Ulysses S. Grant
From Philosopedia
Grant, Ulysses S(impson) [President, 1869 - 1877] (27 April 1822 - 23 July 1885)
Appointed by President Lincoln the commander in chief of the Union forces, Grant wore out the Confederates by sheer attrition, receiving Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865. In 1868, Grant was elected the nation’s 18th President.
Once expelled by West Point for his alcoholism, Grant, a Methodist, in an 1875 speech declared, “Keep the church and the state forever separated.” His defending public schools against Roman Catholic schools was widely publicized, as was his statement, “I suggest the taxation of all property equally, whether church or corporation.”
Religionists fought back, pointing to Grant’s notorious 1862 order expelling all Jews from his military department - he accused them of speculating in cotton. “No political party can, or ought to, exist when one of its cornerstones is opposition to freedom of thought,” Grant wrote in his Memoirs (Vol. 1, p. 213). “If a sect sets up its laws as binding above the state laws, whenever the two come in conflict, this claim must be resisted and suppressed at any cost.”
Despite being fatally ill from cancer of the throat, Grant wrote the two-volume Personal Memoirs (1885-1886), which are ranked as being among the great military narratives of history. John Keegan, a British military historian, wrote,
- If there is a single contemporary document which explains ‘why the North won the Civil War,’ that abiding conundrum of American historical inquiry, it is the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant.
Mark Twain, smarting at how publishers had exploited him in the past, persuaded Grant not to accept 10% royalties from any publisher but, instead, to allow his new firm to publish the work in return for seventy percent of the net proceeds by subscription. Grant earned $450,000 for his family.
Hamlin Garland, his biographer, wrote that Grant “subscribed to no creed.” The Rev. M. J. Cramer, however, said that Grant “believed the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion,” which Joseph McCabe retorts is like saying that a good freethinker has to be “a good Christian in the true sense.” General Hallock, commenting upon Grant’s sobriety, said it was remarkable for “a man who is not a religious man.”
At the end of his life when unconscious, Grant was baptized, and when he unexpectedly recovered he exclaimed that he was surprised at what they had done to him. With his wife’s remains, Grant lies in New York City in a tomb that was constructed in 1897 and made a national memorial in 1959.
