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January 2011
For more than a decade after his death in 1885, Ulysses S. Grant’s body lay in a small brick tomb in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. When, in 1897, the general’s remains were moved to the big marble tomb they occupy today, the tomb was torn down, and one of the bricks went to an ex-slave named William R. Davis, who built for it the elaborate and engaging reliquary below.
We know next to nothing about Davis. “I tried to research him,” writes William F. Robinson of Guilford, Connecticut, who sent us these photographs, “but came up with a blank.” Davis was born in North Carolina and possibly served in the Union army—he is referred to as “Lieut. Davis” on the back of one of the pictures—and the ornate wooden shrine he built for the brick is something more than mere homage.
A war that never goes away
Before it people said “the United States are …” and afterward they said “the United States is . …” The American Revolution determined that the country wouldn’t be British; the Civil War determined what it would be, for better or worse, for all time to come. Its continuing hold over our imagination is confirmed in everything from movies to reenactors—that amazingly large body of people who dress up in scrupulously accurate blue and gray uniforms and squeeze off blank rounds in each other’s faces—to the recent success of James McPherson’s history of the contest, Battle Cry of Freedom .
With that in mind, and with the 125th anniversary of the conflict’s end close at hand, the editors asked McPherson to explore the reasons his book found so large an audience. Around his essay we have fashioned a special issue devoted entirely to the Civil War. Among the features:
Richard Ketchum’s admirable and able story “’Yesterday, December 7, 1941 …” in the November 1989 issue includes references to persons who say that they were listening to the New York Philharmonic broadcast at 2:30 P.M. (EST) when it was interrupted for the announcement about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
According to The New York Times of that day, the Philharmonic broadcast started at 3:00 P.M. (EST) on radio station WABC. I was listening to a concert from the Brooklyn Museum under Eugene Plotnikoff on New York City’s radio station WNYC from 1:30 that afternoon. While I was reading for my next day’s classroom assignments, that concert was interrupted at about 2:30 P.M. with the news of that “day of infamy.” At that program’s conclusion I was prepared to tune in on WABC at 3:00.
In your article about December 7, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt is quoted as saying in his dictation to Grace Tully, “a day which will live in infamy.” I was nineteen at the time and remember distinctly listening to Roosevelt’s speech over the living-room radio in our home. I remember Roosevelt saying, “a date which will live in infamy,” and in doing research earlier this month for a book I am writing on baseball in 1941 (the last season before the war), I noted the word date rather than day in newspaper reports of the speech. Did Roosevelt indeed dictate the word day and then accidentally or intentionally switch to date in his speech? Or are both my memory and the newspaper reports inaccurate?
I must dispute Paul Fussell’s assertions in his November 1989 interview (“The Real War”) that the Vietnam War would probably still be going on if Congress had declared war, that a declaration of war makes dissent treason, that a declaration of war guarantees public support, and that the Founding Fathers gave Congress the power to declare war to ensure public support for wars.
What wonderful memories John Mariani’s article “‘Everybody Likes Italian Food’” (December 1989) brought back! In 1932 I was a freshman at New York University’s Heights campus in the Bronx, New York. One Saturday a fraternity brother of Italian descent asked me if I would like to have some “ahpeetz.” I had never heard of pizza, but when he described it as a big tomato pie with buffalo-milk cheese, I agreed to try it.
Off we went to Mario’s at 2342 Arthur Avenue, south of Fordham Road. I remember the pizzaiolo kneading the dough, flipping and twirling it in the air. This was part of the process, not showmanship as it is today. I remember the paddle on which the pizza was put into the big brick-lined oven and the wonderful aroma of the plum tomatoes, cheese, and oregano when the finished pie was brought to the plain wooden table. This was the first of many, many visits to Mario’s over the next five years.
Easily reached from all the major nearby expressways, the Gilcrease Museum (1400 North 25 West Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74127/Tel: 918-582-3122) is open every day of the year but Christmas. The hours are 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. on weekdays and 1:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. on Sundays and holidays, with a free public tour daily at 2:00 P.M. The suggested museum admission is three dollars for adults, five dollars per family.
Anyone who has the temerity to set out in quest of a true understanding of George Washington undertakes a perilous adventure that requires climbing over hallucinatory mountains and penetrating ghost-ridden forests. When in old age, under attack by enemies who wished to discredit his policies, Washington wrote hopefully, “...by the records of my administration and not the voice of faction I hope to be acquitted or condemned hereafter.” The records voluminously remain, but his hopes have not been realized. Faction is, indeed, only one of many elements that create the cacophony that has down the years drowned out the true greatness of Washington.
Basic to the whole phantasmagoria are two roles that Washington has played in the American psyche: first as the father of our country, and second as human equivalent of the American flag.