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For about 20 years, Ray Keating wrote a weekly column - a short time with the New York City Tribune, more than 11 years with Newsday, another seven years with Long Island Business News, plus another year-and-a-half with RealClearMarkets.com. As an economist, Keating also pens an assortment of analyses each week. With the Keating Files, he decided to expand his efforts with regular commentary touching on a broad range of issues, written by himself and an assortment of talented contributors and columnists. So, here goes...
Al Hintz, amateur Civil War historian extraordinaire and all-around history buff, joins Ray to discuss the History Channel’s “Grant” documentary, and other aspects of and views on the life and times of Ulysses S. Grant. Tune in to Al and Ray having an enjoyable conversation about the man who led the Union Army during the Civil War, went on to lead the nation as president, and deserves to be recognized a great American. Tune in right now!
Check out Ray’s two recent pieces on Ulysses Grant and this documentary:
The History Channel’s Grant documentary ranks as a long overdue masterpiece.
This miniseries tells much of the story of Ulysses S. Grant, the general who led the Union Army to victory in the Civil War and served as a two-term president of the United States in the aftermath of that bloody conflict and during Reconstruction. And the creators of Grant offer this biography in straightforward, honest fashion. It’s not hagiography; it just sound history.
But by simply treating Grant fairly, and therefore coming to recognize his noteworthy accomplishments, this documentary serves as part of a much-needed corrective to the abuse that Grant has suffered at the hands of biased, revisionist pro-South historians who sought to justify the Confederacy’s actions. Tragically, as the Civil War moved further back in time, more Americans simply forgot their history, and proved amazingly susceptible to the southern “Lost Cause” spin and re-writing of the causes, purpose and execution of the Civil War. Most bewildering perhaps is how many historians bought into this.
Consider that when Ulysses S. Grant died in 1885, and for a good time thereafter, he was recognized as one of the great leaders in American history – along with Washington and Lincoln, for example, as Teddy Roosevelt noted. But subsequently, Grant’s reputation plummeted, to the point of being relegated to the status of a drunk, a butcher and a corrupt president.
But the Grant documentary shows us a very different man – a great leader, though certainly with flaws and weaknesses as is the case with all of us, who played a central role in saving the Union and ending the atrocity of slavery in the U.S. It was President Abraham Lincoln and Grant who completed the Founders’ work when it came to what was stated in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Grant’s perseverance is made clear, for example, in terms of facing assorted failures and working to support his family under dire circumstances. In fact, it was mainly long separations from his family, coupled with periods of inaction, that led to his drinking. His masterful abilities as an aggressive military strategist and to see how battles developed while on the ground were highlighted in the miniseries, as were his victories that were essential to the Union prevailing, along with some terribly costly mistakes as well. But hearing Grant’s own words, we gain insights into his humility, and an unflagging willingness to take responsibility for his actions and the results of his decisions.
The Civil War takes up the bulk of this documentary, but some time also is spent on Grant’s presidency. From that, we see a man who again took responsibility, fought for equal rights for former slaves, and was anything but corrupt. There was more to say about and for Grant and his presidency, including positive steps taken by him and Congress that provided a sound foundation upon which the U.S. economy would grow for decades to come (see my recent columnon Grant that covers some of this).
We also see something very special about Grant at the end of his life. While suffering from terminal cancer and facing bankruptcy, he fights on trying to write his memoirs and save his family from poverty. He finishes the book, dies three days later, and the memoir becomes one of the greatest books written by any president, and it does save his family from poverty.
The production value of the series is top notch, with Justin Salinger at the center, exceling in his portrayal as a steely, determined Grant. Malcolm Venville deserves high praise as the director of the miniseries with its often-powerful reenactments, and kudos to the various executive producers involved, including Ron Chernow, Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer and author of Grant, and Academy-Award winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
Before the miniseries aired, since we live in the age of Twitter (and that’s not a positive thing these days), DiCaprio tweeted about the miniseries. It was nice to see him sum matters up this way: “Ulysses S. Grant was regarded as one of the greatest military commanders in United States history, and as the 18th President, he united a country that was divided during the Civil War.” Straightforward and correct.
