Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb__ A Tour of Presidential Gravesites - Brian Lamb [29]
Touring James Buchanan’s Tomb at Woodward Hill Cemetery
Woodward Hill Cemetery is located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It is open daily during the daylight hours. Admission is free.
From Philadelphia: Take the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76) West to exit 21. Drive south on Highway 222. Highway 222 turns into Prince Street. From Prince Street turn left onto Hager Street. On reaching Queen Street turn right.
From Harrisburg: Take Highway 283 east to the Harrisburg Pike exit. Take Harrisburg Pike west into the city of Lancaster. Harrisburg Pike turns into Harrisburg Avenue. Turn left onto Prince Street until reaching Hager Street; then turn left onto Queen Street.
To find Buchanan’s grave, bear to the right after entering the cemetery gates. Climb up the small hill and head toward the red brick church. President Buchanan’s gravesite is located to the left of the church.
Also buried at Woodward Hill is Frederick Muhlenberg, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789-1791 and 1793-1795.
For additional information
Woodward Hill Cemetery
South Queen Street
Lancaster, PA 17602
Lancaster County Historical Society
230 North President Avenue
Lancaster, PA 17603
Phone: (717) 392-4633
www.lancasterhistory.org
“Buchanan proved no more successful as a prophet than a president.”
—Richard Norton Smith
Before going to work as a screenwriter for the Weinstein brothers, Shakespeare observed that, “the evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.” The sentiment applies with unmistakable force to James Buchanan, the sine qua non of executive enfeeblement. The swashbuckling Theodore Roosevelt liked nothing better than to contrast “Buchanan presidents” and “Lincoln presidents,” leaving no doubt as to in which camp he belonged. Reproached for his conduct on the eve of Fort Sumter, Buchanan in retirement wrote a self-serving memoir, selected a burial spot in Lancaster’s Woodward Hills Cemetery, and composed an inscription for his white marble tombstone. “I have no regret for any public act of my life, and history will vindicate my memory,” he told those gathered around his sickbed in June 1868. Buchanan proved no more successful as a prophet than a president.
—RNS
James Buchanan’s gravesite
Abraham Lincoln
Buried: Oak Ridge Cemetery, Springfield, Illinois
Sixteenth President - 1861-1865
Born: February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky
Died: 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865, in Washington, D.C.
Age at death: 56
Cause of death: Gunshot wound to the head
Final words: Unknown
Admission to Oak Ridge Cemetery: Free
In his 1858 bid for an Illinois Senate seat, Abraham Lincoln engaged in a series of seven debates with incumbent Democrat Stephen Douglas. The frontier lawyer lost that election, but the fame he gained allowed him to face Douglas again in the 1860 presidential race. Lincoln won the White House, inheriting a nation bitterly divided over the slavery issue.
The Civil War began just one month into Lincoln’s first term and became the defining event of his administration. Sectional differences cast the industrial North against those in the South who favored states’ rights. Eleven southern states seceded from the Union and formed their own Confederate government, laying the groundwork for the bloody clash that began in April 1861. Lincoln was determined to save the Union above all else.
Lincoln’s final resting place at Oak Ridge Cemetery
Lincoln’s 1862 Emancipation Proclamation granted freedom to slaves in the seceding states. Despite considerable losses on the battlefields, the war continued to rage for three more years. The conflict officially ended with the surrender of the Confederacy on April 9, 1865, shortly after Lincoln’s second inauguration.
For many, the hostilities lived on. Unable to accept the South’s defeat, an actor named John Wilkes Booth plotted against the Union government, conspiring to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward.