Ulysses S. Grant finally getting the respect he deserves...

[S_E_Fudd]

Jumps 10 place in latest C-Span ranking of the Presidents...(Bill Clinton took a jump up as well)

http://www.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/Overall-Ranking.aspx

[Radical Activist]

1. and kennedy is still overrated

he didn't accomplished a third of what johnson did.

I wonder what explains the Grant jump. The passing of John Y. Simon last year?

[Occam Bandage]

2. It's becoming more fashionable to

focus on Grant's support of the radical Republican platform of civil rights, instead of his eternal blind eye to corruption and patronage.

[S_E_Fudd]

4. Fashionable implies it is not justified...

I believe it is...ultimately it was more important than the corruption that occurred during his administration...

[Occam Bandage]

7. I don't mean to imply anything about validity. nt

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

15. Fashionable merely implies a person can have a motive to support something beyond its merits

[grantcart]

22. It wasn't just platform support he used the army against the KKK

Less appreciated is his single handed efforts to keep the Army from being taken over by Custer types who wanted a complete genocidal war against Native Americans.


The corruption under Grant was a continuation of the terrible corruption that developed under Lincoln with the huge explosion of government expenditures during the civil war without any apparatus to control it. After the war it was no longer seen as a 'necessary evil' and prosecutions began.

There is no question that Grant was terrible with money and naive about the corruption. He did take one major step against corruption that goes completely unreported. The most corrupt agency of the government was the Bureau of Indian Affairs where Bureau agencies were 'auctioned' off for hundreds of thousands of dollars for a job that paid a few thousand dollars.

Grant appointed Ely Parker to head the Bureau, the first Indian to head the Bureau. He also appointed only Quakers to be local agents and the bureau entered one of the least corrupt periods. Grants cleaning up of the most corrupt government agencies doesn't wipe out the other things that he was oblivious to but it is odd that it goes unreported even today. Grant thought that he could run the government like the Army, just select a good subordinate and give him freedom to get the job done, like Sherman.

Parker is a fascinating story and his story is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ely_S._Parker

Near the start of the Civil War, Parker tried to raise a regiment of Iroquois volunteers to fight for the Union, but was turned down by New York Governor Edwin D. Morgan. He then sought to join the Union Army as an engineer, but was told by Secretary of War Simon Cameron that he could not since he was Indian.<5> Parker's lifelong friend Ulysses S. Grant, whose forces suffered from a shortage of engineers, intervened; Parker joined Grant at Vicksburg. He was commissioned a captain in 1863 and rose to the rank of Brigadier General. Parker became the adjutant to Ulysses S. Grant and was present when Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse in April 1865. The surrender documents are in his handwriting. During this surrender, Lee mistook Parker for a black man, but apologized saying "I am glad to see one real American here." Parker purportedly responded, "We are all Americans, sir."

After the Civil War, Parker was head of the Federal Commission on Indian Affairs from 1869 to 1871. Leaving government service, he involved himself in the stock market, but eventually lost the fortune he had accumulated. He lived his last years in poverty, dying in Fairfield, Connecticut on August 31, 1895. His body was exhumed and moved to Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York, to lie with other notables of Western New York, on January 20, 1897.

Parker's career and impact on contemporary Native Americans is described in Chapter 8 of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

[karynnj]

25. There was a recent exhibition at NYC's historical museum on

Grant and Lee which definitely took that position. From your description, it sounds like they were as far off in the positive direction as things I learned in high school were too far off in the Corruption and patronage side.

[S_E_Fudd]

3. It could be argued he was the first "Civil Rights" President...

If you look at his ranking there probably explains most of the jump...it is deserved IMO

I agree Kennedy is a tad overrated...as is Reagan

[Jennicut]

5. Yup, that is why. All presidents have their good points and bad.

Clinton never gets credit as he served at a time of more peace and prosperity then some other Presidents did. But he deserves to be in the top 15 for sure.

[karynnj]

26. I suspect that as time go ons he may well fall

I think that all recent presidents, who are popular with their party, may tend to be over rated because there is still too much emotion. I suspect that he will be seen as having made some of the deregulation decisions that ended up playing a part in the Financial crisis. In addition, he will be seen as having done nothing on the emerging climate change problem - sadly GHWB did more with the clean air act and with supporting the RIO conference.

On Foreign policy, Clinton is a mixed bag - excellent on Northern Ireland, most think good on Yugoslavia, bad on the AIDS crisis in Africa and Rwanda. One thing that helps him is that Bush followed him and he was the worst President - no matter what this says.

[Radical Activist]

9. Funny. I've been arguing that for several years.

Much of what later Presidents had to do a century later was finish the job that was cut short after the 1880 election when troops were pulled out of the South. It would be interesting to read an article from a historian making that point, if you know of any.

