Ulysses Grant, The 19th Century Voice of Racial Equality

                         Ulysses Grant 

I have another blog which I share with Brian and Robert.  The title of the other blog is "Things as They Really Are." I  explained the title of my Blog by quoting a line from a book about Churchill and Orwell by Thomas Ricks which read as follows,"The struggle to see things as they really are is perhaps the fundamental driver of  Western Civilization." Today, August 27, 2020, I finished Ron Chernow's book, Grant,  a biography of a man who was all of the following: a great military strategist, unflappable in the heat of battle, an alcoholic, gracious in his treatment of vanquished enemy soldiers, scrupulously honest and a champion of emancipated slaves and American Indians who (Grant) was so far ahead of his time that if he were alive today he would be regarded as a progressive. In stark contrast to his grasp of "world issues as they really were" he was bamboozled over and over again by people who publicly supported him but lied to him for personal gain.  The world he lived in was a text book case of issues that are relevant to the 2020 election, such as racism, voter suppression, divisiveness and lying to the American public.  In 1870 the KKK was so powerful in South Carolina that he had to suspend habeas corpus for indicted klansmen long enough to protect witnesses from reprisals.  The move netted 3,384 indictments and 1,143 convictions.  In a single day 250 citizens, confessed to affiliation with the KKK.  Grant was the voice of racial equality before, during and after his tenure of office but after his death,  reconstruction largely went out of business.  Besides the KKK there was lots of blame to go around. Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's replacement, along with the democratic party, for example, didn't really believe in racial equality while the republican party and most private citizens were passively complicit with its demise. In the face of southern resistance, the price tag for reconstructing the South was too high.