Category Archives: Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

The Class the Stars Fell On at Gettysburg, 1915

02 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

≈ 2 Comments

The West Point Class of 1915–The Class the Stars Fell On–toured Gettysburg in early May 1915 a few days before the sinking of the Lusitania and graduated one month later. Two years after this many of these men would be lieutenants and captains serving in France.

We are going to continue with the Gettysburg theme this Fourth of July Week with this photograph of the West Point Class of 1915 posing on the steps of the Christ Lutheran Church on Chambersburg Street. This West Point cohort is called The Class the Stars Fell On because so many of the firsties we see here went on to become generals by the time of the Second World War. Somewhere in here are Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley. They arrived in Gettysburg on 2 May and toured for several days under the supervision of Colonel Gustav J. Fiebeger, the legendary instructor who for more than a quarter of a century served as chair of the Academy’s Civil and Military Engineering Department. Among Fiebeger’s important works was “Campaign and Battle of Gettysburg,” which was studied by students at West Point. Remember that military parks like Gettysburg still fell under the auspices of the War Department in 1910s, not being turned over to the National Park Service until the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration.

When these cadets graduated a month later on June 12 they were the largest West Point Class up until that time, comprising 164 second lieutenants. Secretary of War Lindley Garrison was the commencement speaker. This was the first United States Military Academy class to graduate since the outbreak of the Great War the previous year and everyone understood that these young men might eventually be leading men into battle. The Lusitania was sunk later the very week this photo was taken. A very short list of those in attendance when the West Point Class of 1915 graduated the following month included Major General and Chief of Staff Hugh L. Scott; Major General George W. Goethels, who built the Panama Canal during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration; a West Pointer from the Class of 1847 who went on to become a brigadier; and Horace Porter, another West Pointer, who was an important aid to General and President Ulysses S. Grant and who went on to build Grant’s Tomb and was managing the mausoleum up through this time.

 

Grant at Gettysburg

20 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Gettysburg, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

≈ Comments Off on Grant at Gettysburg

Ulysses S. Grant arrived in Gettysburg on this date in 1867. Grant had been made lieutenant general the year before and, with Andrew Johnson’s presidency increasingly in jeopardy, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Grant might make a feasible run for the White House in 1868. David Wills invited Grant to visit Gettysburg to tour the battlefield and also meet the commissioners of the National Cemetery where Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address four years earlier.

The photograph we see here was taken by Charles J. Tyson on June 21. Charles and sibling Isaac were the Tyson Brothers who took so many of the iconic images of the battlefield just after the fighting ended. This image was taken with the boys and girls at National Homestead orphanage for Union soldiers on Baltimore. The girls are on the left and the boys on the right. The photo was taken for charity, with proceeds going to fund the orphanage. The children seem to have been selected from many states to increase public interest in the photograph and thus the orphanage itself.

It is difficult to distinguish the four men but based on other versions of the photograph online that zoom more closely on the adults, Grant seems to be second from the right. Grant and his entourage toured the Gettysburg battlefield and cemetery that day. After that, the busy Grant was off to Harrisburg. In an interesting coda, when Grant indeed assumed the presidency two years later, Wills wrote to him asking to be made U.S. minister to Italy.

(image/Library of Congress)

Grant off to Mount McGregor

16 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by in Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

≈ 2 Comments

An afternoon paper, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle chronicled Grant’s June 16, 1885 journey to Mount McGregor almost in real time. New Hamburgh is a reference to one of the stops Grant’s entourage made along the way.

Like news outlets throughout the country the Brooklyn Daily Eagle was closely monitoring Ulysses S. Grant’s health and progress in the spring and summer of 1885. This is an excerpt from the June 16th edition of that Brooklyn newspaper. As we can see, it was 133 years ago today that Grant and his family traveled to Mount McGregor, outside Saratoga New York, to escape the heat here in the city. At Mount McGregor Grant would push himself to finish his Memoirs. Everyone knew that General Grant’s health was failing due to throat cancer and that it was a race against time.

