April 27, 1897: General Grant National Memorial Opens

April 27, 1897: General Grant National Memorial opens in New York City, on what would have been the 75th Birthday of its subject.

Hiram Ulysses Grant was born on April 27, 1822 in Point Pleasant, Ohio, where Big Indian Creek flows into the Ohio River, across from Kentucky, about 25 miles southeast of Cincinnati. His family always referred to him by his middle name.

When he was admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1839, a clerical error led to him being listed as "U.S. Grant." Since "U.S." stood for not just "United States" but also "Uncle Sam," his classmates called him "Sam," which he apparently didn't mind. It beat being called "Useless," which is what some rotten kids called him in Ohio.

Eventually, his name became "Ulysses Simpson Grant," and he married Julia Dent, the sister of a classmate. A cousin of Julia's, James Longstreet, would turn out to be a Confederate General. Grant fought in the Mexican-American War, and became renowned within the U.S. Army for his horsemanship. But civilian life was a struggle, and when the American Civil War came in 1861, he was working in his father's tanning shop in Galena, Illinois.

On February 16, 1862, he won the Battle of Fort Donelson in Tennessee, the Union's 1st major victory of the war. He demanded, and got an "unconditional surrender." And so, "U.S." came to also stand for "Unconditional Surrender." His victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 4, 1863, combined with the Union victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania the day before, insured that the Confederacy could no longer win the war militarily.

On April 9, 1865, having taken the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, he got General Robert E. Lee to surrender his troops at Appomattox Court House. His humane treatment of Lee and his troops meant that, unlike his good friend, General William Tecumseh Sherman, scourge of Georgia and the Carolinas, he was always admired, never hated, by Southerners. The combination of this respect, and the location of his great victory at Vicksburg, is why his Presidential Library was established at Mississippi State University in Starkville in 2012.

He was elected President in 1868, and re-elected in 1872. He crushed the original Ku Klux Klan in the South, and fought for early civil rights gains for the freed slaves. But corruption in his Administration (though he was never accused of anything worse than trusting the wrong men) and the depression that began in 1873 hurt his historical reputation. By the time he left office on March 4, 1877, the nation was ready to move on.

Some bad moves in the stock market forced him to write his memoirs for money. Advancing cancer forced him to work quickly, through immense pain. He finished The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant -- limiting it to the period from his birth until the end of the Civil War, and not discussing his Presidency at all -- just 5 days before his death on July 23, 1885, at a cottage near Mount McGregor, in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, about 200 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, and 45 miles north of the State Capitol in Albany.

Ulysses and Julia had 4 children. Frederick served as U.S. Minister to Austria-Hungary under President Benjamin Harrison. Ulysses Jr., known as Buck, became a lawyer, and served as his father's private secretary during his last year as President, and later as a U.S. Attorney in New York. Their 3rd child was a daughter named Ellen, known as Ellie. And youngest child Jesse became a lawyer, and helped to develop the border city of Tijuana, Mexico as a gambling resort.

Grant was eulogized in the press, likened to George Washington and his former Commander-in-Chief, Abraham Lincoln. He was laid to rest in Riverside Park, first in a temporary tomb, and then, in 1897, in the General Grant National Memorial, the largest mausoleum in North America. Julia died in 1902, and subsequently joined him there.

The Memorial is in the middle of a divided Riverside Drive, at 123rd Street, in the Morningside Heights section of Upper Manhattan, near Riverside Church and Columbia University. Decades later, baseball legend Babe Ruth had an apartment overlooking the Memorial. Each man was arguably the most famous man in America in his respective time. But Ruth learned nothing from the Memorial, since he died from the same thing Grant did: Throat cancer from too many cigars.

Why New York? True, he had lived there since leaving the Presidency. But he wasn't identified with it. He wanted to be buried at West Point, or at the Old Soldier's Home in Washington, D.C. But he also wanted Julia to be buried next to him, and that eliminated all military cemeteries: In a policy that would later be changed, they did not allow women to be buried on their grounds. The family still owned a home in Galena, but they rejected the site as not easily accessible. Julia was talked into a New York location.

Since 1913, Grant has appeared on the U.S. $50 bill. Since 1924, a Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, an equestrian statue of him, has stood on the Capitol Building grounds in Washington. From 1963 to 1992, a submarine named the USS Ulysses S. Grant was in service

Grant Memorial, Washington

There are high schools named for Grant in Oklahoma City, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Portland, Oregon. The 1995 film Mr. Holland's Opus begins in 1964, and the high school where Mr. Holland teaches, in Portland, is shown having its sign changed from being named for Grant to being named for John F. Kennedy.

The last surviving member of Grant's Cabinet was James Donald Cameron, who served as Secretary of War. Cameron later served as a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, and lived until 1918.

General Grant National Memorial became popularly, but incorrectly, nicknamed "Grant's Tomb." On You Bet Your Life, a game show televised by NBC from 1950 to 1961, if the host, comedy legend Groucho Marx, liked a contestant, he would offer a consolation prize if they could correctly answer a very easy question. Frequently, that would be, "Who was buried in Grant's Tomb?" If the contestant answered, "Grant," he awarded the prize.

In fact, no one is buried in General Grant National Memorial. The main floor is up steps, rising it one level above the ground, but the sarcophagi containing each of the Grants' remains stand on a marble floor, at ground level. Therefore, while they are interred there, they are not buried.

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April 27, 1897 was a Tuesday. The only sport being played in North America on this day was baseball, and these National League games were played:

* The New York Giants beat the Washington Senators, 8-3 at the Polo Grounds.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, 12-8 at Union Park in Baltimore. The Brooklyn team were called the Bridegrooms because, a few years earlier, several of their players got married in the off-season.  

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Boston Beaneaters, 10-8 at National League Park (later Baker Bowl) in Philadelphia.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Cleveland Spiders, 7-3 at League Park in Cincinnati.

* The Louisville Colonels, 8-6 at Eclipse Park in Louisville, Kentucky.

* And the St. Louis Browns beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Colts, 10-4 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

The Senators, the Orioles, the Spiders and the Colonels were contracted out of the NL after the 1899 season, which gave the American League a chance. In 1900, the St. Louis team became the Cardinals. In 1903, the Chicago team became the Cubs. In 1911, the Brooklyn team became the Dodgers. In 1912, the Boston team became the Braves.