Who's Buried In Grant's Tomb? Part 7

To reach the Clinton Center from north of Little Rock: From I-40, use the I-30 exit and get off Exit 141A Cantrell/Clinton Avenue (the first exit after crossing the Arkansas River). Follow the sign to 2nd Street/Ferry Road. Turn left on Ferry Road and then right on President Clinton Avenue.

To reach the Clinton Center from south of Little Rock: From I-30, take exit 140 (Ninth Street/Sixth Street) and continue on the service road until you reach Third Street. Turn right on Third Street, take the second left onto Dean k.u.mpuris Street, then turn right on President Clinton Avenue.

For additional information William J. Clinton Presidential Center 1200 President Clinton Ave.

Little Rock, AR 72201 Phone: (501) 374-4242 www.clintonpresidentialcenter.com

George W. Bush Forty-third President - 2001-2009 Born: July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut On January 20, 2001, George W. Bush took office after a long, contested election. On election night, it became clear that the vote in Florida was too close to call, leaving Florida's crucial 25 electoral votes in question and the race between Mr. Bush and Democratic opponent Al Gore unresolved. After a legal battle between the Bush and Gore camps over hand recounts in Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Florida recounts unconst.i.tutional in a 5-4 decision, ending Gore's bid for the presidency about one month after election night.

Among those watching George W. Bush take the oath of office was his father, former president George H. W. Bush. Not since John and John Quincy Adams had a father and son both served as president. Politics runs in the Bush family: Prescott Bush, George W.'s grandfather, was a U.S. senator from Connecticut and his brother Jeb was elected governor of Florida.

After earning an MBA from Harvard in 1975, George W. Bush had an early, unsuccessful flirtation with politics when he ran for Congress in 1978; he then concentrated on the oil business from his base in Midland, Texas. He sold the business and left Midland to help his father, the sitting vice president, win the 1988 presidential election. George W. then returned to Texas and served as managing general partner of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise from 1989 until 1994.

In 1994, he was elected governor of Texas; four years later, he became the first Texas governor to be elected to two consecutive four-year terms, winning 68 percent of the vote.

The historic 2000 presidential election was soon eclipsed by another history-making event when, on September 11, 2001, nineteen Muslim extremists commandeered four U.S. airliners; three were flown into landmark buildings, and the fourth crashed, killing thousands of civilians. Just months after a presidential campaign that had focused on domestic issues, President Bush was to declare a long-term war against international terrorism.

In February of 2008, it was officially announced that Laura Bush's alma mater, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, would be the home of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. Groundbreaking is planned for late 2010 with an antic.i.p.ated completion date in 2013. In November of 2009, Mr. Bush introduced the new George W. Bush Inst.i.tute, also located at Southern Methodist University, as a forum for study and advocacy in four main areas: education, global health, human freedom, and economic growth. Since retirement, the Bushes have lived nearby in University Park as well as on their ranch in Crawford, Texas. There have been no plans announced publicly for their burial locations.

For additional information Visit www.georgebushlibrary.com for information about the George W. Bush Presidential Center, including the library, museum, and the George W. Bush Policy Inst.i.tute. for information about the George W. Bush Presidential Center, including the library, museum, and the George W. Bush Policy Inst.i.tute.

Barack Obama Forty-fourth President - 2009-Present Born: August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii Barack Obama made history as the United States' first African-American president when he was elected on November 4, 2008, defeating Republican Arizona Senator John McCain. The match-up was widely seen as generational, with the forty-six-year-old Obama facing the seventy-one-year-old McCain, who, if elected, would have been the oldest U.S. president. In an atmosphere of economic crisis and war, there was the highest voter turnout in forty years, with Senator Obama winning 68 percent of the electoral votes. Mr. Obama, the one-term, junior Democratic Senator from Illinois, ran under a slogan of "change" and used multimedia campaigning, particularly aimed at younger voters, to an extent that had not been possible in the past.

