Newcastle & Sunderland: where Ulysses S. Grant was loved as he needed to be loved
The Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian H.W. Brands called him “The Man Who Saved the Union” and more people turned out for his funeral in 1885 than did for Abraham Lincoln’s, 20 years earlier.
But by the end of his second presidential term in 1877, Ulysses S. Grant — the hero of the American Civil War and the man who had tried to reunite the post-bellum United States — was not exactly loved in his home country. Despite winning re-election in 1872 with the then-largest majority in American history — not to mention passing the Fifteenth Amendment (which guaranteed suffrage for African American men), fighting the Ku Klux Klan, and enforcing civil rights — his presidency was seen as a failure.
So in an attempt to improve his standing at home — and with one eye on another run at the White House in 1880 — Grant decided to embark on a world tour, in the hope that if Americans saw the admiration those abroad had for him, they might too learn to love him again.
Britain was one place that was already fond of him, largely for his hand in settling of the Alabama claims in 1871. After its ratification on both sides of the Atlantic, it paved the way for what Brands called “the most important and enduring alliance in modern world history.”
It was six years into this alliance that Grant docked in Liverpool on 28th May, 1877, aboard the Indiana. His arrival saw all the ships of the Mersey decorated with American flags, and he was greeted by the mayor, Sir Andrew Barclay Walker. From Liverpool he visited Manchester, Leicester, and London, before sailing to Belgium, and taking in some of Europe.
After a few weeks on the continent, Grant returned to Abbotsford — the former home of Sir Walter Scott — near Melrose in Scotland, before eventually heading back south, and to Newcastle upon Tyne.
It was here that “at last,” according to historian William S. McFeely, “Ulysses Grant was loved as he needed to be loved.”
His arrival in north east of England had been planned for weeks in advance.
A Newcastle City Council meeting on the 4th July, 1877, proposed extending an invitation to Grant to visit the city, and called him “a man who [is] pure in his own heart”. The motion was seconded by William Haswell Stephenson, who said he also hoped that “the freeman would see to it to be their privilege and duty to present General Grant with the freedom of the town.”
All agreed, apart from Alderman Nichol, who was worried about the financial burden for the council. After Alderman Gregson sarcastically said the Alabama Claims had left England “diddled thoroughly”, the resolution was carried unanimously.
It then fell to the press to drum up the necessary support. An appeal in the Newcastle Daily Chronicle on the 31st August asked the workingmen of the area to join in the demonstration honouring Grant. In it he was portrayed as having destroyed slavery, a struggle during which he was “sustained by the universal sympathy of the working classes of England”. The labouring classes were told “when the day comes, muster in large numbers, proceed to the Town Moor, Newcastle and express to the distinguished son of America our warmest congratulations and our earnest and sincere gratitude.”
The readers responded. On the 15th September the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle printed a poem by a Robert Elliott of Choppington, which started with the two verses below, and became ever more flowery from there on:
Give him welcome! Give him welcome!
For a worthy man is he
As ever stept on England’s shore
As ever crossed the sea
Ring, ring the bells right joyfully
And bring the fife and drum
To receive with martial magic
The hero who has come
But planning Grant’s reception was not the press’s only interest. Some columnists even went as far as to castigate those who had criticised Grant in the past, and insinuated that many of those who would prominently greet the former president in Newcastle were hypocrites. The Northern Echo wrote: “At Newcastle, this week, the man who crushed the Confederacy will be cheered and feted by the men who when the work was in doing were his bitterest opponents…When a good thing is in doing the coward souls stand aloof and hoot at the doer; but when the good thing is done, these abjects crowd around the victor and bespatter with their wretched flattery the man whom in the hour of his struggle with the powers of darkness they had done their puny best to overwhelm.”
It even took aim at those in the capital saying that Grant “was for months bombarded with contemptuous denunciations by the supercilious loungers in London Clubs.”
There were some members of the fourth estate who were less than excited by the prospect of the former President visiting Newcastle though. On the 21st September, The Newcastle Courant said that “Town Councils are vieing with each other in doing honour to the ex-President. Many silly things are being said in speeches and it must be news to the General to be told that he fought for the freedom of the slave in the civil war of a dozen years ago.”
