This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories.

And up next, the story of Ulysses S. Grant, our 18th president.

But this isn't a story about his Civil War victories or his presidency.

It's about his final resting place.

Here to tell the story is Louis Pecone, author of Grant's tomb.

Take it away, Lewis. Grant was the most popular man in America,

but he was also perhaps the one figure that was admired by all sections and was really a unifier.

And this was a time when America was still greatly divided after the Civil War.

This was only 15, 18 years after the Civil War.

But he was beloved by Democrats and Republicans, by Northerners and Southerners, by whites and African Americans, by men and women.

In the North, he was the savior of the Union. He was a liberator of four million enslaved. But even in the South,

he was beloved. And it's just, it's fascinating to think about that because he was the victorious

general that defeated the South in the Civil War. But he was beloved because he was magnanimous.

He had given generous terms to Robert Lee at Appomattox, but also all throughout the war.

He was known for treating

Southerners with compassion, whether they were captured soldiers or whether they were

southern citizens. But he was diagnosed with inoperable throat and tongue cancer, which

at the time, a diagnosis of cancer was pretty much a death sentence. He died on July 23rd.

He was surrounded by all of his loved one.

He was surrounded by his children, by his wife Julia, by his doctors who he had grown so close with.

It was what's considered a good Victorian death.

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