Ulysses S. Grant

I've been reading up on one of my favorite Presidents out of the past: Grant.

He was a very complex, yet very simple man. He was astoundingly honest and naive in equal parts.

I bet that most people don't know that under his administration, the Department of Justice was created, that he prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan, that he worked on good relations with the American Indians and that the USA was not involved in any foreign wars during his 2 terms.

But he was also naive: although not corrupt himself, he was blind to the corruption among some of his cabinet officials. And that naivitee allowed some pretty ugly scandals (whisky, whisky, whisky) to bloom during his tenure.

Also, his inattention to the economy led to the 1873 recession, which in turn led to the Democratic Party of that time recapturing the House of Representatives for the first time since before the Civil War, which neutralized any further attempts at continuing Reconstruction in the South, thereby ushering in the gross and ugly Jim Crow era.

After leaving office in 1877, he went on a world tour, including India, China, Japan and Jerusalem. He was the first (former) American President to visit the holy city.

After returning from his world-tour, he participated unwittingly in a ponzi-scheme and lost all of his money. As a result of this unfortunate development, the US congress passed an act to allow him to receive a general's retirement pay and on top of that, while battling the end-stages of throat cancer, he wrote his memoirs (at the urging of none other than Mark Twain himself) in order to make sure that his family would not be destitute after his death. He died just days after finishing the book.

But the most poignant detail of his life would be the letters he received shortly before his death, letters of thanks and good will and wishes for a recovery from Confederate soldiers whom were treated well by him after surrendering to his armies. He personally sent many back, made sure they had a shirt on their backs and some food in their pockets for the long trek home and told them to tend their farms and be good to their families. This left a huge impression among many Southernors. Grant could have lorded the North's victory over the South over those he defeated and rubbed it in their faces, but he did not.

1.5 MILLION people attended Grant's funeral in NYC. Then-President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, declared 30 days of national mourning for the former President. A number of years later, Grant's grave was moved to a memorial created for him, which we of course call "Grant's tomb". For years to come, the two names that most people outside of the USA knew the best about America were: Abraham Lincoln and (Hiram) Ulysses Grant.

The names "Washington", "Lincoln", "FDR", "Kennedy" and "Reagan" are so burnt into our memories as universally respected, truly great presidents and correctly so, I think, but I am starting to think that Pres. Grant actually also belongs in that category as well. I think that all of his accomplishments need a serious re-evaluation.

Dwight Eisenhower was a great admirer of Grant's.

Grant was just about as American as an American can get. We could use more Ulysses Grants these days.

I just wanted to share those thoughts with you. Feel free to add your thoughts as well.

-Stat

 

Grant's memoirs are a model of the type. They are an insightful history of important and significant events and at the same time the poignant journey of an individual soul. They can be read with profit by just about anyone who wishes to understand the ACW and/or to overcome personal demons and live a proper life despite them.

 

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In Texas, Davis was the last Reconstruction Republican governor. When Coke [a Democrat] overwhelming won the next free election, Davis refused to leave office and barricaded himself inside the capitol. The opposing governors, Davis and Coke, occupied two different levels of the capitol building at the same time. Davis sent for Texas militia to try to keep him in office; but they switched their loyalty to Coke. Then Davis appealed to President Grant to send federal troops to keep him in office. Not wanting to start another civil war, Grant declined. Duly elected Coke became governor and [as in other Confederate states], Texans voted solidly Democrat for the next 100 years.

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I need to read more of his writings. He's always fascinated me, for a lot of reasons, but I understand that he was destitute near the end, selling his memoirs just to get by and living paycheck to paycheck. I'm not sure about the causes of that, though, and that's not a judgment on him, just a curious fact. I'd love to read up more on his companionship with Mark Twain and his thoughts on the Civil War itself. Mostly just responding to follow and further educate myself.

 

Good man, good man.

 

Grant wrote his memoirs to give his family an income once he died and they did a good job of that. I was told once that the copyright dates in the US expire 75 years past the date of death for just that reason but I am uncertain there as that seems a bit too early for what is universally called the "Disney rules" to go into effect.

Grant is one of those people where the saying is "He had to succeed at what he went into in the end, he had failed at everything else." His nemesis was the bottle and he had actually left the military to be a storekeeper at one point but he had to return to familiar territory when that went belly up too. Militarily he was known as a "butcher" who lost men but gained victories and his main strength was summed up by Lincoln in two words, "He fights"

 

Having a great interest in military history I find Grant to be an underrated General. His Vicksburg campaign was in many ways a complex and brilliant campaign. One characteristic Grant had that many other Union generals lacked was a tendency to persevere in the face of setbacks. This was certainly demonstrated at what might have been the turning point of the war, the battle of Shiloh - a significant battle -- the 1987 125th reenactment of which I took part.

