On June 20 in Los Angeles I saw Junipero Serra pulled off his pedestal. Mythologized as a savior of Native Americans, he was in fact a colonizer who viciously oppressed California’s Indigenous population. The statue’s fall was one of many in recent weeks as Confederate generals, slaveholders, and colonizing oppressors the world over are being torn down in an upsurge of long held anger and historical reckoning.
Among the fallen is Ulysses S. Grant, 18th U.S. President and commander of the Union Army during the Civil War. After being torn down by demonstrators in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park a spirited social media discussion arose among liberals and leftists regarding his legacy.
“Taking down a statue of Ulysses Grant makes little sense. He used federal troops to protect the rights of Black Americans after the Civil War. An imperfect man but far better than the presidents who came soon after him,” tweeted Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden.
On the other side of the spectrum the right seemed uniformly apoplectic. Long defenders of monuments extolling the Confederacy, they insisted the toppling of Grant impugned the movement seeking a reckoning with the past.
“Mob in San Francisco brings down statues of Junipero Serra, Francis Scott Key, Ulysses S. Grant (!). The slippery slope argument seems alive and well,” tweeted the Washington Examiner’s Byron York.
When accessing historical figures like Confederate generals, the foul cause for which they fought must be put at the forefront. Despite the protestations of revisionists, the Confederates' own words show they were fighting to defend white supremacy and chattel slavery.
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth,” said Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens in his infamous Cornerstone Speech.
The only reason high ranking Confederates are noteworthy today is their service to this government. Slaveowners themselves, and in the case of Nathan Bedford Forrest the first Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, their legacy cannot be construed as a positive one worthy of veneration. Likewise, the monuments themselves cannot be separated from who they depict. There is no honest way to interpret them as benign symbols of southern pride, military valor, or simple historical artifacts. Many were put up during the height of Jim Crow or the Civil Rights Movement. Clearly a rejection of racial equity, and a statement of support for white supremacy.
Unlike those in gray, Grant does have positive accomplishments. Most remembered for his Civil War victories, his military career started at West Point. As a young lieutenant he was commended for bravery in the Mexican-American War which he called, “one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.”
When the Civil War began Grant rejoined the Army after years of struggling in civilian life. When The North was fairing poorly early in the conflict he delivered important, morale boosting victories at Fort Henry and Donelson in 1862. His brilliant siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1863 helped turn the tide in favor of The Union. Later in the war Grant assumed command of the entire U.S. Army. He faced off with Robert E. Lee in a series of brutal battles that badly depleted Lee’s reserves of manpower and supplies. After months of besieging Petersburg, Grant forced Lee to surrender at Appomattox in1865. While other major Confederate commanders would capitulate in the coming weeks, this effectively represented defeat for The South.
During this time Grant showed some care for Black soldiers and civilians alike. When negotiating a prisoner exchange with Lee, he refused to go through with the deal unless Black Union troops would be included. When negotiating the surrender of Confederate General Pemberton’s army at Vicksburg he did not allow the paroled Confederates to take enslaved people with them.
Grant Parlayed his status as a war hero into a successful run for the Presidency in 1868. As chief executive he took a strong stance against the KKK. While the organization wrought terror and mayhem upon newly freed Black people and their White supporters in the South, Grant did not stand idly by. He took decisive actions that played a major role in successfully suppressing the terrorist group.
All of these accomplishments were recognized by his contemporaries. Black leaders sang his praises, and he was memorialized by Frederick Douglass upon his death.
“A man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point. In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior,” Douglass said.
It’s difficult to question Douglass as he is a legendary advocate for justice. Still, was Grant a “protector,” or “friend” to these marginalized groups? While his accomplishments are impressive, there is a dark side that has in all to American fashion been glossed over.
In the winter of 1862 he issued Special Order No. 11. Wrongly blaming Jews for smuggling and cotton speculation, Grant ordered them completely expelled from his sizable military district.
As historian Jonathan Sarna notes it was, “the most notorious anti-Jewish official order in American history.”
It came after waves of national anti-Semitism, previous anti-Semitic orders from Grant, and as Erin Blakemore points out Grant’s own, “personal animosity.”
In the end the order effected few Jews and was rescinded within days at the behest of Lincoln. Grant later publicly and privately apologized in addition to appointing Jews to public office and decrying pogroms in Europe. While his remorse and efforts to make amends are noteworthy, this is far from the only time he assailed the most vulnerable.
The primary cause of the Civil War was slavery, and today the Union’s effort to defeat the Slaveholders Rebellion is rightly construed as a just war. Grant’s reputation is largely built on the fact that he played a decisive role in leading the Union Army to victory, thus ending chattel slavery in the United States.
Yet, this great hero of a noble cause has an often overlooked contradiction. He in fact owned another human being. This cannot be written off with any facile arguments about “being a man of his times.” His father Jesse was an abolitionist and taught his son the evils of slavery from a young age. His wife Julia’s family got him more involved in slaveholding after his initial resignation from the Army in 1854.
