V: THE GARDEN AND GROUNDS
Much of the sentimental interest attached to the Hermitage centers around the garden, that fenced-in acre to the east of the mansion house which was set aside by General Jackson for that purpose when the Hermitage was built in 1819. We know that the exact site of the house was carefully selected by his wife, and it is safe to assume that it was she also who picked out this particular spot for the garden.
A short time before the Hermitage was built the General, accompanied by Rachel, visited in Washington on official business; and on this occasion they made the pilgrimage to Mount Vernon. Jackson was obviously much impressed by his visit to the old home of George Washington, so much so that he left in his papers a written memorandum of his impressions aroused by his journey to what he described as “the venerable dwelling of the patriarch of our liberties.”
It is only a speculation, of course, but it is interesting to entertain the fancy that it was perhaps as a result of this visit that the old General, upon his return to Tennessee, decided to build for himself a home more in keeping with the dignity of the position he had attained as a national hero. Perhaps Rachel herself suggested it to him. She was proud of the General and the distinctions he had gained; maybe she put the thought in his head that the Hero of New Orleans ought not to be receiving his guests in a log house, that he should live in a little more style—something approaching the quiet dignity of Mount Vernon, which they both admired. A new house they should have—and, of course, by all means, a garden.
At any rate, we find in the old General’s memorandum of his Mount Vernon trip the following reference: “A neat little flower garden, laid out and trimmed with the utmost exactness, ornamented with green and hot houses in which flourish the most beautiful of the tropical plants, affords a happy relief to the solemn impressions produced by a view of the antique structure it adjoins, and leads you insensibly into the most delightful reverie, in which you review in imagination the manner in which the greatest and the best of men, after the most busy and eventful life, retired into privacy and amused the evening of his days.” And so, when the Hermitage mansion house was built in 1819, we find close by its side “a neat little flower garden, laid out and trimmed with the utmost exactness;” and, although it is difficult to picture the tempestuous old warrior puttering about a flower garden, his correspondence reveals that thoughts of it occupied a part of his attention throughout his lifetime, and contemporaries have recalled that he had more than the average man’s interest in the flowers, particularly admiring the roses and the pinks.
That the garden was no mere afterthought or casual incidental to the building of the house is shown by the fact that in 1819 he engaged, evidently for the task of laying it out and planting it, an English professional gardener named William Frost, reputed at that time to be one of the best gardeners in the metropolis of Philadelphia. The best was none too good for Rachel in those days.
During his long absence from home during his two terms as President, Jackson’s correspondence is liberally sprinkled with references to his garden. In all the great difficulty he experienced in obtaining the services of competent or satisfactory overseers, one of his criticisms of them was that they were derelict in their care of the garden—Rachel’s garden. And in May, 1835, when his son wrote him relative to the good conduct of the new overseer most recently engaged he replied: “How I am delighted to hear that the garden has regained its former appearance that it always possessed whilst your dear mother was living, and that just attention is now paid to her monument. This is truly pleasing to me, and precisely as it ought to be.”
In May, 1832, in a letter to his son’s young wife General Jackson wrote: “I sincerely regret the ravages made by the frost in the garden, and particularly that the willow by the gate is destroyed. This I wish you to replace. The willows around the tomb I hope are living, and a branch from one of these might replace the dead one at the garden gate. It will grow if well watered and planted on receipt of this.” But it didn’t grow—or else the youthful Sarah neglected to plant it; and it was not until 1925 that a member of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association ran across this letter of the General’s and decided that, better late than never, his wishes should be carried out. The willows at the tomb—the willows General Jackson had himself planted nearly a century before—are now dead and gone, probably crowded and shaded to death by the stately old magnolias that now guard the plot of graves. But a scion was taken from another willow on the place and today the young willow may be seen there at the garden gate, belatedly replacing the one destroyed by the late frost in the spring of 1832.
The garden plot occupies an acre of ground, surrounded by a high picket fence built of enduring Tennessee red cedar. The fence is of the old substantial type, constructed of pointed pickets mortised with precision into the horizontal sustaining members, and entrance is gained through an old-fashioned wooden gate, reached by a short brick walk from the door on the eastern side of the house.