The Spectator was more circumspect. In May of 1877 — when Grant was halfway across the Atlantic en route to Liverpool — it praised his conduct in the Civil War, but called him “a very third-rate statesman”. It lamented his decision to run for the presidency after such success as a General, but conceded that “such a man deserves respect, even though he has shown but middling powers in a sphere widely separated from that which shed so much lustre on his name.”
Despite this wide variety of press opinions, a 1969 Durham University Journal article about Grant’s time in the city said that “Newcastle’s enthusiasm for Grant was almost unqualified.”
Grant finally arrived in Newcastle on the 20th September, pulling into Central Station on a train that was running approximately 11 minutes late. He was greeted by thousands of cheering well-wishers and the Cathedral bells peeled in his honour. Mayor Thomas Robinson was there to officially welcome him to the city, alongside the celebrated creator of Jesmond Dene and Cragside, Sir William Armstrong. The streets were full of bunting, banners and American flags, plus a large number of flags from other nations, apparently pressed into service due to a lack of available U.S. ones.
Grant’s party drove to Mansion House, the mayor’s official residence, where he and his wife Julia were guests of honour at a special banquet. On their arrival they were greeted by what the Sunderland Daily Echo called “a numerous crowd cheering lustily”.
The next day, the former president went sightseeing — taking in the city’s old castle and the Cathedral Church of St Nicholas — before enduring a spectacularly dull speech from the Chamber of Commerce. That Grant not only listened intently, but delivered an eloquent response after it is testament to how much he was enjoying being in Newcastle.
Once away from the Chamber of Commerce’s clutches, he went to witness the new Swing Bridge in action, followed by a trip down the River Tyne on the steamer Commodore. As they went, Grant estimated that at least 150,000 people had come out to catch a look at him, while The Times reckoned that the entire populations of Walker, Jarrow and Hebburn lined the banks of the Tyne. At Wallsend there was “a firing of guns, mortars, fog signals, and every species of instrument that could be induced to make a noise”.
At Jarrow, a band played Hail Columbia and Yankee Doodle, but his stop there was overshadowed by the deaths of six children on the same day, who were crushed when a road above an old pit heap collapsed. A correspondent of the Daily Gazette said: “The calamity has cast a sad gloom over the town, the more so as the cheers at General Grant’s reception at Jarrow landing had scarcely died away, ere the wail of anguish was heard for the lost little ones.”
It’s possible Grant was never made aware of this tragedy, but even if he was, he continued on down towards the mouth of the river. “The shipping in Shields harbour were gay with flags,” said The Times, “and the seaport of North Shields kept holyday.”
At Tynemouth, he was greeted by the MP for South Shields James Cochran Stevenson, and was treated to a display by the local Lifeboat Brigade, before the mayor, Alderman Green, gave an address. According to The Times, he told Grant how proud they were to have such a distinguished American hero in their midst, and that his “sagacity and valour in battle and clemency to the conquered in the hour of victory were matters of history.”
That evening, the Tyne Theatre hosted a specially-written play entitled North and South! An Episode of Vicksburg, which told of the forbidden love between the daughter of a Confederate general and a Union officer.
The next day, the 22nd September, was according to McFeely “one of the most remarkable days in Ulysses Grant’s life”. In the morning he visited the Armstrong Foundry, who had supplied both sides with arms during the Civil War, something Sir William Armstrong had been heavily criticised for. Grant, ever magnanimous, had apparently put this behind him by 1877, and took great delight in visiting every department. Of particular interest was the ordnance branch, and its 100-ton gun.
But it was the afternoon’s events that were to live long in the memory. The press calls for a demonstration to honour Grant had been answered resoundingly, and culminated in a parade to the city’s Town Moor, followed by addresses to the huge crowds gathered there. When re-evaluated by Durham University Journal almost a hundred years later, it was called “…a tribute to him as a hero of international arbitration and a champion of labour.”
