"Protesters in San Francisco, California, toppled a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the U.S. who led the Union Army during the Civil War..."
Maybe they just don't like the statues as art.
Incidentally, this post knocks the grinning visage of cheap Justice Roberts off the front page; I know that photo was giving Veeshir and others (including me) heartburn, so he's gone for now.
22 comments:
All dead white men owned slaves.
Well, except dead Democrats.
Geez, it's like you haven't taken a history class in the last 20 years.
Yeah apparently the Civil War was just a small blip in the grand narrative of oppression.
But then the wealthy coastal elites are ok because they admit their guilt or something, at least in their own minds.
Maybe they just don't like the statues as art.
Or, maybe they just like destroying things, and see "he was some old time white guy who may have been a racist" as a currently acceptable excuse for destroying things.
I think these people pulling down statues are college kids or antifa types who sit around smoking dope and deciding what they can destroy next. They don't care what it is, if it's a statue, pull it down, maan! Maybe they think they'll be able to replace them with their own artwork, when they get around to making any, next week maybe. Maybe they just want to destroy things for the fun of it. There's no real rhyme or reason anymore. Monkey see, monkey do.
V: I was browsing through Grant's Memoirs and I didn't see anywhere that he owned slaves - so, the obvious conclusion is, he covered it up.
See, now you're getting it.
Notice too that Lincoln was born in a slave state and in the Emancipation Proclamation he didn't even write that black lives matter!
Grant was gifted a slave, a man named William Jones, as a wedding present by his father-in-law, Frederick Dent, a Missouri plantation owner. While Grant didn't free Jones immediately, he was treated as a member of the family, and Grant outraged his neighbors when he worked the field alongside his "slave". When the farm was failing and Grant literally could not afford to feed Jones anymore, he freed the man, rather than sell him, which would have brought at least $1,500 at the time, and gone a long way towards settling his debts, but the very idea repulsed Grant.
Grant did, briefly, work for his father-in-law supervising his FiL's slaves, but again, Grant found that task repulsive.
Confederate apologists insist Grant "owned slaves all through the Civil War" usually citing photos of Grant with a "black man" at his side. That man was not black, but a Seneca Indian, Ely Samuel Parker, his adjutant. Claims that his wife Julia owned many slaves, and during the "War of Northern Aggression" took them with her to Ohio to stay with her in-laws (where slavery was illegal). They usually site her diary entries discussing her black maid (as if there were no free black people in 1860s Ohio). Grant's parents were staunch abolitionists, and his father Jesse was a childhood friend of John Brown.
Okay, now I checked: Julia Grant's black maid was "Julie", who was once a slave on her father's plantation, and was freed by Julia when the Grants moved to Ohio. Julie left the Grants' employ when they returned to Missouri after the end of the War, because she feared she's lose her freedom if she returned (slavery was still that law of the land in Missouri, a border state exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation, and would be until the ratification of the 13th Amendment).
Sorry for the pedantry, but President Grant is one of my favorite historical figures.
Excellent history lesson, SN, thanks.
There have been recent biographies of President Grant that try to set the record straight about his life and legacy. Here. Here. And here.
By the way, the recent Chernow biography seems to have received the most acclaim, but it is not my favorite, as the author too often gets bogged down on "sidebars", excessive detail about minor characters (an appendix would have been a much better way of dealing with them). While they all seem to be in agreement on the important things, and I think Jean Edward Smith version is really an excellent read, and would be the one I would recommend.
(Sorry for all the comments, but I'm really pissed at the Panty-fa idiots in SF pulling down the statue of the 19th century black American's strongest defender.)
Good stuff, Spiny. I either wasn't aware of that background, or had forgotten about it.
One thing the iconoclasts and the perpetual pot stirrers ought to remember, as well, was that Grant was interested in reconciliation after the war. As I recollect, Confederate partisan John S. Mosby wound up becoming a great friend and supporter of Grant's.