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father, Barack Obama, Sr., and an American mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, though his parents separated when he was two and later divorced. His mother remarried, and in 1967, the family moved to Indonesia with his stepfather. The young Obama, known then as Barry, remained there until at age ten he returned to Hawaii, where he lived with his maternal grandparents. He finished his education through high school at Punahou School, a private college preparatory school. He attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years and then transferred to Columbia University in New York, where he was awarded a degree in political science in 1983.

In 1985, he moved to Chicago, where he was a community organizer on the city's south side, working to improve living conditions for the city's poor. He attended Harvard Law School and was named the president of the Harvard Law Review Harvard Law Review. During this time, he met his future wife, Mich.e.l.le, when he served as a summer a.s.sociate at the law firm where she worked. They married in 1992 and now have two daughters: Sasha and Malia.

After law school, Mr. Obama returned to Chicago to teach const.i.tutional law at the University of Chicago and work as a civil rights lawyer. It was during this time he ran for the Illinois state senate, where he served for eight years representing Chicago's south side. Barack Obama ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000; four years later, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. During that campaign Barack Obama was introduced to the nation when he was selected to deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Barack Obama auth.o.r.ed two bestselling books, Dreams from My Father Dreams from My Father (1995) and (1995) and The Audacity of Hope The Audacity of Hope (2006). In February 2007, he launched his presidential bid in a crowded democratic field that included former first lady, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. (2006). In February 2007, he launched his presidential bid in a crowded democratic field that included former first lady, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

President Obama's private home in the Kenwood section of Chicago, Illinois. (Jeff Haynes/Polaris) (Jeff Haynes/Polaris) As it is still early in President Obama's term, no public plans have been revealed for his presidential library. He does have a variety of locations to choose from, though, that have played a part in his past. With his close connections to Chicago, some are predicting that he will choose the University of Chicago, where he taught.

Afterword.

by Presidential Historian Douglas Brinkley We must have many Lincoln-hearted men.

A city is not builded in a day.

And they must do their work, and come and go, While countless generations pa.s.s away.

-Vachel Lindsay, "Abraham Lincoln Walks At Midnight" (1914)

Whenever I took a group of college students on one of my "Majic Bus" academic treks across America in the 1990s, our primary goal was to study history where it happened and literature where it was created. We always made a pilgrimage to Abraham Lincoln's Tomb in Springfield, Illinois. Much like Lincoln himself, there is something mournful in Springfield's wholesome bond with our greatest president, as if generations of its denizens have remained in a state of perpetual sorrow over his shocking a.s.sa.s.sination just six days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army to Union Commander Ulysses S. Grant.

It was as if the people of Springfield had been attending a 138-year wake. The city's downtown was a commercial monument to the martyr of the Civil War, whose likeness is everywhere: on savings and loan signs and fast food billboards, on restaurant menus and flea-market posters, on taxicab doors and bowling-alley walls. A riffle through the Springfield Yellow Pages Yellow Pages turned up the Lincolnland Baptist Church and Lincoln Rent-a-Car, Lincoln Land Plumbing and Lincoln Pest Control, a Lincoln Chiropractic Clinic, and the Lincoln Dialysis Center. Yet despite this robust commerce, Springfield's Lincoln was not the vigorous young rail-splitter of New Salem or the precocious country lawyer with the brooding eyes, big hands, and a book under each arm, but the dead president lain out in his Sunday best in a velvet-lined open coffin, arms folded across his chest, his face powdered, a small patch of dried blood in his hair-not the man, just the carca.s.s he came in. turned up the Lincolnland Baptist Church and Lincoln Rent-a-Car, Lincoln Land Plumbing and Lincoln Pest Control, a Lincoln Chiropractic Clinic, and the Lincoln Dialysis Center. Yet despite this robust commerce, Springfield's Lincoln was not the vigorous young rail-splitter of New Salem or the precocious country lawyer with the brooding eyes, big hands, and a book under each arm, but the dead president lain out in his Sunday best in a velvet-lined open coffin, arms folded across his chest, his face powdered, a small patch of dried blood in his hair-not the man, just the carca.s.s he came in.