The parade began in the centre of Newcastle, going along Neville Street, Collingwood Street, St Nicholas Square, and Grey Street, before the carriage carrying the General and Julia Grant joined it at the corner of Blackett Street and Northumberland Street (close to where Northern Goldsmiths’ iconic golden clock is now).
Shops all along the route had banners, flags and bunting affixed to their fronts, and the Newcastle Daily Chronicle reported that on Northumberland Street “Messrs Carnegie and Gullachsen had there erected two Venetian masts, one at each side of the carriage way.” A cord stretched between the two “beautified with numerous tiny bannerets from which suspended a board” that just said “Welcome”.
A seemingly endless number of union and workers’ organisations took part, all with their own banners or tributes to Grant. The Mill Sawyers carried a banner that called him a “Hero of Freedom”, while the Painters carried an image that represented the chains of bondage being broken, and the phrase “Welcome to the Liberator”.
All in all, John Russell Young — who had been sent by the New York Herald to cover the trip, and would later turn it into the book All Around The World with General Grant — noted no less than 38 different workingmen’s groups in the parade.
As it progressed, the Newcastle Courant said: “hundreds of people appeared at windows, on balconies, and even on house tops, and at two o’clock there was a densely packed crowd, numbering certainly not less than 150,000 extending on the line of procession from the Central Station to the Moor.” The Daily Chronicle said it looked “like some long non-descript monster, with a dorsal fin of variegated colours”.
People had come from miles, and by all manner of transportation, to see the man who McFeely said “personified the bourgeois virtues they so greatly honoured”. The Times called it “the greatest demonstration as regards numbers and enthusiasm that has been witnessed in Newcastle for a number of years.”
“Adventurous youngsters,” said the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, “swarmed up the numerous flag posts” along the route to try and catch a glimpse of Grant.
Before he spoke, the crowd was addressed by Thomas Burt, the MP for Morpeth (not to mention former secretary of the Northumberland Miners’ Association and prominent trade unionist) in what L.T. Remlap in General U.S. Grant’s Tour Around the World called a “eulogistic address to General Grant”. Burt said of the Civil War: “It was not a war for conquest, for selfish aggrandisement, or for the propping up of a tottering throne, but it involved the great question on freedom, the rights of man, and the dignity and honour of labour.” This was followed, understandably, by loud applause.
Burt went on: “the foul blot of slavery no longer disfigures the constitution or mocks the Declaration of Independence. Greater and nobler objects were never achieved by the sword, and certainly never did victors in a great war display such moderation and magnanimity to the vanquished.” Moving on to the settlement of the Alabama Claims, he called them “one of the grandest moral victories that ever was achieved”.
There was then a workers’ address which was delivered by Burt, which said that Grant “having attested again and again your deep solicitude for the industrial classes and having also nobly proclaimed the dignity of labor by breaking the chains of the slave” was entitled to their “sincere and unalloyed gratitude”.
Finally, Grant stood up to speak, and as he did, it was reported that the cheering crowd could be heard almost a mile away, at the Church of St Thomas the Martyr, beside the Haymarket.
The crowd he addressed was — according to the Chronicle — no less than 80,000 strong. He did this from a covered platform erected “a little to the west of the reservoirs” or roughly just across the lake from where Wylam Brewery now stands.
He said:
“We all know that but for labor we would have very little that is worth fighting for, and when wars do come, they fall upon the many, the producing class, who are the sufferers. They not only have to furnish the means largely, but they have, by their labor and industry, to produce the means for those who are engaged in destroying and not in producing. I was always a man of peace, and I have always advocated peace, although educated a soldier. I never willingly, although I have gone through two wars, of my own accord advocated war. I advocated what I believed to be right, and I have fought for it to the best of my ability in order that an honorable peace might be secured…I would like to communicate to the people whom I see assembled before me here this day how greatly I feel the honor which they have conferred upon me.”
His speech was, according to McFeely, one “that Karl Marx could have made”, despite Grant’s later admittance in a letter to his son Buck that he had not “the slightest idea beforehand of what I was to hear, or what I should say.”
