Posted on 07/24/2015 2:30:32 PM PDT by the scotsman
'After Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, died 130 years ago today, a million and a half Americans watched his funeral procession. His mausoleum was a popular tourist attraction in New York City for decades. But for most of the 20th Century, historians and non-historians alike believed Grant was corrupt, drunken and incompetent, that he was one of the country's worst presidents, and that as a general, he was more lucky than good.
A generation of historians, led by Columbia's William A. Dunning, criticized Grant for backing Reconstruction, the federal government's attempt to protect the rights of black southerners in the 1860s and early 1870s. Black people, some Dunning school historians suggested, were unsuited for education, the vote, or holding office. Grant's critics were "determined the Civil War would be interpreted from the point of view of the Confederacy," said John F. Marszalek, a historian and executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association. "The idea that Grant would do things that would ensure citizenship rights for blacks was just awful and so he had to be knocked down."
Grant's "presidency was basically seen as corrupt, and it took place during Reconstruction, which was seen as basically the lowest point of American history," said Eric Foner, a civil war historian at Columbia University. "Whatever Grant did to protect former slaves was naïveté or worse."
In recent decades, that's all changed. The Grant you learned about in school isn't the one your kids will read about in their textbooks. And that's because historians are in the midst of a broad reassessment of Grant's legacy. In just nine years, between 2000 and 2009, Grant jumped 10 spots in a C-SPAN survey of historians' presidential rankings, from 33rd to 23rd -- a bigger jump than any other president.'
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?
No one. The deceased aren’t “buried “ in a tomb:-)
Maybe they can dig up Bedford Forrest and put him there.
His liver hasn’t been officially declared dead.
Actually his memoir is well written.
if only one could go back in time , bearing a scoped Whitworth , at Pittsburg Landing ....
Live him or hate him
Grant knew how to win.
Wish we had him for the fight against muslim terror
I’ve got Grant’s memoir sitting on the shelf beside me. It is indeed a great read.
I was thinking the (almost) same thing earlier today. Imagine how many lives could have been spared if someone had just put a bullet in jeff davis’s brain as he abandoned the senate.
IMO I think his publisher Mark Twain helped him.
Grant was good at turning the handle on Lincolns meat grinder.
MacKinlay Cantor has Grant dying in a riding accident outside Vicksburg in his If the South Had Won the Civil War. But he also has to make Lee's Gettysburg gamble pay off in the capture of Washington DC.
Find out what kind of whiskey he drinks so I can send a barrel of it to all my generals. - A. Lincoln
Lee always spoke very highly of Davis.
Most historians are statists. Grant was a monster who broke with centuries of precedent governing the conduct of war. When he couldn't defeat Lee in the field he turned to making war on civilians. Western civilization had not seen that kind of barbarism since the Thirty Years War.
Yeah, in those days, the president did not get millions in benefits when they left office.
Actually IMO the Army of the Potomac was the best behaved union Army. Not saying much though. They were good at marching south and running north.
If for no other reason that to cut the head off the snake.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.