 

lol he was an alcoholic sociopath who mass murdered civilians and black slaves alike. As for 'Jim Crow', the northern states kept theirs, most of them making their Jim Crow laws even stricter in the decade preceding Lincoln's illegal war, especially Lincoln's home state of Illinois, which made it practically illegal for any black to make a legal living, which of course resulted in most blacks being arrested sooner or later and then rented out by the local sheriffs for fees, as laborers for local businesses. Some 700,000 or so 'freed slaves' were forced into contraband camps to die of starvation and disease, at least those who weren't forced to work on government plantations set up by the Lincoln military govts of 'freed' states, to keep those allegedly 'free' peoples from annoying white northerners. Grant was also Adolph Hitler's favorite American General; he hated Jews, too.

https://www.history.com/news/ulysses-grant-expulsion-jews-civil-war

 

The North won because they had a larger population, far more supplies and troops. The North lost over 400,000 troops compared to the South's 200,000 or so inadequately equipped soldiers, which doesn't point to any great 'generalship' on Grant's part, more like a Soviet style blunt human wave attacks.

 

Ok, I read up on that. Fascinating.

General Grant Expels Jews From His War Zone, 150 Years Ago - HISTORY

 

Closer to 260,000 vs 160,000.

 

I see most using numbers close to my generalization, and they don't include the 'freed slaves' who died in the contraband camps.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up-by-20-percent-in-new-estimate.html

https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/cwsurgeon/cwsurgeon/statistics

.... and so on. I'll stick with the conservative 600,000 or so, even though it's low.

 

Lincoln's Generals went on to commit all those atrocities they became inured to under Lincoln's war commanders against the Sioux and other Indian tribes after the Civil War. I don't get why liberals today think they're obligated to defend the Lincoln Myth; the war had nothing to with slavery as far as Lincoln was concerned., he was merely about massive corporate welfare programs and financial scams, like every other railroad lawyer was in that era.

 

Lincoln went to war to preserve the Union (after the Confederates fired the first shots). The Confederacy left the Union to preserve slavery.

 

Rubbish. Only one state seceded at first, and that was over the Morill Acts and tariff bills making it out of committee in Dec. In January, Buchanan tried to blockade Charleston; that prompted four or five more to secede, which is why Lincoln did the same thing, prompting the rest to secede. The south had already won all the Court battles over slavery; they had nothing to worry about there, especially while Tainey was still Chief Justice; that's just a lie. Blockading a port is an act of war, and was the 'first shot'. Your schoolyard analogy fails the smell test.

The Constitutional Convention specifically barred the Federal govt. from using force against a state, and they made it clear the Union was to be voluntary; there is nothing in it that bans secession, and in fact it was northern states who historically threatened secession in order to bully the rest to meet their demands. See also the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, and James Madison's Convention diary for May 31.

Oh yes, I forgot to add that Lincoln himself said Congress didn't have the authority to outlaw slavery in any state, and he also admitted his own Emancipation Proclamation was just a ruse and illegal anyway, and he vetoed the Wade-Davis bill because it tried to outlaw slavery for just those reasons, the second Bill to outlaw slavery that failed. the North wasn't fighting to end slavery, they were fighting to keep black people out of the northern states and the new territories altogether.


"But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery [meaning the Confederate constitutional convention]? Am I to let them go on... [a]nd open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten-percent tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?" ~ Lincoln to Colonel John B. Baldwin, deputized by the Virginian Commissioners to determine whether Lincoln would use force, April 4, 1861.

"You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail ; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result. "
Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Gustavus Fox, May 1, 1861

Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils....The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel".... Charles Dickens in a London periodical in December 1861

"The affair at Fort Sumter, it seems to us, has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified, and the administration thus receive popular support for its policy.... If the armament which lay outside the harbor, while the fort was being battered to pieces [the US ship The Harriet Lane, and seven other reinforcement ships], had been designed for the relief of Major Anderson, it certainly would have made a show of fulfilling its mission. But it seems plain to us that no such design was had. The administration, virtually, to use a homely illustration, stood at Sumter like a boy with a chip on his shoulder, daring his antagonist to knock it off. The Carolinians have knocked off the chip. War is inaugurated, and the design of the administration accomplished." ~ The Buffalo Daily Courier, April 16, 1861.