The local press was by now unanimous in its praise of Grant. In its coverage of the day, The Newcastle Daily Chronicle said that “never before did any military chieftain so truly fight the battle of labour”, and reported that “when the General finishes…those who have bellowed themselves hoarse, make themselves still hoarser”.
The same paper also described a black man who watched Grant speak, “his face glowing with intense excitement, the whole soul within him shining out through his sable skin like a red-hot furnace seen through a dark curtain…[watching] Grant with a gaze of such fervid admiration and respect and gratitude that it flashes out the secret of the great liberator’s popularity.”
After the overwhelming show of affection at the Town Moor, Grant spent his final evening in Newcastle at a banquet at the Assembly Rooms, which The Times said was “attended by most of the leading men in the North”.
Here, the Liberal MP for Newcastle Joseph Cowen said of the ties between England and America:
“We are streams from the same fountain, branches from the same tree. We spring from the same race, speak the same language, are moved by the same prejudices, animated by the same hopes. We sing the same songs, cherish the same political principles and are imbued with the conviction that we have a common destiny to fulfil.”
Cowen said that Grant’s “achievements will fill a large and glowing page in the history of his native land”, but hinted that at the time of the Civil War, the views of the north of England were not quite as positive as they were in 1877: “On the questions involved in the great conflict…there were differences of opinion among us.” He specifically mentioned Foreign Secretary Earl Russell saying in 1861 that “the North was fighting for empire and the South for independence”, and talked of then-Chancellor William Gladstone’s famous 1862 speech — given in Newcastle — in which he hinted at British recognition of the Confederacy.
When asked to speak, Grant said “I have had no better reception in any place, nor do I think it possible to have a better. All I have seen since I have been on the Tyne has been to me most gratifying as an individual.” Mindful of opinion back home, he also joked that the American newspapermen may not believe how positively he had been received: “They will think that the correspondents of your Press have made it all up.”
After the Assembly Rooms, he left to spend the night with William Charlton, the man behind the Border County Railway from Hexham up to the Scottish borders, at his home Hesleyside Hall in Northumberland.
On the morning of the 23rd September, Grant and his wife Julia left Hesleyside to travel by train to Sunderland. Like his visit to Newcastle, the local press had been full of calls to honour the Civil War hero in the proper way.
A letter to the editor of the Sunderland Daily Echo two weeks before Grant’s visit urged the city to give the General a hero’s welcome. The writer could not “overestimate the great and glorious task” Grant had achieved in freeing the slaves, while a subsequent supporting letter the next day said that Grant was “a friend of art, literature, and science” and should be recognised by Sunderland as such. Another letter on September 19th — four days before Grant arrived — asked if the mayor would consent to making the day a public holiday for the city’s shop assistants. A day later the paper confirmed the council resolution that granted the holiday.
The Sunderland Daily Echo reported a meeting prior to his arrival, that had declared that “every workman and every man with a spark of patriotism in his bosom, saw that it would be their duty to give a proper reception to so worthy a man”
Meanwhile, an editorial in the Sunderland Daily Echo on the 17th September had said that Sunderland, in greeting Grant, “could not do worse than her sister-city” of Newcastle. It said that nowhere had been “more earnest sympathisers [with the cause of emancipation] than here on the Wear.”
By way of introduction to those unfamiliar with Grant, the 21st September edition of the Sunderland Daily Echo treated readers to a long list of puns on his initials, including “Unaffectedly Simple Grant”, Unambiguously Straightforward Grant”, and “Unintermitting Smoking Grant”, which the paper said was “an idea peculiarly American”. The next day’s edition gave a long biography of Grant and his Civil War exploits.
He arrived at Monkwearmouth Station at midday on the 23rd, aboard a “special engine, with a Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes flying at the fore”, and was greeted by the Police Force band. The Times estimated that between 30 and 40,000 people came out to see him.
Grant walked across the Robert Stephenson-designed second Wearmouth Bridge towards Mowbray Park, and John Russell Young noted that “as the General walked up the hill to the park a salute was fired. Just then the sun came out from behind a cloud.”
