Steve Nickerson| Wicked Local
“Let us have peace.” These are the words inscribed on the tomb of Ulysses S Grant, the union general who defeated the Confederacy and won the Civil War, thereby preserving the country and freeing slaves. Later, in his two-term presidency, Grant’s administration gave Blacks the right to vote, and crushed the Ku Klux Klan. So badly was the KKK beaten that it took decades for it to come back. Few Americans have had the influence and impact on our history and society as Ulysses S Grant.
In this current period of unrest, rioting and chaos, a number of statues and monuments representing key contributors to American history have been taken down or vandalized. These include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and inconceivably, Ulysses S Grant among others. Grant’s statue in San Francisco was recently toppled by rioters. The desecration was done as an act of defiance by those who hate America and want to erase our history, their purpose - to rewrite a new history that conforms to the narrative as America as an evil nation.
Erasing history and creating new rewritten narratives conforming to political beliefs is nothing new. This strategy has taken place in Communist and Marxist countries for decades. It is done in order to give a nation a new identity, regardless of historical facts. The new identity is created as a means to consolidate and maintain political power for those in authority. The government creates the new truth and feeds it to the citizens. Dissenting voices are not tolerated.
Even Grant was not immune to the rewriting of history for political purposes. As an example – after the Civil War was over, Grant was rightly hailed as an American hero and a military genius – saving the Union and eradicating slavery. However, a group of southern writers known as the “Lost Causers,” - as a way to reinvent the historical narrative, characterized Grant as an alcoholic loser – a man barely able to make his way through West Point, a bungling butcher as a general – only using his superiority in numbers of troops to eventually wear down the South and win by attrition. Grant’s presidential administration was looked at as a scandal-ridden failure, and Grant himself was described as incompetent as the nation’s leader.
The Lost Causers also redefined the South, from the racist slave-owning society that it was, to a noble and cultured genteel society, and Robert E Lee – the general who fought for the cause of slavery, was described as a gentleman, a military hero, and a man embodying all of the refined qualities that Southern society embraced. I am sure to many readers this characterization of Grant, Lee, and the South, sounds familiar. It shows how powerful a rewritten historical narrative can be. Even if none of it is actually true.
In reality, Grant graduated in the middle of his West Point class (not at the bottom), and he served as president of the Cadet Literary society. He hoped to return to the school as a mathematics professor.
Later on, as the Civil War started – Grant rose in rank rapidly. He earned a number of key victories in the western theater of the war, none of them more important than his victory at the battle of Vicksburg, a brilliant strategic campaign – which gave the Union control of the Mississippi River, and split the Confederacy. The battle of Vicksburg was the turning point of the war.
Grant was later promoted by Lincoln to the rank of General of the Armies, a position not held since George Washington. He moved to the eastern theatre of the war, took on Robert E Lee and beat him. Lee surrendered his army to Grant at Appomattox, Virginia – ending the war. Ultimately, Grant had over million men under his command – including 200,000 Blacks who served in the Union army.
Grant was a gifted military strategist and tactician. He is considered one of the first “modern” era generals. His battles are studied in military colleges to this day.
Grant’s drinking is another area that was, to an extent, created out of fiction. Yes, he drank – no more, and far less than many other generals. As a way to besmirch his reputation, the Lost Cause writers exaggerated his drinking. In reality, Grant would go months and sometimes years without drinking. He was not the drunken failure that the rewriters of history would have us believe.
Grant’s administration gave Blacks the right to vote – and he crushed the KKK. Abolitionist Frederick Douglas said that Blacks “had no greater friend” than Ulysses S Grant.
To underscore Grant’s attitudes and actions regarding slavery – when he was a younger man his wife’s Southern, slave-owning family “gifted” Grant and his wife a slave named William Jones. Grant was not a “slavery man,” and the situation embarrassed him. He worked alongside with Jones in the fields, unusual at the time, and he granted him his freedom within a year. Grant did not insist that Jones purchase his freedom or take part in any arrangement of any type, he simply freed him.
Near his death Grant wrote his memoirs – he had been swindled out of his life savings by the “Bernie Madoff” of the time and his finances were ruined. During that era – former presidents did not have congressional pensions. Grant wrote his memoirs while dying of throat cancer as a way to provide for his family once he was gone.
His personal memoirs are considered by presidential scholars as the finest written. In his memoirs he recognizes the South’s passion for their cause – but he also has this to say, “The cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which was the least excuse.” He died just days after completing his memoirs.
It has taken decades for the “real” history of Ulysses S Grant to overcome the false narrative of the Lost Cause writers. Grant’s reputation and his significance to the nation’s history have both risen exponentially – and deservedly so. He was a man of true greatness. However – given today’s political extremism, and the effort to rewrite and/or erase our history, it is a warning sign that removing and vandalizing statues, monuments, and other symbols of our history, can have a real, detrimental, and lasting effect, snuffing out the truth and replacing it with falsehoods is a means to an end. The end being political power and control of the “truth.”
Quote of the Month – “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. Who controls the past controls the future.” - George Orwell, English author.
Steve Nickerson is a former long-term Mansfield resident and former US Marine. The opinions he expresses are his own.
