When Ulysses S. Grant entered the president’s office in 1869, echoes of the Civil War tensions that he helped to resolve still reverberated in his mind—and in the nation at large. In response, he commissioned a set of paintings to represent the Union’s indivisibility and to symbolize the nation’s post-war recovery. “Liberty” by Constantino Brumidi is mounted…

The summer of 1885 was a scorcher, but that wasn’t the hot topic in America that year. On June 16, a national hero battling terminal cancer retreated to a small cottage in the cooler mountains of upstate New York in a valiant effort to finish his long awaited memoirs. The famous Civil War general had…

There’s an old joke that goes, “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” The answer, of course, is Grant. That is, Ulysses S. Grant, a Union general during the Civil War and then the 18th president of the United States. Andrew Astley is a National Park Service ranger assigned to Grant’s Tomb in New York City, which…

“Each person’s life is a kind of battle,” the philosopher Epictetus wrote more than 2,000 years ago. What was true then is true now. After all, what is life if not a series of challenges, even small ones? The baby has colic, Joe’s late for work, traffic on I-95 is backed up for miles, and…

Julia Dent Grant grew up in the two-story federal-style home, and it was the first place her future husband, Ulysses S. Grant, would visit as a guest in 1843 when he was stationed militarily in St. Louis, Missouri. Named White Haven by the Dent family to keep the title of former family residences owned prior…

Slavery, distance, family animosity, and a war conspired against Julia Dent’s courtship and then marriage to Ulysses S. Grant, but she soldiered on steadfastly. Julia Dent Grant traveled to be with her husband, Ulysses, more than 10,000 miles during the four years of the Civil War—4,000 of those during the first year alone. Carriages, ferries,…

When President Ulysses S. Grant—helped by Don Pedro II, emperor of Brazil—hand-cranked the 40-foot-tall, 600-ton engine to life, he was opening the first large-scale international exhibition ever to be hosted by the United States. It was May 1876, and this was the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. The massive Corliss engine, which the American president had just…

A lot of folks continue their education after leaving school. Doctors, attorneys, nurses, computer programmers, and many others enroll in continuing education courses, attend seminars, and subscribe to professional journals to keep abreast of changes in their chosen fields. Several individuals I know in such trades are avid readers of magazines giving them new ideas on improving their work…