He wasn't the only one. Former West Point classmate,and later Confederate General, James Longstreet was Grant's best man at his wedding (or at least a groomsman), and was one of Grant's staunchest defenders in the South during his presidency, which earned him the scorn of many "unreconstructed confederates". The revisionist history which gave us the "Lost Cause" narrative, heaped a lion's share of the blame for Lee's defeat on Longstreet. For Longstreet's part: "I never heard of any other cause of the quarrel than slavery."
Most of the mess of Reconstruction can be laid at the feet of Andrew Johnson, who seemed to want to return to the "status quo" division that existed prior to the war, going so far as to actively campaign against the 13th Amendment.
Ok, Spiny, you're the Grant expert, so riddle me this: what was Grant's favorite brand of cigar? If he had one, that is; I honestly don't know.
That I don't know, other than at the beginning of the Civil War he was, in his words, "a light smoker", but once the public learned of his fondness for cigars, he was deluged with gifts of them, often in expensive boxes:
In the accounts published in the papers, I was represented as smoking a cigar in the midst of the conflict; and many persons, thinking, no doubt, that tobacco was my chief solace, sent me boxes of the choicest brands .... As many as ten thousand were soon received. I gave away all I could get rid of, but having such a quantity on hand I naturally smoked more than I would have done under ordinary circumstances, and I have continued the habit ever since."
He recalled that it was during and after the attack on Fort Donelson in Tennessee he was either smoking one or chewing on one, and until he could no longer due to his throat cancer, he was a chain cigar smoker, smoking as many as 20 a day. Maybe the cigar smell kept unwanted visitors away...
Found it here: Cigar Aficionado.
(Sad thing is, when he first noticed a problem, the tumor may have been operable, even in the late 19th century, but it was much too late by the time he actually sought medical attention months later.)
By the way, contrary to popular myth, Grant was not a heavy drinker; quite the opposite, he was a "lightweight" who "couldn't hold his liquor". Two shots of whiskey and he was stumbling drunk. Tobacco was definitely his vice of choice. Shelby Foote didn't believe the drunkard myth, which was a creation of Lincoln's northern Democrat political opponents that traveled south to Grant's Confederate critics, eager for salacious rumors. Foote stated in Ken Burns' Civil War series, that if Grant ever drank, it was when his wife Julia was away and nothing was going on battlefield (such as during the sieges of Vicksburg and Petersburg).
Yeah, I think I remember reading somewhere that his supposed heavy drinking was an invention of his enemies.
I think I also remember reading somewhere that his administration was not as corrupt as it has often been held out to be, but I can't say for sure.
What's your recommendation for the best biography? I have his Memoirs, which I've only browsed, although I believe they're generally considered to be outstanding.
No, his administration was not "corrupt" per se, but some of the members of his second administration were involved in shady dealings during the Johnson administration. His first term was scandal-free (for real!). He originally reconstructed Lincoln's Cabinet (that Johnson tried to bust up, leading to his impeachment), and had a very successful first term. However, he found politics "unsavory" as a general rule, and was a very reluctant candidate for reelection. In fact, he dithered so long that many of the talented and effective people in his first administration decided not to wait, and left to pursue their own political careersn. So when Grant accepted the nomination (he never campaigned, figuring if the American people wanted him back, they'd vote for him), he had a rather dubious list of candidates to fill his Cabinet, and most of those were Washington "insiders" (sound familiar?), who were more or less foisted on him by the Party.
Despite all that, had he not waited until that last moment to "throw his hat in the ring" at the 1876 Republican Convention, it is very likely he would have won a third term. He was that popular with the public.
I especially like the Smith bio, and it's really a good read, particularly for a political biography, but the White bio is supposed to be more "in depth". I have it, but never got very far into it (I got too busy with work and set it aside, intending to finish it, but...) White also published a very well-regarded bio of Lincoln that I have on my Amazon wish list. He won a Pulitzer for his bio of Washington.
One more thing: the quite violent war against the Plains Indians was very much against his wishes. In fact, he once sent Sherman a telegram asking him if he took his orders from him or from Mr Vanderbilt.
(That would be Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad baron who benefited enormously from the suppression of the Plains tribes.)
Oops, the Washington biography that won a Pulitzer is Chernow's.
Thanks for the recommendation.
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