Why Did Grant Choose Confederate Generals as Pallbearers?

The Final Chapter of Ulysses S. Grant On August 8, 1885, one and a half million people lined the streets of New York City. They had come to say goodbye to a general, a president, and the man many believed had saved the United States twice, once on the battlefield, and once at Appomattox. But what happened that day was more than a funeral. It was something the Civil War had never quite managed to produce on its own: a moment when North and South, Union and Confederate, Black and white, stood together as one people, carrying the same grief. Among the pallbearers walked Union Generals Sherman and Sheridan — and beside them, Confederate Generals Joseph Johnston and Simon Bolivar Buckner. The same men who had faced each other across battlefields now carried the same coffin through the streets of New York. No one had scripted the symbolism. They didn't need to. This is the final chapter of Ulysses S. Grant's story — and in many ways, the final chapter of the Civil War itself. From his quiet acceptance of the Republican nomination in 1868, to his near-total financial ruin, to the race against death to finish his memoirs so his wife Julia would not be left destitute, to the extraordinary scene on the Hudson River that August morning — this is the story of what Grant meant to America, and what America owed him in return. In this video: How Grant spent his final months dying of throat cancer and still finished his memoirs The deal with Mark Twain that saved Julia Grant from poverty Why former Confederate generals agreed to carry his coffin The four words inscribed on his tomb — and why they still matter How Grant's funeral became the largest public gathering in American history "I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy; but I feel it within me that it is to be so." — Ulysses S. Grant, 1885 #UlyssesSGrant #CivilWar #AmericanHistory #Appomattox #GrantMemorial #USHistory #HistoryDocumentary