Lee and Grant | Triumphs and Failures of the Grant Administrations

Grant's two terms as president brought significant advances in the areas of human rights and foreign affairs. Building on the great accomplishment of the war—emancipation—Grant worked to provide justice to black Americans. He attempted to end long policies of exploitation and genocide against Native Americans as well. Grant used diplomacy to avoid potential wars with Spain and England. His administrations, unfortunately, are largely remembered for a half-dozen scandals involving appointees of Grant who fell victim to bribery.

Grant's Diplomacy

"I think it advisable to complete the neutrality proclamation which I signed . . . [and] to mediate between Spain and the Cubans. . . . [W]e look with some alarm upon [the Spanish] proposition to send 20,000 more troops to Cuba to put down, as Ameri-
cans believe the right of self government on this Continent. . . ."

—Ulysses S. Grant, Kane, Pa., to Sec. of State Hamilton Fish, 14 August 1869

Grant's Policy toward Native Americans

". . . the management of the original inhabitants of this Continent, the Indian, has been one of embarrassment. . . . A system which looks to the extinction of a race is too abhorant for a Nation to indulge in without entailing upon the wrath of all Christendom."

—Ulysses S. Grant, First Annual Message to Congress, 6 December 1869

Grant and the 15th Amendment

"A measure which makes at once Four Millions of people . . . voters in every part of the land . . . is indeed a measure of grander importance than any other one act of the kind from the foundation of our free government to the present day."

—Ulysses S. Grant, message to Congress following the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, 30 March 1870

Annexing Santo Domingo

"The condition of the colored man within our borders may become a source of anxiety. . . . It was looking to a settlement of this question that led me to urge the annexation of Santo Domingo. . . . I took it that the colored people would go there in great numbers. . . . They would still be States of the Union."

—Ulysses S. Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs

"[The Ku Klux Klan Act] applies to all parts of the United States. . . . I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the Executive."

—Ulysses S. Grant, Proclamation, 3 May 1871

The Geneva Peace Conference

"An example has thus been set which . . . may be followed by other civilized nations and finally be the means of returning to productive industry millions of men now maintained to settle the disputes of nations by the bayonet and broadside."

—Ulysses S. Grant, Message to Congress, 4 December 1871

The Sanborn Contracts Scandal

"The report leaves but two judgments to be formed of the conduct of these gentlemen—that it was corrupt, or that it was inexpressibly negligent and careless."

—New York Times, 5 May 1874

The Indian Trading Scandal

"Belknap and the President, The Extent of Belknap's Guilt Unknown to the President When the Resignation Was Accepted—Belknap's Future Action"

—Newspaper headline, 3 March 1876

Back to Reconciliation

Images: Thomas Nast, The Spanish Bull in Cuba Gone Mad . . . , 29 November 1873, Harper's Weekly; Red Cloud, Chief of the Oglala Sioux, c. 1870 (Library of Congress); Thomas Kelly, The Fifteenth Amendment, 1870 (New-York Historical Society); Santo Domingo, 1871 (New-York Historical Society); Ku Klux Klan Robe and Hood, c. 1866 (Chicago Historical Society); Thomas Nast, International Law—The Better Way . . . , 1874, Harper's Weekly; "The President and the Sanborn Business," New York Times, 5 May 1874; Mathew Brady, William W. Belknap, c. 1865–75 (New-York Historical Society)