Inside the garden, eight feet from the fence, the plot is encircled by a gravel walk about six feet wide, and similar bisecting walks cut the garden into four plots. In the center the walks converge on a geometrically designed system of concentric circular beds in which annuals bloom from year to year. Roses climb on the fence, and shrubbery is planted along the sides of the walks, the central portion of each of the four plots now being kept in grass. In the middle of the north side is the original brick tool house, the path to which is shaded by an old rustic rose arbor; and peeping out between the box bushes and crape myrtles may be seen an occasional moss rose or other old-fashioned plant.
We do not find here the hothouses with their tropical plants which the General and Rachel so much admired at Mount Vernon; but evidently an effort was made to introduce unusual shrubbery into the garden, for in addition to the customary plants found in a Southern garden of the period there are to be seen some of the more rare and exotic shrubs—fig trees brought from the far South, a pink magnolia from Japan, etc.
The planning and arrangement of the planting is such that it provides attractions the whole year round. There are flowers throughout the blooming season from early spring to late fall; then there are the brightly colored leaves of the bushes and trees; and during the winter there is the glossy green foliage of magnolias and the faintly scented box bushes beside the garden paths, the barrenness of the flower beds at that season being relieved by the sweet-scented winter honeysuckle which defies the seasons and blooms in December and January as though it were mid-summer. The Hermitage garden is never without its attractive features.
In early spring there is first the brilliant bloom of the English hawthorn, then the narcissi and tulips and hyacinths making the air heavy with their fragrance, also the jonquils and old-fashioned blue-bottles and purple shades. Crocuses and butter-and-eggs and, later, iris and peonies all combine to make the garden a springtime riot of bloom. So spectacularly do the peonies bloom that they always attract large crowds of visitors while they are in full flower, more than a thousand visitors having gone to the Hermitage garden in one day to witness the rare floral spectacle.
Interspersed with all the conventional plants and shrubs are some of the native wild flowers that bloom in the fields and along the river banks near by; for when the Hermitage garden was first planted the florist’s art had not reached its present peak of perfection, and although the thoughtful General sent home flower seeds from Philadelphia and Washington, Rachel took pleasure in augmenting the garden’s finery by selections from the surrounding country. Visitors may still see in the beds there the nodding Jacob’s ladder, the columbine and other such homely blossoms. The wild yucca, with its semi-tropical appearance, was brought in from some of the near-by cedar glades, along with prickly pear cacti and rock roses; and a graceful fringe tree was planted near the entrance gate.
In the beds in the center of the garden there have always grown tulips in the springtime and then some kind of annuals to sustain the succession of blooms through the summer. Early in June the great collection of ascension lilies begin to bloom, filling the garden with their perfume; and throughout the summer there are the roses, both in bush and climbing form, mostly of the old-fashioned varieties—moss roses, the yellow briar, maiden’s blush, Louis Phillippe, macrophylla, pink musk, etc.
The shrubbery also contributes its share of blossoms, from the golden bells, bridal wreath, snowballs and calacanthus of the spring through the altheas or Rose of Sharon of the summer, to the pink and red crape myrtles of the late summer which cap off their showy mass of blooms with a brilliantly colored array of scarlet leaves in the fall months.
The Hermitage garden offers some form of attraction at any season of the year.
During the early days of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association the wealth of bloom in the garden was turned to good account, especially in the spring. Then cuttings of jonquils and peonies, literally by the wagonload, were sent into Nashville and sold on the street; and there were also sales of seeds and cuttings and surplus bulbs, so that visitors might take away with them living mementoes of the Hermitage garden. From this source the association was able to derive a considerable and much-needed revenue at a time when funds were scarce and every dollar of income was welcome.
During his lifetime Uncle Alfred, who acted as a guide to visitors, always took especial interest in the garden and beamed with proprietary pride when visitors gave expression to their appreciation of its beauties. “Please do not pluck the flowers” says a conspicuous sign by the side of the gate; but if a visitor really seemed interested in the garden’s attractions the old retainer would slyly say: “Now if you like dat rosebud, I won’t see you if you gets it.”
