page_title: Post-presidency of Ulysses S. Grant
section_title: Death and burial
hierarchical_section_title: Post-presidency of Ulysses S. Grant / Death and burial
caption_attribution_description: English: Grant's Tomb, Morningside Heights, New York City.
context_page_description: After eight years in the presidential office during Reconstruction, Ulysses S. Grant looked forward to retirement from public life. When his second term in office ended in 1877, Grant had gained weight, while he desired to travel the world and visit his daughter in Scotland. Grant began his post-presidential life with a two-year tour that took him and his wife and entourage around the world. On returning, Grant was welcomed home with an adoration unknown since the end of the Civil War, and he began to consider running for a third term as president in 1880. Following a hard-fought defeat at the Republican National Convention that year, Grant embarked on a financial career in partnership with Ferdinand Ward, but the venture failed and Grant was nearly bankrupted. Diagnosed with cancer in 1884, he began writing his memoirs as a way to tell his story and provide for his family after his death. The book, finished just before his death the following year, was a huge success and remains in print. Grant was interred in Grant's Tomb, a massive mausoleum in New York City.
context_section_description: Three days after finishing his memoirs, Grant died of throat cancer at the age of 63 in a cottage at the top of Mount McGregor in upstate New York. His last words were, "I hope that nobody will be distressed on my account."  Commanding General of the United States Army Philip Sheridan ordered a day-long tribute to Grant on all military posts, and a six-month mourning among West Point cadets.  President Grover Cleveland ordered a thirty-day nationwide period of mourning.
  Private services were held in Mount McGregor on August 4. After lying in state in the New York State Capitol at Albany, Grant's body was placed on a funeral train and traveled via West Point to New York City, where a quarter of a million people viewed in the two days prior to the funeral.  His funeral was held August 8, in New York, and was supervised by Military Division of the Atlantic head Winfield Scott Hancock.  It featured a procession of 60,000 men, many of them veterans from the Grand Army of the Republic or other veterans’ organizations.  
  Grant’s casket was placed on a catafalque pulled by two dozen horses between New York City Hall and Riverside Park.  His pallbearers included Generals Sherman, Sheridan, Buckner, and Johnston, as well as GAR head John A. Logan and admiral David Dixon Porter.  Attendance at the New York funeral purportedly topped 1.5 million.  In the days before and after the funeral, ceremonies were held in other major cities around the country.  Those who eulogized Grant in the press likened him to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, then the nation's two greatest heroes.  His body was interred in New York City's Riverside Park, first in a temporary tomb and later in General Grant National Memorial ("Grant's Tomb"), the largest mausoleum in North America.  His wife, Julia Grant, was also interred in Grant's Tomb following her death in 1902.  Grant is also honored by the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial at the base of Capitol Hill in Washington.
caption: General Grant National Memorial, known colloquially as "Grant's Tomb", is the largest mausoleum in North America, and one of the largest in the world.
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