Few writers about Grant acknowledge his religious sensibility. Often he's portrayed as religiously indifferent. At his death, his friend and publisher Mark Twain mocked claims from a Methodist minister of Grant's deathbed piety. But White writes:
"Grant's religious odyssey has been overlooked or misunderstood. He is a son of Methodism. When the fastest-growing Protestant denomination in the nineteenth century decided to build a national church in Washington, as one of its trustees Grant took part in its dedication four days before his inauguration as president in 1869. The unrecognized person in Grant's faith story is John Heyl Vincent, his Methodist pastor in Galena who went on to found the now world-famous Chautauqua Institution in New York in 1874 and summoned President Grant to participate there the following summer."
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