History generally has not been kind to Ulysses Grant. For the longest time, even his military reputation had been sullied by the stinging indictments of Lost Cause advocates who enjoyed unquestioned sway over the popular interpretation of Civil War history. The apotheosis of Robert E. Lee’s role in the war required the diminishment of Grant’s reputation. Fortunately, this impression has been convincingly reversed and Grant is now hailed as the proper savior of the Union. The same reversal cannot be said of interpretations of Ulysses S. Grant, the President. Until recently, Grant has been pilloried as a hopelessly naive, bumbling incompetent who was way over his head in the political arena. The combined forces of self-styled reformers of his own day and the criticism of Lost Cause devotees consigned Grant to the ranks of America’s worst presidents. In the popular imagination, as reflected in ongoing surveys, polls, and rankings, Grant still suffers from a poor evaluation. Only in the last generation of historians have we begun to revisit the Grant presidency and suggest that he may well have been a very capable and strong president; one who was inspired by noble sentiments and aspirations that simply were not attainable in his own time. This study continues in the revisionist tradition to suggest that Grant was an excellent chief executive even though much of what he strove to accomplish was not realized in his time.
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