With the possible exception of John F. Kennedy's death nearly a century later, Lincoln's death on April 15, 1865, had a greater impact than any other in American history. Shot in his seat at Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.'s Ford Theatre while watching the hit play Our American Cousin, Our American Cousin, Lincoln died the day after actor John Wilkes Booth fired a lead ball into his head. The book of Genesis says it took the Israelites forty days to embalm the body of Jacob; Americans needed just one day to do the same for Lincoln's from which the brain and scalp were removed beforehand. The president's corpse was then dressed in a black suit and placed in a lead-lined mahogany casket covered in black broadcloth and studded with silver handles. Lilies, roses, and magnolia blossoms adorned the catafalque around Lincoln's body as it lay in state in the East Room of the White House. Those who viewed the dead president reported that his expression was one of blissful repose. Lincoln died the day after actor John Wilkes Booth fired a lead ball into his head. The book of Genesis says it took the Israelites forty days to embalm the body of Jacob; Americans needed just one day to do the same for Lincoln's from which the brain and scalp were removed beforehand. The president's corpse was then dressed in a black suit and placed in a lead-lined mahogany casket covered in black broadcloth and studded with silver handles. Lilies, roses, and magnolia blossoms adorned the catafalque around Lincoln's body as it lay in state in the East Room of the White House. Those who viewed the dead president reported that his expression was one of blissful repose.

What has always fascinated me most about the death of Abraham Lincoln is the 1,700-mile journey his coffin made from Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, a grim train procession detailed in Ralph Newman's 1965 article "In This Sad World of Ours, Sorrow Comes to Us All: A Timetable for the Lincoln Funeral Train," published in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. Today it's hard to imagine a slain president's body being taken on a multi-city tour, paraded up Baltimore's Eutaw Street for a public viewing at the Exchange Building, then to another appearance before another mob at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and onto the waiting crowds in Harrisburg, Lancaster, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Chicago until the casket finally arrived at the State Capitol in Springfield, where 75,000 people would pa.s.s by the bier. Lincoln's body was the hottest ticket in America. Hairs from his head became prized collectibles; his a.s.sistant John Hay, for example, had a special ring made with a few dark strands. The level of this obsession with Lincoln's death lives on to this day in Springfield. Today it's hard to imagine a slain president's body being taken on a multi-city tour, paraded up Baltimore's Eutaw Street for a public viewing at the Exchange Building, then to another appearance before another mob at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and onto the waiting crowds in Harrisburg, Lancaster, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Chicago until the casket finally arrived at the State Capitol in Springfield, where 75,000 people would pa.s.s by the bier. Lincoln's body was the hottest ticket in America. Hairs from his head became prized collectibles; his a.s.sistant John Hay, for example, had a special ring made with a few dark strands. The level of this obsession with Lincoln's death lives on to this day in Springfield.

In 1842, it was in Springfield that Lincoln and his new bride, Mary Todd, bought the only house they would ever own and the place where three of their four sons were born. What's more, during his 1860 presidential campaign, Lincoln turned his Springfield home into his operating center for hosting strategy sessions, visiting delegations, and parades. Over the years since, Illinois politicians have told voters that legislators meeting at the capitol in Springfield get a strange feeling, a sense of Lincoln's spirit brooding above, to lead them to create ever better services for the people of his home state. I used to gather my Majic Bus students on the steps of the city capitol and give my lecture on Lincoln's Springfield years next to a bronze statue of the president who saved the Union. After all, the city does have a legitimate claim to Lincoln. But no matter how many colorful anecdotes I told, no matter how many of the town's historic markers we visited to study those sites' various events, it was always the trek to Lincoln's tomb that was the historical payoff and afterwards felt like an essential rite of pa.s.sage for any American.

