The note sat in the pocket of Ulysses S. Grant’s coat, written about a month before he died, left there on purpose so that Julia would find it only after he was gone. He knew the end was near; he had known for some time that it was approaching with certainty. What he had not known was how fast.

He had hoped to live until the fall of 1885 or the early part of the winter of 1886, but he was constantly losing flesh and strength, and he could see now that the time was coming much more quickly than that. So he wrote to the woman he had courted on a porch in St. Louis more than forty years earlier, telling her to look after their dear children and direct them in the paths of rectitude, and to rest in the knowledge of her love and the dutiful affection of their children. He bid her a final farewell until they should meet in another and, he trusted, a better world.

The story of that marriage begins at White Haven, a plantation in south St. Louis County, Missouri, where Julia Dent grew up and where Ulysses Grant, a young army lieutenant, found his way into her life. Today the site is managed by the National Park Service, and its mission centers on the greenhouse, the estate, and the early love story that unfolded there. Historians studying the couple have relied on a number of primary sources, but the two most important came from the pens of the Grants themselves.

Ulysses wrote his famous Personal Memoirs during the last year of his life in 1885, a work that focused largely on the Mexican-American War and the Civil War but that also touched on his personal life. The memoirs have never gone out of print and remain among the best-selling memoirs ever written by a former president. Julia’s story took a more roundabout path to publication. In the 1890s, years after her husband’s death, she began thinking about telling her own story and sharing her experiences.

She worked with her oldest son, Frederick Dent Grant, who transcribed the reflections she shared about her life. Julia hoped to command the same sort of money for her memoirs that her husband’s had brought in, so she pitched publishers for sums in the range of a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand dollars. The first check the Grant family received for the General’s memoirs had been for two hundred thousand dollars, and no publisher was eager to pay that kind of money for Julia’s recollections. When Julia died in 1902, her memoirs remained unpublished.

It was not until the 1970s that Dr. John Y. Simon, the director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, worked with the Grant family to secure the original manuscript, and in 1975 Julia’s memoirs were finally published posthumously.

For scholars, they shed invaluable light on her life, and they hold a unique place in history as the very first personal memoir written by a First Lady. Ulysses was not from St. Louis. He was born and raised in Ohio and attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, but his first assignment after graduation brought him to Jefferson Barracks, about five miles south of the White Haven estate.

He soon became a regular visitor at the Dent home, partly because one of his best friends from West Point was a fellow cadet named Frederick Dent. In his memoirs, Grant described those early visits plainly. He wrote that he soon found his way out to White Haven, the name of the Dent estate, and as he found the family congenial, his visits became frequent. There was an older daughter of seventeen, Julia, who had been spending several years at boarding school in St.

Louis but had not yet returned home; she was spending the winter in the city with the family of Colonel John O’Fallon, well known in St. Louis. In February of 1844 she returned to her country home. After that, Grant wrote, he did not know, but his visits became more frequent, and they certainly became more enjoyable.

They would often take walks or go on horseback to visit the neighbors, until he became quite well acquainted in that vicinity. If the Fourth U. S. Infantry had remained at Jefferson Barracks, he concluded, it was possible, even probable, that this life might have continued for some years without his finding out that there was anything serious the matter with him.

He fell in love with Julia, and the two began a courtship that lasted only about three months before Grant’s unit was ordered further south to begin preparations for a potential war with Mexico. Before he left, Ulysses proposed to Julia on the front porch of the White Haven estate. He departed St. Louis with the Fourth U.

S. Infantry in May of 1844, little knowing that he would be separated from Julia for almost four straight years. Between 1844 and 1848, he was stationed at various military posts in Louisiana and Texas and eventually fought in the Mexican-American War. There was only one brief trip home in 1845, when Grant received a leave of absence to return to St.

Louis. On that visit, he approached Julia’s father, Frederick Dent Sr. , and requested permission to eventually marry his daughter. During that long separation, a remarkable number of letters survived as documentary evidence of the couple’s devotion.

Grant frequently wrote back to Julia at White Haven, reporting on conditions in the South and on the progress of the war as the Fourth Infantry made its way to Mexico. In his first letter to Julia in the summer of 1844, he expressed regret at having to leave Jefferson Barracks when he did, saying he was just learning to enjoy the place and the society of St. Louis, and he went on to mention that he felt he was very well suited for the St. Louis climate.

Anyone who has lived in St. Louis long enough to know its weather understands why that is a funny statement; it is a miserable climate much of the time. Ulysses was in love when he talked about how much he loved the St. Louis weather.

