Read on Twitter
If you hate Ulysses Grant, you hate the United States of America. This iconoclasm may have started with the Confederates, but now it clearly knows no limit. The mob will burn everything if we don't have the courage to stop them. https://twitter.com/jrivanob/status/1274194145838428160
Grant was one of the great men of the nineteenth century. He, as much as Lincoln, is responsible for the defeat of the rebels, the preservation of the Union, and the abolition of slavery.
His story began inauspiciously, a tanner's son turned middling cadet and unhappy officer, he turned to drink when separated from wife and family. Resigned ahead of a court martial and slinked back east, penniless and ashamed.
He was forced to live off of his father-in-law, who belittled him as much as his own father had done. Failed at farming, he was reduced to selling firewood in the streets of St. Louis before his father gave him a job in his leather shop, which he hated.
The war revealed Grant's unique talent for strategy and leadership. He saw right away what most generals, North and South, never did: defeating the rebel armies, not capturing their cities, would bring victory.
He also understood what Lee did not: modern warfare would not allow for a Cannae or Austerlitz. Tactics mastered, but so did a strategy that was made for rifles and mass armies. Élan was less important.
Grant gave the United States its first significant victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, and still his superiors derided him, thought him reckless. Lincoln knew Grant's worth, though.
At Shiloh, more men were killed then in all of American wars to that point, but Grant (with Sherman and Buell) won when more tremulous generals would have fled.
His Vicksburg campaign alone showed his genius, and foreshadowed Sherman's march to the sea. Cutting loose from supply lines went against conventional wisdom, but also made possible his 1863 victory that split the CSA in two.
Grant came East in 1864 after cleaning up Rosecrans's mess in Tennessee. He took the fight to Lee and didn't skedaddle back to Washington every time his army was bloodied. He knew that as long as Lee and his army lived, the CSA did.
When Grant turned south after the Wilderness, the war was effectively over, though it took a year for them to realize it.
Known for demanding "unconditional surrender," Grant offered generous terms to Lee at Appomattox, understanding that peace and union were the goals. Nevertheless, he sided with the radicals in supporting a thorough Reconstruction.
He broke with Andrew Johnson when the President reversed course and went soft in the former rebels. Nominated overwhelmingly by the Republicans for President in 1868, he served two consecutive terms, the only man been Jackson and Wilson to do so.
Grant proved too trusting of corrupt associates, at times, and the vastly expanded federal government was like a trough for the hogs, but Grant never enriched himself. Lost Cause historians used his friends' malfeasance to smear him, and Reconstruction with him.
And Grant truly was committed to Reconstruction and the rights of the freedmen. By the end of his second term he was, as a biographer noted, the only man in Washington "who gave a damn about the black people." https://books.google.com/books?id=cv5IbR5f9oMC&pg=PA439&lpg=PA439&dq=grant+mcfeely+gave+a+damn&source=bl&ots=HphEdBoqh7&sig=ACfU3U2WLGZEdCF1qFQa9P5TgSSC9FmNBg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiU3a7MvZDqAhUlaDABHdFODgIQ6AEwDHoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
He traveled the world after leaving office, a monumental story in itself. After an abortive attempt at a third term in 1880, Grant went into business and was, again, bamboozled by untrustworthy friends.
Broke again, dying of cancer, he wanted only to provide for his wife after he died. To do so, he spent his last days writing the best memoir any president or general ever penned. It was bestseller, but he didn't live to see it.
I say that if you hate Grant you hate America, because his story is our story. An imperfect man who proved perfect for the times, he had his flaws but more importantly he had a vision of a free and united nation.
He wasn't good at everything but when his country called in 1861, he was the best in the world at the one thing they needed. When they called again in '68, he did his level best and pursued a moral course when many others turned to corruption or indifference.
Grant's finally getting his due these days, just in time for woke mobs and overgrown children to smear him as "another slaveowner." Those who can't make history, who can't even understand history, still have the power to vandalize it.