William H. Vanderbilt, who had helped Grant financially after the collapse of the Grant and Ward investment firm the previous year, now put his personal railroad car at Grant’s disposal. Another Grant admirer, Joseph W. Drexel, was lending Grant and his entourage the use of a spacious cottage for the general to complete the draft in comfort and relative solitude. We stress “relative” solitude. Public interest in Grant was so ardent that a continuous stream of onlookers came out regularly to the mountain retreat to bear witness. From a respectful distance they might have seen Grant on the porch, hard at work with the writing and edits but looking up occasionally and waving in acknowledgment. On other days spectators might note the comings and goings of such dignitaries as Mark Twain or Simon Bolivar Buckner, Grant’s old West Point friend who went on to surrender to him at Fort Donelson during the Civil War. The ailing Grant and his editorial team worked diligently on the book over the next five weeks at the cottage. Grant died there on July 23rd, days after finishing the manuscript.

Hancock and Armistead say goodbye in Los Angeles

15 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in Gettysburg, Governors Island, Memory, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

≈ Comments Off on Hancock and Armistead say goodbye in Los Angeles

Detail from the Gettysburg Cyclorama depicting the mortal wounding of Lewis A. Armistead

About six years ago a friend and I hired a licensed battlefield guide to take us around Gettysburg. Even then I knew the outline of the battle pretty well, and had walked the terrain many times, but we wanted someone to do a deep dive specifically on Day 2. This of course means a strong emphasis on Winfield Scott Hancock. When the tour was over my friend and I had a discussion with our guide about various generals from the war. I mentioned that I volunteer at Governors Island and that Hancock commanded there after the war, and indeed died on the island in February 1886. I noted that it was from Governors Island that Hancock organized Ulysses S. Grant’s funeral in August 1885. The guide asked me about the relationship between Grant and Hancock. I explained that the two were deeply ambivalent to one another but that when Grant died Hancock said and did all the right things.

I say all this because today marks the anniversary of one of the most romanticized moments of the Civil War. It was on June 15, 1861 that Hancock and wife Almira hosted Lewis A. Armistead and others who were leaving immediately afterward for San Diego and then the long journey across the country to join the Confederate Army. Interestingly Almira Hancock later remembered George Pickett as having been there that evening, though he was not. Pickett was out west, in the Washington Territory, and eventually too made his way back East. He was not however at the party, as Almira recounted it in the reminiscences of her late husband that she edited and published in 1887. Some historians speculate that Mrs. Hancock remembered Pickett being there because he passed through Los Angeles shortly thereafter, just ahead of the military authorities seeking his arrest, and that the Hancocks may have secretly and illegally offered George Pickett refuge for a day to two before he went on his way. Looking back on it more than twenty years later, the argument goes, she conflated Pickett’s clandestine stay with the party that had taken place a few weeks previously. It seems plausible.

I am not much for romanticism when it comes to the American Civil War, and I am not succumbing to it here. The scene with Armistead, Hancock and the others has been sentimentalized in books, paintings, and treacly movie scenes countless times over the years. Nonetheless the emotions experienced that day were genuine. It is a very human moment.

(image/Ron Cogswell via Wikimedia Commons)

The Military Service Institution of the United States

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in Governors Island, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President), Writing

≈ Comments Off on The Military Service Institution of the United States

I had a curious incident happen over the past week, one that ended with some good news. Late last week I was compiling my paperwork for my annual self evaluation and noted a “work in progress” that had been laying there dormant for some time. I emailed the editor to inquire if there was any news, and his response was “Oh, I never told you? We published that last year.” When I answered in the negative he told me to email the address and that he’d drop a few copies in the mail. The other day when I opened the box, there they were. The piece is about The Military Service Institution of the United States, a museum and professional organization founded by Winfield Scott Hancock on Governors Island in 1878. Leonard Wood ran the Military Service Institution when he himself commanded on the island just before and during the Great War.

The Journal of America’s Military Past was the ideal vehicle for an article about the Military Service Institution and it meant a lot to me to write the piece. Hancock, Wood, Mark Twain, William Tecumseh Sherman, Dan Sickles, Frederick Dent Grant. These are just a few people who regularly attended events there. Twain of course had published Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs in 1886 and in these decades he was a regular on the Civil War reunion circuit. He was a renowned raconteur and ideal after dinner speaker. He once read early chapters of the yet-to-be-published A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to a gathering of officers in the MSI library. The MSI was such an important part of American Army life for decades and has been virtually forgotten since it closed for good in the early 1920s after the First World War. Most the materials held within, including Phil Sheridan’s horse Winchester, went to the Smithsonian in Washington.