Some idea of what the Hermitage garden looked like in the old days may be gathered from a description of it which was given in an interview printed in one of the Nashville papers several years ago with an old lady who had visited there with her father when she was a girl. Looking back down the vista of the years, she said:
The flower beds about the middle of the garden were there when the General lived there. He had an old negro, Alfred, to attend to the garden. They had a regular vegetable garden combined with the flower garden. The vegetable garden was not with the flower part of the garden, but you could see the vegetable garden when you stood in the flower garden or where the flowers were. They had cabbages, potatoes, beets, beans and squash and other vegetables in the vegetable part of the garden. They had sage and thyme around on the edge of the flower beds. They had in the flower beds hollyhocks, beds of pinks of all colors, rose bushes, tea roses, macrophylla and cinnamon roses, moss roses, white lilacs, tiger lilies, heliotrope (white and purple). Some of the beds were edged with sweet violets. There were poppies in some of the beds, and hyacinths and tulips. The Washington bower was on the side—on the fence and climbing up the trees in the garden—they were trees with long white flowers, locust trees I think. The garden was larger then than it is now—it was larger east and west than now and was fenced with a plank fence. There was a weeping willow there but I can’t locate it now. There was a large rope swing near the house and near to the entrance to the garden. It was tied to the limb of a hickory tree.
Continuing with her description of the garden this old lady spoke of two magnolia trees “about the middle of the garden near the tomb—good big trees” and in speaking further of the weeping willows stated that they were “just over the fence, near and opposite the tomb.” She also named more of the flowers that grew in the old garden: Several big bushes of crape myrtle; verbenas, all colors; sunflowers; all-colored flags—red, white and purple; snowballs; red, pink and white peonies; old-fashioned honeysuckle—coral, white and yellow, lilacs, white and purple. The “Washington bower” she describes as having a purple flower, so it was probably the large-flowering variety of clematis which was also known as the virgin bower. She also mentioned, in enumerating the shrubbery, “japonica bushes” which, she said, “has red blossoms and comes early and late;” and this, we may presume, was the flowering shrub known now as the English hawthorn and also called the fire-bush.
The garden as it stands today is just about as it was in the days when it bloomed and blossomed under Rachel’s tender care, except that the flowering shrubs and bushes have now attained the size and beauty gained only with the passing of the years. But it was not in any such condition as this that the Ladies’ Hermitage Association found it when they took charge. During the wartime occupation of the premises by the guard of Federal troops the garden was almost obliterated. Being fenced in and convenient to the house, it appealed to the cavalrymen as an ideal corral for their horses, and it was so used during the three years the Federal troops remained on the grounds. It is easy to imagine the damage done—and it is also easy to imagine Old Hickory’s devastating wrath if he had known that his government’s troops were so heedlessly desecrating Rachel’s flower garden.
After the war but little was done to repair the damage done by the soldiers’ horses. The fence was restored, and this kept out wandering stock and permitted the hardy shrubs to grow again; but the paths were overgrown with weeds, washed by the recurring rains, and in 1889 little trace of the old walkways remained except for the marginal brick borders. (These bricks, by the way, were especially designed and made for the purpose, being longer and thicker than ordinary bricks and also beveled at the top. They were manufactured on the place when the bricks were burned for the building of the big house, the depression in the ground where the clay was dug out for all the bricks being still visible in the extreme northwestern corner of the big wooded lot directly across the road from the front entrance to the Hermitage.)
In spite of the discouraging aspect of affairs in the garden when the ladies took over the property, however, the work of restoring it to its original beauty was valiantly attacked, and one of their very first activities was to engage a man to clear away the weeds and blackberry bushes and the volunteer elms and hickories, rebuild the paths and restore the garden to some semblance of its former appearance. The work of restoration has been carefully done, with a full appreciation of the importance of retaining the spirit and form of the original design and planting. A competent garden authority was retained to plan the work in later years, and there has been no effort to modernize or improve the garden—only a faithful determination to repair the ravages of time and present it to the visitor today just as it was when the General and Rachel were alive and wandered up and down its broad paths in admiration of its beauty.
The focal point of interest in the garden, of course, is the tomb in the southeast corner. When his beloved Rachel died in December, 1828, just on the eve of their departure for his first Presidential inauguration, the old General laid her away in the corner of the garden and, heavy-hearted, started off for Washington alone.
