Essay: Who Is Buried in Grant's Tomb?

Ulysses Grant sat on the porch and marched armies across his memory. He called them up through cocaine and morphine, through the pain in his throat, and into a perfect clarity of prose. He fought the war minutely all over again: Shiloh and Vicksburg, the slaughters of the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, where men were so sure of death that they pinned their names and addresses on their jackets for easy identification when they fell. And at last, the mythy set piece of Appomattox, where Lee came as the elegant last cavalier, and Grant, a shabby cigar stub of a man, appeared...

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