In September 1875, as violence raged across Mississippi, the usually taciturn Ulysses S. Grant gave the most reproduced speech of his presidency before the veterans of the Union Army of Tennessee in Davenport, Iowa. He urged that not one dollar be “appropriated to the support of any sectarian school.” By sectarian Grant meant Catholic. He also warned, “If we are to have another contest in the future of our national existence, I predict the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”
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