During the subsequent eight years, as the bitterly fought battles of partisan politics raged and surged about him in the nation’s capital, his heart remained buried in the garden at the Hermitage. In May, 1829, he wrote to the Rev. Hardy M. Cryer (that bizarre combination of devout Methodist preacher and horseman) saying: “In the day I am laboriously employed, and it is only when late in the night I retire to my chamber that I have time to think of or write to my friends. It is then that I feel the great weight of the late affliction of Providence in the bereavement I have been visited with in the loss of my dear wife; I find myself a solitary man, deprived of all hope of happiness this side the grave, and often with myself at the Hermitage, there to spend the remnant of my days and daily drop a tear on the tomb of my beloved wife and be prepared, when Providence wills it, to unite with her in the realm above.”
Due to the need for his immediate departure for Washington after the death of his wife, it was necessary that she be buried in a plain grave over which a temporary shelter was built. But it was never the General’s idea that her resting-place should go without a more elaborate monument; and even before he left the Hermitage in January, 1829, he began negotiations looking to the design and construction of what he described as a “monumental tomb.” A contract for the building of the tomb was given a Nashville contractor, D. Morrison; and Mr. Morrison designed a simple but impressive structure of classic Greek lines. It is built of stone, its dome-like top being supported by fluted stone columns and covered with copper. The structure is surrounded by a simple iron fence.
The inscription on Mrs. Jackson’s tomb is popularly supposed to have been written by the General himself. Mrs. Rachel Jackson Lawrence stated that it was written by Major Henry Lee, the talented though scapegrace Virginian who was Jackson’s secretary and a resident of the Hermitage at the time of Mrs. Jackson’s death. It has even been attributed to Major John M. Eaton. Whoever wrote it, it is a beautiful and moving tribute to the pioneer woman who occupied the central place in Andrew Jackson’s heart throughout his life:
Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson, who died the 22nd of December, 1828, aged sixty-one years. Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind. She delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow creatures and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods. To the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament. Her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous slander might wound but could not dishonor; even death, when he bore her from the arms of her husband, could but transport her to the bosom of her God.
In strong contrast to this eloquent eulogy is the Spartan simplicity of the old General’s own epitaph, certainly written by himself:
GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON
Born March 15, 1767
Died June 8, 1845
There would have been no such simplicity as this about Old Hickory’s final resting place, however, if some of his admirers had had their way. Early in 1845, only a few months before Jackson died, Commodore J. D. Elliott of the United States Navy, commander of the old Constitution, brought home from Palestine the marble sarcophagus in which had rested the remains of the Roman emperor, Alexander Severus. Commodore Elliott wrote to General Jackson, advising him that he had brought home this handsome relic and deposited it with the National Institute with the suggestion that it be tendered Jackson for his own tomb. “I pray you, General,” wrote Elliott, “to live on in the fear of the Lord; dying the death of a Roman soldier, an emperor’s coffin awaits you.”
But General Jackson, as might have been expected, while courteously expressing his appreciation of the spirit of veneration that prompted the proffer, firmly declared that: “I can not consent that my mortal remains shall be laid in a repository prepared for an emperor or king.”
“My republican feelings and principles forbid it;” Jackson’s letter continues, “the simplicity of our system of government forbids it. Every monument erected to perpetuate the memory of our heroes and statesmen ought to bear evidence of the economy and simplicity of our republican institutions and of the plainness of our republican citizens, who are the sovereigns of our glorious Union and whose virtue is to perpetuate it. True virtue can not exist where pomp and parade are the governing passions. It can only dwell with the people—the great laboring and producing classes—that form the bone and sinew of our confederacy.... I have prepared an humble depository for my mortal body beside that wherein lies my beloved wife where, without any pomp or parade, I have requested, when my God calls me to sleep with my fathers, to be laid; for both of us there to remain until the last trumpet sounds to call the dead to judgment when we, I hope, shall rise together clothed with that heavenly body promised to all who believe in our glorious Redeemer who died for us that we might live, and by whose atonement I hope for a blessed immortality.”
Walnut desk used by General Jackson, with chair made from the wood of the frigate Constitution, presented to him by Levi Woodbury.
General Jackson’s office or library, showing his armchair, presented to him by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, beside the candle-stand where he customarily opened his mail. For thirty years this room was the political center of the United States.