The White House Historical Association’s Sarah Fling writes, “having received eighty acres of land as a wedding gift from Julia’s father, the Grants returned to Missouri to live off the land. There, Ulysses Grant became increasingly involved in slavery at White Haven. Grant farmed alongside enslaved field workers daily, while also working with them to build a new home—this log cabin would come to be known as ‘Hardscrabble. ’Grant left no record of how he felt about his new proximity to the institution of slavery, but he and Julia benefited from their free labor after moving to White Haven.”
By the late 1850’s Grant had broad authority over White Haven and thus its enslaved people. Julia’s sister Emma made clear that while he supposedly opposed the institution, Grant was not, “a very rank abolitionist or that he opposed it so violently that the acceptance of Julia’s slaves had to be forced upon him.”
Around the same time he owned his own enslaved person, a man named William Jones who he set free in 1859, two years before the start of the war. This is notable in that Grant did so before he was legally prompted to, and at the time he was in tough financial straits where selling Mr. Jones or having him buy his own freedom would have been more to his financial benefit.
Still, this cannot change the fact that Grant owned a person, the very act of which is inherently violent, cruel, and evil. He did so knowingly, and he continued to tolerate and benefit from Julia’s slaveholding. Later on his views would evolve, and he became more sympathetic to the cause of Black liberation as evidenced by his efforts as a General and President. Unfortunately, even then he had very obvious faults. He somewhat moderated in his tenacity fighting the Klan while in office. Fling points out he advocated a bizarre plan to colonize what is now the Dominican Republic to serve as a sort of refuge for Black people. These facts must figure negatively in our moral and historical assessment of him.
While Grant’s history as a slaveholder is shameful it is not the only thing tarnishing his legacy. His treatment of Native Americans represents another disgraceful chapter of his biography. Here too he has some complexity. He helped his friend, a Seneca man named Ely S. Parker, gain a commission in the Union Army after he was unjustly denied. As President Grant appointed Parker Commissioner of Indian Affairs. His policies towards Native Americans were sold as conciliatory and peace minded.
“At a time when many in the press and public alike called for the extermination of the Indians, he believed every Indian from every tribe should be made a citizen of the United States, too,” writes historian Mary Stockwell.
In truth Grant’s policies were condescending and assimilationist colonization, even if not more overtly violent like those of his predecessors. Eventually, he went on to commit a crime familiar to 21st Century Americans. He launched an illegal war for material gain. An 1868 treaty had given the Black Hills and large amounts of surrounding territory to the Lakota. In the midst of a nationwide economic stagnation gold was discovered there. After attempts at hardball diplomacy and negotiation Grant decided it was easier to just concoct a war to forcibly take the land. A sad fact is today this whole episode is remembered by many more for being the conflict in which Custer died at the Little Big Horn than the act of aggression and colonization it was. Later Congressional inquiries were shown trumped up, fake evidence that bands of Lakota had started the war. The Supreme Court has since ruled that The Black Hills belong to the Lakota and have ordered the government to pay reparations. For their part the Lakota have refused such monetary payments, demanding instead the return of the stolen land.
Grant’s legacy, like that of the United States, is inextricably tied to this theft. It’s something many in this country don’t wish to discuss, and that includes the scholars who’ve played a major role in the recent rehabilitation of Grant’s historical reputation. To do so is to acknowledge a basic, foundational truth of this nation. It is built upon settler colonialism, stolen land. Here the right’s slippery slope arguments illustrate not a fault with the left, but a fault with themselves. Many of them know the truth. They know about the brutalities and injustices visited upon Native Americans just as they know the truth about slavery. What they fear is a long overdue reckoning which will spare no idol or myth. That is after all one of the things they care most about, national myths. The stories of America and so many of its publicly appointed heroes, no matter how sanitized, grant them inspiration, community, and identity. The myth of Jefferson as deified Founding Father as opposed to the truth of Jefferson as child rapist and slaveholder. They recall the lies and are uplifted as supposed inheritors of a legacy. They protect these tales ferociously. They will defend their idols to the point of defending the very injustices and oppression that in large part were born from them. They do so because to lose them would be to lose a part of themselves, their identity, their way of seeing the world. They cannot deal with the internal turmoil this causes, so they take the cowards way out. They defend the indefensible. These defenses, much like those Grant crushed at Vicksburg, must be obliterated.
They cannot stand because the historical amnesia they breed blinds us to the ongoing crimes. It allows for the continued toleration of the brutalities visited upon Black and Indigenous people. Poverty, violence, and trauma are daily realities for many of these folks. Both groups suffer greatly from police violence and mass incarceration. To this day we see places like Guam kept in colonial status, denied both independence or proper representation in Washington. In his quest to build his xenophobic wall on the Southern U.S. Border Trump has devastated sacred Native American sites. There has never been proper accountability for slavery and colonialism. The stolen land is still occupied with scarcely a hint of any intentions to begin returning it. Proper reparations have never been given to the descendants of the enslaved. Beginning to address these issues demands a proper public understanding of the past.
