# Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) was the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877), the Union general whose campaigns at Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Appomattox won the [[American Civil War]], and the most aggressive federal enforcer of Reconstruction-era civil rights in 19th-century American history. Born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, Grant graduated from West Point in 1843, served with distinction in the [[Mexican-American War]], and then spent a miserable decade in peacetime postings and failed civilian enterprises before the Civil War rescued him from obscurity. [[Abraham Lincoln]] appointed him commanding general in March 1864, and Grant ground down [[Robert E. Lee]]'s Army of Northern Virginia in the Overland Campaign before accepting Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. He won the [[1868 Presidential Election]] as the [[Republican Party]] nominee with the slogan "Let Us Have Peace," carrying 26 of 34 states and winning roughly 300,000 votes from newly enfranchised Black men — a margin larger than his popular-vote majority. Grant's two terms were defined by the struggle over [[Reconstruction and Its Overthrow]]. He signed the [[Fifteenth Amendment]] ratification into effect in 1870, guaranteeing Black male suffrage. He signed the **Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871** (the Third Enforcement Act), which authorized the president to suspend habeas corpus and deploy federal troops against domestic terrorist organizations — and then used it, suspending habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties in 1871–1872 to break up Klan terror and prosecuting thousands of Klansmen under federal law. He signed the **Civil Rights Act of 1875** in his lame-duck final months, the last federal civil-rights legislation until the 1957 Civil Rights Act, more than 80 years later. His administration also pursued a "Peace Policy" toward Native Americans, attempting (with mixed results) to replace corrupt Indian agents with religious appointees. In foreign affairs, his Secretary of State [[Hamilton Fish]] negotiated the Treaty of Washington (1871), settling the Alabama Claims with Britain and establishing international arbitration as a diplomatic norm. Grant's presidency was also dogged by major corruption scandals — Crédit Mobilier (exposed 1872), the Whiskey Ring (1875), and the impeachment of Secretary of War William Belknap (1876) — that historically overshadowed his civil-rights record. Grant himself was personally honest but pathologically trusting; he appointed cronies and old Army associates to positions they were unqualified for, and his loyalty to subordinates persisted long past the point of political damage. The Panic of 1873 collapsed the economy midway through his second term, weakening his political position and sapping Northern will for Reconstruction enforcement. He won the [[1872 Presidential Election]] in a landslide over Liberal Republican Horace Greeley, but by 1876, Reconstruction fatigue, economic depression, and scandal left the party unable to hold the presidency for his chosen successor. Late-20th-century and 21st-century historical reassessment — particularly Ron Chernow's 2017 biography — has substantially revised Grant's reputation upward, reframing him as a more committed and effective Reconstruction enforcer than the post-Reconstruction "[[Lost Cause]]" historiography allowed. He died of throat cancer on July 23, 1885, finishing his memoirs (a literary masterpiece, published by Mark Twain's firm) just days before his death. ## Right-wing relevance Grant occupies an unusual and structurally important position for right-wing analysis. As the Union general who destroyed the Confederacy and the president who most aggressively enforced Reconstruction, he is the primary foil for "Lost Cause" mythology — the revisionist narrative that cast the Confederacy as noble and Reconstruction as oppressive, a mythology that persisted in Southern conservatism through the 20th century and still circulates in fringe right-wing media. Grant's record demonstrates that the early [[Republican Party]] was structurally and ideologically the *opposite* of what the modern Republican Party became after the [[Southern Strategy]] and the [[Party Realignment]] of the 1960s–1970s. His willingness to suspend habeas corpus and deploy military force against the Klan represents the most aggressive exercise of federal executive power against domestic white-supremacist terrorism in American history — a posture that is rhetorically useful to contemporary critics of the Republican Party's post-civil-rights-era posture, but rarely invoked by the contemporary right itself. Grant's presidency also prefigures recurring tensions in American conservatism: the conflict between executive power and states' rights (Grant used federal power to override Southern state governments; the contemporary right champions states' rights against federal overreach), the conflict between law-and-order rhetoric and actual enforcement against right-wing political violence, and the persistent question of whether the federal government should actively protect minority civil rights or leave that function to the states. The corruption of his administration became a template for attacks on federal government competence that recur across the right-wing tradition from the [[Gilded Age Plutocracy]] era through the modern anti-government conservatism. His use of the [[Gold Standard]] — vetoing the Inflation Bill of 1874 and signing the Specie Resumption Act of 1875 — aligned him with hard-money conservatives and set up the gold-vs.-silver monetary debate that would dominate the next quarter-century of American politics. ## Key policies and episodes - **Fifteenth Amendment ratification (1870).