Posted by
Big Mo on Saturday, November 04, 2006 7:29:03 PM
Title: President Grant ReconsideredAuthor: Frank Scaturro
Publisher: Madison Books
Date: 1999
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
What this book is / is not This book examines the critics of President Grant, and explores the disingenuousness of their books and faultiness of their research. It is not a biography of Grant.
Main thesis Along the same lines as Connelly's book (see above) is Scaturro’s work, designed both to begin the rescue of Grant’s presidency from its undeserved and unjust historical trashcan, and call out the lazy, biased, incompetent and/or racist scholars and historians who put him there. You can take almost any biography written on Grant’s presidency during the 20th century and toss it aside, because even Pulitzer Prize winners (William McFeely) managed to miss Grant entirely. Start with Jean Edward Smith’s biography (profiled below) to begin to understand the real President Grant.
As with the “Lee Cult,” there has been an “Anti-Grant Cult” (my term) that began before Grant even left the army. If you want to understand how badly Grant has been treated, imagine what the history of George W. Bush would be like if the primary sources were his harshest enemies like the
New York Times, C-BS News, Michael “Stupid White Fat Man” Moore, Newsweek and the faculty at UC-Berkeley; or what the history of Bill Clinton would be like if the primary sources were his harshest critics like
National Review and Fox News. In either case, you’d get a very skewed view.
That is precisely what happened with Grant, as his political enemies (like the hypocritical “reformers”) and the self-anointed intellectual elite (like Henry Adams) and racist Reconstruction historians (like the Dunning school) and highly judgmental post-modern historians (McFeely) succeeded in becoming the “final” word on Grant. Although in Grant’s time he was revered in the same breath as Washington and Lincoln, historians, scholars and political enemies have succeeded in trashing what was truly one of the best presidencies. (See Smith,
Grant, for the reasons why and also a discussion about the “scandals” and Grant’s real and laudable accomplishments.)
Some of these historians and intellectuals were biased against Grant because they opposed him personally. Some were lazy and neglected to use Grant’s actual papers! Some built upon the previous erroneous works of others and compounded the errors. But mainly they trashed him because of Grant’s enforcement of Reconstruction and a real failure to understand Reconstruction both in the context of the Gilded Age and Grant’s strong belief in it. For example, the Dunning school of thought tore Grant’s presidency to shreds in part because they – like the so-called “reformers” and of course the Democrats before them – despised Reconstruction and therefore Grant. But latter-day historians, like William Gillette in his
Retreat from Reconstruction, 1868-1879, (1982) attempt to paint Grant as an obstacle to Reconstruction, and it is his inattentiveness and lack of a coherent policy that caused Reconstruction to fail!
It’s nonsense, of course, and it is Gillette’s thesis that is incomprehensible – as well as most other historical treatments of Grant, and not Grant’s policy toward the South. For in fact Grant was that rarest of presidents: a politically courageous man who did the right thing even in the face of mounting hostility from all sides, especially the racist Democrats as well as many in his own party who were more concerned about power than doing right by America’s blacks.
Jaw droppersThe hostility of historians toward Grant is amazing, but the reasons why, that Scaturro uncovers, are just mindboggling. They just don’t “get” him, nor understand what he tried to achieve. It's very similar to the irrational hostility toward George W. Bush.
Does the author succeed?Yes. (How could he not?)
Criticism None, really.
Main takeaway lessonsGrant was the first president to fight for equal rights for blacks based on the simple belief that they deserved it no less than anyone else. He used the full weight of the federal government as much as he could during peace-time--and more than any other president in peace-time, ever – to protect America’s must vulnerable people. But his fight was a doomed fight. (The best analogy I can think of is Atticus Finch defending the prejudged Tom Robinson in
To Kill a Mockingbird.) Because racism was so ingrained in America at that time, what Grant sought to do was simply not possible--at least, not then. There are some historians like Gillette who believe that had Grant been a really slick politician, Reconstruction would have worked. But that, too, is hogwash, because even slick politicians can’t change deep-rooted attitudes and beliefs with mere political skills.
But despite Grant’s valiant losing battle, some people did notice and were grateful—and looked forward to a better day when there were more Grants in the country than white supremacists and Klansmen and Redeemers:
“To [Grant] more than any other man the negro owes his enfranchisement and the Indian a humane policy. In the matter of the protection of the freedman from violence his moral courage surpassed that of his party; hence his place as its head was given to timid men, and the country was allowed to drift, instead of stemming the current with stalwart arms.”
So wrote the great Frederick Douglass, who was absolutely right in his assessment of Grant and of the nation. Because when lesser men succeeded Grant as president, and Reconstruction was abandoned, black Americans essentially had to start over. Yet most historians have dismissed Grant as a racist, a butcher and a dullard too stupid to be president. While Grant may never rank among the greatest of presidents, he deserves to be remembered among those ranked “above average.” And certainly, I would hazard that next to Washington, Grant’s two terms were the most consequential, most far-reaching and the most pivotal of all the great peace-time presidents. Scaturro’s book is but the beginning of the struggle to re-right the wrongs done to one of the nation’s greatest sons.
In about 20 years or so, I can envision a book titled “President George W. Bush Reconsidered.” Perhaps I’ll even write it myself.