Grant Quotes

“Four Millions of people heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land, not citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so, voters in every part of the land, the right not to be abridged by any state, 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 . . . The adoption of the 15th Amendment . . . constitutes the most important event that has occurred, since the nation came into life.” It was a stunning statement of Grant’s faith in the new black electorate. He further urged Congress to promote popular education so that “all who possess and exercise political rights, shall have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge which will make their share in the government a blessing.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Walt Whitman, who ardently followed the Overland Campaign: “When did [Grant] ever turn back? He was not that sort; he could no more turn back than time! . . . Grant was one of the inevitables; he always arrived; he was invincible as a law: he never bragged—often seemed about to be defeated when he was in fact on the eve of a tremendous victory”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that 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.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Nothing alarmed the white South more than black power at the polls, which was why most terror was directed there.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“In another message he wrote, “I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“The president of a democracy, he averred, had to show himself to the people, and some danger was an inescapable hazard of office. “To be absolutely safe,” he told John Nicolay resignedly, “I should lock myself up in a box.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Bismarck commiserated with Grant upon the countless fatalities of the Civil War. “But it had to be done,” Grant replied. “Yes,” said Bismarck, “you had to save the Union just as we had to save Germany.” “Not only save the Union, but destroy slavery,” Grant added. “I suppose, however, the Union was the real sentiment, the dominant sentiment,” Bismarck inquired. “In the beginning, yes,” agreed Grant, “but as soon as slavery fired upon the flag . . . we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.”71 Grant’s comments reflect the militance he had felt as president about protecting black civil rights. He now interpreted the four-year war as providential, since a shorter war might have ended up preserving slavery. They had been “fighting an enemy with whom we could not make a peace. We had to destroy him. No convention, no treaty was possible—only destruction”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“In mid-May, he dictated a message for a reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic that had a touching, patriarchal tone: “Tell the boys that they probably will never look into my face again, nor hear my voice, but they are engraved on my heart, and I love them as my children.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“When someone asked if he had ever doubted the North’s final victory, he shot back, “Never for a moment.” He quoted Seward, saying “that there was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency, and he agreed with Mr. Seward in this view.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Grant deserves an honored place in American history, second only to Lincoln for what he did for the freed slaves. He got the big issues right during his presidency even if he bungled many of the small ones. The historian Richard N. Currant who also saw Grant as the most underrated American president wrote “by backing radical reconstruction as best he could he made a greater effort to secure the constitutional rights of blacks than did any other president between Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson”. In the words of Frederick Douglass, “that sturdy old roman, Benjamin Butler, made the negro a contraband, Abraham Lincoln made him a free man and General Ulysses S. Grant made him a citizen”.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“A lifelong Methodist, he had always viewed religious excess with a certain irony, having once told a clutch of ministers that America boasted three parties: Democrats, Republicans, and Methodists.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Nothing in all history,” William Lloyd Garrison wrote, equaled “this wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of human beings from . . . the auction-block to the ballot box.”92 Grant termed it “the most important event that has occurred, since the nation came into life.”93 George Boutwell, who had introduced the proposed amendment in the House, said Grant had thrown his immense prestige behind it and that “its ratification was due, probably, to his advice . . . Had he advised its rejection, or had he been indifferent to its fate, the amendment would have failed.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“The feckless President Buchanan, who opposed secession, thought the federal government powerless to stop it, and in his last annual message blamed the “incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the past quarter of a century.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“With a soil and climate scarcely equaled in the world,” he protested, Mexico “has more poor and starving subjects who are willing and able to work than any country in the world. The rich keep down the poor with a hardness of heart that is incredible.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“established Yellowstone as the first national park on March 1, 1872. President Lincoln had signed a bill in 1864 that permitted California to preserve the Yosemite Valley and the giant sequoias of the Mariposa Grove, but it was Grant who initiated the modern national park system.