Historians are hailing Congress’ recent decision to promote Ulysses S. Grant to the Army’s highest rank, calling it a rehabilitation of his political and racial legacy.
Congress authorized the promotion of the Civil War general and post-war president to the rank of “General of the Armies” under Section 583 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which President Biden signed into law on Friday.
The honor caps the bicentennial year of Grant’s birthday and will make him the third U.S. general to hold the rank alongside George Washington and John J. Pershing.
“It’s long overdue. Most of Grant’s presidency was effectively committed to the end of slavery and the creation of a biracial society,” Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian, said in an interview. “If you understand the historical context, Grant really can’t be ‘canceled.’”
Neither the Army nor the White House responded immediately to a request for comment on the promotion, which Mr. Biden must award before it takes effect.
“Because it’s posthumous, the appointment doesn’t require Senate confirmation, so we hope President Biden confers it soon,” said attorney Frank Scaturro, president of the Grant Monument Association and author of several works on the late leader.
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Grant commanded the Union Army in the last two years of the Civil War and accepted Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender in 1865. He served as president for two terms from 1869 to 1877 and secured the ratification of the 15th Amendment, barring racial discrimination in voting.
Congress previously authorized the rank of General of the Armies for Pershing in 1919, recognizing his service during World War I, and for Washington in 1976 as part of the nation’s bicentennial. In the proclamation for Washington, Congress noted his seniority to ensure he would always be considered the Army’s highest-ranking officer.
Grant easily ranks in their company, said Mark Tooley, author of “The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War.”
“He is more important in American military history than Pershing and almost as important as George Washington,” said Mr. Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative think tank. “Grant is also popular now partly because he was relatively progressive on racial issues and because public honors for Confederates are now being stripped from public life.”
According to historians, the “lost cause mythology” of Southern historians presented Grant as a drunken, incompetent butcher on the battlefield for decades after his death. That view of history contrasted his willingness to sacrifice soldiers for victory with the principles of Lee, his Confederate opponent.
Those views have faded over the last 60 years. The provision authorizing Grant’s promotion to General of the Armies received bipartisan support in the House and the Senate this month.
“Grant truly was the man who saved the Union,” Sen. Sherrod Brown, Ohio Democrat and co-sponsor of the legislation, told “CBS Saturday Morning” last weekend.
Mr. Brown cited Grant’s war record and how the commander of the Union Army in 1864-65 constantly pressed the Confederate Army until it collapsed.
“He is arguably the greatest battlefield general in American military history,” the senator said. “No other U.S. Army general did what he did, which was to demonstrate true brilliance on the battlefield at every level of warfare.”
However, some multicultural historians have slammed Grant for owning at least one slave as general, presiding over the assimilation of American Indians during his presidency and allowing corruption in his Cabinet.
And racial justice protesters toppled a statue of the former president in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 2020.
Grant’s promotion will challenge some of that pushback, according to Mr. Ellis, the presidential historian.
“Slavery is the original sin of American history and racism is its enduring residue,” said Mr. Ellis, who taught for three years at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. “But imposing contemporary perspectives on the past is the original sin of the presentist. If we impose a modern definition of racial equality on historical figures, none of them are going to look good by our contemporary standards and we might as well just tear down Mount Rushmore.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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