Ulysses S. Grant Essays (1505 words) - , Term Papers

Ulysses S. Grant Although Ulysses S. Grant's contemporaries placed him in the highest position of great Americans along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the twentieth century has seen him fade. His presidency has been almost universally condemned, and he is consistently ranked second to rock bottom Warren G. Harding in polls of historians to rate the presidents. Although his military reputation has declined as well, it nevertheless continues to win him a steady following. Even his most faithful admirers, however, tend to end their studies conveniently at Appomattox, and one senses a wide regret that Grant's public career extended beyond the Civil War. Taking note of this trend, John Y. Simon observes that some biographers seem to have wished that Grant had accepted Lincoln's invitation to Ford's Theatre on the night the president was shot- the night that John Wilkes Booth had intended to assassinate Grant along with Lincoln. Much of what has been passed down as an objective appraisal of Grant's presidency more closely resembles the partisan critiques that were produced by a relatively small group of performers during the 1870's-- in many ways the intellectual ancestors of the present historical profession. Although such a minority can sometimes be a source of enlightenment, in this case, it has contributed a monolithic picture of a complex era that is about as depressing as it is inaccurate. Little consideration is given the checkered nature of Grant's eight years of the Gilded Age. Michael Les Benedict observes that Grant dominated his era, a stronger resident than most have recognized. In both the domestic and foreign realms, President Grant could claim a wide range of achievements. In the aftermath of the most serious fiscal problems the nation had ever faced, he pursued policies that stopped inflation, raised the nations credit, and reduced taxes and the national debt by over $300 million and $435 million respectively. His veto of the Inflation Act of 1874 and subsequent drive for what became the Resumption Act of 1875 shocked many who looked to Congress to cure the nation's economic ills, and the panic of 1873 came to an abrupt end when the act went into effect in 1879. The successful arbitration of the Alabama and Virginus disputes mark not only foreign policy victories for the United States, but a significant precursor to the future course of international affairs. The establishment of the principle of the international arbitration through the Treaty of Washington, would later be embodied in the Hague Tribunal, the League of Nations, the World Court, and the U nited Nations. Grant's desire for peace was evident to me from the beginning of my research, but I did not realize how far-reaching it was until I noted the steadiness and rectitude he displayed throughout the presidential electoral crisis of 1876-77, which could have become a disaster. Also remarkable to me was Grant's Quaker Indian Peace Policy: on the eve of what could have become the complete genocide of the American Indian, Grant acted decisively to begin two decades of reform that for the first time promoted the welfare of Indians as individuals and broke ground for their eventual citizenship. However important these issues may seem, the traditional evaluation of Grant as president nevertheless pays far less attention to them than to the issue of corruption. Unlike other cases of presidents charged with allowing corruption, however, the corruption that reformers condemned during Grant's two terms, for the most part, was merely the practice of making appointments through the spoils system. As Benedict points out, scholars have tended to accept the judgment of the anti-Grant reformers that this (patronage) system was inherently corrupt, but that is a very questionable conclusion, and reformers had ulterior, political motives for making the charge. The matter of whether patronage is necessarily synonymous with corruption provides an additional question of consistency; for historians, if the reformers' verdict is true, must explain how Grant's predecessors, most of whom practiced patronage, led administrations exempt from the brand of corruption. What is ironic about the traditional picture of honest reformers opposing the president's corrupt party henchmen is that Grant was actually the first president since the establishment of the Jacksonian spoils system to initiate civil service reform. The