Lewis Cass’s Grave

Few names are stamped on Michigan more heavily than Cass — a county, a river, streets, schools — and few careers were more consequential or more troubling. Lewis Cass governed the Michigan Territory for nearly two decades, served as a U.S. senator, secretary of war, and secretary of state, and was the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 1848. He was also, as territorial governor and under President Jackson, a central architect of the treaties and removal policies that stripped Native nations of their land across the Great Lakes.

He rests at Elmwood, a giant of 19th-century Michigan whose legacy the state is still reckoning with. We include him as history, not homage — the full story matters. On our list, with the hard parts intact.