Perhaps James Baldwin put it best, “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Facing our past and present requires a true historical appraisal of Grant and figures like him. Hero of the Union Army and fighter of the Klan, yes. Slaveowner, one time anti-Semite, and colonizer, also yes. What does this say about the statues bearing his likeness?
Some monuments are mournful, places for reflection. Others, like the statue of Grant, are objects of veneration. Can we say, knowing full well the man’s entire record, that he is worthy of this reverence bordering on deification? The answer is no. We cannot hand wave away his crimes. Some will then ask if this means that only saints can be admired by society. Flawless individuals free of failings or human complexity. My answer is that no such person has ever existed. Anyone so appearing has merely benefited from their transgressions being lost to history. All failings are not however equal. Grant did not just express a stupid opinion in a letter or fail to prioritize something he should have. Several times he used his great personal and institutional power to enact tremendous violence on some of the most marginalized people in the history of this nation. To take down the statues of him does not say he did nothing well or praiseworthy. It doesn’t prevent scholars, writers, and students of history from having a nuanced take on him. It does reject any hero worship, demand we not ignore his victims, and calls into question the practice of casting those like him in metal in the middle of the public square.
There are some people who do pass the litmus test for a statue. Many of these men have received far to little credit for their accomplishments. I wonder, in taking down Grant and similar figures, if it’s not their turn for recognition. One who comes to mind is Robert Smalls. Born into slavery, he eventually found himself aboard the steamship Planter in Charleston Harbor during the Civil War. A brave man, he lead other enslaved people in seizing the ship and sailing it out to the Union blockade and freedom. He continued to captain the vessel for The North during the conflict. After the war he became a prominent Reconstruction Era politician. The current, small memorials to him are nowhere near grand enough for such a figure.
While Smalls is a good candidate for public honors, writer Noah Berlatsky has a further suggestion. Sharing many of my thoughts on the matter, I should note that Noah is a good man with whom I have occasionally corresponded. He believes the monument to Robert Gould Shaw is instructive. Shaw was the White Colonel of the famed 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment during The Civil War. One of the first regiments to be comprised of Black soldiers, Shaw was killed heroically leading his troops in the assault on Fort Wagner and buried with them in a mass grave. The monument depicts him astride a horse leading his regiment.
“The monument doesn't honor Shaw alone or individually. Rather, it is a tribute to his solidarity with the Black men he fought with, and their solidarity with him,” wrote Berlatsky. “The Shaw memorial calls those who look at it not to admire one antiracist man, but to join an antiracist community.”
I in no way mean to insult Shaw when I go further than Mr. Berlatsky did here and say that perhaps the statue depicting the great man, even in a better way, is for the most part passé, a sentiment he too expressed when he tweeted, “I think the model of giant honking monument to some singular dead hero is worth questioning.”
While some memorials to honorable people should stay up, and some individuals do deserve new ones, going forward there are alternatives worth exploring.
A few years ago I found myself in D.C.. Never having seen it, I decided to pay a visit to the World War II Memorial. Unlike so many nearby monuments there is no commander astride a horse or lone figure towering over the rest. There isn’t the face of one man, there’s many. It is all those who fought by land and sea. It is those who built and delivered the munitions. It is those who stormed beaches. It is those who flew and jumped from planes. It is those who lived and died to defeat Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Japanese Empire. It is my mother’s father in the Pacific, my father’s father in the shipyard, my great uncles on the battlefield. In that reflecting pool, among all the panels depicting scenes from the war, there they are.
In memorializing the cause of the Union this is perhaps the way to go. A monument for the many. A place to honor not solely the people in headquarters but those who braved the elements, disease, and the battlefield to bring the Confederacy to its knees. The soldiers for whom it is said, perhaps apocryphally, Grant wept for at The Battle of The Wilderness.
These memorials can have their issues as well. After all, no large group is free of sin, especially in such an ugly business as warfare. Even noble ventures count among their ranks those who’ve committed misdeeds and atrocities. Still, memorials like this can be seen as places to commemorate those who served honorably for a just cause.
For many it will be difficult to make these changes. In disposing of myths and their memorials there can be confusion, sadness, and internal tumult. Many fear being implicated as inheritors to the crimes. They fear what justice would mean. Be that as it may discomfort and fear are not what is needed right now. Instead we require bravery, foresight, and a thirst for justice. A desire to do the work that must be done which has already begun. To look backwards clear eyed in order to look forwards. For once there has been a true historical accounting we as a society can perceive and teach the past properly. That will mean accelerating down the path toward a better world. We can finally pay reparations and return stolen land. We can change unjust systems and achieve a just and equal society. This is inseparable from the ongoing protests in which I have participated. If some so called great men must fall so be it, for their fall ushers in a future brighter than most of us can imagine.
About the author: Mathew Foresta is a writer, journalist, photographer, and activist. His work has appeared in HuffPost, USA Today, VICE, LAist, and Pasadena Weekly. You can follow him on Twitter @ForestaWriter and on Instagram @Foresta_Writer.