FREE ESSAY ON ULYSSES S. GRANT

ULYSSES S. GRANT

Although Ulysses S. Grant's contemporaries placed him in the highest position of great
Americans along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the twentieth century has
seen him fade. His presidency has been almost universally condemned, and he is
consistently ranked second to rock bottom Warren G. Harding in polls of historians to
rate the presidents. 
Although his military reputation has declined as well, it nevertheless continues to win
him a steady following. Even his most faithful admirers, however, tend to end their
studies conveniently at Appomattox, and one senses a wide regret that Grant's public
career extended beyond the Civil War. Taking note of this trend, John Y. Simon observes
that some biographers seem to have wished that Grant had accepted Lincoln's invitation to
Ford's Theatre on the night the president was shot- the night that John Wilkes Booth had
intended to assassinate Grant along with Lincoln. 
Much of what has been passed down as an objective appraisal of Grant's presidency more
closely resembles the partisan critiques that were produced by a relatively small group
of performers during the 1870's-- in many ways the intellectual ancestors of the present
historical profession. Although such a minority can sometimes be a source of
enlightenment, in this case, it has contributed a monolithic picture of a complex era
that is about as depressing as it is inaccurate. Little consideration is given the
checkered nature of Grant's eight years of the Gilded Age. Michael Les Benedict observes
that Grant dominated his era, a stronger resident than most have recognized. 
In both the domestic and foreign realms, President Grant could claim a wide range of
achievements. In the aftermath of the most serious fiscal problems the nation had ever
faced, he pursued policies that stopped inflation, raised the nations credit, and reduced
taxes and the national debt by over $300 million and $435 million respectively. His veto
of the Inflation Act of 1874 and subsequent drive for what became the Resumption Act of
1875 shocked many who looked to Congress to cure the nation's economic ills, and the
panic of 1873 came to an abrupt end when the act went into effect in 1879. The successful
arbitration of the Alabama and Virginus disputes mark not only foreign policy victories
for the United States, but a significant precursor to the future course of international
affairs. The establishment of the principle of the international arbitration through the
Treaty of Washington, would later be embodied in the Hague Tribunal, the League of
Nations, the World Court, and the United Nations. 
Grant's desire for peace was evident to me from the beginning of my research, but I did
not realize how far-reaching it was until I noted the steadiness and rectitude he
displayed throughout the presidential electoral crisis of 1876-77, which could have
become a disaster. Also remarkable to me was Grant's Quaker Indian Peace Policy: on the
eve of what could have become the complete genocide of the American Indian, Grant acted
decisively to begin two decades of reform that for the first time promoted the welfare of
Indians as individuals and broke ground for their eventual citizenship. 
However important these issues may seem, the traditional evaluation of Grant as president
nevertheless pays far less attention to them than to the issue of corruption. Unlike
other cases of presidents charged with allowing corruption, however, the corruption that
reformers condemned during Grant's two terms, for the most part, was merely the practice
of making appointments through the spoils system. As Benedict points out, scholars have
tended to accept the judgment of the anti-Grant reformers that this (patronage) system
was inherently corrupt, but that is a very questionable conclusion, and reformers had
ulterior, political motives for making the charge. 
The matter of whether patronage is necessarily synonymous with corruption provides an
additional question of consistency; for historians, if the reformers' verdict is true,
must explain how Grant's predecessors, most of whom practiced patronage, led
administrations exempt from the brand of corruption. What is ironic about the traditional
picture of honest reformers opposing the president's corrupt party henchmen is that Grant
was actually the first president since the establishment of the Jacksonian spoils system
to initiate civil service reform. 
The arguability of the reformers' charges against Grant extends to cases of actual
corruption. The Credit Mobilier scandal, the most conspicuous of the so-called Grant
scandals, was in fact only uncovered by the administration. The corrupt activity had
occurred in 1867-68, before Grant even became president. Nowhere else in the American
political tradition is a president held accountable for corruption dating back to a
previous administration. The reformers also charged such figures as cabinet members