[crimsonblue]

17. It would be horribly argued...

If you are going to say the first Civil Rights president came from that era, then it is obviously Lincoln.

[S_E_Fudd]

18. Grant was a stronger support of voting and equity rights for African Americans...

Than Lincoln was...

Now that is not to say Lincoln would not have come around to that view had he not been assassinated, but we won't know for sure...

[grantcart]

19. He also used the army to move against the KKK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_S_Grant

from Wikipedia

He favored a limited number of troops to be stationed in the South—sufficient numbers to protect rights of Southern blacks, suppress the violent tactics of the Ku Klux Klan, and prop up Republican governors, but not so many as to create resentment in the general population. In 1869 and 1871, Grant signed bills promoting voting rights and prosecuting Klan leaders. The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, establishing voting rights, was ratified in 1870. Recent historians have emphasized Grant's commitment to protecting Unionists and freedmen in the South until 1876. Grant's commitment to black civil rights was demonstrated by his address to Congress in 1875 and by his attempt to use the annexation of Santo Domingo as leverage to force white supremacists to accept blacks as part of the Southern political polity.

Grant confronted an apathetic Northern public, violent Ku Klux Klan organizations in the South, and a factional Republican Party. He was charged with bringing order and equality to the South without being armed with the emergency powers that Lincoln and Johnson employed.

Grant signed a bill into law that created Yellowstone National Park (America's first National Park) on March 1, 1872.<25> Grant also signed into law making Christmas a federal holiday in 1870.<26>






The army had also become a force onto itself with guys like Custer initiating genocidal attacks in an effort to follow him into the White House. He was almost alone in stopping what would have been a complete genocide against Native Americans.

He was terrible with money (he sold wood at a street corner before the war and went bankrupt after - even though he was the most popular person in the entire world when he left office. Mark Twain produced his autobiography which is still readable and considered the best written by any President. In the end he suffered from lung cancer (from all of the free cigars he was given by appreciative Americans from the time he won civil war battles) and completed his biography unable to speak days before cancer killed him.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

43. Yes, he was in a big hurry to write his memoirs

so that his wife would be financially solvent. I read she initially received $200,000 after Mark Twain published it, but that ultimately she netted closer to $350,000. Grant died 5 days after he completed his writing.

[crimsonblue]

23. That may be true...

but that doesn't make Grant the first Civil Rights president. That'd be Lincoln... ya know.. the guy that ended the Civil War, freed the slaves, etc/

[Bullet1987]

30. I thought I read somewhere that Lincoln was planning to give Blacks

some rights?

[Radical Activist]

50. hah yeah, like the right to vote and

the right to not be held in slavery. :)

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. It's a vision thing.

On the Moon in 10 years is pretty hard to top. :shrug:

[Radical Activist]

10. But again, Johnson

is the one who had spent years being a Congressional leader pushing the space program, and the vision for that goal probably came from him.

[mikekohr]

12. John Kennedy Saved the World from Nuclear War

Think for a moment what would have happened if W was in the Oval Office in '62 instead of Kennedy. W. would have launched. The Soviets would have responded. Those of us that survived would not be living in the manner we are today. For that alone Kennedy will be and should be rated as among our best Presidents.

But Kennedy's legacy will always be one shaded by unrealized expectation, simply because he had less than a 1000 days in office. Oswald's 7.5 slug killed more than 58,000 Americans, the president and then the men and women who died in Vietnam, an action that Kennedy had decided to pull back from three weeks before his assassination. The Johnson escalation and Nixon expansion of the war never occurs if Kennedy lived.

mike kohr

[Radical Activist]

14. Kennedy also instigated that crisis.

With the bay of pigs invasion and other hostile action, Cuba was forced to turn to the Soviet Union for protection. There were several ways he could have avoided coming that close to a crisis.

The idea that Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam is entirely speculative. In 1963, LBJ had no plan to escalate the war either. But you did mention the real reason he'll be overrated as a President until we get more time behind us for perspective: the assassination.

[mikekohr]

16. Three weeks before his assassination he ordered a draw down order of 3,000 troops from Vietnam

One of Johnson's first actions was to rescind this order as he was concerned about being painted as "soft on communism," by the Republican Party.

Kennedy had first spoken out against our involvement in Vietnam as early as 1948 and was very skeptical of our presence there from the beginning. He inherited Vietnam from Truman/Eisenhower as he had inherited the "bay of Pigs," fiasco from the Great Golfer.

He did a rare thing in politics after the invasion failed, he took responsibility. He also learned from the incident which I believe helped form his response to Russians in '62.

mike kohr

[Radical Activist]

20. Johnson talked about drawing down troops all the time.

It was Kennedy advisers who convinced Johnson to escalate. We can do nothing but speculate. What we do know is that Johnson passed the domestic policy agenda that Kennedy failed to pass and went farther than Kennedy ever hoped.