As is so often the case with documentaries in recent times, they can rise or fall based on the experts who are relied upon, put on screen, and quoted. Venville and the Grant team chose wisely, including Doug Douds, Colonel USMC retired and professor of U.S. Army War College; Caroline E. Janney, director of the Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia; and Joan Waugh, author of U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth. Of course, Chernow also lends his expertise on screen, as do several others.
Directly addressing in the documentary Grant’s dramatic decline in terms of reputation, Doug Douds explained, “The Lost Cause narrative is really an effort of the South to say, ‘How did we sacrifice so much for a cause so bad as slavery?’ So they changed the narrative. ‘No, no, it was about state’s rights and independence.’ And so that narrative has become the predominant narrative, and I think, a part of it gets buried in there is the role of Grant.”
These revisionists managed to turn history on its head, transforming Robert E. Lee, the traitor, into the hero, and Grant, defender of the Union, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, into the villain.
Thankfully, the realities of what the South was doing and what the North was defending come out in this miniseries. For example, the reason for why so many men in the North fought was addressed by Caroline E. Janney. She observed, “Many people in the United States thought this experiment that the Founding Fathers had put in place was in fact still an experiment and was in jeopardy. This notion of fighting for the Union was tied up in believing that what the Founders had created was in fact worth fighting for, and worth saving.”
And then we have Grant’s own words throughout. And they include the following direct declaration, which comes early in the miniseries: “There were but two parties now: traitors and patriots.”
And at the close of the war, regarding Lee’s surrender, Grant reflected, “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who fought so long and valiantly and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought.”
If you didn’t see this six-hour series when it aired on the History Channel last week, have no fear. It’s available for streaming now at History.com, and I trust it will be available soon via other streaming services, and for purchase in digital and Blu-Ray formats. Grant warrants inclusion in your own history library (if you don’t have a book and video history library, then this is the time to start), as well as being spread far and wide to classrooms across the entire Union – south, north, east and west.
As I wrote in my previous column on this topic, Ulysses S. Grant deserves to be recognized as one of the greats in American history for his accomplishments on and off the bloody fields of the Civil War. Thanks to the History Channel’s Grant miniseries, more Americans will understand and agree.
I’ve long admired Ulysses S. Grant for his perseverance; dedication to his family; accomplishments on the battlefield during the Civil War in defense of the United States (and the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution) and on behalf, ultimately, of freeing the slaves; and some noteworthy achievements as president.
I’ve also long believed that Grant’s reputation suffered at the hands of an assortment of historians who were sympathetic, apologetic, justifiers and/or moral-equivalency peddlers for the Confederacy. Make no mistake, Grant was quite right when he declared, “There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party.”
The first night’s two hours of the History Channel’s three-night Grant documentarywere quite good, and I look forward to the next four hours. (I’ll try to write a review after seeing the full six hours.)
For now, I would like to focus on the presidency and highlight two key accomplishments by President Grant and a Republican Congress after the Civil War. The following is an excerpt from an essay in my new book Behind Enemy Lines: Conservative Communiques from left-Wing New York:
Not only do supply-side economic ideas formally date back to at least the dawn of modern-day economics – for example, with Adam Smith and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), and Jean-Baptiste Say and A Treatise on Political Economy (1803) – but it follows that supply-side economic policies have been around for some time as well.
Briefly consider what happened during and after the U.S. Civil War. As wartime measures, President Abraham Lincoln and Congress decided to abandon hard money – that is, issuing “greenbacks” that were not convertible into gold or silver – and imposed the first income tax in U.S. history. The Civil War income tax went into effect at a flat 3 percent rate in 1862, and was later increased to a progressive rate structure, with a top rate of 10 percent.
