Historical reputation of Ulysses S. Grant

From the time Grant was hailed across the North as the winning general in the American Civil War his military reputation has held up fairly well. He was roundly credited as the General who "saved the Union," and although he has been the subject of some criticism over the years, this reputation largely stands intact. His presidential reputation has not always fared so well. Although his nomination as president of the United States in 1868 was considered "a foregone conclusion" and he easily won the election, his reputation as president began to suffer from congressional investigations into corruption in his administration. However, his reputation has improved in the 21st century, for his prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan and for his protection and legal support of African Americans. He is also recognized for the creation of the first Civil Service Commission, and appointment of cabinet reformers, who prosecuted the Whiskey Ring.

After leaving office in 1877, Grant's reputation soared during his well-publicized diplomatic world tour. Accusations of Grant's alleged excessive drinking hounded him for most of his military and political career, and are still widely believed by the general public. Historians generally agree he drank occasionally but not often. At his death, he was seen as "a symbol of the American national identity and memory", when millions turned out for his funeral procession in 1885.

Military and political reputation

Grant was the most successful Union General of the Civil War, defeating six Confederate armies and capturing three. He was criticized over the Battle of Shiloh after the public learned that this victory came with unprecedented losses of life, and again during the Overland Campaign for the same reason. Despite the criticism, once Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox he was largely praised throughout the North as the man who had won the war. Not surprisingly, general opinion of Grant in the South was much less favorable. During his presidency Grant experienced cases of fraud and governmental mismanagement, while his attempts to reunify the South with the North while trying to protect Civil Rights for African-Americans during the Reconstruction era were met with both praise and criticism, socially and historically. Grant's reputation rose again during his well-publicized world tour. While often criticized in the 20th century for not doing enough with Reconstruction efforts, and for corruption in his administration, many historians in the late 20th and 21st centuries have reevaluated Grant's performance and have largely offered more favorable assessments.

Grant's popularity declined with congressional investigations into corruption in his administration and Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In 1877, there was bipartisan approval of Grant's peaceful handling of the electoral crisis. Grant's reputation soared during his well-publicized world tour. At his death, Grant was seen as "a symbol of the American national identity and memory", when millions turned out for his funeral procession in 1885 and attended the 1897 dedication of his tomb. Grant's popularity increased in the years immediately after his death. At the same time, commentators and scholars portrayed his administration as the most corrupt in American history. As the popularity of the pro-Confederate Lost Cause movement increased early in the 20th century, a more negative view became increasingly common.

As they had early in the Civil War, Grant's new critics charged that he was a reckless drunk, and in light of his presidency, that he was also corrupt. In the 1930s, biographer William B. Hesseltine noted that Grant's reputation deteriorated because his enemies were better writers than his friends. In 1931, Frederic Paxson and Christian Bach in the Dictionary of American Biography praised Grant's military vision and his execution of that vision in defeating the Confederacy, but of his political career, the authors were less complimentary. Speaking specifically of the scandals, they wrote that "personal scandal has not touched Grant in any plausible form, but it struck so close to him and so frequently as to necessitate the vindication of his honor by admitting his bad taste in the choice of associates." However, Paxson and Bach noted Grant's presidency "had some achievements, after all." Paxson and Bach said Grant's presidential achievements included settling peace with Great Britain, stabilizing the nation after an attempted Johnson impeachment, he brought the nation through the "financial and moral" uneasiness of the Panic of 1873, and kept the nation from breaking up during the controversial election of 1876.

Views of Grant reached new lows as he was sometimes seen as an unsuccessful president and an unskilled, if lucky, general. Even for scholars with a particular concern for the plight of former slaves and Indians, Grant left a problematic legacy and, with changing attitudes toward warfare after the end of the Vietnam War, Grant's military reputation suffered again.

In the 1960s Bruce Catton and T. Harry Williams began the reevaluation of Grant's military career and presented assessments of Grant as a calculating and skillful strategist and commander. Catton agreed that the Union had enormous potential advantages in terms of manpower and industry, but until Grant took over in 1864, it lacked the commander who could successfully exploit that potential. Catton said, "Grant, in short, was able to use the immense advantage in numbers, and military resources, and in money which the Federal side possessed from the start. Those advantages had always been there, and what the Northern war effort had always needed was a soldier who, assuming the top command, would see to it that they were applied steadily, remorselessly, and without a break, all across the board."

William S. McFeely won the Pulitzer Prize for his critical 1981 biography that credited Grant's initial efforts on civil rights, but emphasized the failure of Grant's presidency to achieve lasting progress and concluded that "he did not rise above limited talents or inspire others to do so in ways that make his administration a credit to American politics." John Y. Simon in 1982 responded to McFeely: "Grant's failure as President ... lies in the failure of the Indian peace policy and the collapse of Reconstruction ... But if Grant tried and failed, who could have succeeded?" Simon praised Grant's first term in office, arguing that it should be "remembered for his staunch enforcement of the rights of freedmen combined with conciliation of former Confederates, for reform in Indian policy and civil service, for successful negotiation of the Alabama Claims, and for delivery of peace and prosperity." According to Simon, the Liberal Republican revolt, the Panic of 1873, and the North's conservative retreat from Reconstruction weakened Grant's second term in office, although his foreign policy remained steady.

Historians' views continued to grow more favorable since the 1990s, appreciating Grant's protection of African Americans and his peace policy towards Indians, even where those policies failed. This trend continued with Jean Edward Smith's 2001 biography where he maintained that the same qualities that made Grant a success as a general carried over to his political life to make him, if not a successful president, then certainly an admirable one. Smith wrote that "the common thread is strength of character—an indomitable will that never flagged in the face of adversity ... Sometimes he blundered badly; often he oversimplified; yet he saw his goals clearly and moved toward them relentlessly." Brooks Simpson continued the trend in the first of two volumes on Grant in 2000, although the work was far from a hagiography. H. W. Brands, in his more uniformly positive 2012 book, wrote favorably of Grant's military and political careers alike, saying:

As commanding general in the Civil War, he had defeated secession and destroyed slavery, secession's cause. As President during Reconstruction he had guided the South back into the Union. By the end of his public life the Union was more secure than at any previous time in the history of the nation. And no one had done more to produce the result than he.

As Reconstruction scholar Eric Foner wrote, Brands gave "a sympathetic account of Grant's forceful and temporarily successful effort as president to crush the Ku Klux Klan, which had inaugurated a reign of terror against the former slaves." Foner criticized Grant for not sending military aid to Mississippi during the 1875 election to protect African Americans from threats of violence. According to Foner, "Grant's unwillingness to act reflected the broader Northern retreat from Reconstruction and its ideal of racial equality."

According to historian Brooks Simpson, Grant was on "the right side of history". Simpson said, "[w]e now view Reconstruction ... as something that should have succeeded in securing equality for African-Americans, and we see Grant as supportive of that effort and doing as much as any person could do to try to secure that within realm of political reality." John F. Marszalek said, "You have to go almost to Lyndon Johnson to find a president who tried to do as much to ensure black people found freedom." In 2016, Ronald C. White continued this trend with a biography that historian T. J. Stiles said, "solidifies the positive image amassed in recent decades, blotting out the caricature of a military butcher and political incompetent engraved in national memory by Jim Crow era historians."