tomb

12 Sunday Aug 2018

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“Grant from West Point to Appomattox,” 1885 engraving

It always pays to engage the pubic when one works or volunteers at a National Park Service site. Here are three amazing vignettes that happened just today at Grant’s Tomb:

A woman, clearly nostalgic, comes in today and says she lived in the neighborhood a long time ago and was back for the weekend. I told her that a few weeks a man came in and said the last time he had been in the Tomb was sixty-one years ago when he was a cadet at West Point and he and his classmates were there for a ceremony. “Oh, I can do better than that,” she laughs before continuing, “I grew up in an apartment building further down Riverside Drive and when I was a little girl way back when my friends and I would roller skate up here.” She then begins discussing the notion of free-range children, the freedom kids once had to explore the world around them on their own and figure things out for themselves.

A little while later a man comes in wearing a bright yellow shirt upon which are printed multiple images of Ulysses S. Grant. His daughter, a woman in her thirties, is with him. When I strike up a conversation he explains that they are on their way back to Ohio after attending the 137th annual Sons of Union Veterans encampment held this weekend in Framingham, Massachusetts. I had to tell them that the Grand Army of the Republic oversaw the Decoration Day observations at Grant’s Tomb from 1886 until 1929, when they turned those duties over to the Sons of Union Veterans. Father and daughter are duly impressed.

A little while after that a man comes in and says he lives in the Midwest and has not been here in some years. I mention to him the story of the West Point cadet coming back after sixty-one years and he too laughs. He himself turns out to be a United States Military Academy graduate, attending in the late 1970s in those years immediately after Vietnam. After he mentions it, I cannot help but notice that he has that thing that all Service Academy graduates seem to possess: the obvious intelligence and awareness, the sense of presence and unfailing politeness, and the impression that they are giving you their undivided attention when you are speaking. He is in town because he is going to West Point tomorrow to participate in March Back from Camp Buckner.

Three amazing and very random stories one might hear visiting one’s national parks.

(Engraving by Thure de Thulstrup for L. Prang & Co., Boston via Library of Congress)

 

Sunday morning coffee

12 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by in General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Style, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

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Ulyyses S. Grant sent his measurements to Brooks Brothers in August 1861 after being promoted to brigadier general. Oddly the tailors did not keep the entire note, instead only saving the portion describing the fit and proportions.

I’m listening to jazz and having my morning coffee before heading out the door for Grant’s Tomb. The sun seems to be shining. I thought we would stay with the Brooks Brothers theme one more day. What we see here is a letter in Ulysses S. Grant’s hand to Brooks Brothers giving his measurements. The letter is from August 1861 and is currently on display at the exhibition I mentioned yesterday at Grand Central Terminal. Grant learned of his promotion when he read about it in the St. Louis newspapers while stationed in the Western Theater. His rise had been meteoric. Grant left the Army in April 1854 and had seven full years in the wilderness before rejoining the military after the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Now before the end of the summer he would be a brigadier general. Grant was never one for punctiliousness in military dress, he would famously wear an enlisted man’s blouse later in the war, but it must have been nice to order and put on this general’s uniform that we see here.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Grant rocks the ZZ Top beard wearing his new Brooks Brothers-tailored uniform, Cairo Illinois, September 1861.

Sunday morning coffee

29 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by in General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Jazz, New York City

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Grant’s Tomb from Sakura Park, July 2018

I took this photo last Sunday and thought I would share. From the view from my window right now it looks like it should be a beautiful if warm day. Today marks the start of Harlem Week. Apparently this event is also called A Great Day in Harlem, after the Art Kane photograph taken sixty years ago this August. The photo is actually called Harlem 58. If you have never seen it take a look at this Daily News article from a few years back.

When this photo was taken the Harlem Renaissance was still within living memory. Many of the musicians profiled probably played in Paris in this years just after the Great War. By the late 1950s New York City was already beginning its post-industrial decline, even if that was not readily apparent at the time. From the Daily News: “The world represented by those 57 men and women — a world of late-night clubs, of gents in suits and hats and ladies in gloves, of martinis and Lucky Strikes — was already vanishing in the rear-view mirror of popular culture.” It all sounds good to me, except for the martinis and Lucky Strikes. I remember when the documentary about the film shoot came out in the mid-1990s and even that seems like five eras ago. Many of the principals, like Dizzy Gillespie, were still alive to participate in the film. It is hard to believe Sonny Rollins and Benny Golson are the only two who remain.

Harlem Week began as Harlem Day in 1974. Someone was telling me that this event used to be more anarchic back in the wild years of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s, with people sleeping overnight on benches in Riverside Park and that type of thing. The beauty of this city is that it is constantly reinventing itself. Today Harlem Week stretches a month, through August 25 this year. Come to Harlem this Summer of 2018 and experience it for yourself.

