Ulysses S. Grant - Historical Reputation

Historical Reputation

Ulysses S. Grant, during the latter 19th Century, was popularly viewed as "a symbol of the American national identity and memory." Millions of people viewed his New York City funeral procession in 1885 and attended Grant's Tomb 1897 Manhattan dedication. However, at the turn of the 20th Century ex-Confederates and the Dunning School, began to minimize Grant's accomplishments as commanding general and President. Northerners in addition having desired national reconciliation distorted Grant's reputation, having viewed the Northern and Confederate cause on equal moral terms. Grant himself desired peace, however, he believed the Union victory was morally superior and meant the Southerners had to abide by the Northern victor's terms. From the 1920s through the 1980s Grant was viewed as a brutal warrior general and an inept President. However, though Grant's legacy as a military leader and President will always be entwined with the American Civil War and Reconstruction, revisionist historians have since begun to look at Grant from a new approach having appreciated his genius as general, his protection of African Americans during Reconstruction as commanding general and President, and his peace policy towards American Indians.

Historian Eric Foner stated that Grant was a "decent guy who tried his best" and that he had an exceptional combination of "character and policy". Foner stated that Grant's presidency did have corruption and that Grant himself too readily trusted his associates. In terms of assessing President Grant from an "emancipationist" historical view, Grant's policies look "surprisingly good." Grant secured the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment and enforced the rights of African Americans to vote. Grant's reputation has improved due to his use of federal troops and the Justice Department under his Enforcement Acts to prosecute and shut down the Ku Klux Klan from 1871 to 1873; the result, according to historian James McPherson, was that Grant's victory in 1872 was one of the fairest Presidential elections in the United States. Although Grant was criticized in the 1960s for the end of Reconstruction, historians believe Grant did the best he could and that according to Brooks Simpson "his limitations were also the limitations of his countrymen." Grant's policy for a peaceful assimilation and citizenship for Indians rather than their extermination has also improved his Presidential reputation. Grant's reputation as a soldier during the American Civil War has been criticized for removal of Jews as a class from his military department in an effort to stop the illegal cotton trade, and for his high casualties. Historian McPherson, however, stated that Grant as a general pioneered U.S. military capability to use "overwhelming power to attack the enemy's infrastructure"; an effective U.S. military strategy used in WW II.