Grant Ulysses S. Grant's persistent negative press

[contestedground]

Logic is over rated. I prefer using my prejudices instead. that way, my views are never challenged and I can say whatever I feel like without having to deal with such annoyances as evidence or good faith

You'll go far here.

 

[Good Soldier Shweik]

The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Elizabeth D. Samet, Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York 2019. Grant's memoirs as literature. Rather good. Her main point was Grant's unremitting demystification of the Civil War. Placing the unbelievable ups and downs of the first part of Grant's life in the context of world literature, is a worthwhile achievement. The notes are literature notes, not history. Beats Chernow by a large margin.

I bought an electronic copy this evening. Reading the first section has been both an eyeopener and a validation of beliefs. Grant really does write 21st century prose. The lost cause crowd really have had their brains polluted by Walter Scott. Comparing them shows why Grant isd so much better a prose stylist

 

[Drew]

It is easier to piggyback on someone else's work than to do the hard work of researching a totally new line of your own.Edited.

Edited. with President Grant. We've got measurable, objective failure, not least of which was the corruption on his watch.

Edited.
"What Grant meant was..." It's ridiculous to me people have made careers out of this nonsense.

 

[O' Be Joyful]

"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason's and Dixon's, but between patriotism and intelligence on one sight, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other."

"We are a republic whereof one man is as good as another...all should be possessed of education and intelligence enough to cast a vote with a right understanding of its meaning. A large association of ignorant men cannot, for any considerable period, oppose a successful resistance to tyranny and oppression from the educated few, but will inevitably sink into acquiescence to the will of intelligence, whether [the ignorant were] directed by the demagogue or by priestcraft. Hence the education of the masses becomes of the first necessity for the preservation of our institutions. They are worth preserving, because they have secured the greatest good to the greatest proportion of the population of any form of government yet devised."

Those words possess the eternal ring of truth for any moment in our nation's history. I suspect, nay I am convinced, that we would be hearing them repeatedly quoted and praised for their insight and wisdom by today's talking-head tv historians as a modern challenge and call to all, for eternal vigilance to preserve what Grant fought for, if..., they had been uttered by Lincoln. But, they were said by Grant and thus sit idly, almost uselessly, except for those of us that cherish history and are aware of their existence and their never-ending truth.

 

[Bruce Vail]

It's a remnant of the losers writing the history. We can see the White House website text isn't written by anyone who's anywhere near competent in history. Frank Freidel died in 1993 and journalist Hugh Sidey died in 2005, so the 2006 date on the book is rather suspect. Freidel's and Sidey's knowledge was quite obviously out of date.

Burrows died last year, and neither he nor Wallace are experts in Grant's presidency or on Reconstruction. They're obviously relying on faulty works, probably Dunning school writings.

It's more than a case of a lot of sore losers badmouthing the winning general. When Greeley ran against him in 1872, he ran as a critic of Reconstruction policy and an ex-Republican disgusted by the corruption of the Grant administration. Grant won easily, of course, but that doesn't mean that Reconstruction wasn't failing, or that his administration was clean.

Some critics also point to his inaction on the great depression or his bloody Indian policy as major failures entirely unrelated to the Civil War. The Grant presidential record leaves a lot of room of criticism, and can not be fairly described as just an unfair attack by sore-lose Lost Causers.

 

[wausaubob]

It's more than a case of a lot of sore losers badmouthing the winning general. When Greeley ran against him in 1872, he ran as a critic of Reconstruction policy and an ex-Republican disgusted by the corruption of the Grant administration. Grant won easily, of course, but that doesn't mean that Reconstruction wasn't failing, or that his administration was clean.

Some critics also point to his inaction on the great depression or his bloody Indian policy as major failures entirely unrelated to the Civil War. The Grant presidential record leaves a lot of room of criticism, and can not be fairly described as just an unfair attack by sore-lose Lost Causers.

There were business cycles before Grant and after Grant. What Grant did not do was use inflated currency to negate the federal debt. That would have been good for him, but would have destablized the economy.
By the time Grant took office, the frontier was closing. Sending the Indians westward was no longer possible: thus another problem pushed into the future had to be dealt with.
Horace Greeley stood for everything. He contradicted himself every 6 months. There are reasons his paper went bust, and the poor man had no business running for President. Greeley was a scandal sheet publisher who advocated a new cause per month. He never did anything constructive in business or government, other than run his newspaper into the ground.

 

[wausaubob]

Greeley never served on a school board, or in a state legislature, or in the army. He did not compete in the fast growing industrial economy. He was competing in the New York newspaper business, and they were busy ruining each other.

 

[Bee]

It's more than a case of a lot of sore losers badmouthing the winning general. When Greeley ran against him in 1872, he ran as a critic of Reconstruction policy and an ex-Republican disgusted by the corruption of the Grant administration. Grant won easily, of course, but that doesn't mean that Reconstruction wasn't failing, or that his administration was clean.

Some critics also point to his inaction on the great depression or his bloody Indian policy as major failures entirely unrelated to the Civil War. The Grant presidential record leaves a lot of room of criticism, and can not be fairly described as just an unfair attack by sore-lose Lost Causers.

We all know what a reliable critic Greeley was:

 

[wausaubob]

One side of Grant there was a person, Senator Sumner, who knowingly used the most inflammatory rhetoric possible to inflame civil unrest, and to try incite a war with a foreign power. On the other side was Horace Greeley who lied about everything, and whose lies usually contradicted what he had written a few years ago.

