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HE WAS A failure at just about everything he tried. The one thing he did well was an achievement that saved the nation and stamped out slavery.
The man was Ulysses S. Grant, the scruffy general who stepped in to marshal the dithering Union effort and win the Civil War for President Abraham Lincoln.
But Grant's glory had faded by the end of his two terms as president, a tenure riddled by scandal involving those around him.
He lived the last decade of his life a pariah and was nearly destitute when he died in 1885.
Public donations were collected over 12 years to build a final resting place for Grant, the nation's 18th president. Now that tomb, in New York City, has fallen into disrepair and has become home to derelicts and drug users and a canvas for graffiti artists.
The tomb also has...