In August of 1844 he wrote to Julia, who had told him she often dreamed of him, asking her to tell him some of her good dreams and not any of the bad ones. He reminded her that while he was writing, the ring he used to wear was on her hand, and parting with that ring, he said, was the strongest evidence he could have given her of the depth and sincerity of his love. In 1845 he told her he would always look back on his short visit to Missouri as the most pleasant part of his life, that it seemed more like a pleasant dream than reality, and he could scarcely convince himself he had been there so short a time ago. In another letter from that year, he recalled how awkwardly he had first made known his love, a scene he often thought of with pleasure, and how glad he had been to hear that his offer was not entirely unacceptable.

He felt now, going away, as if he had someone else than himself to live and strive to do well for, and he said she could have but little idea of the influence she had over him, even while so far away. The Mexican-American War came to an end in 1848. The United States defeated Mexico and acquired a vast amount of territory that had been part of northern Mexico, land that would eventually become California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and other western states. With the war over, Grant returned to St.

Louis, received a leave of absence from the army, and married Julia Dent on August 22, 1848. The wedding did not take place at White Haven; the Dent family also owned a city home at the corner of Fourth and Cerre Streets in downtown St. Louis. By all accounts it was a lovely affair, with many people from Jefferson Barracks in attendance.

It is sometimes inaccurately stated that future Confederate General James Longstreet served as Grant’s best man, but that is not true; Longstreet and his wife did attend the wedding, however. The ceremony was Methodist, presided over by the Reverend John H. Lynn, then the minister of the Fourth Street Methodist Church in downtown St. Louis.

Interestingly, Ulysses’ parents did not attend. The exact reason remains uncertain, but there is speculation that it had to do with the church’s affiliation with the pro-slavery southern Methodist denomination, and with the fact that the Dent family themselves were pro-slavery; Julia’s father owned upwards of thirty enslaved African Americans. These connections and support of slavery may well have been why the Grants stayed away. In any case, the wedding was a success, and it marked the beginning of a marriage that would last nearly forty years.

A few years ago, a former park guide who now volunteers at the site recreated the dress Julia wore on her wedding day. The volunteer, Chris Smearinger, made it as a gift to the park, and it was put on display in 2018 to mark the 170th anniversary of the wedding. The dress still comes out for display each August to commemorate the anniversary. The Dent city home itself did not survive.

During World War II it was torn down, despite an effort in the late 1910s and into the 1920s and 1930s by local citizens who tried to save the house and turn it into a museum dedicated to the Grant and Dent families. The association never had the funds, and the city of St. Louis, looking to revitalize downtown, demolished the building in 1943. The corner of Fourth and Cerre is now a parking lot where people park when they go to see the St.

Louis Cardinals play at Busch Stadium. Even after the Mexican-American War, Ulysses and Julia experienced frequent separations. For roughly six years, from 1848 to 1859, Grant moved often with the Fourth U. S.

Infantry to military posts throughout the country. He was stationed at Sackets Harbor in New York, at Fort Wayne in Detroit, Michigan, at Fort Vancouver on the border of Oregon and Washington, and at Fort Humboldt in Eureka, northern California. During their time in New York and Michigan, the couple was able to stay together, and their first son, Frederick Grant, was born in 1850 in St. Louis during a brief stay there while Grant was stationed at Fort Wayne.

Julia was pregnant with their second child, Ulysses Grant Jr. , when Ulysses was ordered to Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory. Julia insisted she wanted to go with him. But the trip was extremely dangerous.

The Grants were in Sackets Harbor, New York, and the plan was to travel down the Atlantic Ocean, cross the Isthmus of Panama, come out the other side into the Pacific, and land in San Francisco before the troops made their way to Fort Vancouver. Ulysses insisted that Julia not make the journey, especially since she was pregnant. That ended up being the right decision. A terrible cholera outbreak swept through the ships carrying the Fourth Infantry to San Francisco, and many of the children under eighteen died on the voyage.

Julia returned to White Haven to stay with her parents as she prepared to give birth to her second son. From 1852 to 1854, the couple endured another horrible, troubling, and difficult separation. It is safe to say that Ulysses suffered bouts of depression during this time. He loved Fort Vancouver and actually looked into moving his family there at one point, but he did not have the funds.

When he was later stationed at Fort Humboldt in northern California, he found himself extremely miserable with army life, with little to do in a remote, isolated, rainy, and damp post, and he was miserable being away from his family. In 1852, while at Fort Vancouver, he wrote to Julia that he had nearly filled the sheet without saying one word about their dear little ones, about whom he thought so much. If he could see Fred and hear him talk and see little Ulysses, he said, he could then be contented for a month, provided their mother was with them. He asked her to teach them to be good boys and to think of their pa, and he sent kisses for Fred and Ulysses, asking them to kiss their mom for him too.

In February of 1854, writing from Fort Humboldt, he told her she did not know how forsaken he felt there. The place was good enough, but he had interests at others which he could not help thinking about day and night. He felt again as if he had been separated from her and Fred long enough, and as for the younger boy, Ulysses Jr. , he had never seen him; the child must by then be talking as Fred did when he last saw him.