When the new Hermitage was built in 1819 and the garden was laid out, one of General Jackson’s first acts was to walk out into the garden with Rachel and select the spot where their remains would rest side by side when life had passed. At this time the General’s health was precarious, racked as he was by eight years of almost continuous campaigning while in a debilitated physical condition, and he frankly expressed the belief that he would not live long. At that time it seemed highly improbable that he would outlive the blooming Rachel by nearly seventeen years.
This burying ground in the corner of the garden is not, legally speaking, now a part of the Hermitage property. To insure its permanent care, General Jackson on September 17, 1832, executed a formal indenture with John H. Eaton, John Coffee, and Andrew Jackson, junior, “and their heirs forever,” whereby he “bargained, sold, conveyed and delivered” to them in trust “one-fourth part of an acre of ground, out of the Hermitage tract, to be laid off and run out so as to include the tomb or monument placed on the remains of his dear departed wife, Rachel Jackson, and designed as the deposit of the remains of the said Andrew Jackson when it pleases God to take him hence, and the family of Andrew Jackson, junior, and his heirs.” It is provided that the trustees and their heirs shall preserve the sacred deposit made upon said ground and let the tomb or monument remain undisturbed and “hold the ground subject to the use and purpose mentioned, forever.” This conveyance is duly registered in the courthouse at Nashville, and was taken into consideration when the Hermitage property was transferred to the state in 1857.
Here in this quiet corner, sheltered by the heavy green foliage of the old magnolias that guard the tomb of the General and Rachel, are the graves of the adopted son and his family connections. Here lie Andrew Jackson, junior (the adopted son), and his wife, Sarah York Jackson; Colonel Andrew Jackson (the adopted son’s son), his wife Amy A. Jackson and his younger brother Captain Samuel Jackson, who was killed at Chickamauga; also the two other sons of Andrew Jackson, junior, who died in infancy; Rachel Jackson Lawrence, daughter of Andrew Jackson, junior, her husband, Dr. J. M. Lawrence and their son and daughter, John Marshall Lawrence and Sazie Lawrence Winn; Mrs. Marion Adams, sister of Sarah York Jackson; and R. E. W. Earle, the artist.
On the other side of the General’s monumental tomb, just across the graveled walk, is a single mound with a plain, low marble headstone on which is carved: “Uncle Alfred. Died September 4,1901, aged 98 years. Faithful servant of Andrew Jackson.” It was Uncle Alfred’s fondest wish in his old days that his mortal remains might be laid to rest as closely as possible by the side of his old master, the General; and the promise that he would be so buried lent solace to his declining years. So long as “the Gin’ral” lived, Alfred kept as closely by his side as possible; and close by his side he remains as master and servant sleep their long sleep in the dark magnolias’ shade.
When General Jackson in his letters spoke of returning to the Hermitage to cast a tear on the tomb of his departed wife it was no mere figure of speech. After his retirement from public life in 1837 he went back to the home place and spent the rest of his days on the farm in pleasant association with the family of his adopted son. Here a part of his daily routine consisted in a long walk in the afternoon which invariably wound up at the side of Rachel’s tomb, where he was wont to sit in contemplative reflection. His little granddaughter, Rachel, was his customary companion on these walks; but she soon learned that when his steps turned toward the tomb he wished to be alone, and when they reached the garden gate she always withdrew her hand from his and ran away about her childish diversions, leaving him to his thoughts. Even after he became bedridden in the last year of his life, on pleasant days he required that his chair be carried to the garden and placed by the side of the tomb; and there he sat through the hours, dreaming of the stormy and pleasant days of the past.
Just to the east of the tomb the visitor to the garden today sees a group of hickory trees closely together in a straight row; and concerning these trees there is an interesting little story. On December 18, 1830, President Jackson received from an admirer in Ulster, New York, Colonel Charles E. Dudley, a parcel of hickory nuts (“nutts” in Jackson’s free-and-easy orthography) from a tree in Ulster said to be the only one of its kind known in New York. Colonel Dudley doubtless felt that he was the author of a delicate compliment in sending these unique hickory nuts to Old Hickory himself; and the President in his formal note of thanks, seemed duly appreciative of the honor intended. “To perpetuate this memento of the kind regard of Mr. and Mrs. Dudley,” he wrote in the formal official third person of the period, “he has sent one dozen of these nutts to be planted in his garden at the Hermitage, to encircle the tomb of his departed wife, and to have the following inscription engraved on the marble. ‘The Dudley hickory of Ulster, New York, presented by Mr. and Mrs. Dudley to the President.’”