A walk past the Newark Paramount

20 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography, Memory, Museums, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

≈ Comments Off on A walk past the Newark Paramount

I am having my Sunday coffee and listening to Yusuf Lateef. With the semester in its final few days, it’s going to be a working Sunday. I have already sent a few emails and will tie up various loose ends over the course of the day. Yesterday a friend and I braved the rain and crossed the river to visit the Newark Museum of Art. I had not been there in 6-7 years and can say that officials there have been doing great work maintaining what has always been an outstanding cultural institution. If you live in New York City and are ever looking for a place to visit, I can attest that the Newark Museum is very easy to get to. Top it off with lunch or dinner in The Ironbound, as we did, and you’ve had a good day.

Paramount Theater, Newark, New Jersey

I took this photo of the Newark Paramount theater on the way to the museum. Some readers may know of the old Paramount Theater in Midtown Manhattan that they tore down decades ago. The reason there was “another” Paramount in Newark is because the movie studios owned their own theaters until losing a major antitrust case in 1948, after which Paramount and others had to divest themselves of their movie houses. As you can see, the Newark Paramount now stands empty. If my memory serves, the last time I was in the vicinity this was a storefront in which Rastafarians were selling oils and incense. Some rudimentary internet searching informs me that this opened as a vaudeville theater in 1886. To put that in perspective, that was the year after Ulysses S. Grant died.

The space in Newark came under new management and was expanded in 1916. Expansion in this period makes sense; in 1916 with the Great War raging in Europe there was a great deal of activity in Essex County, New Jersey. The docks were teeming and it makes sense that there would be entertainment options such as this. During and immediately after the First World War this would have meant live stage entertainment, and starting in the late 1920s moving pictures.

Last night on the train home I sent this photo to a friend who was born in the early 1960s and lived in this area until the mid-70s, when his family moved to a Sunbelt State. This led to a philosophical discussion over text messaging about loss and memory. My friend mentioned how this all seemed like eons in the past. The Newark Paramount closed as a movie theater in April 1986–itself now a lifetime ago–and while my friend in all likelihood never saw a film there, it is a good bet his mother and father did in their own early years.

I have a yen for these old theaters, having in the 1990s worked for a large chain bookstore based in old art deco move house that in the 2010s because a Trader Joe’s. The race seems to be on to save the Newark Paramount. A society cannot let things lie literally in ruins just for the sake of holding on to the past, but hopefully some vestige of this old treasure can be incorporated into Newark’s future as things continue to move forward. We’ll see how things develop, no pun intended.

 

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)

≈ 4 Comments

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.

One Tuesday in January . . .

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Museums, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

≈ Comments Off on One Tuesday in January . . .

U.S. Grant bust, Met MuseumYesterday morning I submitted a piece (to which I will link when the time comes) and then headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Holiday Monday. It was not as crowded as I thought it would be. I suppose the warmer weather had people outside. I saw this bust Grant that I had not previously seen before. I intentionally left a portion of the vase in the lower right hand corner for scale. In a sense he was an opponent of the Roosevelt family because Grant ally Roscoe Conkling vehemently opposed Theodore Roosevelt Senior’s 1877 nomination to lead the Port of New York. Perhaps that partially explaining the strained relationship between their sons, Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Dent Grant, had a strained relationship when they were on the NYC Board of Police several decades later.

It is still the intersession and I am off this week to write. The original plan was to go to Washington and work but with the inaugural taking place it seemed wiser to stay away. They say it’s going to rain today and tomorrow, which makes for good writing weather.

Washington Roebling’s wars

11 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in Roeblings, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

≈ Comments Off on Washington Roebling’s wars

Major General Joseph Hooker's headquarters at the Chancellorsville house, where Washington A. Roebling served during that battle

Major General Joseph Hooker’s headquarters at the Chancellor House, where Washington A. Roebling served during that battle

Last night I finished Ernest B. Furgurson’s Chancellorsville 1863: The Souls of the Brave. My interest in reading the book was two-fold. First, I am trying to get a better sense of what the New York regiments dealt with during the Civil War. One of my objectives in the Roosevelt Sr. book is to explain how the homefront and the battlefront intertwined. Also, I am trying to nail down my Roebling history a little tighter for my volunteer work at the museum. I was always aware of Gouvernor K. Warren and Washington A. Roebling’s place on Joseph Hooker’s staff. Furgurson’s book fleshed that out a little more. Warren was Roebling’s immediate superior and eventual brother-in-law. After the war Roebling was the younger half of the father-son team that built the Brooklyn Bridge.

