> I think that Grant got tarred as a failed president precisely
> because of his efforts, to enfranchise the freedmen after
> the Civil War and to deal justly with the American
> Indians, were not exactly overwhelmingly popular
> in his day, nor for a long time afterwards.
>
I'm glad to see somebody making this case. It's a thing I've long suspected but been too lazy to research.
I like Grant, personally. I don't mind his drinking, since I enjoy a wee dram from time to time, myself. There's that famous story about somebody going to Lincoln and complaining that Grant drank too much. Lincoln is supposed to have replied, Find out what brand he drinks and send a case of it to all my generals.
I think I remember reading, years ago, that Grant's rather imposing tomb up the street from me was largely paid for by small contributions from Black folks in New York who cherished the "star-spangled sot's" memory. Fools, no doubt, far more easily taken in than a man of principle like Carl Remick.
Henry James, returning to the States after many years' exile, wrote a mildly interesting travelogue called The American Scene. I'm not a huge James fan, but I like reading about my nabe, and here's what James has to say about Grant's tomb:
"I shall in fact always remember that icy hour, with the temple-crowned headlands, the wide Hudson vista white with the cold, all nature armor-plated and grim, as an extraordinarily strong and simple composition: made strong and kept simple as for some visit of the God of Battles to his chosen. He might have been riding there, on the north wind, to look down at them, and one caught for the moment the true hard light in which military greatness should be seen. It shone over the miles of ice with its lustre of steel....
"Here, if ever, was a great democratic demonstration caught in the fact.... The tomb of the single hero... presents itself in a manner so opposed to our common ideas of the impressive, to any past vision of sepulchral state, that we can only wonder if a new kind and degree of solemnity may not have been arrived at in this complete rupture with old consecrating forms.
"The tabernacle of Grant's ashes stands there by the pleasure-drive, unguarded and unenclosed, the feature of the prospect and the property of the people, as open as an hotel or a railway station to any coming and going.... One must leave the tomb of Grant with the simple note that if it be not one of the most effective of commemorations it is one of the most missed. On the whole I distinctly 'liked' it."
Gotta love the quotes on "liked." But I "like" it too, and as noted, I quite "like" the guy who is buried in it.