[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 69 (Wednesday, April 27, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2176-S2178]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Ulysses S. Grant

  Mr. COTTON. Madam President, 200 years ago today, one of our Nation's 
greatest heroes was born. Ulysses S. Grant rose from humble beginnings 
to stand next to Lincoln and Washington as one of America's 
indispensable men. This great defender of America won our bloodiest 
war, crushed the darkest forces of disunion, bandaged our deepest 
national wounds, and bridged the greatest political divides. He was an 
unshakable pillar of strength upon which this Nation's future rested 
time and again.
  Virtually no one foresaw Grant's rise to greatness before the Civil 
War. Although he had graduated from West Point and distinguished 
himself as a soldier in the Mexican-American War, he had later stumbled 
from one failure to another in business.
  In 1861, Grant was a man bent by humiliation and ridicule but 
unbroken.

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After the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, Grant rose from his knees 
as destiny called, he redonned his uniform, and he marched into the 
history books.
  For the first 3 years of the Civil War, Grant fought on the western 
front, winning several of the Union's early victories while commanders 
in the East dithered. After Grant's first great victory, his 
Confederate counterpart sued for peace and asked what terms he would 
give them. Grant firmly responded that he would accept ``no terms 
except an unconditional and immediate surrender.'' This earned him the 
nickname ``Unconditional Surrender'' Grant and resulted in the largest 
capture of enemy troops in the history of the Western Hemisphere up to 
that time.
  Grant waged a relentless form of warfare. He knew that, in his words, 
``the art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at 
him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as 
you can, and keep moving on.''
  Grant's warrior spirit famously moved President Lincoln to declare 
``I can't spare this man--he fights.'' When Grant's enemies spread the 
rumor that he was an alcoholic and should be dismissed, Lincoln wryly 
responded that if he could find out what brand of whiskey Grant drank, 
he would send a barrel of it to all the other commanders.
  Grant's famous determination and grit were on full display during the 
brutal Battle of Shiloh, one of the bloodiest episodes of the Civil 
War. In the first day of fighting, Grant's army was mauled by 
Confederate forces under the command of Albert Sidney Johnston, the 
Confederacy's most competent general at the time.
  William Tecumseh Sherman approached Grant that rainy night beneath a 
great oak tree and he said, ``Well, Grant, we have had the devil's own 
day, haven't we?''
  Grant replied, between puffs of his ubiquitous cigar, ``Yes. Lick em 
tomorrow though.'' He made good on this promise, threw back the 
Confederate forces, and won the carnage-filled battle.

  Sidney Johnston was killed in the fighting, and Confederate President 
Jefferson Davis later wrote that ``it was the turning point of our 
fate.''
  This story remains so legendary in the Army today that it was 
commonplace for young officers in the Iraq war to conclude a hard day 
by borrowing from Grant: ``Lick em tomorrow.''
  Grant continued his brilliant streak of victories, and on July 4, 
1863--the 87th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of 
Independence--he seized the fortress city of Vicksburg on the 
Mississippi, splitting the Confederacy in two and securing the Union's 
control of that mighty river. This was perhaps the greatest strategic 
victory of the war, and combined with the victory at Gettysburg the 
previous day, Grant's seizure of Vicksburg put the Union on the path to 
victory.
  Soon after Grant's decisive victory in the Battle of Chattanooga a 
few months later and capture of the supposedly impregnable heights of 
Missionary Ridge, Lincoln promoted him to the rank of lieutenant 
general--a position that no one had held since George Washington. A few 
days later, Lincoln also named him commander of Union forces.
  In his new command, Grant quickly turned eastward and confronted 
Robert E. Lee, a skilled tactician who had run circles around the Army 
of the Potomac for 2 years. Lee had spooked Union commanders for so 
long with his audacious battle plans but not Grant. He said:

       I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to 
     do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to 
     turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both our 
     flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to 
     think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee 
     is going to do.

  What Grant did was pursue Lee's army ruthlessly. As he marched into 
the Confederacy, he told a reporter:

       If you see the President, tell him from me that whatever 
     happens, there will be no turning back.''

