For most of the 137 years after his death in 1885, Ulysses S. Grant was remembered by historians as a failed president who led a hopelessly corrupt administration. In recent years, however, Grant’s reputation has undergone a scholarly renaissance that has set straight his record of accomplishments, not least in the area of civil rights for the newly emancipated slaves.
In this year marking the bicentennial of his birthday, Grant scholars say the 18th president deserves a place next to Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson in the decidedly small pantheon of civil rights presidents. The Civil War general-turned-chief executive sent in federal troops to places where White Southerners resorted to terrorism and murder to intimidate Black people, and he crushed the Klu Klux Klan in the process.
In this episode of History As It Happens, constitutional lawyer and historian Frank Scaturro says Grant was wronged by generations of historians whose work was strongly influenced by the myth of the Lost Cause and the long since discredited Dunning School interpretation of Reconstruction.
“Grant pushed through Congress a series of five enforcement acts between 1870 and 1872 to put teeth into newly conferred 15th and 14th Amendment rights. Grant is a very effective legislative president. He also pushed through the creation of a new Department of Justice, which is the most important consolidation of the federal government’s law enforcement power in its history,” said Mr. Scaturro, whose 1998 book “President Grant Reconsidered” helped spur a broader reassessment of Grant’s record.
Mr. Scaturro is also the president of the Grant Monument Association by virtue of his work in the 1990s, while he attended college in New York City, to successfully pressure the federal government to repair Grant’s dilapidated, vandalized mausoleum on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
SEE ALSO: History As It Happens: Slavery and the Constitution
Like the tomb, Grant’s reputation has undergone a major rehabilitation. Learn about it all by listening to this episode of History As It Happens.