 

Yes, I can, and I already listed where it can be found, and the date it was brought up at the Convention, May 31. If that isn't enough for you then you aren't informed enough to cater to.

 

An actual hyperlink is customary, thank you.

 

Only for respectable posters who ask for them.

 

Everything I stated comes directly from primary sources. It's me and the contemporary account from the Confederates themselves vs you. Sorry, but you lose that one.

You are going to go with the Morrill Tariff? Really? There are so many things wrong with this statement. For one thing, the south had the votes it needed to defeat the Morrill Tariff. It only passed BECAUSE of secession. As far as other tariffs go, the south had already won the tariff war. The tariffs in place were they ones THEY had written.

Second, who should I believe about the causes of SC secession, you or a contemporary account from the South Carolinians who actually made the call to secede? Because the didn't mention tariffs at all, much less the Morrill Tariff specifically. In fact, the only time they mentioned taxes at all was when talking about taxes on slaves. They did, however, have a hell of a lot to say about slavery.

"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States." - South Carolina speaking for South Carolina on its causes for secession.

I'd like to see your source for Buchanan trying to form a blockade, but your timeline is still all off here. Even if Buchanan had tried forming a blockade in Charleston in January, that still would have been AFTER SC had started seizing federal property in December.

Additionally, between the time that South Carolina seceded and Lincoln declared his blockade, you say that "four or five" states seceded and that the remaining 7 or so seceded after Lincoln's blockade. This is backward. Between SC's secession (which was explicitly over slavery) and Lincoln's blockade, 7 states seceded. Only 3 seceded after the blockade, and none of them cited the Lincoln's blockade or Buchanan's attempted blockade as their reason for seceding. Lots of them mentioned slavery, though.

But let's put your theory to the test. First you said that SC seceded over the Morrill Tariff and not slavery; that's been disproven. So, next you say that the next "four or five" states seceded over Buchanan's attempted blockade and not slavery. Will this "theory" prove any better? Well, let's see. The next state to secede after SC, and after Buchanan's supposed attempt at a blockade, was Mississippi. Luckily for us, Mississippi left an explanation for their secession, and they do a much better job of getting straight to the point than SC did!

Let's begin. Mississippi starts by saying, "In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course."

Did you catch that?!?! They are about to get straight to declaring "the prominent reasons which have induced [their] course"! We'll find out in the very next sentence. Was it Buchanan's attempted blockade? Maybe tariffs? Suuuurvey says . . .

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world." - Mississippi speaking for Mississippi on its causes for secession.

And then they go into further detail about their slavery boner. Okay, so strike 2 I guess. You said SC seceded over the Morrill Tariff, and they said they did it over slavery. You said Mississippi seceded over Buchanan's attempted blockade, and they said they did it over slavery. But you still have 1 more swing! Okay, so you say the remaining states seceded over Lincoln's blockade. Well, the next state to secede after that blockade was Arkansas. Suuuurvey says . . .

"People of the northern states have organized a political party, purely sectional in its character, the central and controlling idea of which is, hostility to the institution of African slavery, as it exists in the southern states, and that party has elected a President and Vice President of the United States, pledged to administer the government upon principles inconsistent with the rights, and subversive of the interests of the people of the southern states . . . They have denied to the people of the southern states the right to an equal participation in the benefits of the common territories of the Union, by refusing them the same protection to their slave property therein that is afforded to other property, and by declaring that no more slave states shall be admitted into the Union . . . They have declared that Congress possesses, under the constitution, and ought to exercise, the power to abolish slavery in the territories, in the District of Columbia, and in the forts, arsenals and dock yards of the United States, within the limits of the slaveholding states." - Arkansas speaking for Arkansas on its causes for secession.

It goes on, but you get the idea. So, I'm afraid that's strike 3.

To recap:

I said: South Carolina seceded over slavery
You said: They seceded over the Morrill Tariff
South Carolina said: Um, actually we did secede over slavery

I said: Mississippi seceded over slavery
You said: They seceded over Buchanan's attempted blockade
Mississippi said: Um, actually we did secede over slavery

I said: Arkansas seceded over slavery
You said: They seceded Lincoln's blockade
South Carolina said: Um, actually we did secede over slavery

You should go back in time and explain that to the seceding states, because their writings make it clear that they weren't buying this. They still feared that the country was on a path to abolition. They feared an amendment that would end slavery, which the courts wouldn't be able to do anything about. They feared losing power as new, non-slave territories were added. Again, we know this because they said so. Whatever you think they should have believed, I'm trying to get you to look at what they actually believed.