[EFerrari]

21. Precisely. He was fighting the cold war on one hand and his own

military on the other.

[Robeson]

29. One of the main reasons for Kennedy's troop withdrawal plan, was to pressure Diem...

...for political reform in S.Vietnam, and little to do with Kennedy seeking to pull American troops out of the escalating conflict. The evidence that he wanted to pull out can be argued from both sides. On the one hand, he did tell Mike Mansfield that he was thinking about a complete military withdrawal, but said he couldn't contemplate it until 1965, after his reelection. On the other hand, he had never discussed withdrawal with key cabinet members like Rusk. So they pursued a policy of engagement. It can be argued that he had personal doubts, but whether that would have led to a full military pull-out is up for debate.

[Thothmes]

35. Kennedy increased the number of American troops in

Vietnam from 300 or so in 1961to 16,000 by the end of 1963.

[Radical Activist]

48. oh

that really cuts to the chase.

[Captain Hilts]

41. His immaturity at his meeting with Khrushchev emboldened Khrushchev to place the missiles. nt

[Thothmes]

34. True, but he did not get 36,000 Americans killed in Vietnam either.

[Captain Hilts]

40. JFK is ludicrously over-rated and never should have been prez. Averill Harriman...

would have been better. The Cuban Missile Crisis never would have happened. Bay of Pigs either.

[Renew Deal]

6. And two Bush family members at the bottom

Franklin Pierce is 3rd from the bottom. Bush Jr. is 7th worst. I'd put Bush lower.

[Exilednight]

28. Before you go to far with that, you might want to take a look at this ........

Presidents related to British royalty

This is a list of presidents of royal descent. Note that since all of these Presidents are related to English or Scottish monarchs, they are also all related to each other, though very distantly.

* George Washington (descendant of Edward III of England)
* Thomas Jefferson (descendant of Henry I of England)
* James Madison (descendant of Edward I of England)
* John Quincy Adams (descendant of Edward III of England)
* William Henry Harrison and his grandson, Benjamin Harrison (descendants of Edward I of England)
* Zachary Taylor (descendant of Edward I of England)
* Franklin Pierce (descendant of Henry I of England and William I of England)
* Rutherford Hayes (descendant of David I of Scotland)
* Grover Cleveland (descendant of Edward I of England)
* Theodore Roosevelt (descendant of Edward III of England)
* William Taft (descendant of Edward I of England)
* Warren Harding (descendant of Ethelred II of England)
* Calvin Coolidge (descendant of Henry II of England)
* Herbert Hoover (descendant of John of England)
* Franklin Roosevelt (descendant of Edward III of England)
* Richard Nixon (descendant of Edward I of England)
* Gerald Ford (descendant of Edward I of England)
* George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush (descendants of Edward I of England)
* Barack Obama (descendant of Edward I of England)

As a result, all of the listed people are direct descendants of Alfred the Great.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

11. Garfield was shot 4 months into his presidency and he beats Chimp.

:wow:

[NoPasaran]

13. Good

I loves me some Unconditional Surrender!

[karynnj]

24. Funny you say that

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to a big exhibit at the New York Historical Museum on Gant and Lee. I was very surprised to hear of the principled stands that Grant took on Native Americans and on reconstruction period. Reading some of his quotes, it was clear that he was a good principled man. I was also surprised to read that the Republican party gave up most of the principles held by Lincoln and Grant in a deal to get Rutherford Hayes selected as President after a contested election (that sounds like it made 2000 look good.

Having always heard that Grant lead a corrupt administration and had a problem with drinking, I think I need to do a lot more reading on this period. Leaving the exhibit, my husband and I questioned if the exhibit were revisionist history or if Grant was swiftboated by the establishment after he left office. (Per the exhibit, he fought the establishment at times as President.)

[grantcart]

27. I have provided some examples of the issues were talking about up thread

Grants drinking problem traces mainly back to a single incident after the war with Mexico. He took the non glamorous job of being quartermaster and missed out on the glory. Afterwards he got a lowly staff position and grew depressed and took to drinking and was completely smashed when an important visitor stopped by. He was reported and resigned but the reputation stuck although there are very few reliable sightings of him being drunk after that.

One of the ironies is that Grant got the quartermaster job because of his excellent math skills (near the top of his class) and his experience of planning the extended march that the Army took would become useful experience when he became a general. The irony is doubled when you realize that Grant was very good in math but a complete idiot when it came to finance, especially his own.

Grant is still thought to have been one of the best horseman to every graduate from Westpoint.

