Category Archives: General Grant National Memorial (NPS)

Sunday morning coffee

03 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by in General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Heritage tourism, National Park Service

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I am having my coffee getting ready to head out the door in a bit for my first day at Grant’s Tomb. Yesterday a friend and I took the bus to Philadelphia to visit the Museum of the American Revolution. The Revolutionary War period is something I know little about. My first experience visiting sites related to the period came a few years ago when my aunt and uncle took me to Lexington and Concord. It was an experience that has stayed with me. Of course we have a certain amount of Revolutionary War sites here in New York City as well, though the heritage tourism is less pronounced. Apparently the Museum of the American Revolution now stands on the site of what what used to be a visitor center for the nearby attractions.

The image of me above was taken yesterday outside of Independence Hall. If you look closely at the date, Lincoln’s visit fell on Washington’s Birthday 1861. This was while Lincoln was president-elect and on his way from Illinois to Washington for his inaugural. He was here in New York just a few days before this meeting with Edwin D. Morgan and others. Note that this tablet was put there by a Grand Army of the Republic post, though alas it does not give the year. A tablet next to this one mentions a John F. Kennedy visit to Independence Hall on July 4, 1962. We could not go into Independence Hall because tickets for the day were sold out but we weren’t too concerned because the museum was our main focus for the day. We did sit on an interpretive talk by park ranger of the adjacent Congress Hall. The ranger did a great job telling the audience about the significance of the hall and, among other things, about John Adams’s swearing in there as the second president.

I had an aunt who died about three years ago who lived in Greater Philadelphia. She loved visiting places like this and I’m sure over the years came here regularly with her elementary school students. There was a Boy Scout troop sitting in on the ranger talk and a group of young high schoolers in matching red t-shirts from Ohio in the museum. I love seeing the continuity and had to text my mother and tell her I was thinking of her older sister. Overall it made for a great day. We already have plans to visit again next year and take in the full experience. Now I’m off to the General Grant National Memorial. Enjoy your Sunday.

Decoration Day 1886

27 Sunday May 2018

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

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They have my article up and running at the General Grant National Memorial (Grant’s Tomb) website. It is about Decoration Day 1886, the first Memorial Day to take place after Ulysses S. Grant’s death in July of the previous year. Alas it appears the pictures did not seem to go through, but we’ll figure that out. I hope everyone enjoys the piece as much as I enjoyed writing it.

(image/Museum of the City of New York)

David Blight on Grant

15 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in General Grant National Memorial (NPS)

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Small bust of onetime U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant — shown in his Civil War general’s attire (hence the “G” Grant) inside the Cleveland Public Library’s main building

When I was at Grant’s Tomb this past Friday a few of the rangers and I got into an interesting discussion about the Grant historiography. Grant is similar to Dwight Eisenhower in that his reputation waxes and wanes in relation to the country’s mood and circumstances. Of course this is true for all presidents and political figures, but seems especially so with these men who both rose to prominence as military figures and then went on to twice capture the White House. The nadir for Grant was the 1920s and  1930s in the wake of the Great War. Comparisons between Spotsylvania Courthouse and Verdun inevitably highlighted the impression of Grant the Butcher. This was also the high tide for Jim Crow and the mythology of the Lost Cause. In this milieu it was inevitable that Grant would be found lacking in comparison to the dashing Robert E. Lee.

I had to work this past Sunday and while in the library I pulled David Blight’s Race and Reunion off the shelf for a small project I am working on. I have not read Blight’s influential work in many years but intend to re-read it this summer. Earlier this evening, after arriving home soaked to the bone after getting caught in the downpour, I checked out Professor Blight’s website where, as it turns out, he has a new article about Grant in The New York Review of Books. Blight gives Ron Chernow’s new Grant biography a favorable review and also has high praise for the new edition of Grant’s Memoirs edited by John F. Marszalek and others. I was pleased to see Blight mention Ronald C. White’s American Ulysses, which I read last summer, and also highlight the important works by Brooks Simpson on the general and eighteenth president.

(image/Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Interpreting Grant

11 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Chester A. Arthur, General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father), Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

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Grant’s Tomb, May 2018

I was in Upper Manhattan this afternoon for a meeting. I took the #1 train to 116th Street and when I emerged to street level Columbia students were packing their belongings into their parents’ cars and heading home for the summer. As I continued along I saw the doors open at Riverside Church and, with about fifteen minutes on my hands, went in to give it a look. As it happened, I stumbled into the Columbia University graduation ceremony, which I could hear and see going on inside the church from the lobby. A student in cap and gown standing in the lobby even asked me if I needed help but I politely said no, wished him well, and went on my way.

The reason I was in the area was because I had a meeting at Grant’s Tomb. As it turns out, I’ll be volunteering there at least over the summer. I am excited about this. I feel that in many ways things have been guiding me towards this for some time. I am already contemplating a number of interpretive possibilities. My first order of business though will be to ground myself in the basics of the site and its historic provenance. I have already just about completed the historic resource study written by a Park Service historian in the early 1980s.

Grant’s Tomb is a good fit because it ties in neatly with my book manuscript about Civil War Era New York City. Theodore Roosevelt Sr, Chester Arthur, Winfield Scott Hancock, Roscoe Conkling, Rutherford B. Hayes: the lives of all of these figures and others intertwined with Grant’s in substantial ways. I feel I’m well-positioned to take this on. I will not be starting until early June but after I do I will have regular updates about what is going on.