I was talking about the literal first shot. But if you want to get more figurative, you are still wrong, as shown above. Even if Buchanan tried to blockade (which you haven't shown), that was still only after SC began seizing federal property.

It wasn't an "analogy." It was an accurate reflection of primary sources. I said that the Confederate states seceded over slavery . . . which is exactly what they said about themselves.

I may cover the rest later, but they are mostly straw men. I may also bring in additional evidence from the Cornerstone Speech, the Crittenden Compromise, statements from secession commissioners, and/or observations on the Constitution of the CSA itself. We'll see.

 

Nothing you posted rebuts anything I posted, just a big collection of segues to issues after the fact. Your ignorance ,or deliberate misrepresentations of the timelines are typical of the Lincoln Myth cults.

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More rubbish and misleading conflations. The Congressional records of the day prove otherwise; everyone knew the tariffs were going to pass, and therefore SC seceded.

Easy enough to explain. Most contemporary people knew what was it was about. They're saying ' a lot about slavery' AFTER secession while forming a new government, not before. Of course that wouldn't fit your fantasy so it is ignored in favor of rubbish. The South had already won the SC cases over slavery, and Tainey was still Chief Justice; Tainey was the Justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision. You probably didn't know that. The North, nor Lincoln, didn't give a hoot about slavery, just keeping black people out of northern states, free or slave. They were were going to lose a lot of money if the South seceded and passed their 10% tariffs.

"Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, 'to fire the Southern Heart' and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation"..... North American Review (Boston October 1862)

The rest of your post is just more rubbish in the same vein. Congress never bothered with anything resembling outlawing slavery until 1863, and both Bills failed to pass, with Lincoln himself vetoing the second one.

So you admit you don't know the sequence of events, or care, you just want to soapbox about 'slavery n stuff', as if you had anything to do with it in the 1800's. It was no longer Federal property' after secession, and blockading a port is an act of war, always has been and always will be; it was the first shot, and Lincoln fired the second shot, and got the war he wanted. We have his own words as to motive and intent.

Still nothing here, as usual. You don't even get the secession dates and order right.

As for 'contemporary observations', most of the major newspapers of the day covered that extensively:

"In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow." .... Chicago Daily Times December 1860

Contemporary enough? Yes, it is. And more ....

"Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils....The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel".... Charles ****ens in a London periodical in December 1861

"The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for independence on that of the South....". ..... London Times of 7 Nov 1861

"Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, 'to fire the Southern Heart' and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation"..... North American Review (Boston October 1862)

"They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests....These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union." ..... New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861


"At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States." ..... NY Times 22 March 1861

"the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports....by a revenue system verging on free trade...." .... Boston Transcript 18 March 1861

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"The affair at Fort Sumter, it seems to us, has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified, and the administration thus receive popular support for its policy.... If the armament which lay outside the harbor, while the fort was being battered to pieces [the US ship The Harriet Lane, and seven other reinforcement ships], had been designed for the relief of Major Anderson, it certainly would have made a show of fulfilling its mission. But it seems plain to us that no such design was had. The administration, virtually, to use a homely illustration, stood at Sumter like a boy with a chip on his shoulder, daring his antagonist to knock it off. The Carolinians have knocked off the chip. War is inaugurated, and the design of the administration accomplished." ~ The Buffalo Daily Courier, April 16, 1861.

"We have no doubt, and all the circumstances prove, that it was a cunningly devised scheme, contrived with all due attention to scenic display and intended to arouse, and, if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South.... We venture to say a more gigantic conspiracy against the principles of human liberty and freedom has never been concocted. Who but a fiend could have thought of sacrificing the gallant Major Anderson and his little band in order to carry out a political game? Yet there he was compelled to stand for thirty-six hours amid a torrent of fire and shell, while the fleet sent to assist him, coolly looked at his flag of distress and moved not to his assistance! Why did they not? Perhaps the archives in Washington will yet tell the tale of this strange proceeding.... Pause then, and consider before you endorse these mad men who are now, under pretense of preserving the Union, doing the very thing that must forever divide it." ~ The New York Evening Day-Book, April 17, 1861.

 

We also know what Lincoln's plans were for all those 'freed slaves'; he intended to confine those that failed to die in his contraband camps to plantations, forbid them to leave without written permission from their new owners. and work for $3 a month. See James McPhersons book on Reconstruction for the details of that 'freedom' the North envisioned for black people.

 

Grant was one of my favorite Generals. He was a good man. Not so good at running a business, but he was honest. Might be in the top 5 of my favorite Presidents.