On this day in New York · July 23, 1885
Ulysses S. Grant Dies, and New York Claims His Tomb
The general who saved the Union died of throat cancer upstate, and a million and a half people turned out in Manhattan to bury him.
The facts
- Date of death
- July 23, 1885
- Place
- Mount McGregor, New York, near Saratoga Springs
- Funeral
- August 8, 1885, in Manhattan
- Turnout
- About 1.5 million, then the largest in U.S. history
On July 23, 1885, Ulysses S. Grant died of throat cancer in a cottage on Mount McGregor, near Saratoga Springs, days after finishing the memoirs that would rescue his family from ruin. His body was brought to New York City, and on August 8 the city staged a funeral procession of some sixty thousand marchers, watched by an estimated one and a half million people, the largest public gathering the country had yet seen. Union and Confederate generals walked together behind the coffin. New York won the contest to be his final resting place, and Grant's Tomb rose over the Hudson in Riverside Park.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Grant's funeral procession surpassed any public demonstration in the United States up until that time, with an attendance of 1.5 million people
Death and state funeral of Ulysses S. Grant, Wikipedia
Source: Death and state funeral of Ulysses S. Grant, Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Grant's Tomb, finished in 1897, is the largest mausoleum in North America and still anchors Riverside Drive, though the old riddle about who is buried in it has long outshone the man. His memoirs, written against the clock as cancer closed in, remain a classic of American letters.
Sources
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