Under President Ulysses S. Grant and a Republican Congress after the war, the income tax was reduced to a flat 5 percent tax, and subsequently in an 1870 act, the rate was cut further, and the income tax sentenced to be terminated at the end of 1871. For good measure, Grant and Congress moved the U.S. back towards a gold standard, after the greenbacks had led to inflation during the war. As noted in a 2011 Congressional Research Service report (“Brief History of the Gold Standard in the United States”) on the history of the gold standard:
After the war was over, Congress determined to return to the metallic standard at the same parity that existed before the war. To do this, the market exchange rate of greenbacks for gold had to be brought back to its old level. This was accomplished by slowly removing the greenbacks from circulation. This was an off-and-on effort, with notes removed, held steady, and even returned to circulation. In 1875, it was decided to reduce their number to $300 million. In 1878, however, their number was frozen at about $347 million, where it remained for a century.
Parity between the greenback and gold dollars was achieved in 1879, returning the United States to a metallic standard. The government stood ready to pay its debts in gold, accept greenbacks for customs, and to redeem greenbacks on demand for gold.
The combination of eliminating the income tax and returning the U.S. to sound money – a very supply-side thing to do – resulted in a long period of robust economic growth. Focusing on the monetary aspect, supply-side thinker Lew Lehrman (in his book Money, Gold, and History)explained:
“It is also true that the price level gradually declined during periods of diminished rates of discovery of the monetary metals – causing real wages to rise. Such a period was the late 19th century in the United States, known to some historians as ‘The Great Deflation.’ The average annual decline in the price level during this period was one to two percent. But this fall in the price level was associated with one of America’s greatest periods of economic growth – three to four percent annually. Compared to the Great Depression of 1930-1933 – caused by monopoly central banking, protectionism, trade barriers, and the official reserve currency roles of the dollar and the pound – the monetary deflation of 1870-1900 was but a gentle decline amidst a remarkable economic expansion, productivity and wage growth.”
Indeed, historians, along with many economists, have a difficult time wrestling with the fact that economic growth can occur without inflation, not to mention growth with deflation. It is not unusual, for example, to see deflation confused with economic contraction. But consider the period of the 1870s, with the income tax eliminated, and a shift to sound money. From 1870 to 1880, while the price level declined:
• real annual GNP growth averaged 5.3 percent,
• the number of employed grew by 38 percent,
• farm output expanded by 61 percent,
• and manufacturing production grew by 68 percent.
By the way, federal government spending was 14 percent lower in 1880 compared to 1870, as was federal debt.
I would argue that the foundational steps taken by Grant and Congress on the tax and monetary fronts provided a sound policy foundation that helped bring about unprecedented growth and innovation in our economy that lasted some six decades.
It’s also worth highlighting that Grant worked to achieve a balancing act with Reconstruction, as noted by Joan Waugh, a history professor writing for the Miller Center:
As President, Grant was determined to follow Lincoln's policy of reconciliation with the South rather than one of retribution or appeasement. He also wanted to make sure that the federal government preserved the sacrifices of the war by sustaining a strong Union while at the same time protecting the newly freed slaves and preventing former unreconstructed Confederates from regaining power in the South...
Grant wanted to meet the needs of the newly freed slaves and, at the same time, entice white Southerners into a Republican Party dedicated to creating jobs and solid businesses in the defeated region. However, it proved impossible for him to achieve these two competing goals. When he used federal troops or legislation to defend the rights of blacks, whites assailed him as a tyrant trampling states' rights. Yet it went against his personal and political goals to abandon the freed slaves and the Republican Party in the South. In the end, Grant had little chance to take his good intentions and make them into effective policy.
Indeed, whether he read Adam Smith or not, Grant obviously grasped Smith’s point that he made over two decades before The Wealth of Nations was published: “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice...”
Upon his death and for a fair time afterwards, Grant was widely admired. Now, once again in the twenty-first century, Grant deserves to be recognized as one of the greats in American history for his accomplishments on and off the bloody fields of the Civil War.