The Northern Echo said: “Poles were erected on the bridge, and flags stretched from either side. The streets were all gaily decorated with bunting, and every window and available space was occupied with spectators. The shops were all closed and the day was kept as a general holiday.”
Shortly after his arrival, Grant witnessed the laying of the foundation stone for the Borough Free Library and Museum (now Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens), which was the first free municipal public library in England. The stone was laid by the mayor Samuel Storey.*
After the conclusion of the proceedings at the new library, he went into Mowbray Park to see the statue of British Major General Sir Henry Havelock, born in Sunderland and famed for his leadership during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
He then ate lunch at a banquet organised by the mayor at the Victoria Hall, which was located on Toward Road, beside Mowbray Park, and was destroyed in 1941 by a parachute bomb. The Sunderland Daily Echo said the head table was “decked with flowers and ferns, and lines of flags and streamers were hung round the end of the hall.” The banquet was a veritable feast, and included Goose Pie, Boar’s Head, Collared Veal, Roast Hare, Grouse, Lobster, and much more.
Here, the local MP Sir Charles Palmer said they were “entertaining one of the most eminent and illustrious men of America,” while Town Clerk William Snowball said, “your Genius asserted [America’s] rightful claim to the foremost place, and by decisive victories you saved the Republic, brought back peace, and above all sealed the Emancipation of millions of Slaves.”
The mayor then offered a toast, during which the Police Band unexpectedly started playing Old John Brown, much to the mayor’s embarrassment. He quickly composed himself and continued his glowing tribute to the former president.
In response, Grant said the reception he had received embarrassed him “beyond measure, and I know if I should attempt to express all I feel on this occasion, I should make a most stupendous failure of it”.
After the banquet he visited the docks, where he was greeted by more wild cheering, and in the evening the town put on a fireworks display — provided by the pyrotechnists of London’s Crystal Palace — in his honour.
The following day, the 24th, he stayed with former local mayor James Hartley at Ashbrooke Hall (later renamed Corby Hall), and visited his famous Wear Glass Works, where he watched a display of glass-blowing. On the 25th September, Grant visited Lambton Castle and Biddick Hall, before leaving for Sheffield at 9.35 in the evening
The Sunderland Daily Echo surmised that “The General has been much impressed by his reception in Sunderland. He is surprised at the size and importance of the town, and he has expressed his pleasure at the orderly behaviour of the inhabitants.”
For the rest of his trip around the world, Grant was treated in much the same way as he had been in Newcastle and Sunderland. Parades were put on, speeches were made, and the former president was showered with gifts and compliments.
While he would write little of his trip that was for public consumption, it’s clear that his time in the north east of England was special. As McFeely states, only on his arrival in the region was he finally “loved as he needed to be loved.” Though never a vain man, Grant must have felt the need to be recognised for all he had done for America, and in Newcastle and Sunderland, he was.
For the people of the area, “Grant had been at the head of a nation they imagined to be a beacon of goodness ready to call in all who sought to live in freedom”, according to McFeely. That they would want to honour such a man is obvious.
After his return to America in September 1879, Grant would fail to reclaim the presidency, and died of throat cancer on July 23rd, 1885. In the weeks and months leading up to his passing, he would complete what many believe is the greatest military memoir of all time, with only that of Julius Caesar comparable. Over the following decades, his presidential legacy would be slowly rehabilitated.
But back in September of 1877, the people of Newcastle and Sunderland already knew that he was a hero.
One spectator, who watched the procession and saw Grant as he passed Grey’s Monument in Newcastle, was quoted in the local press as saying that he was “as greet a man as ivvor Queen Victoria was!” [sic].
*A 2012 Telegraph article by Roland Gribben said that “A worse-for-wear ex-president was also due to lay the foundation stone at a new museum in Sunderland but the audience had to be content with an arm waving out of a coach door with the result that the inscription said the building had been opened by the mayor in his presence.” The “worse-for-wear” comment seems to hint that Grant may have been drunk (claims of heavy drinking dogged him throughout his career) and therefore incapable, but all contemporary newspaper articles and records suggest that at no point was Grant intended to lay the stone, and the ceremony was conducted as planned.
Sources
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