To prepare for the visit to Lincoln's tomb, I took my students first to 603 South Fifth Street, the house once owned by Lincoln's sister-in-law, which later became the lifelong home of Vachel Lindsay, whom critic Louis Untermeyer dubbed the greatest lyric poet since Edgar Allen Poe. Lindsay was born in the house in 1879 and committed suicide there in 1931, in between writing hundreds of memorable poems, mostly about the Midwest of the 1910s and '20s. Author Sinclair Lewis called him, "One of our few great poets, a power and a glory in the land."

It was while sitting on the porch of Lindsay's house that I read my students his haunting 1914 poem "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight," verses that evoke the heavy heart of a man mourning in the rain over his son's grave and of a president alone at midnight in the White House after the Battle of Bull Run, begging G.o.d to help him end the Civil War. In Lindsay's poem Lincoln's ghost yet wanders the streets of Springfield, his spirit still a guiding force for our nation: It is portentous, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, Near the old court-house pacing up and down,

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards He lingers where his children used to play, Or through the market, on the well-worn stones He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away....

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, That all his hours of travail here for men Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace That he may sleep upon this hill again?

From Lindsay's house, I traditionally instructed the Majic Bus driver to follow the same route as the procession of Lincoln's body in 1865, from the State Capitol to Oak Ridge Cemetery on the outskirts of town, where Lindsay is also buried. It was at Lincoln's gravesite that I told the students about his interment at which thousands of mourners heard prayers, sang hymns, and listened in tears as his inspirational second inaugural speech was read to them. The nation's grief was overwhelming, but only in Illinois was it said that the brown thrasher was not heard singing for an entire year after Lincoln was laid in his tomb.

But as Tennessee Williams put it in A Streetcar Named Desire: A Streetcar Named Desire: "Funerals are pretty compared with death." Over the years this has proved true via the various attempts that have been made to steal Lincoln's remains. In 1876 thieves with the idea of demanding $200,000 in ransom broke into Lincoln's tomb, forced open the sarcophagus, and pulled Lincoln's coffin partway out, but the would-be graverobbers were apprehended and each sentenced to a year in prison. Eventually, to prevent such desecration, Lincoln's body was reburied thirteen feet deep and surrounded by more than six feet of solid concrete. "Funerals are pretty compared with death." Over the years this has proved true via the various attempts that have been made to steal Lincoln's remains. In 1876 thieves with the idea of demanding $200,000 in ransom broke into Lincoln's tomb, forced open the sarcophagus, and pulled Lincoln's coffin partway out, but the would-be graverobbers were apprehended and each sentenced to a year in prison. Eventually, to prevent such desecration, Lincoln's body was reburied thirteen feet deep and surrounded by more than six feet of solid concrete.

A 117-foot obelisk towers over the granite tomb that houses the remains of Abraham Lincoln, his wife Mary Todd, and their sons-Edward, William, and Thomas; Robert, the eldest, is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The family tomb's entrance is dominated by a bust of Lincoln as a beardless prairie lawyer designed by sculptor Larkin Mead and executed in bronze by Gutzon Borglum of Mount Rushmore fame. It is said that rubbing the bust's nose brings good luck, but after millions of visitors there's not much nose left. Inside the tomb, the walls are lined with pa.s.sages from Lincoln speeches engraved in bronze, complementing a life-size statue of the president labeled Great Emanc.i.p.ator Great Emanc.i.p.ator. A circular hallway leads to the marble burial chamber, where Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's famous reaction to Lincoln's death is literally etched in stone: "Now he belongs to the ages."

