Fables of the Reconstruction

Sean Wilentz takes to the pages of the NY Times to rehabilitate the historical image of US Grant. It's about 100 years late, but whatever: Who's Buried In the History Books?

In reality, what fueled the personal defamation of Grant was contempt for his Reconstruction policies, which supposedly sacrificed a prostrate South, as one critic put it, “on the altar of Radicalism.” That he accomplished as much for freed slaves as he did within the constitutional limits of the presidency was remarkable. Without question, his was the most impressive record on civil rights and equality of any president from Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson.

After Grant left the presidency in 1877, he was widely hailed as the most famous and admired living American, his alleged transgressions overcome by a fabulously successful two-year world tour. He was still beloved at his death in 1885 — a reverence embodied by his monumental tomb in Manhattan, overlooking the Hudson.

But Grant came in for decades of disgraceful posthumous attacks that tore his reputation into tatters. Around 1900, pro-Confederate Southern historians began rewriting the history of the Civil War and cast Grant as a “butcher” during the conflict and a corrupt and vindictive tyrant during his presidency. And the conventional wisdom from the left has relied on the bitter comments of snobs like Henry Adams, who slandered Grant as the avatar of the crass, benighted Gilded Age.

I always think it's important to point out that it was DEMOCRATS - the self-proclaimed truth telling tribunes of the people - who aided and abetted this sort of historical slander. Also, it's notable that many of these DEMOCRATS were segregationists on the one hand and statist progressives on the other. A charming bunch, and it's a wonder how they obtained the privilege of having the last word in these sorts of things.

Grant, of course, was a remarkable man. In 1858, he was working behind the counter of his father's store after having been drummed out of the army for drunkenness (fun fact: his drinking became terminal right here in Northern California!). 10 years later he was president of the United States. In the intervening years, he had led the armies of the North to victory in an all consuming civil war. But, all I ever heard about in school was that Grant was "corrupt," although the exact details of that corruption were never quite spelled out.

As Wilentz notes, the "trend" is for historians to look more favorably upon Grant. Thanks, fellas! A good place to start is Jean Edwards Smiths' biography, which he wrote with the explicit aim at presenting a more balanced portrait of the general and his times. I