It is still very much a work in progress. I havent figured out everything about this man the white house. Perhaps that is an impossibility. Some of the things i will be saying today are tentative in nature, shall we say. We do not have the time to go through an entire chronology of the events of grants very busy two terms in the white house. Instead i would like to raise a few points to how to look at the grant presidency. First to historiography. How he has been treated in the past. I will be very brief about that. Then we will look at some of the problems in the country during his presidency. Then i would like to discuss some of the assets that he brought to the office that help him succeed. Not only personal assets, but assets in the culture in which he was operating. And then i would like to talk about some of the liabilities. And then i will talk about grants achievements in the white house and a little bit about the impact on the evolution of the presidency. First to historiography. Grant has had fairly bad press as president ever since he took the white house and really it started before he took office. The standard view is that he performed badly and was criticized. The truth of the matter is there were some people who were ready to criticize him even before he came president. I can name names. One is Charles Sumner who was disappointed he was not appointed secretary of state. He became a very severe critic of grant until he died in 1874. He was always criticizing grant for things that he thought were not being handled properly. Another critic was henry adams. He was turned off by the Johnson Administration and even before grant became president he was had vowed to write articles exposing corruption in the government. He was ready for bear even before ulysses s. Grant put his hand on the bible to become president. Throughout his term, henry adams wrote quite critical articles about him. If you know about henry adams, grant comes off badly there as well. These men thought that he was a liar, a rogue, he was stupid, he was conniving. Very nasty portrait of grant in the past. Some newspapers, particularly democratic newspapers, gave him a very hard time. Congressional investigations, was the democrats got control of the house of representatives severely investigated and criticized grants performance. The significance of all this is that these critics comments and notions about grant became embedded in the literature about it. Historians doing their work in the first 75 or so years of the 20th century, when they looked back at the grand administration, they tend to pay more attention to what his enemy said about him than what he had accomplished in the white house. If you look at the president ial polls that were conducted, among historians and political scientists, journalists, and others, you will see that grant tended to rank low in those polls. Never rockbottom. That was usually reserved for andy johnson or James Buchanan but still nonetheless quite low. Reflecting the scullery we scholarly image of grant trade the scholarly criticism of him. But 25, 30 years ago, there began to be something of a rehabilitation of the scholarship on grant, grants reputation, and i think that that was largely due to the civil rights movement. The development of civil rights in the 20th century. Grant came to be seen in many historians views as a defender of civil rights, and his estimate tended to rise ever since that time. If you look at the president ial assessment polls, if you well, you will see the ranking somewhere in the middle. Never in the top five or even top 10, but certainly doing much better than when those polls first began around the middle of the 20th century. So, grant had an evolving impression or reputation shall , we say, among historians and other scholars. What kind of problems did grant face when he became president . The most significant was the domestic problem in the question of reconstruction. What to do about the self, what what to do about the south what to do about Race Relations in the south. Grant like to refer to this as the effort to secure the results of the war. This was a question of enormous difficulty. Not only because of the problems in the south, but because the approach to reconstruction in the immediate postwar years was the subject of great wrangling between the president Andrew Johnson and the Republican Party in congress. One way of looking at reconstruction is not only what is dealing with is in the south, but also looking at this as an institutional struggle between the president and the congress. Grant was not only trying to fortify reconstruction efforts to a poll the rights of the former slaves and so forth, but also to rebalance, recalibrate the relationship with the congress and that was a very tall order. Another problem with the civil war related to the nations finances. During the civil war, the United States government, of course needed to raise very large sums of money. It passed a tremendous new load of taxes. Taxes were raised, tariffs were raised, income taxes were instituted, inheritance taxes and on and on. The federal government taxed just about everything that moved to during the civil war. Still was not enough to cover the cost of the war. So, the government also engaged in heavy borrowing, selling bonds, and the National Debt was Something Like 2 billion. It would seem like chicken feed to us today, but it was an enormous sum of money at that time and the question was, what kind of program could the government put in place to pay that back . Borrowing was not enough either. The government got in the situation of printing money the socalled greenbacks unbacked by gold or silver. The question of the postwar years is what we do with that money . Do we get back into the situation of where we can take older silver for it . There were lots of questions related to the war that grant would confront in the white house. There were problems on the frontier of course. In grants time, this treatment of indians was continuing. It was nothing new in grants grandpa sarah. Grants era. This was