And so he does. The quiet of the horrific human toll of the Civil War -more than a half million Americans dead in their uniforms and many millions more suffering over their loss-has a heartbreaking immediacy. Pausing in the gloom where our sixteenth president lies almost mutes his ringing Gettysburg Address and the moral soaring of the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation beneath the echo of a line by poet Carl Sandburg: "When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the a.s.sa.s.sin...in the dust, in the cool tombs." To most Americans, Lincoln's tomb is a melancholy shrine indeed-for as Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote in Little Foxes Little Foxes the year Lincoln died, "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone." the year Lincoln died, "The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."

Back then it was only after seeing the a.s.sa.s.sinated president's lanky body lying in a coffin that the American public realized in awe how unflappable he had stayed throughout those four years of civil terror. In his lifetime Lincoln had been belittled by many, even his friends mistaking his serenity for weakness. In death, however, his greatness became undeniable: seeing his remains returned in pomp to the common prairie soil, his citizens sobbed with the understanding that Lincoln had sacrificed himself for them and the nation. Under his stewards.h.i.+p all questions of division were settled: America was truly united and four million slaves freed. The collective recognition of the magnitude of these feats transformed Lincoln in retrospect into an American martyr for all time, a common man whose humility and forthrightness indeed forged a new nation. Sandburg once asked a railroad flagman to explain in just a few words why Lincoln was so beloved. Without hesitation the man replied: "He was humanity."

After we filed out of the cool vault, I usually asked my students to sit in front of the monument and jot their sentiments and reflections down in notebooks. There was something redemptive about visiting Lincoln's tomb in a group, the way there is in wors.h.i.+pping together with one's fellow man in church where all are temporarily free of earthly burdens. One former student, Jared Goldman, summed up the feeling nicely in his journal: "All around me is free air, free sight. Abraham Lincoln sought the freedom of all people. It is fitting for this site to give such a sense of freedom that I want to sing 'America the Beautiful. O beautiful for s.p.a.cious skies.' I am here. This is America and more than just a place for the dead to lie. It is peace and freedom."

Strolling around the towering oaks through the gently rolling landscape of Oak Ridge Cemetery prompts a reconciliation with the past, a sense that the blood at Antietam and s.h.i.+loh and Gettysburg was not spilled in vain, that perhaps there is something to the myth that Lincoln was divinely sent to heal our nation by leading it undaunted through the divisive crisis over slavery that nearly tore it asunder.

But this sentiment fades in wandering past the headstones of the ordinary Americans who are also buried within the Oak Ridge Cemetery's lonely manicured grounds. There's something disturbing in the reflection that one will never know what Betty Potter or Jackson Lemmings did with their lives, whether they spent childhood in the Illinois backwoods or raised families in Chicago when it was just a hamlet. There may be more than 30,000 volumes on the Civil War in the Library of Congress alone, but nearly all the folks buried in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln's tomb will remain ever invisible to history. Yet they too played roles in our great national drama, and their ghosts also surely linger in Springfield at midnight alongside those of Lincoln and Lindsay.

In the end, however, cemeteries are for the living. Nearly all the dead presidents in Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? are interred in imposing mausoleums, some with eternal flames kept lit in their honor. This is a fine tradition-provided it doesn't go too far. American presidents are not meant to be remembered with the grandeur accorded Egyptian pharaohs and French kings-our leaders rise not from royal pedigrees or dictatorial impulses but through hard work, patriotic conviction, and luck. Oak Ridge Cemetery is filled with Lindsay's "Lincoln-hearted," ordinary men and women with such an extraordinary belief in our great democratic experiment that it inspired them to build the United States into the strongest and freest nation in history. Thus it is that in some uniquely American way every grave at Oak Ridge seems as important as Lincoln's in a country where citizens.h.i.+p is the highest honor of all. are interred in imposing mausoleums, some with eternal flames kept lit in their honor. This is a fine tradition-provided it doesn't go too far. American presidents are not meant to be remembered with the grandeur accorded Egyptian pharaohs and French kings-our leaders rise not from royal pedigrees or dictatorial impulses but through hard work, patriotic conviction, and luck. Oak Ridge Cemetery is filled with Lindsay's "Lincoln-hearted," ordinary men and women with such an extraordinary belief in our great democratic experiment that it inspired them to build the United States into the strongest and freest nation in history. Thus it is that in some uniquely American way every grave at Oak Ridge seems as important as Lincoln's in a country where citizens.h.i.+p is the highest honor of all.

