Last updated: February 27, 2024
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Ulysses S. Grant Meets Queen Victoria: A Test of Protocol
From John Russell Young, "Around the World with General Grant."
On May 28, 1877, former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, his wife Julia, and youngest son Jesse stepped off the iron cargo passenger ship, the SS Indiana. They had just arrived in Liverpool, England. This first stop marked the beginning of what would become the Grants' famed two-and-a-half-year world tour. The Grants had a very personal reason to visit England. Their daughter, Nellie, and her family lived in the country.
The former President and First Lady couldn't escape their celebrity status during their month-long visit. They soon received the following message: "The Lord Steward has received Her Majesty's command to invite General and Mrs. Grant to dinner at Windsor Castle on Tuesday, 26th June, and to remain until the following day - Windsor Castle 27th June 1877." On the other side it read "Buckingham Palace, 1877." Britain's Queen Victoria had just extended her hospitality to the Grants. The former General and President was about to meet his first European head of state, but a protocol issue almost derailed this important meeting.
Queen Victoria couldn't have been more different than Ulysses S. Grant, yet they were both highly regarded leaders of their countries. Born in 1819, Victoria was only a few years older than Grant. But unlike Grant, who was the son of a tanner and faced financial struggles while working as a farmer in St. Louis, Victoria was born into royalty and was the granddaughter of King George III. In 1837 Victoria became Queen of England at the tender age of eighteen upon the death of her uncle, William IV. She was queen two years before Ulysses entered the United States Military Academy. One similarity they had in common were happy, loving marriages. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were devoted to each other and were married for 17 years. They had nine children, and after Albert’s death at age forty-two Victoria mourned for him the rest of her life. At the time of the Grants visit with Queen Victoria, Ulysses and Julia had been happily married for almost 29 years and had four children.
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Queen Victoria presided at the head of a constitutional monarchy overseeing a vast British Empire. Her invitation to Ulysses S. Grant was the first time that a British monarch received a former US president. (Other previous presidents such as James Buchanan served as Ministers of Great Britain, but served in those roles before they were elected as presidents.) As Grant was not a current president or monarch, official protocol had not been established for how to handle the visit. This confusion created awkward moments surrounding their meeting. According to Adam Badeau, Grant's aide and a member of the traveling party, "the Queen was out driving and would not be visible until dinner so that all the nonsense that was published about Her Majesty welcoming General Grant at the foot of the grand staircase as she would have done the Shah of Persia, or any other black or white monarch who visited her, was without foundation." The other awkward matter involved the Grants' son Jesse.
Jesse Grant was still a teenager at this time. He wasn't enamored with the invitation to dine with the Queen. According to Badeau, Jesse explained, "the honor was meant for [his] father, not for him." However, Julia wished to see her son treated with the same respect as she and Ulysses. Jesse received an invitation like the one his father received. He soon found out that, like Badeau, he was to dine with the Queen's household and not at the royal table where his parents were invited. Badeau recalled that "Jesse declared that he would not dine with the Household. He had been invited by the Queen and if he could not sit at her table he would return to town.” According to a duchess on behalf of Queen Victoria, her reasoning was that too many at her table would cause the queen "dizziness." In the end, Grant, who wished for his son to stay, proved diplomatic by reaching out to the master of the household to clarify Jesse's situation. Grant stated to him that although "he had no wish to suggest any change in the arrangements . . . the invitation had been misunderstood. [Grant] supposed that [Jesse] was to dine at the same table with himself." In the end Queen Victoria allowed Jesse to dine at her table with his parents.
The actual dinner went smoothly, with the Queen inquiring of how Grant's visit to England was going. Queen Victoria also conversed with Julia about her labors and duties as queen. Julia responded, "Yes I can imagine them; I too have been the wife of a great ruler." Grant even showed Queen Victoria a telegram he recently received from General Hartranft, the commander of the national encampment of Union veterans. It read, "your comrades in national encampment assembled in Rhode Island, send heartiest greeting to their old commander, and desire, through England's Queen, to thank England for [Grant's] reception.” Badeau wrote that despite the issues with protocol, the "queen was gracious throughout. This dinner was the last time that Ulysses S. Grant and Queen Victoria ever met but upon hearing of Grant's death in 1885, Queen Victoria directed her Minister to the United States to offer her condolences. Her son, the Prince of Wales, further told the American Minister in London to express his "regret and the advantage they should always consider it had been to them to have made his acquaintance."