George H. Williams and George M. Robeson with corruption, and although the record showed
the baselessness of such charges, historians evidently see this minor point as
negligible. No major study of the Grant presidency makes the connection between the
untrustworthiness and utter damage of the reformers' accusations and Grant's adverse
behavior toward such reformers as Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin Bristow, who made
serious allegations concerning the president's private secretary, Orville Babcock,
without sufficient evidence. The weakness of the reformers' charges, however, is in
itself an insufficient explanation of the political environment of the Grant presidency.
The crucial issue that remains to be explored--Reconstruction-- sheds light on the entire
political situation. There was more to the reformers than civil service reform, just as
there was more to Grant's supporters than patronage. 
In order to understand the reformers, one must understand the circumstances under which
they first came into existence as an organized group dedicated specifically to defeating
Grant in 1872 through the Liberal Republican Party. Grant's suspension of habeas corpus
in nine South Carolina counties in 1871 marked a singular display of peacetime
presidential power, and in Benedict's words,  The effect was electric. Reformers lamented
the sacrifice of 'real' issues, such as the tariff and civil-service reform, to the
'dead' one symbolized by the 'bloody shirt'...and the use of federal troops (in the
South) as gross violations of civil liberty, but they were also forced at last to give up
their open hostility to equal rights and black suffrage. Announcing a new departure, they
promised to accept the finality of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments.
The new departure enabled Democrats, reform Republicans, and some Republican politicians
who had lost power in their party to unite against Grant's reelection. Calling themselves
Liberal republicans, the dissident Republicans met...(in 1872 ) to name a candidate whom
the Democrats would endorse. 
The administration's success that led to the new departure was one of President Grant's
crowning achievements, but Grant would pay dearly for it in history. Having lost their
old focus and finding themselves desperately in need of a new one, the Liberal Republican
movement began to focus upon what they questionably termed corruption. Both the birth and
the survival of Grant's enemies as a group specifically focused on Grant himself and the
new politics of the Gilded Age was deeply intertwined with Grant's dedication to
Reconstruction. (Liberal reform had come to view Reconstruction as an expression of all
the real and imagined evils of the Gilded Age, Historian Eric Foner asserted, and the
rise of (pro-Grant) Stalwarts did less to undermine Republican Southern policy than the
emergence of an influential group of party reformers whose revolt against the new
politics of the Grant era caused them to demand...an end to Reconstruction. 
It is the centrality of Reconstruction issues in Grant's political situation that has led
to a great deal of oversight by historians. Grant's years in office cannot be understood
if the politics of the Gilded Age is separated from the politics of Reconstruction. Both
were primary features of the 1870's, and in order to understand Grant's political
situation, historians must recognize how fundamental the inconsistency was between the
reformers' revered conception of government by the best educated and the notion of black
rule in the South, the latter being an essential part of Grant's program. The president's
dedication to Reconstruction, which endured even after most national leaders declared it
misguided, produced a civil rights record which, according to Richard N. Current, made
Grant, in a certain respect, one of the greatest presidents with whom only Lyndon B.
Johnson can even be compared... 
A look at all of the pressing issues during the Grant administration, but especially
Reconstruction, clearly indicates that the portrait of politics during the 1870's as a
mere matter of who practiced a less desirable system of patronage and who advocated civil
service reform is seriously distorted. The traditional verdict on the Grant presidency
does not even begin to appear logical until one accepts the flawed assumption that the
corruption / civil service reform issue was more important than such issues as
Reconstruction, international crises, Indian affairs, and the multitude of economic
matters, all combined. As William B. Hesseltine admits in his definitive study of
President Grant, Grant's enemies....stuffed the ballot boxes of history against Grant...

Bibliography
Bibliogaphy
Ringwalt, J. Luther (John Luther) Anecdotes of General Ulysses S. Grant illustrating his
military and political career and his personal traits.
Richardson, Albert D. (Albert Deane). A personal history of Ulysses S. Grant.
King, Charles. The True Ulysses S. Grant. 
Garland, Hamlin. Ulysses S. Grant; his life and character.