Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb__ A Tour of Presidential Gravesites - Brian Lamb [6]
Introduction
If you like to explore old cemeteries, take heart. You are not alone, as this book demonstrates. C-SPAN’s guide to presidential gravesites is for people like you and me and historians Richard Norton Smith and Douglas Brinkley, who enjoy learning through personal experience and who think that, as historic sites, cemeteries have much to offer.
Why visit presidential graves? They are gateways to American history, helping us learn more about the men who held our nation’s highest office and the times in which they lived. Americans believe our presidents are no greater than the rest of us. Nonetheless, only forty-three of our fellow citizens have made it to the White House and each helped shape the direction of our nation. When we learn about these men, we learn more about our collective selves.
If you’re a curious but inexperienced gravesite tourist, don’t be daunted by cemeteries. Presidential tombs are not morbid. The truth is, these graves aren’t so much about death as they are about personal and political symbolism. In making this tour, I’ve come to realize how much presidents and their families, from our earliest times, understood the public nature of presidential deaths. Obvious care was given to planning most of their funerals and memorials.
Andrew Jackson and his beloved wife, Rachel, were buried under a cupola in the garden alongside their home in Nashville, surrounded by family members and Uncle Alfred, a favored slave. Our seventh president chose to have the title “general” chiseled into his sarcophagus. Thomas Jefferson also chose an epitaph that ignored his service as president. Visiting his iron-fenced grave at Monticello, you’ll find him self-described for posterity as, “Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia.”
Some of the presidents’ final words can be as interesting as their epitaphs. William Henry Harrison, who served only one month of his term, seemed to have his place in history in mind while drawing his last breath. “I wish you to understand the true principles of government,” he’s reported to have said. “I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.” Grover Cleveland, succumbing to heart failure at age seventy-one, said, “I have tried so hard to do right.” James Madison had no time to consider history. Expiring at the breakfast table, he tried to brush aside a niece’s concern for his health, assuring her, “Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear.”
Eight presidents died in office, four of them (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy) at the hands of assassins. Those who survived the White House lived anywhere from three additional months (James K. Polk) to more than thirty-one years (Herbert Hoover). The average age of our chief executives at death was seventy.
Quality of life after the White House varied greatly among the presidents. Many early presidents, like Grant, were virtually penniless. Worried about his family’s financial future, the old general worked furiously on his memoirs while gravely ill with throat cancer. Thomas Jefferson sold his extensive book collection to the Library of Congress to support his life at Monticello. Harry Truman, our thirty-third president and a man of modest means, finally put presidential financial security to rest by successfully lobbying for a presidential pension.
Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb? is full of facts like these about the post-White House years of our presidents, their deaths, and their funerals. We also tell you how to visit each presidential gravesite, taking you to small towns and to several of America’s largest cities. As you progress, you’ll see ornate memorials from the Gilded Age and a few tucked-away plots in lesser known burial grounds.
The idea of gravesites as lessons in history was suggested to me by Richard Norton Smith, George Washington biographer and the former executive director of several presidential libraries. His foreword tells of his own childhood, spent visiting presidential graves with