Further reference to the nuts is seen in a letter written by President Jackson in the spring of 1831 to his adopted son, who was about to return to Tennessee: “I sent to Mr. Daniel Donelson some hickory nutts with a request that he would hand them to the overseer with a letter directing Steele to plant them around your mother’s tomb.” That they were duly planted is attested by the attention-attracting row of tall, straight trees seen there today; but there is no sign of the inscription mentioned in General Jackson’s letter to Colonel Dudley. No one now living remembers whether the trees were planted in strict accordance with the General’s expressed wish that they encircle the tomb, although one of Jackson’s biographers does mention that “some fine hickory trees that grew in the garden” were at one time removed in a mistaken effort to improve the appearance of the place.
Despite the careful and painstaking preparations made by General Jackson to insure that the last resting place of his mortal remains would be by the side of his beloved wife in the tomb in the Hermitage garden, it was only by the interposition of the governor of the state that there was frustrated an effort to nullify this last wish of the old General.
When the state purchased the property in 1856 and then began to make plans to tender it to the Federal government as a suitable site for a military academy in the South, somebody had the bright idea of digging up the bodies of the General and Mrs. Jackson and removing them from the Hermitage to Capitol Hill in Nashville. Accordingly a bill was introduced in the General Assembly in 1860 providing for such removal, and it was promptly passed by the Senate. Before the lower house could act on it, however, Andrew Jackson, junior, heard of the plan and immediately raised a loud and well-justified protest. Directly to Governor Harris he went to remonstrate against the enactment of the bill, pointing out that upon his death-bed General Jackson had expressed the hope that the remains of himself and his wife should under no circumstances be removed from the Hermitage. Governor Harris thereupon sent a special message to the Senate and House of Representatives “respectfully recommending” that the bill be rejected and that Old Hickory’s wishes be respected. In those days a respectful recommendation from Governor Harris was just about equivalent to an edict, and nothing more was heard about disturbing the Jackson remains.
But, although this plan for the official removal of the remains was defeated, there was another mysterious and criminal attempt on General Jackson’s body several years later. It was late in the summer of 1894 that a visitor appeared at the Hermitage one morning and, as was the customary procedure with visitors, was courteously conducted through the house and about the grounds. It was noted at the time that he displayed an unusual interest in the Jackson family and home life and talked with Uncle Alfred at great length about his old master. He showed particular interest in the tomb; although, at the time, no sinister intent was attached to his interest. After spending the morning on the place he went to a near-by country store for a bite to eat during the middle of the day and then returned and loitered about the premises throughout the afternoon until nearly dark. At length, to the relief of the custodian who was growing vaguely apprehensive, the stranger departed; and it was thought he had gone for good.
It is easy to imagine the custodian’s horrified astonishment, on visiting the garden next morning, to find a large and gaping hole in the ground on the west side of the tomb near the head of General Jackson’s grave. The hole was deep enough to expose the stone foundations of the tomb; but fortunately the burial vaults were enclosed in a solid wall of masonry, and the grave-robber’s felonious intentions were defeated. It developed, upon inquiry, that the mysterious stranger had borrowed a spade from the near-by Donelson home at Tulip Grove the preceding afternoon and that it had been carefully returned and left at the door of the house in the early morning hours. The ghoul had evidently, from the extent of his operations, worked all night in opening the big excavation; and he was doubtless exasperated to discover that the careful and substantial work of the builder of the tomb in 1831 had made the General’s last home impregnable to such assaults.
The Ladies’ Hermitage Association made every effort to ferret out the mystery; but, with the limited means at their disposal, they were able to learn nothing at the time. But several months later a man died in a hospital in New York who confessed that he was a professional body-snatcher (a practice not uncommon at that time) and that among other exploits of his infamous career he had made the ineffectual attempt on the Jackson tomb. Just what he intended to do with the body if his efforts had been successful was not revealed; and today it is hard to imagine how the body of an ex-President would command any premium even in the grave-robbers’ underworld; but the fact remains that the attempt was made, and it was only because of the staunch construction of the tomb that the body of the General remained undisturbed.