This week I want to focus on Ulysses S. Grant. You could say he was not an American Founder since he lived later in our history, but he greatly influenced our history, enough to draw the ire of leftist rioters who want to tear down any memory of him and what he did. They obviously don’t care about racial equality or they wouldn’t want to do that.
Ulysses S. Grant is known mostly for being the Commanding General of the Union armies during the Civil War in which the Northern states defeated the Southern states. As a result the Union was preserved and abolition of slavery was assured. He was also our 18th president and advocated for the passage of the 15th Amendment, which granted voting rights to former African-American slaves. As president, Ulysses Grant used federal troops to defeat terrorism against African-Americans in the southern states by the Ku Klux Klan.
“To him, more than to any other man, the Negro owes his enfranchisement,” Frederick Douglass remarked after Grant’s death. “When red-handed violence ran rampant through the South, and freedmen were being hunted down like wild beasts in the night, the moral courage and fidelity of Gen. Grant transcended that of his party.”
In addition, while some were pushing for genocide of certain Native American tribes, President Grant urged for more peaceful, compassionate treatment for Native Americans and pushed for them to be given full citizenship. He also instituted reforms of government agencies which had often cheated them in the past. His idea of “placing all the Indians on large reservations, as rapidly as it can be done” sounds harsh and inhumane to our ears but overall he was guiding our nation’s policy in right direction.
Was Ulysses S. Grant a perfect person? No. In addition to one of his ideas about Native Americans discussed above, even though he was considered an honest man, he appointed unscrupulous people in his administration that were embroiled in various scandals. He was human as we all are, but his achievements served to further the American ideals of freedom and equality and for that he should remain an honored American.