[Kaleva]

32. Didn't Sherman say that he stuck by Grant when he was drunk?

[Thothmes]

36. Actually wha Sherman saidwas that Grant stuck with me when I was

crazy and I stuck with him when he was drunk.

[Thothmes]

38. Actually at the time the drinking incident occured

in 1854, Grant had been promoted to captain in the Regular Army and was assigned as an infantry company commander at Fort Humbolt,CA. He had been the quartermaster of the 4th Infantry Regiment at Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory in 1853.

[grantcart]

49. you are correct - after serving as quartermaster for the entire American expedition

he grew depressed over the small posting he got. There were only 50 captains in the entire US Army so there were few career prospects.

Even that initial episode of drinking has been disputed by some historians although even the biography by his grandson, General Grant acknowldges that he was drunk when Buchannan visited.

Details here

After the Mexican-American war ended in 1848, Grant remained in the army and was moved to several different posts. He was sent to Fort Vancouver in the Washington Territory in 1853, where he served as quartermaster of the 4th Infantry Regiment. His wife, eight months pregnant with their second child, could not accompany him because his salary could not support a family on the frontier. In 1854, Grant was promoted to captain, one of only 50 still on active duty, and assigned to command Company F, 4th Infantry, at Fort Humboldt, California. However, he still could not afford to bring his family out West. He tried some business ventures, but they failed. Grant resigned from the Army with little advance notice on July 31, 1854, offering no explanation for his abrupt decision. Rumors persisted in the Army for years that his commanding officer, Bvt. Lt. Col. Robert C. Buchanan, found him drunk on duty as a pay officer and offered him the choice between resignation or court-martial.<10> Some biographers discount the rumors and suggest Grant's resignation, and his drinking, were both prompted by profound depression. According to this view, Buchanan hated Grant and concocted the drunkenness story years later to protect Buchanan's action in removing the man who became one of the most famous generals in history. The War Department stated, "Nothing stands against his good name."<11>

A civilian at age 32, Grant struggled through seven lean years. From 1854 to 1858 he labored on a family farm near St. Louis, Missouri, using slaves owned by his father-in-law, but it did not prosper. Grant owned one slave (whom he set free in 1859); his wife owned four slaves (two women servants and their two small boys).<12> In 1858-59 he was a bill collector in St. Louis. Failing at everything, in humiliation he asked his father for a job, and in 1860 was made an assistant in the leather shop owned by his father and run by his younger brother in Galena, Illinois. Grant & Perkins sold harnesses, saddles, and other leather goods and purchased hides from farmers in the prosperous Galena area.<13>

Although Grant was essentially apolitical, his father-in-law was a prominent Democrat in St. Louis (a fact that lost Grant the good job of county engineer in 1859). In 1856 he voted for Democrat James Buchanan for president to avert secession and because "I knew Frémont" (the Republican candidate). In 1860, he favored Democrat Stephen A. Douglas but did not vote. In 1864, he allowed his political sponsor, Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, to use his private letters as campaign literature for Abraham Lincoln<14> and the Union Party, which combined both Republicans and War Democrats. He refused to announce his political affiliation until 1868, when he finally declared himself a Republican.<15[br />

[karynnj]

39. I just looked up thread to find them - many were things seen in

that exhibit. (In addition to being a good horseman, there are paintings he made. They all had to learn art, as in pre-camera days - sketching the battlefield accurately was way to record a huge amount of information.)

It is good that his life is being re-evaluated.

[Kaleva]

31. Grant was loyal to his juniors to a fault.

During the Civil War, he kept some officers in command who should have been chained to a desk in Cow Pasty, Minnesota.

[Clio the Leo]

33. Ok, forgive me ignorance, what did Grant do?

Is he credited for helping rebuild the country after the Civil War or what?

[Thothmes]

37. He did accept the surrender of three Confederate Armies for starters.

[SoxFan]

42. Did William Henry Harrison have time to screw up that badly?

Hell, it would take me a month just to find the bathroom.

[Ishoutandscream2]

44. Several things that make me go "ummmmm"

The biggest, in my opinion, is the high ranking of Truman. He left office at such low approvals, and look where historians put him now. I always liked Truman, but I never envisioned him being ranked this high.

[dsc]

45. he deserves it

He oversaw the end of WW2, the creation of NATO and the UN, desegregated the Armed Forces, signed the first Civil Rights bill in a generation, and kept a GOP Congress from undoing the new deal. Not bad.

[Ishoutandscream2]

46. Oh, I'm not saying I disagree

Truman is one of my heroes. But he bacame such an unpopular president, and historians have typically not been too kind to Harry. That's why being in the top 5 gets a big response from me.

[Top Cat]

47. Number 43 should have been at the bottom of the list...