He asked Julia to tell him a great deal about both boys, and about Fred’s pranks with his grandpa. Because Ulysses Jr. had been born in 1852 while his father was on the Pacific coast, Ulysses Grant did not see his second son for the first two years of the boy’s life. Finally, in 1854, Grant resigned his commission.

He decided the time had come for a change, and that he was tired of having to choose between his family and his job. He came back to White Haven and tried his hand at farming. For five years, from 1854 to 1859, he raised fruit and vegetable crops at White Haven, including corn, wheat, potatoes, and apples. During this period the family grew: Nellie Grant, the only daughter, was born in 1855, and Jesse Grant, the youngest son, in 1858.

It was a period of great struggle for the Grants. A multitude of factors worked against Ulysses’ success as a farmer. The economy was weak in the late 1850s, a recession that lowered the value of his crops. The St.

Louis weather was not always cooperative, and some of the summers brought unusually cold temperatures. Grant also fought malaria, a disease he had most likely contracted growing up in Ohio and that he would struggle with for most of his life; there were times he was stuck in bed, too sick to get out and work the farm. But despite all that, this was also a period of great happiness for the Grant family. Even though Ulysses struggled on the farm, he got to spend quality time with his four children.

He got to spend quality time with his wife, reading the newspaper together with Julia, having quality meals together as a family. It was not all doom and gloom; it was a time of togetherness. Another project during those years at White Haven was building the famous Hardscrabble log cabin. The idea behind it was independence.

Moving to White Haven was the very first time the entire Grant family was living together under one roof, but Grant was also moving in with his in-laws, and he was anxious to find independence for himself and his family. He began constructing the log cabin in 1855, about a mile and a half north of the White Haven estate, on property that is now part of St. Paul’s churchyard off Rock Hill Road in south St. Louis County.

It took about a year to a year and a half to build. Grant did most of the work himself, though some neighbors and enslaved laborers from White Haven and other nearby properties came to assist with raising the house. Hardscrabble, however, was a short-lived home. The Grants lived there for only about three months, from October 1856 through the end of the year.

Julia, as much as she loved her husband, hated the cabin. She jokingly referred to the home as Hardscrabble because she simply could not stand it, and she never found a way to make it feel like home the way White Haven did. Julia’s mother, Ellen, passed away in January of 1857, which also prompted the family to move back to the White Haven estate. The Hardscrabble cabin still stands today, across the street from the park at Grant’s Farm, the animal park managed by Anheuser-Busch, and it remains a living symbol of the Grant family’s life in St.

Louis in the 1850s, right before the Civil War. During the Civil War, Ulysses was again separated from his wife and children for long stretches as he fought on the battlefield, but numerous stories highlight the partnership at the heart of the marriage. Julia traveled upwards of ten thousand miles during the war, frequently going back and forth between her children and visiting her husband on the battlefield. There were many times she stayed at his headquarters, including during the Vicksburg campaign in Mississippi and later during the Overland Campaign of 1864 and 1865, when Grant was fighting Robert E.

Lee in Virginia. She stayed with him at City Point, Virginia, south of Richmond, as the siege of Petersburg ground on. Julia and Ulysses worked together to put their children through school. The four children did attend school during the war.

Jesse, the youngest, spent the least time in the classroom and actually spent quite a bit of time traveling with his mother, but the other three attended school in various places, including Galena, Illinois, and Covington, Kentucky, where Ulysses’ parents lived. Through the summer of 1863, the grandchildren attended school in St. Louis as well. The couple also worked together to secure ownership of the Hardscrabble log cabin.

Before leaving St. Louis, Ulysses had sold the cabin to a farmer named Joseph White. White defaulted on his payments during the war, and Ulysses directed Julia to come to St. Louis and repurchase the house once the payments had ended.

Julia took ownership of Hardscrabble in her own name during the Civil War, keeping that St. Louis connection alive. Some interesting letters between the couple concern the curriculum their children studied. General Grant was vocal about what he wanted them to learn, insisting to Julia that especially the boys, Fred and Ulysses Jr.

, learn foreign languages. He wanted them to study German and classic literature. He was equally vocal, however, about what he did not want: music. Grant hated music, famously stating that he only knew two songs, one of which was Yankee Doodle and the other of which wasn’t.

The negotiations between Ulysses and Julia over their children’s schooling show how they worked together as parents even from a distance. In 1868, Ulysses Grant was elected the nation’s eighteenth president, taking office in 1869. By all accounts, the Grants were wonderful stewards of the White House, making renovations that had been neglected during the Civil War. Julia was deeply interested in the politics of Reconstruction and would often sit with her husband to discuss pressing political issues, talking about the cabinet members of his administration and the work they were doing.