  In the weeks and months that followed, Grant attacked Lee's army 
again and again. Whether he won or not, Grant continued to advance 
deeper into the Confederacy. Grant's army fought in the burning forests 
of the wilderness and in the muddy trenches of Petersburg, experiencing 
extraordinary hardship but never allowing Lee to regroup or 
reinvigorate his shrinking army. Less than a year after Grant began his 
overland campaign, the Union forces finally took the rebel capital of 
Richmond and broke the back of Confederate resistance.
  But U.S. Grant wasn't a great leader simply because he won the war; 
he was also great because he never lost sight of the first goal of the 
war: to reunite our shattered Republic and restore what Lincoln had 
called the ``bonds of affection'' and the ``mystic chords of memory'' 
between Americans, North and South.
  Instead of humiliating Lee at Appomattox Court House, Grant offered 
him generous and honorable terms. Uncompromising in war, Grant was 
magnanimous in peace. He allowed Confederate officers to keep their 
sidearms and horses, did not demand Lee's sword, and promised not to 
prosecute rebels who laid down their arms. As Lee departed the 
courthouse, Grant and his staff took off their hats in respect--a small 
act for the victors but an extraordinary gesture to the defeated 
Confederates.
  Grant remained in the Army after Appomattox and continued to be a 
force for reconciliation and union as we stitched the stars back on Old 
Glory. He didn't allow vengeance or anger to overcome prudence and 
wisdom. He even defended his former antagonist Robert E. Lee when 
President Andrew Johnson tried to renege on the terms of Grant's 
surrender agreement. When Johnson asked Grant ``When can these men be 
tried?'' Grant replied ``Never, not unless they break their parole.'' 
He went so far as to tell his staff that ``I will not stay in the Army 
if they break the pledges that I made.'' To Grant, his word was more 
important than any office. Thanks to his principled stand, Johnson 
backed down, and our Nation avoided cycles of fruitless recrimination. 
At the same time, Grant also opposed Johnson's attempts to weaken 
Reconstruction and leave newly freed slaves exposed to inhumane 
treatment by vengeful former masters. Grant wanted neither excessive 
punishment nor excessive lenience; he wanted justice.
  Never a politician, Grant nevertheless acquiesced to popular demand 
and Republican entreaties to run for President in 1868 on the simple 
platform ``Let us have peace.'' Although his administration was 
imperfect, he fought to make good on his promise. He continued his work 
to bring the South back into the Union, restoring the rights of 
citizenship to over 150,000 former rebels and bringing Robert E. Lee to 
the White House as a symbol of reconciliation.
  Grant was also one of the greatest civil rights Presidents in our 
Nation's history, protecting freed slaves with laws and, when 
necessary, with force. When the first Ku Klux Klan terrorized the 
South, Grant ordered and empowered the Department of Justice and the 
Army to destroy it, and it was destroyed.
  Grant also healed the wounds that the Civil War had inflicted on our 
relationship with other nations. He settled a spiraling diplomatic 
crisis with Great Britain, provoked by Britain's decision to allow 
Confederate warships to be built in its ports, which went on to sink 
over 150 Union ships. After years of negotiation, the United States and 
Great Britain signed the Treaty of Washington, in which Great Britain 
formally apologized for its support of the Confederacy. The treaty 
further established an independent commission to assess damages 
inflicted on American commerce, which in turn ordered the British to 
pay our country over $15 million in damages. Grant also worked to 
settle other outstanding concerns in the treaty, paving the path to 
strong relations with Great Britain in the future.
  After his Presidency, Grant sadly was conned in business ventures and 
fell deeply into debt. But even as he lay dying of cancer, he resolved 
to provide for his family. A week before his death, he completed his 
memoirs, a monumental literary achievement that continues to rank among 
the greatest ever written by any statesman. He also saved his family 
from debt, demonstrating one last time his indomitable will.
  Grant's funeral procession was the largest public demonstration in 
American history up to that point, with an

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estimated 1\1/2\ million Americans in attendance.
  Frederick Douglass described Grant as ``a man too broad for 
prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at 
any point.'' Douglass saw in Grant ``a protector'' to freed Blacks, ``a 
friend'' to Indians, ``a brother'' to vanquished foes, and ``a savior'' 
for our imperiled Nation.
  Yet progressive historians, a partisan press, and political enemies 
tarnished his record from the beginning. They have maligned him as a 
drunk and a butcher and a bumbling western rube who was ill-suited to 
politics and probably corrupt at that. This is an ahistorical slander 
against a great American.
  As a deeply honest man and a Washington outsider, Grant perhaps 
wasn't always astute in spotting the unscrupulous swindlers and 
grifters attracted to our capital then as now. As President, he trusted 
some who didn't deserve that trust. His critics have exaggerated this 
guilelessness as a mortal sin, using dishonesty of others to besmirch 
the record of a good and great man. But Douglas was right; Grant was 
``a savior'' of this Republic, and his few failings pale in comparison 
to his extraordinary achievements. And Grant's countrymen agreed, 
electing him twice by historic landslides.
  I have four photos hanging on the wall of my Senate office, photos of 
great statesmen who saved the West in our hour of crisis: Abraham 
Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, and U.S. Grant. Throughout 
his life, U.S. Grant embodied a profound patriotism and selflessness 
that our Nation should remember with awe and reverence. On this 
bicentenary of his birth, we should restore him to the pantheon of 
American heroes, first among Americans.