Some years ago, during a sojourn at Princeton University, I decided to stroll around the local cemetery to visit the grave of Grover Cleveland, the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the United States-the only chief executive to serve non-consecutive terms and the only Democrat elected to the White House between James Buchanan in 1856 and Woodrow Wilson in 1912. I had always felt a certain fondness toward Cleveland, whose political career was characterized by commonsense conservatism and honesty in governance. It surprised me, therefore, that as I searched Princeton Cemetery for Cleveland's grave I encountered not a single visitor there to pay their respects to this once towering political force. When I found the gravesite, I was further struck that there were no statues, no celebratory wreaths, no memorial bouquets of flowers-just a modest tombstone marking the resting place of the former president, his wife Frances, and their daughter Ruth. Textbook images of Grover Cleveland when he had served as the reformist mayor of Buffalo, New York, of when he took on the corruption of Tammany Hall, of how he handled the Pullman strike and the financial panic of 1893, flooded my brain in vain denial of the hard fact that this gigantic figure was no more than a pile of bones under the cold November ground of central New Jersey and had been for eighty years. Later, I came across something theologian Jonathan Edwards-who is also buried in Princeton Cemetery-wrote back in 1746 in his book Procrastination, Procrastination, "The bodies of those that made such a noise and tumult when alive, when dead, lie as quietly among the graves of their neighbors as any others." "The bodies of those that made such a noise and tumult when alive, when dead, lie as quietly among the graves of their neighbors as any others."

Another long-ago quote rang true during my visit to Princeton Cemetery, where I also sought out the grave of one of the great anti-heroes in American history: onetime Vice President Aaron Burr, who is best remembered for killing former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 pistol duel. But as I stood at his gravesite instead of feeling animosity toward Burr, I was engulfed by an unexpected wave of compa.s.sion. I understood what Was.h.i.+ngton Irving had meant in 1820 when he wrote in The Sketch Book The Sketch Book: "Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him."

Cemeteries are some of the least appreciated, even most mocked, public s.p.a.ces in America. Thus, when Brian Lamb first told me of his plan to write a book on presidential gravesites, I knew he would be in for a round of ridicule. After all, in 1948 supremely snide British writer Evelyn Waugh devoted an entire novel, The Loved One The Loved One, to lampooning California's famous Forest Lawn, barely disguised as Whispering Glades Memorial Park.

Waugh's acetose satire of American cemeteries was published just a few years after his countryman Aldous Huxley's novel After Many a Summer Dies the Swan After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, which also made sport of the promise of immortality that cemeteries like Forest Lawn were selling. Waugh and Huxley derided the "memorial park" as a harmful illusion designed to mask the reality of death, thus denying its purpose in society. In his 1947 Life Life magazine article "Death in Hollywood," Waugh averred that death should remind "a highly civilized people that beauty [is] skin deep and pomp mortal." He would not have thought much, it seems, of President John F. Kennedy's eternal flame at Arlington National Cemetery. Rather, Waugh argued that at the Forest Lawns of America the body is not allowed to decay: instead, "it lives on, more chic in death than ever before, in its indestructible Cla.s.s A steel-and-concrete shelf; the soul goes straight from the Slumber Room to Paradise, where it enjoys an endless infancy." magazine article "Death in Hollywood," Waugh averred that death should remind "a highly civilized people that beauty [is] skin deep and pomp mortal." He would not have thought much, it seems, of President John F. Kennedy's eternal flame at Arlington National Cemetery. Rather, Waugh argued that at the Forest Lawns of America the body is not allowed to decay: instead, "it lives on, more chic in death than ever before, in its indestructible Cla.s.s A steel-and-concrete shelf; the soul goes straight from the Slumber Room to Paradise, where it enjoys an endless infancy."

