There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos

15 General Grant Skips the Theater

78 There’s More to New Jersey . . . bitter document. It describes how the Confederates denied the prisoners pure water to drink or wood to build shelter or cook their food, despite the fact that the prison was surrounded by pine forests and abundant water. While in the New Jersey Assembly, Hopkins supported a campaign to erect a memorial to the New Jersey soldiers imprisoned at Andersonville. The monument can be found today in the cemetery at Andersonville National Historic Site. It is a statue of a New Jersey soldier, facing south. On the base are these lines: “Go, strangers, to New Jersey; tell her that we lie here in fulfillment of her mandate and our pledge—to maintain the proud name of our state unsullied, and place it high on the scroll of honor among the states of this great nation.” Before you dismiss those words as Victorian sentimentality, think of what Charles Hopkins endured to preserve that great nation. 15 General Grant Skips the Theater General Ulysses S. Grant loved his wife and he loved his children. He loved them so much that in order to spend some quality time with his family in New Jersey, he turned down an invitation from President Abraham Lincoln to attend a play at Ford’s Theater. In April 1865, Ulysses S. Grant was the Union’s greatest hero. After years of failure for Northern armies, it was Grant who had brought victory . The news that Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Grant at Appomattox brought joy to the North. Grant was the idol of the capital when he and his wife Julia arrived in Washington four days after the surrender. The couple were cheered by crowds everywhere they went; Julia recalled how joyous the city was, with cannons booming and flags waving and, at night, how public buildings were illuminated with candles in the windows. The next morning, April General Grant Skips the Theater 79 14, Grant attended a meeting of the cabinet where he discussed the future of the country. President Lincoln and his wife invited General and Mrs. Grant to go to the theater that night to see the comedy Our American Cousin. But after some hesitation, Grant declined. He politely informed the president that could not attend because he and Julia had arranged to travel by train to Burlington, New Jersey, to see their children. Why Burlington? When Lincoln brought Grant to the East to command the Union armies in the spring of 1864, Mrs. Grant had looked for a place where she and the couple’s four children could live. On the recommendation of a friend, she chose the quiet Jersey community of Burlington. The family’s two daughters were enrolled in St. Mary’s Hall, an Episcopal school for girls. (Many girls at the school had family ties to the South; once when Grant paid a visit some of the students sullenly refused to look at him.) So instead of going to the theater, General and Mrs. Grant took the evening train from Washington headed north. The Lincolns found another couple, a young army major and his fiancée, to accompany them to the theater. And it was there while watching the performance, that Lincoln was slain by the demented actor John Wilkes Booth. At 10:15 p.m., the moment the assassin’s bullet ploughed through Lincoln ’s brain, Grant and his wife were speeding through the night, headed for Philadelphia. There is a belief that someone on the train, perhaps an accomplice of Booth’s, tried to kill Grant. Julia felt she had been shadowed all day by a sinister-looking man who followed them to the train station. At one point on the train trip, someone tried to force his way into the Grants’ locked car. The train crew stopped him, and the man got away. Years later, the Grants received an anonymous letter from a man who claimed that he had gone on the train that night to kill the general. The would-be assassin wrote that he was glad he had failed in his mission. It was late at night when the Grants reached Philadelphia, still in ignorance of the assassination. In order to get to Burlington from Philadelphia in those days, it was necessary to take a ferry to Camden and then another train to Burlington. On the way by carriage to the Philadelphia 80 There’s More...