** Grant championed and signed the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting denial of the vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." This was the constitutional capstone of Reconstruction, and its subsequent nullification through poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses in the [[Jim Crow Era]] is the central story of American democratic erosion for the next century. - **Ku Klux Klan Act and South Carolina intervention (1871–1872).** Grant signed the Third Enforcement Act (Ku Klux Klan Act) in April 1871, authorizing the president to suspend habeas corpus and use the military against domestic terrorism. He invoked it in nine South Carolina counties, deploying federal troops and U.S. marshals who arrested hundreds of Klansmen. This was the most aggressive use of federal executive power against domestic political violence between the Civil War and the 20th century, and it effectively broke the first Klan — though white-supremacist violence would reconstitute in other forms after federal withdrawal in 1877. - **Treaty of Washington and Alabama Claims arbitration (1871).** Grant's Secretary of State [[Hamilton Fish]] negotiated the Treaty of Washington with Britain, referring the Civil War-era Alabama Claims to international arbitration. The resulting Geneva tribunal awarded the U.S. $15.5 million in damages and established a precedent for international arbitration that shaped diplomatic practice for the next century. - **Panic of 1873 and hard-money policy (1873–1875).** The collapse of Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 triggered a severe depression that lasted six years. Grant vetoed the Inflation Bill of 1874, which would have expanded the money supply with greenbacks, and signed the Specie Resumption Act of 1875, committing the government to resuming [[Gold Standard]] convertibility by 1879. This hard-money stance aligned Grant with Eastern financial interests and fueled the agrarian populist movement that would culminate in William Jennings Bryan's 1896 free-silver campaign. - **Civil Rights Act of 1875 (March 1875).** Signed in Grant's final months, this act prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations, public transportation, and jury service. It was the most expansive civil-rights legislation until the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]]. The Supreme Court struck it down in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), ruling that the [[Fourteenth Amendment]] did not authorize Congress to regulate private discrimination — a doctrinal limitation not overturned until the 1960s. - **Crédit Mobilier and Whiskey Ring scandals (1872–1876).** The Crédit Mobilier scandal (exposed during the 1872 campaign) implicated members of Congress in railroad construction kickbacks; the Whiskey Ring (exposed 1875) involved Treasury officials and distillers conspiring to defraud the government of liquor taxes. Grant's personal secretary, Orville Babcock, was indicted in the Whiskey Ring. Grant was never personally implicated but his loyalty to corrupt subordinates damaged his reputation for generations. - **Peace Policy toward Native Americans (1869–1876).** Grant attempted to reform Indian affairs by replacing corrupt political appointees as Indian agents with nominees from religious denominations and by pursuing a policy of reservation settlement over extermination. The policy collapsed under pressure from Western expansion, gold discoveries in the Black Hills, and the resulting Great Sioux War of 1876, culminating in the Battle of the Little Bighorn (June 1876). ## Connections - [[Abraham Lincoln]] — Commander in Chief under whom Grant won the Civil War; Grant's political career was built on Lincoln's legacy and the Republican coalition Lincoln assembled. - [[Andrew Johnson]] — Grant broke with Johnson over Reconstruction policy and the Tenure of Office Act controversy; Grant's 1868 election was in part a repudiation of Johnson's obstruction of Reconstruction. - [[Rutherford B. Hayes]] — Grant's Republican successor; Hayes ended Reconstruction through the [[Compromise of 1877]], undoing Grant's enforcement project. - [[Hamilton Fish]] — Grant's Secretary of State for both terms; the most capable member of Grant's cabinet and the architect of the Treaty of Washington. - [[Roscoe Conkling]] — New York Republican boss and leader of the Stalwart faction; Grant's political ally whose patronage-based machine politics defined the era and whose influence persisted through the Arthur presidency. - [[William Tecumseh Sherman]] — Grant's most important military subordinate and Commanding General of the Army during Grant's presidency; Sherman's March and the total-war doctrine were central to the Union victory Grant oversaw. ## See also - [[Reconstruction and Its Overthrow]] — Grant was the most aggressive federal enforcer of Reconstruction; his presidency marks the high-water mark of federal commitment to Black civil rights in the 19th century. - [[Compromise of 1877]] — The deal that ended the Reconstruction project Grant had enforced, withdrawing federal troops from the South. - [[Jim Crow Era]] — The regime that emerged after Grant's enforcement project was abandoned under Hayes. - [[White Supremacy]] — Grant's Klan suppression was the most direct federal confrontation with organized white supremacy between the Civil War and the 20th century. - [[Southern Strategy]] — The 20th-century racial-political realignment that inverted the party positions Grant's Republican Party held on race and federal enforcement. - [[Gold Standard]] — Grant's hard-money policies set the terms for the monetary debate that dominated American politics through the 1890s. - [[Gilded Age Plutocracy]] — The economic and political structure of concentrated wealth and political corruption that defined Grant's era and the decades following. ## Notable Quotes - [[Ulysses S. Grant - let no guilty man escape]] — 1875 Whiskey Ring endorsement; equal justice applied to the president's own circle. Featured in [[Presidents on the Rule of Law]]. - [[Ulysses S. Grant - keep church and state forever separate]] — 1875 Des Moines address; "Keep the church and the state forever separate." Featured in [[Presidents on the Separation of Church and State]].