One suspects that neither my Majic Bus visit to Lincoln's grave nor Brian Lamb's Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? are the sort of enterprises of which Waugh and Huxley would have approved, sniffing as they would at the study of presidents' deaths as an exercise in morbid triviality. But they were a couple of Anglocentric sn.o.bs feeding off California's golden riches even while mocking the American way of doing everything, including death. Had they ever deigned to visit Ohio, how they would have snickered at the imposing Harding Tomb in Marion or the gargantuan McKinley Mausoleum in Canton-such ridiculous and meaningless sites. But what those blinded by cynicism fail to understand is that the purpose of a visit to, say, James Madison's grave at Virginia's Montpelier Station is not the mawkish wors.h.i.+p of a founding father. No, a pilgrimage to a president's grave is instead a way to pay quiet tribute to all of our glorious past, to thank the militiamen who lost their lives at Bunker Hill, to honor the oratory of Patrick Henry, to salute the valor of the men who died at Iwo Jima and Midway and a hundred other flyspeck islands in the Pacific. All presidents-no matter how well they performed in office-are revered by most Americans simply because they represent our grandest political traditions. are the sort of enterprises of which Waugh and Huxley would have approved, sniffing as they would at the study of presidents' deaths as an exercise in morbid triviality. But they were a couple of Anglocentric sn.o.bs feeding off California's golden riches even while mocking the American way of doing everything, including death. Had they ever deigned to visit Ohio, how they would have snickered at the imposing Harding Tomb in Marion or the gargantuan McKinley Mausoleum in Canton-such ridiculous and meaningless sites. But what those blinded by cynicism fail to understand is that the purpose of a visit to, say, James Madison's grave at Virginia's Montpelier Station is not the mawkish wors.h.i.+p of a founding father. No, a pilgrimage to a president's grave is instead a way to pay quiet tribute to all of our glorious past, to thank the militiamen who lost their lives at Bunker Hill, to honor the oratory of Patrick Henry, to salute the valor of the men who died at Iwo Jima and Midway and a hundred other flyspeck islands in the Pacific. All presidents-no matter how well they performed in office-are revered by most Americans simply because they represent our grandest political traditions.

Ever since first president George Was.h.i.+ngton died on December 14, 1799, the United States has looked to its leaders' funerals as a means to unite the nation. Partisan bickering is put in check, flags are flown at half-staff, and solo trumpeters blow taps from the Jefferson Memorial to Mt. McKinley. The death of a president is a time of collective mourning and national pulse-taking, a yardstick moment to reflect how far we've come and how much remains to be done before America truly becomes Ma.s.sachusetts colonist John Winthrop's "city upon a hill."

As a quintessential American and a Hoosier who regularly strolls the grounds of Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, where twenty-third president Benjamin Harrison is buried, C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb understands how presidents' graves serve as guideposts to our past and why a moment of quiet reflection in such places nourishes the soul and fuels the historical imagination. It's a way to make a connection with the lives of the individuals who helped shape our nation.

Lamb's attraction to presidential burial sites does not arise from some odd fascination with entombment; he is not the least thanatophilic and has as healthy a fear of death as anyone. His interest is instead that of a serious student of American history who simply has come to learn that both the lives and deaths of presidents play a part in our national drama. After all, the deaths of Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln, FDR, and JFK surely rank among the most memorable days in American history.

Detailing these events makes an intriguing read as well as a useful reference work in the form of a guidebook that encourages the traveler to put historical cemeteries on their itineraries. More recent presidents including Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon are buried on the grounds of their respective presidential libraries, so their graves are just the capstone on an afternoon of learning. There is an added value to Arlington National Cemetery as well; in addition to John F. Kennedy's tomb with its eternal flame, visitors can also pause at the final resting places of such diverse patriots as Omar Bradley, Medgar Evers, Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Marshall, William Howard Taft, and Earl Warren. And when we ponder all those endless rows of white crosses marking how many of our forebears lost their lives fighting for our freedom, we can't help but be moved.