 

[wausaubob]

Someone like @contestedground would be useful in pointing out that the reasons Grant should have declined the nomination were clear to Grant in 1868. And they turned out to be valid. But as Prof. Simpson pointed out, not running for President probably meant regressing backward into the possible renewal of sectional violence. Any result was better than a return to civil war. Though the actual result was only somewhat better for the nation as a whole, and disastrous for the previously enslaved who remained in the south for the next generation.

 

[GrantCottage1885]

Hows this for criticism, I get the distinct feeling this individual doesn't have a great deal of confidence in Grant:

"How is it that Grant who was behind at Ft. Henry, drunk at Donelson, surprised and whipped at Shiloh and even driven back from Oxford, Miss., is still in command? Our noble army of the Mississippi is being wasted by the foolish, drunken, stupid Grant...a jackass in the original package. He is a poor drunken imbecile. He is a poor stick sober, and he is most of the time more than half drunk, and much of the time idiotically drunk...Grant will fail miserably, hopelessly, eternally. You may look for and calculate upon his failure in every position in which he may be placed, as a perfect certainty."
-From Murat Halstead editor of the Cincinnati Commercial in letters to Sec. Salmon P. Chase early 1863.

Grant was dogged by negative press after Shiloh and on the run up to Vicksburg especially. Many editors would take any shred of information, true or false, that fits their preconceived agenda and run away with it. One editor is claimed to have told his correspondents "If there is no news, send rumors." Well it turns out those rumors never died.

 

[James N.]

I think that the real problem Grant has is always being judged by his presidency rather than for his generalship - except of course by people like US who are aware that he was something else before he became President. Even then, his generalship has been similarly tarnished by the charge of his being nothing but a butcher; however works of military historians beginning with Bruce Catton in the 1960's and 1970's have done a lot to rehabilitate his reputation as a general for the public. Unfortunately, the same has yet to be said for Reconstruction or Gilded Age politics that define Grant's presidency, despite Chernow and other modern revisionist writers.

 

[Cavalry Charger]

I get the distinct feeling this individual doesn't have a great deal of confidence in Grant:

His lack of confidence is noted

And also dismissed

Well it turns out those rumors never died.

It's one reason I'm so glad he wrote his memoirs. He got to have his say on his life, and his times. At least those that led up to the end of the war. Of course, we can always assume some level of self-interest, but what can't be hidden is the genuine man and his thinking.

I'm quite sure some people didn't understand his level of humility, and lack of vainglory.

In many ways he may have looked like a 'loser' to them.

But, as Julia Dent Grant said, "They don't know my Captain Grant".

 

[Drew]

One side of Grant there was a person, Senator Sumner, who knowingly used the most inflammatory rhetoric possible to inflame civil unrest, and to try incite a war with a foreign power. On the other side was Horace Greeley who lied about everything, and whose lies usually contradicted what he had written a few years ago.

Horace Greeley was of course Abraham Lincoln's greatest and perhaps singularly most effective advocate.

If he "lied about everything" with respect to Ulysses Grant, we've got some thinking to do.

 

[cash]

Horace Greeley was of course Abraham Lincoln's greatest and perhaps singularly most effective advocate.

If he "lied about everything" with respect to Ulysses Grant, we've got some thinking to do.

Greeley was in no way Lincoln's "greatest and perhaps singularly most effective advocate," as "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" shows clearly.

 

[Drew]

Greeley was in no way Lincoln's "greatest and perhaps singularly most effective advocate," as "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" shows clearly.

Horace Greeley organized Abraham Lincoln's original New York City tour, arranged his widely distributed and most famous photograph in 1860, got himself appointed to the Oregon (I think) delegation to the 1860 Republican Convention (NY Governor William Seward would have nothing to do with either Greeley or Lincoln), and

Advocated for and facilitated the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860.

Now, we are told Horace Greeley "lied about everything."

I'm not going away until you guys get your story straight.

 

[huskerblitz]

I think that the real problem Grant has is always being judged by his presidency rather than for his generalship - except of course by people like US who are aware that he was something else before he became President.

Depends. I dont think the general perception of his generalship is all that bad. His PRESIDENCY is judged to be bad because of the issues already addressed. If we look just at what type of president he was, his time in the military shouldn't come into play.

 

[cash]

It's more than a case of a lot of sore losers badmouthing the winning general. When Greeley ran against him in 1872, he ran as a critic of Reconstruction policy and an ex-Republican disgusted by the corruption of the Grant administration. Grant won easily, of course, but that doesn't mean that Reconstruction wasn't failing, or that his administration was clean.

Some critics also point to his inaction on the great depression or his bloody Indian policy as major failures entirely unrelated to the Civil War. The Grant presidential record leaves a lot of room of criticism, and can not be fairly described as just an unfair attack by sore-lose Lost Causers.

Political opponents always badmouth their opposition the lost causers gave it legs.

 

[cash]

Horace Greeley organized Abraham Lincoln's original New York City tour, arranged his widely distributed and most famous photograph in 1860, got himself appointed to the Oregon (I think) delegation to the 1860 Republican Convention (NY Governor William Seward would have nothing to do with either Greeley or Lincoln), and

Advocated for and facilitated the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860.

Now, we are told Horace Greeley "lied about everything."

I'm not going away until you guys get your story straight.

"The course of Greeley's opinion and treatment of Lincoln was peculiar and tortuous."
http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom...mporaries/abraham-lincoln-and-horace-greeley/

So not the greatest or most effective advocate.

 

[Bruce Vail]

Political opponents always badmouth their opposition the lost causers gave it legs.

Lost Causers definitely opposed Grant, just like the true-blue radical Republicans.

FYI - Recently read the new Frederick Douglass bio and Douglass is quoted as saying he supported Grant because Grant was the candidate most feared by the (white) Southerners.