something grant felt very deeply about and try to deal with as president. In dealing with those problems i submit the grant did have available to him a Certain Group of assets he could bring to bear. Some of them were personal. Others were, i think, more institutional or contextual, if you well. We will look at the personal ones first. Grant had experience as an administrator. That came from his war years. Not only the civil war, but also the mexican war. In the mexican war, he was in the quartermaster corps. He learned how to organize in that situation, learned the value of supply lines and so forth and this was important. He honed his Organizational Skills in that role. Those commands in the civil war became ever and ever larger, until of course the last years when he was in charge of all of the union armies. This was very important for him to carry into the white house because he had run this huge organization, he had learned how to see the big picture, he had learned how to delegate tasks, to see his roles. When he was running for president , the Chicago Tribune ran an editorial and compare d him to other candidates who had legislative experience in the congress or judicial experience, Supreme Court justices people were thinking about for president , and they said grant was superior to them because of his military experience. And the reason for that was his military experience was primarily executive. Not legislative, not judicial, but executive and that is what we needed in the white house. So, that was an important asset for him. He also had a great asset of determination to see things through to a successful conclusion. This was with him all his life. If you had a chance to read his memoirs, you will see he never liked retracing his steps. He always wanted to move toward his goal and take the steps to get there. You can see that. During the war grant also showed that he could be a great judge of men. He could assess their strengths. He could assess their weaknesses. This was his reputation during the war this was borne out by experiences of great lieutenant such as sheridan and mcpherson and so forth. There was some question about how well he translated that into civilian life. It took him some time to do that. He did it, i think, primarily when he realized the Republican Party at the time was sort of the army he was now commanding. And his lieutenants were not only the people in his cabinet but the key figures and the congress. These were important senators who helped grant achieve his goals. Doing the same things that sherman or sheridan did to help him achieve his goals in wartime. Grant also in a little more abstract sense he was quite a dedicated patriot. He one of the army to succeed. He wanted his country to succeed in the postwar years and his commitment to democratic ideals initially, before the war, he was not interested in politics had a suspicion of politics. After the war, when he was in the white house, he did come to realize the Great Potential for positive good through Political Action and he did very much uphold the rights of former slaves to vote black suffrage. That commitment to democratic ideals as part of the american credo. It was a very important part of his response to a poll be amendments of the constitution that undergirded civil rights. And the right to vote. What we have to remember about ulysses s. Grant is he did not undergo a lobotomy between appomattox and becoming president. As a general, he had demonstrated capability with the generality of things and the details of things. He manipulated performance well subordinates well and he showed a dogged perseverance to achieve his goals under heavy odds. That did not abandon him when he went into the white house, but i think it is fair to say it took him a little time to adjust. All right, those are his personal assets. The list could probably go on. What about institutional assets or external assets that could aid him in his operations as president . I think one of the things that was working for him was a wealth of good will in the country at large. He went into the presidency respected, generally. He was the savior of the union after all. And after the death of lincoln he was the most revered man in the United States. Certainly in the north. In the south, he was respected by many people. Not only for his treatment of lee at appomattox, but his protection of lee and other officers from trial. He sensed it would be good to get the country back together as soon as possible. That was important, it worked to his advantage. This atmosphere of goodwill when he took the oath of office. Also working to his advantage, the republican majorities in both houses of congress, very large majorities as a matter of fact. His party controlled both houses of congress for the first six years of his presidency. The last two years, the democrats had the house of representatives. This is important because it eased grants legislative tasks. He could get things done a bit more easily, as we well know. President to have divided governments do have difficulties. Another asset this president had was the patronage power. That is to say, the appointments to office of subordinates around the country. Not only in washington, but in federal offices around the country. This is important because he like other president s would take the advice of senators and representatives about who to appoint to those positions and that patronage power helped grant forge alliances. That strengthened his ability to get through congress what he wanted to. So, on the plus ledger, there were a number of things working to grants advantage. Both of his personal makeup, his personal experiences, and the institutional setting in which he conducted the white house. On the other side of the ledger, there were liabilities. They were obstacles to his success. Practices that worked against him. We can divide them into personal deficiencies and institutional or contextual ones. I think it is worth noting that despite his experience, he did lack political knowledge. He did lack some little goal political experience