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Once Reconstruction collapsed, it left southern blacks for eighty years at the mercy of Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tactics designed to segregate them from whites and deny them the vote. Black sharecroppers would be degraded to the level of debt-ridden serfs, bound to their former plantation owners. After 1877, the black community in the South steadily lost ground until a rigid apartheid separated the races completely, a terrible state of affairs that would not be fixed until the rise of the civil rights movement after World War II.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Reconstruction was a fine but ultimately doomed experiment in American life. The tragedy of this intractable issue was that there was finally no way for blacks to enjoy their rights without a prolonged military presence, and that became politically impossible.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Having prospered as a merchant, Jesse was now worth $100,000—equivalent to nearly $3 million today—and employed about fifty people. When he reached sixty in 1854, he had begun to withdraw from active management of his business interests. His holdings included several tanneries near Portsmouth, Ohio, and leather goods stores in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Galena, Illinois.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“that there was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency, and he”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Reared with Methodist modesty, he could never admit nakedly to the true depth of his ambition. In this way, he was strictly Hannah Grant’s son, not Jesse’s. Ethical and honorable, he wanted to receive jobs based squarely on his merits, a faith he held so unalterably he called it “one of my superstitions.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Everyone found Grant modest and retiring, an altogether likable fellow. “His only dissipation was in owning a fast horse,” said a regimental colleague. “He always liked to have a fine nag, and he paid high prices to get one.”Grant enjoyed playing chess and checkers, attending parties with Julia, and worshipping with her at the Methodist church.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“On July 11, Lincoln appeared at Fort Stevens, north of Washington, which was under fire from Early’s men. To soothe an alarmed populace, Lincoln and Stanton rode there in an open carriage. The tall, angular president, peeping over the fort’s parapet, made a prime target for Confederate marksmen, and one Union soldier (possibly Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.), unaware it was Lincoln, shouted, “Get down, you fool.”13 It was the only time in American history a sitting president came under fire in combat.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“A journalist named C. E. Meade, a nephew of George Gordon Meade, claimed Grant puffed on his last cigar while visiting a horse farm in Goshen, New York. “Gentlemen,” Grant announced to his companions, “this is the last cigar I shall ever smoke.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Summing up Grant’s career, Frederick Douglass wrote: “In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“The funeral was a vast, elaborate affair, befitting a monarch or head of state, in marked contrast to the essential simplicity of the man honored. The grandeur emphasized the central place that Grant had occupied in the Civil War and its aftermath. “Out of all the hubbub of the war,” wrote Walt Whitman, “Lincoln and Grant emerge, the towering majestic figures.”146 He thought they had lived exemplary lives that vindicated the American spirit, showing how people lifted from the lower ranks of society could attain greatness.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“On the morning of March 4, in an extraordinary sequence of events, the House approved the bill right before the noon deadline. Senators had already adjourned to the Capitol for the inauguration. They were abruptly rounded up and herded back into the Senate chamber, the hands of the clock were turned back twenty minutes, and, to tempestuous applause, they approved Grant’s bill. Chester Arthur hurried to the Capitol to sign it. As his last presidential act, he nominated Grant, and President Cleveland renewed his commission as general of the army. Chester Arthur instructed the president pro tempore of the Senate to send Grant a congratulatory telegram.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Shiloh, but it sorely disappointed the Century editors. Written in Grant’s pithy style, it was arid and compact and read like a bloodless report. Johnson hurried over to Long Branch for a pep talk with his new writer. A gifted editor, he drew Grant into personal reminiscences about Shiloh and made him see the difference between a dry recitation and one enlivened by personal impressions. This came as a revelation to Grant, who was an apt pupil and promised to start anew. As he did so, he felt a spurt of liberating energy. “Why, I am positively enjoying the work,” he told Johnson. “I am keeping at it every night and day, and Sundays.” Under Johnson’s tutelage, Grant discovered new dimensions to his writing,”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“It turned out that before he had stalked Garfield, Charles Guiteau had stalked Grant.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“Had Napoleon been thoroughly unselfish, Grant suggested, he would have been the greatest man in history, such was his military genius. When a young woman on board asked Grant to name the two figures he detested most in history, he shot back, “Napoleon and Robespierre.”114”
― Ron Chernow, Grant

“In the words of Frederick Douglass, “That sturdy old Roman, Benjamin Butler, made the negro a contraband, Abraham Lincoln made him a freeman, and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant made him a citizen.”
― Ron Chernow, Grant