Canadian
Sergeant
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2017
*Mike Decided the tie breaker
I wonder whether U.S. Grant's image will ever change, in the mind of the general public, teachers, and of many historians, from the simplistic drunkard/butcher/corrupt one. It's an image that's so deeply ingrained that very few people seem to question it, even when they're writing history.
The top results in a Google search on Grant are usually Wikipedia and the White House. It's all most people will ever read about him.
I've mentioned before on this forum that I find it weird and disgraceful that on the White House website Grant is the only president who is essentially introduced by the critiques of his contemporary political enemies. When he was elected, the American people hoped for an end to turmoil. Grant provided neither vigor nor reform. Looking to Congress for direction, he seemed bewildered. One visitor to the White House noted “a puzzled pathos, as of a man with a problem before him of which he does not understand the terms.
Contrast that to the introduction to Andrew Johnson: Although an honest and honorable man, Andrew Johnson was one of the most unfortunate of Presidents. Arrayed against him were the Radical Republicans in Congress, brilliantly led and ruthless in their tactics. Even James Buchanan gets a somewhat more respectful introduction, an acknowledgement of the difficulty of his assignment: Presiding over a rapidly dividing Nation, Buchanan grasped inadequately the political realities of the time. Relying on constitutional doctrines to close the widening rift over slavery, he failed to understand that the North would not accept constitutional arguments which favored the South. Nor could he realize how sectionalism had realigned political parties: the Democrats split; the Whigs were destroyed, giving rise to the Republicans.
The text long predates the current occupant of the White House, and is based on a 2006 book called The Presidents of the United States of America, by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey.
Wikkipedia is a bit more balanced, a shifting battleground between people who have read some historians and people who are determined to get "corruption" in as many times as possible. The separate page on corruption in the Grant administration is closely watched by its authors, who really, really want "scandal" in bold face type at the top of the page. Contrast that with, say, Attila the Hun, whose treatment is a bit more nuanced: The historiography of Attila is faced with a major challenge, in that the only complete sources are written in Greek and Latin by the enemies of the Huns. Attila's contemporaries left many testimonials of his life, but only fragments of these remain. Genghis Khan, admittedly controversial, gets an admission that Like other notable conquerors, Genghis Khan is portrayed differently by conquered peoples than those who conquered with him. Negative views persist in histories written by many cultures from different geographical regions.
Our Sam Grant hasn't seemed to benefit from different perceptions in different geographical regions.
I've been listening to a long and extremely detailed audiobook on the history of New York City. Painstakingly researched, or so I believed, until I got to the fascinating 1870s, where Grant's presidency is mentioned occasionally. The word "corrupt" is always, I repeat, always said in conjunction with President Grant. The one time Grant does something that the author appears to agree with, trying to counter the administration's corruptions is cited as a motivation. When Gould and Fisk attempt to corner the gold market, the president is "in on it." When the Secretary of the Treasury dumps gold onto the market and precipitates Black Friday, the author says that he was responding to public pressure, never mentioning Grant's belated realization of what was happening, leaving the impression that Grant was still "in on it." While Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace published Gotham in 2003, long predating Charles Calhoun, Ronald C. White, Ron Chernow, Joan Waugh and H.W. Brands, the work of Brooks D. Simpson and (albeit lawyer) Frank Scaturro had already delved behind the facade of the corrupt oaf in the White House to find a much more complex and intelligent person.
I think U.S. Grant deserves at least as much respect among the general public as, well, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun. I wonder how much longer it will take for the work of recent historians to trickle down to the White House and Wikipedia.
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