Less than a year after Chancellorsville and Gettysburg Warren was placed in command of the V Corps after Meade’s restructuring of the Army of the Potomac. Roebling followed. Until the Overland Campaign the battles in the East were primarily campaigns of movement. The trench warfare of 1864 was closer to what took place on Europe’s Western Front a half century later. Roebling lived until 1926 and would have been conscious of the parallels between the two. We know he didn’t think too much of Ulysses S. Grant, whom he called Useless Grant. The Roebling business was active in helping the Allied cause during the Great War, primarily in the making of submarine netting. Roebling knew war intimately. I cannot help but wonder what he thought about the carnage in Europe after having gone through it himself all those decades earlier.

(sketch by Edwin Forbes, courtesy Library of Congress)

 

 

A quick take at the the Grant-Greeley campaign

22 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in New York City, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father), Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

≈ 2 Comments

In the May 11, 1872 issue of Harper's Weekly Thomas Nast railed against Carl Schurz and other Republicans who were abandoning Ulysses S. Grant in the upcoming election. Like Greeley, Nat was a member of the Union League Club of New York.

In the May 11, 1872 issue of Harper’s Weekly Thomas Nast railed against Carl Schurz and other Republicans who were abandoning Ulysses S. Grant for Horace Greeley in the upcoming election. Like Greeley and many of the other players, Nast was a member of the Union League Club of New York. Nast had attended the meeting for Grant at the Cooper Institute a few weeks previously.

I was in the city this past Friday to attend some work-related meetings. There was a gap between the two functions and with time to kill I walked up the block to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. I started searching a few of the old newspaper databases more or less at random when I stumbled upon a small article in the April 18, 1872 Baltimore Sun. It described a meeting held at the Cooper Institute in New York City at 7:00 pm the evening before. The Friends of Grant were holding a rally for the re-election of the president. Grant was running against newspaperman Horace Greeley. What made the 1872 election so interesting was that it exposed a schism within the Republican Party that never fully healed, despite the fact that the Party of Lincoln held on to national power for most of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

It was fitting, and probably not coincidental, that the Friends of Grant were meeting at Cooper Institute; it was there in February 1860 that Lincoln had given the address that launched him to national prominence. In attendance that spring evening in support of Grant twelve years later were such heavy hitters as Henry Ward Beecher, Thurlow Weed, Peter Cooper, shopping magnate A.T. Stewart, Thomas Nast, Roscoe Conkling, and Theodore Roosevelt Sr.

What made the election so emotional was that Greeley had once been a passionate advocate for Lincoln, the Party, and the Union cause. After the war however he grew frustrated with the way the country was going; he even helped raise Jefferson Davis’s bail. Greeley’s defection, if that’s what it was, cost him. In a drawn out process he was nearly expelled from the Union League Club. He of course lost to Grant in November 1872 and died died later that same month. In a reconciliationist gesture Grant attended Greeley’s funeral.

That is all fascinating enough, but the undercurrents are even more intriguing. Just five years later Senator Conkling became involved in a bitter dispute to keep Theodore Roosevelt Sr. from becoming the head of the U.S. Custom House in New York during the Rutherford B. Hayes Administration. Other subplots were also  in play. In 1872 Carl Schurz supported Greeley. Four years later Schurz returned to the fold and supported Hayes. He was rewarded with an appointment as Secretary of the Interior. In 1884 he and other Mugwumps would support Grover Cleveland over GOP candidate James Blaine. Theodore Roosevelt Sr. was gone by this time, but his son held his nose and stayed with the Party and Blaine. Schulz supported Bryan over Roosevelt in 1900.

Too often people jump from the assassination of Lincoln to the murder of McKinley and the rise of Theodore Roosevelt. That is a major disservice to ourselves and the people who struggled with the complicated issues facing the nation in the years after the Civil War.

(image courtesy of New York Public Library; permalink: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?3905312)