I would not be surprised if Anne Marshall feels sort of like John Adams or Buzz Aldrin or John Landry as she begins her new role as executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library and its founding organization the Ulysses S. Grant Association.

Marshall is the second director of Grant Presidential Library, which has been housed at Mitchell Memorial Library on the Mississippi State campus since it was established 10 years ago.

In the process, Marshall bears both the benefit and burden of being second, as did Adams who succeeded George Washington as President, Aldrin who followed, quite literally, Neil Armstrong’s footsteps on the moon and Landry, who followed Roger Bannister to become the second person to run a mile in less than four minutes.

These are obviously not perfect comparisons. Washington, Armstrong and Bannister will be remembered through the generations. But in another respect, Marshall is stepping into an even larger shadow.

If not Washington, someone would have become our first president. Likewise, someone would be the first to walk on the moon or run a sub-four-minute mile.

But there would be no Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State were it not for its first director, John Marzalek.

Marzalek taught history at MSU from 1973-2002. During that time he was an active member of the U.S. Grant Association. When he became its director in 2008, he led the effort to relocate Grant papers, then held at Southern Illinois University and, prior to that, at Ohio State University, Grant’s home state.

Marzalek was not content for MSU to be simply the repository of the relatively limited amount of Grant’s original papers, but built on the collection, adding thousands of authenticated copies of Grant’s writing, correspondence and artifacts.

In 2012, MSU became the permanent home of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, one of just five universities to hold the distinction of being home to a presidential library.

The Grant Library does meet the conventional definition of a presidential library in the sense that most of the collection are not original documents.

But only a purist would bother with that distinction. With a collection that has now reached 32 volumes and more than 15,000 linear feet of material painstakingly preserved and cataloged, chances are someone somewhere would have continued to collect, compile and organize additional Grant-related material, but it’s hard to imagine that it would have approached what we see today at MSU were it not for Marzalek’s devotion over the years.

Any serious scholar of Grant will no doubt spend hours of research at the Grant Library.

The efforts to collect and preserve these materials is a task worthy of Grant, who, aside from Lincoln, may have been the greatest American of the 19th Century, given his roles first as a military leader and, later, a statesman.

Grant’s leadership of the Union forces turned the tide of the Civil War. It’s not too far-fetched to imagine that were it not for Grant, Mississippi State might be the home of the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library. So his battlefield exploits alone cement Grant in our nation’s history.

As 18th President of the United States, it was Grant’s determined leadership that helped restore a nation, ushering in an era that, for a brief time, provided Black Americans with opportunities long denied under slavery, freedoms that were quickly dismantled after Grant’s second term.

For those reasons, Grant is worthy of the efforts of people like Marzalek and, now, Marshall.

The Grant Library is a point of pride for Mississippi State and our community, a valuable resource for scholars and a delight to anyone who appreciates history.

Marshall, who has taught at MSU since 2006, is an accomplished Civil War historian in her own right and a perfect fit as Marzalek’s successor.

I’m sure she will build on Marzalek’s work.

I make one suggestion where that is concerned.

Somewhere in the Grant Library, there should be a space dedicated in the name of John Marzalek.

He has earned that distinction.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

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