Enlightenment can be found at every presidential grave. It doesn't matter what the various polls say about a past president's rank by order of greatness, a consensus that usually puts Was.h.i.+ngton, Jefferson, Lincoln, and both Roosevelts at the top, with the likes of Hoover, Harding, and Nixon at the bottom.

What makes Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? so refres.h.i.+ng is its avoidance of this poll-driven approach, instead giving all our past presidents equal billing in death; the chapter on Franklin Pierce is thus nearly as long as the one on Franklin Roosevelt. Of course, this egalitarianism will come as no surprise to C-SPAN viewers familiar with the network's dispa.s.sionate, straight-down-the-middle style. In this book, refraining from favoritism allows C-SPAN to pay homage to the so refres.h.i.+ng is its avoidance of this poll-driven approach, instead giving all our past presidents equal billing in death; the chapter on Franklin Pierce is thus nearly as long as the one on Franklin Roosevelt. Of course, this egalitarianism will come as no surprise to C-SPAN viewers familiar with the network's dispa.s.sionate, straight-down-the-middle style. In this book, refraining from favoritism allows C-SPAN to pay homage to the inst.i.tution inst.i.tution of the presidency and not just to the extraordinary individuals who have staffed it. of the presidency and not just to the extraordinary individuals who have staffed it.

And the folks at C-SPAN are right: visiting any one of the presidents' gravesites provides just as perfect an opportunity to meditate on the Const.i.tution and the Bill of Rights, on slavery and emanc.i.p.ation, on agrarianism and industrialism-on any event, large or small, that ever contributed to the forging of our nation. For great thoughts are inspired by contemplating the lives of great men, and every American president has been great in having the supreme courage to take on the job. As Theodore Roosevelt declared in an often quoted speech at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910, "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood...."

After all, the White House is the zenith of American ambition, attained by only a rare few of those bold enough to seek it. By succeeding in the highest arena, our presidents have earned their places as what Ralph Waldo Emerson called "inextinguishable beings."

Shortly after the death of Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of Brooklyn, New York's Plymouth Church, echoed Emerson's distinction in a sermon on the newly filled tomb in Springfield. "Four years ago, O' Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man and from among the people," Beecher intoned. "We return him to you a mighty conqueror. Not thine any more, but the nation's; not ours but the world's. Give him place, O' ye prairies. In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism."

Due to 24/7 TV coverage of presidential funerals, the recent deaths of Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford have become coronations. Anybody who ever shook hands with Reagan or Ford became a prime interview candidate. For both men, long film tribute biographies were aired over and over again on the networks. Reagan and Ford were honored more in death than in life. The joke, "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?" just doesn't work anymore; the new parlor room game by the year 2000 was what major American politician wasn't wasn't at the presidential memorial service. In death, modern U.S. presidents are guaranteed to get an upward revision by the general public. They are our own version of royalty. And the presidential tombs are routinely visited by school groups and campers, curiosity seekers and scholars, tourists and wanderers. Onlookers pause, if only for a moment, to pay private homage at the graves of the bold, often flawed men who have led our nation. Somehow at these final presidential resting places the pageant of democracy flourishes. at the presidential memorial service. In death, modern U.S. presidents are guaranteed to get an upward revision by the general public. They are our own version of royalty. And the presidential tombs are routinely visited by school groups and campers, curiosity seekers and scholars, tourists and wanderers. Onlookers pause, if only for a moment, to pay private homage at the graves of the bold, often flawed men who have led our nation. Somehow at these final presidential resting places the pageant of democracy flourishes.

Remember me as you pa.s.s by As you are now, so once was I, As I am now so you must be Prepare for death and follow me.

-Traditional epitaph