 

Ulysses S. Grant, 1822-1885

23 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by in General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Those we remember, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

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excerpt from July 23, 1885 Brooklyn Daily Eagle on Grant’s death

What a special day it was yesterday at General Grant National Memorial (Grant’s Tomb) as we remembered the life and memory of the general and eighteenth president. It was an honor to read the Whitman poem and participate in the wreath laying and placement of the white roses. Frank Scaturro gave a very informative talk in the visitor center afterward. This event gets bigger every year and I am sure will continue to grow as the 2022 bicentennial of Grant’s birth gets closer and closer in the coming years.

Sunday morning coffee

15 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by in General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Monuments and Statuary

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I’m listening to it rain as I have my coffee and get ready to start the day.

A few weeks back at the Grant’s’ Tomb visitor’s center a patron asked me where the Amiable Child monument was. I had to confess that I did not know. When I asked one of the rangers they said it was abut 100 yards north on the west side of Riverside Drive. Last week I took a different path to the subway and lo and behold there it was. I found this to be a striking monument, especially when juxtaposed with the imposing Grant’s Tomb just down the street. Apparently this is one of only three private graves in New York City. That this four year old who died in 1797 is down the street from resting place of the 18th president makes the monument more poignant.

I imagine many walkers along Riverside who pass this every day during their daily constitutional think of this as “their” monument, so remote and tucked out of the way as it is. I wonder how many will notice today that the date on it is July 15, 1797.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Sunday morning coffee

01 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by in General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Historiography, Memory

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A colonel at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, Edward B. Fowler led the 14th Brooklyn in Wadsworth’s division of Reynold’s I Corps at the railroad cut.

I am finishing up my coffee before I head out the door for Grant’s Tomb. It is going to be a warm one today, close to 100. I’m trying to embrace the heat to the extent I can. Today is the 155th anniversary of Day One of the Battle of Gettysburg. I was with a friend in Green-Wood Cemetery Friday and yesterday and, with a sense of longing for Adams County, was paying close attention for headstones of men who fought and/or were killed at Gettysburg. Yesterday I took this photograph of the Edward B. Fowler headstone. He and his men served under James Wadsworth in the Union I Corps. After the war he was a prominent figure in Brooklyn. When he died in 1896 he lay in state in Brooklyn’s City Hall and then had a full military burial in Green-Wood.

On Friday I finished re-reading David Blight’s Race and Reunion. While I don’t believe the work’s arguments were as groundbreaking as some would have us believe, R&R is no doubt an extraordinary work of scholarship. I gained a lot from going back to it. One of the things that most fascinates me about Grant’s Tomb, besides the life and times of the man resting there, is how the general’s death fit in to Americans’ memory and understanding of the war. Once I have my Grant history and historiography down a bit more, I intend to explore some of these things in a deeper way. I have already begun doing that. Grand Army Men were visiting the tomb for Decoration Days well into the 1920s. After the Armistice, they marched with men from the Spanish-American and the Great War.

Liberty trucks at Grant’s Tomb

06 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Grant National Memorial (NPS)

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I wish the above image were less grainy but it is how it appears in the digitized edition of the 28 April 1918 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. For much of the year leading up to the taking of this picture, the Society of Automotive Engineers had worked exhaustively with the Quartermaster Corps’s Motor Transport Board to standardize a number of vehicles before putting them into mass production. The ones we see here are Standard B “Liberty” trucks. They were brought to Grant’s Tomb in late April 1918 to observe the anniversary of Ulysses S. Grant’s birthday, show the vehicles off, and demonstrate to the public how their Liberty Loan money was getting spent. When the war began most European armies were still using horse-drawn carriages. The United States experimented with trucks somewhat during the Punitive Expedition in Texas in 1916 but was also largely dependent on equestrian transport out in the field. Thus the need for the automotive industry and War Department to brainstorm in 1917-18 before putting the Standard B and other models into mass production. By early winter 1918 through the summer, dozens of factories were turning these and the other models out by the thousands every month.

In the same edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in which this photograph appeared, there was an article stating that the automobile would become increasingly significant in American life after the war. That prediction proved prescient but it is nonetheless jarring to see, given that the United States had not yet fully engaged in the Great War and that the outcome was far from certain. In July 1919,, just one month after the Versailles Treaty, about 275 officers and men of the U.S. Army, including one Dwight D. Eisenhower, engaged in the first Transcontinental Motor Convoy from Washington D.C. to San Fransisco. The convoy’s mission was both to test the efficacy of moving men and material across such a distance and to advertise to the public and military/political leadership the significance of motorized transport.