Wednesday, June 08, 2022

Grant

 


2 comments:

Dan in Philly said...

As a fan of the man myself, I tend to think he was vastly underrated as a president. The scandals for which he usually gets blamed for more a part of normal government business at the time. Even his worst critics admit that he had no part in the scandals, however riddled his administration's might have been in them. But again that was typical for the time. The question is what was the main purpose of his presidency? It was to preserve the union. He accomplished that, when it seems unlikely no one else could have. It would be easy to see a different man leading the country into either non-stop military occupation of the South or even a devolution into another civil war or a second secession.

"He, like Grant, recognizes the limits of what was possible at the time. Grant brought real stability to a region wracked with violence at the outset of his administration; anything more would have required years, perhaps decades of military rule. However noble the objective, there are good reasons such a course was untenable.[10] It is fair to ask if there was anyone else who could have done better than Grant, and perfectly reasonable to conclude that the answer is no."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017/5/29/american-ulysses-and-the-rehabilitation-of-an-american-hero%3fformat=amp

Michael Wade said...

Dan,

I completely agree.

As I write this, a picture of Grant is over my shoulder.

Michael