Did class prejudice hurt Grant's reputation?

It peaked under Grant, but it also began to decline under Grant. At the end of the day, Grant (especially in his second term) saw the various multiracial Reconstruction-era governments give way to the Redeemers and their white supremacist politics.

Certainly, Grant was a vastly better civil rights president than either Johnson or Hayes, but that's hardly a high bar. One can respect what he accomplished without overlooking his very serious failures, and I do think these failures are important in evaluating his presidency. Just because Lost Causers also hated him for terrible reasons doesn't mean that his presidency was a success.


Is that any particular fault of Grant's?

After all, failing to do the impossible is no flaw. And between Southern stubbornness and Northern indifference, it probably was impossible to achieve much more than he did.
 
More meant as a corrective to the general "Grant as civil rights champion." There is a strong narrative out there that tends to whitewash his faults; he certainly could have done more than he did (e.g. by taking action to prevent the general fraud and intimidation that characterized the 1876 election, and led to the final end of Reconstruction, which he essentially acquiesced to).

Which leaves us with the rest of his presidency, which pretty much was a series of unfortunate events.

As I said, generalship and government have much less in common than a lot of people historically seem to think.
 
More meant as a corrective to the general "Grant as civil rights champion." There is a strong narrative out there that tends to whitewash his faults;
Isn't the strongest narrative by far in popular culture more "Grant was a butcher a drunk and a crook"? Not that we should go too far in the other direction in imputing uniquely liberal attitudes to Grant, but his pop culture reputation is a little unfairly negative to say the least.
 
Isn't the strongest narrative by far in popular culture more "Grant was a butcher a drunk and a crook"? Not that we should go too far in the other direction in imputing uniquely liberal attitudes to Grant, but his pop culture reputation is a little unfairly negative to say the least.
Traditionally? Sure (and as you note, that's quite unfair to arguably the best general in the ACW).

At the same time, there has been a more recent attempt to rehabilitate him that has also sometimes gone too far (IMHO). People can have different reputations in different groups, and I suspect this thread tends to attract more of the latter than of the former.
 
Traditionally? Sure (and as you note, that's quite unfair to arguably the best general in the ACW).

At the same time, there has been a more recent attempt to rehabilitate him that has also sometimes gone too far (IMHO). People can have different reputations in different groups, and I suspect this thread tends to attract more of the latter than of the former.
I guess with the rather small sample size of this thread that could be true; and I agree with you that Grant as a politician or a leader on civil rights was not exceptional (he did not that great with the already bad hand most gilded age presidents were dealt)
 
More meant as a corrective to the general "Grant as civil rights champion." There is a strong narrative out there that tends to whitewash his faults; he certainly could have done more than he did (e.g. by taking action to prevent the general fraud and intimidation that characterized the 1876 election, and led to the final end of Reconstruction, which he essentially acquiesced to).


He did take action - Ku Klux Acts etc.

It just didn't achieve much because he lacked the resources. By 1876 the Army was back to peacetime levels - iirc abt 27,000 of which only abt 3,000 could be spared for duty in the South. This was way to few to police a region which contained a million or so Confederate veterans. And there was no way that Congress would pay to expand the Army to a size that could have done so.

Imho, Grant did well to keep Reconstruction going as long as it did. Under another POTUS it would probably have ended even sooner.
 
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