The Grant Memorial is a contributor to the Civil War Monuments in Washington, D.C., of the National Register of Historic Places.

[6] A striking feature of the central statue is Grant's calm (almost disaffected) attitude amidst the raging fighting going on around him.

Despite the impending course change the horse on the right is able to continue lunging forward due to a broken strap on the right bridle bit.

To the north the Cavalry Group depicts a color squad consisting of seven cavalrymen charging into battle.

[8][9] Work on the memorial was begun in 1902 as the largest ever commissioned by Congress at the time,[4] was created by sculptor Henry Merwin Shrady and architect Edward Pearce Casey.

[11] Shrady spent 20 years of his life working on the memorial and died, stressed and overworked, two weeks before its dedication in 1922.

The layer of green corrosion on the memorial's bronze was removed to return it to its original brown color.