because he had never held a Political Office before. He was briefly general in chief of the army, and briefly the interim secretary of war. During that time he learned a great deal about how washington works. He was somewhat naive when he took the oath of office, and the feeling he could somehow remain above politics, above the fray. It was not going to work out that way. He rather quickly realized that as i said, you need to forge those positive relationships. Another element in his personal makeup that perhaps worked to against his success to some degree, his taciturnity. He was known as the great silent man. He didnt like public speaking. He seldom spoke as president other than to acknowledge the crowd. I think this is unfortunate because grant missed the opportunity to use the presidency as a bully pulpit. For the things that he believed in that he favored. Why was he this way . I think there were components in his personal makeup that made him very averse to public speaking, but it was also a reaction to Andrew Johnson, who grant believed made a full of a fool of himself during several of his speaking tours. Grant accompanied him on one in which Andrew Johnson got into shouting matches with people in the crowds and it really brought the presidency low and grants idea was not for me. I am not going to do that kind of thing. Could you speak effectively . Yes, on occasion he did. In 1875 he made a speech quite effectively in the ohio Gubernatorial Campaign when rutherford b. Hayes was reelected that year and positioned him to run for president the following year. In a sense, that is the exception that proves the rule on grant about public speaking. Its too bad he did not do more of it. When he went abroad after his presidency, he came to enjoy it, but not in the white house. Grant was an excellent writer, and he used his messages to congress, both his special messages and his annual message to propose policies, defend positions, and so forth and he could be quite eloquent doing that. Particularly in messages that related to civil rights questions. Grant did not go to congress in person. It wasnt done. It wouldnt be done again until Thomas Jefferson stop that and Woodrow Wilson picked it up. Most president s sent their work to congress on paper. Grant could do this effectively but i think you couldve done more that and been more effective. There was some use of the press in the grand presidency. Feeding favorable information to reporters, grant sometimes gave interviews to the new york herald, for instance. But i think one of the contextual problems for grant was his taciturnity he didnt control the narrative. He did not control the narrative. What happened was, his enemies his adversaries did tend to control that narrative and when it came time for historians of the 20th century to look back and write about his administration, they tend to Pay Attention to those adversaries much more than what the president and his advocates were saying. Another personal deficiency that i think was against grant is what i think we might term and excessive loyalty to people around him. Loyalty to a fault, really. With many of his associates. Grant was a highly sensitive man. He was an appreciative man. He held friendships dearly. He stood by those who stood by him. But sometimes he remained loyal to people whether or not they were worth his loyalty. That was unfortunate. His own son, ulysses s. Grant jr. , once said of his father, he is incapable of supposing his friends to be selfish. And the fact of the matter is that some of them were selfish. And grant may have had too trusting a relationship with some of them. That opened them up to charges of corruption. That is the most enduring condemnation of the grant to administration. Part of the reason i think that grant did cling so tenaciously to proven friends was his own sense of, believe it or not, inferiority. We do not have the option of putting grant on the couch, but it is inevitable that we try to analyze his personality. There was elements of an inferiority complex in some sense with ulysses s. Grant. He did greatly admire men of wealth. Because they compared so favorably to his own early failures in business. And he felt that they had a deep understanding of the American Economy and perhaps he was too willing to listen to their advice regarding Economic Policy in the white house. Grant also had a sense of inferiority with people we might term intellectuals. Grant was a man of simple tastes. He enjoyed his family life very much. Not particularly interested in cultural matters. There is some evidence he may have felt his west point, basic engineering type of education was somehow inferior to the classical education men received at yale and harvard and such places. So, grant had trouble reaching out to those men and tended to avoid their company, and hence to avoid their counsel. And i say this is an inferiority complex, but in fact, grant may have been right about the way these people felt about him. They did tend to look down on him as a matter of fact. They thought that he was base and vulgar, ill mannered. Henry adams wife once referred to ulysses s. Grant as the king of vulgaria. That stuck. He was an intelligent man. That is more than abundantly clear. But he lacked the selfconfidence that Abraham Lincoln had that could scoff and blow off people who criticized his background. He of course laughed at his own background. Grant had trouble reaching out to intellectual leaders. The vulgarity leads to rumors of grants drinking. I will not spend a lot of time on this question. Most of it stems from his war years. Highly exaggerated, nothing. He did drink in the white house. He served alcohol. He did not drink to excess in the white house. An article came out in 1983 alleging grant was an alcoholic. He did not drink to function. Neither was it the case he would go on binges. I think that that public miss the mark that probably misses the mark. Again, we do not have grants medical chart in front of us but i think if we did, we would see that grant have low tolerance for alcohol, and very little would