In her memoirs, she stated that she tried her best to welcome all people to the White House. This was notable given that she had grown up in a strongly pro-slavery household; four enslaved laborers, Dan, Eliza, John, and Julius, who was also called Julia, had attended to her needs in the years before the war, though she did not legally own them. Julia wrote that when she became First Lady, she tried her best to open doors to all people regardless of race. She also introduced a custom of having cabinet members and their wives, along with the wives of senators, help welcome guests to White House receptions.

She did not want to do all the work herself, and she wanted to build good relationships across the government. Julia was beloved by the American people, a popular and famous First Lady. She did run into one bit of trouble when she decided to put a fence around the White House. In those days, the White House was considered the people’s house, and visitors could walk through the front doors and sometimes even shake the president’s hand.

But Ulysses Grant had been the youngest elected president at the time, only forty-six when he took office, and the children were still fairly young, particularly Nellie and Jesse, who were in their early teenage years. Julia wanted to shield the children from media attention and give them a chance at a somewhat normal upbringing, with space to go outside and play with toys. So she ordered a fence installed around the White House. Some newspapers were critical, but she defended her decision, arguing that the family was still raising children there.

By all accounts, though, the Grants enjoyed their time in the White House. The one person most excited to leave was President Grant himself, who remarked in 1877 that he was as excited as a schoolboy to leave the White House after eight years of bitterly divisive politics during the Reconstruction era. After leaving the White House, Grant decided it was time for a break, an extended vacation after his service as general and president. From 1877 until late 1879, Ulysses and Julia went on a two-and-a-half-year world tour.

They visited nations all around the world, and a journalist named John Russell Young, who accompanied them, published a book called Around the World with General Grant. Julia devoted about two-thirds of her personal memoirs to the trip, writing about what she saw and did during the world tour; it was obviously a significant highlight of her life. One of the favorite stories from the trip took place in Switzerland, where the Grants were riding in a horse-drawn buggy up a mountain for a view of the Swiss Alps. Julia decided to play a prank on her husband.

She got out of the buggy and went and hid in the mountains. General Grant waited a minute, then realized his wife was gone and became genuinely worried. He ordered the driver to move the buggy, saying they needed to find Julia, she was missing. At the last second, Julia reappeared, scaring her husband and having a great laugh about it.

According to Julia, her husband was not too happy about the prank. But the moment shows Julia’s playfulness and the playfulness of the relationship. For Ulysses, a quiet and reserved person, Julia was perhaps one of the only people, if not the only person, with whom he could let his guard down and share what was on his mind and in his heart. After the world tour, the Grants relocated to New York City, where they lived for the remainder of Ulysses’ life.

In 1884, he ran into serious trouble when he got involved with a Wall Street investment banking firm. His partner in the firm, Ferdinand Ward, was essentially a nineteenth-century version of Bernie Madoff, cooking the books the whole time. The Grant family lost their entire fortune in the swindle. General Grant was also a very heavy smoker, known to smoke up to twenty cigars a day, and he was diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer.

For the last six weeks of his life, the family relocated to a cottage in upstate New York, in an area called Mount McGregor. It was a painful time, as Julia did whatever she could to care for her husband, knowing he did not have much time to live. A photograph from shortly before his death shows much of the family gathered together: three of the four grandchildren seated to the far left, Ulysses Grant Jr. standing, Fred Grant, the oldest son, standing behind his father, Jesse Grant in the corner to the right, and the sons with their wives.

Down at the very front sits Ulysses S. Grant III, who would later attend West Point and serve as a general in both World War I and World War II. Grant died on July 23, 1885. After his death, questions arose about his final resting place.

He had never stated a preference as to where he wanted to be buried, though he had suggested possibly West Point. At that time, however, the wives of soldiers were not allowed to be buried next to their husbands. There had also been some loose talk of the Grants being buried in St. Louis; during his presidency, the Grants had actually put a down payment on a plot of land in Bellefontaine Cemetery in north St.

Louis, but for reasons unknown the plan fell through. In the end, New York City emerged as the final resting place. The city offered a plot of land in Riverside Park in the northern part of Manhattan, and Julia, who planned to stay in New York and wanted to be close to her husband, was in favor. A temporary tomb was erected at Riverside Park, and for twelve years, from 1885 until 1897, a major fundraising effort collected money from citizens of the United States and other parts of the world to build a mausoleum.

On the anniversary of Ulysses S. Grant’s birth, April 27, 1897, there was a lavish dedication ceremony, and his remains were moved into the new tomb. Today the mausoleum, the largest in the United States, is managed by the National Park Service. The only wish Ulysses had expressed before his death was that Julia be by his side, and when Julia Grant died in 1902, five years after the dedication ceremony, she was taken to the same tomb.

Ulysses and Julia Grant, married for thirty-seven years, rested together at General Grant National Memorial, known in shorthand as Grant’s Tomb, in New York City, side by side as they had been in life.