[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 70 (Thursday, April 28, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2215-S2216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                            ULYSSES S. GRANT

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring 
Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and 18th President of the United 
States, who was born in Point Pleasant, OH, 200 years ago this week.
  In honor of the bicentennial of Grant's birthday, which took place 
yesterday on April 27, 2022, I joined Senator Blunt of Missouri to 
introduce a concurrent resolution in the Senate. This resolution honors 
Grant for his efforts and leadership in defending the union of the 
United States of America, recognizes his military victories, and 
affirms him as one of the most influential military commanders in our 
Nation's history. I spoke about President Grant's accomplishments 
briefly on the floor yesterday, but want to take this opportunity to 
elaborate on my remarks.
  Ulysses S. Grant was a proud Ohioan, born in Point Pleasant, OH, to 
Jesse Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant on April 27, 1822. I know a number 
of celebrations were held in Ohio to honor the 200th anniversary. 
Grant's family soon moved to Georgetown, OH, in Brown County. Grant 
spent the remainder of his youth in the house his parents built in 
Georgetown. Both his birthplace and boyhood home are preserved as 
historic sites that draw visitors to Ohio communities today. In 1839, 
Grant left Ohio to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, 
graduating in 1843.
  Grant was instrumental to the Union victory in the Civil War, leading 
Union forces to critical early victories in the

[[Page S2216]]

West at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. After 
President Lincoln appointed him Lieutenant-General of the Army in 1864, 
he commanded all Union armies until the conclusion of the war. At 
Appomattox, Grant prescribed terms of surrender intended to set the 
stage for postwar reconciliation.
  Grant's legacy extends beyond his role in the Civil War. Grant was 
elected the 18th President of the United States in 1868 and was 
decisively elected to a second term in 1872, the only two-term 
President between Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson. As President, he 
oversaw the orderly readmittance of States following the Civil War, 
completing the restoration of the Union by 1871.
  An ardent supporter of Reconstruction, President Grant championed the 
ratification of the 15th Amendment to prohibit discrimination in voting 
rights on the basis of ``race, color, or previous condition of 
servitude.'' In 1870, he oversaw the creation of the Department of 
Justice, essential to the prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan and 
enforcement of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. 
Constitution, the ``Reconstruction Amendments.''
  Grant was an advocate for civil rights, endorsing and then signing 
the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to outlaw racial segregation in public 
accommodations, schools, transportation, and juries, nearly a century 
before such protections would be effectively enforced.
  And although President Theodore Roosevelt is most often associated 
with our National Parks, it was President Grant who designated 
Yellowstone as the first National Park in 1872.
  After his presidency, Grant traveled the world and wrote his memoirs. 
``The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant'' became a bestseller and 
garnered lasting critical acclaim, praised by Mark Twain for its 
``clarity of statement, directness, simplicity, unpretentiousness, 
manifest truthfulness, fairness and justice toward friend and foe 
alike, soldierly candor and frankness, and soldierly avoidance of 
flowery speech.''
  As I said yesterday on the Senate floor, history has not always been 
kind to Grant. But as we commemorate his 200th birthday, his legacy is 
being reevaluated and his far-reaching impact more fully appreciated. 
Frederick Douglass eulogized Grant as ``a man too broad for prejudice, 
too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any 
point.'' I urge my colleagues to join Senator Blunt and I in honoring 
one of Ohio's finest, Ulysses S. Grant, for these remarkable qualities, 
for his role in preserving the Union of the United States as a general 
in the Civil War, and for his defense of Reconstruction and Civil 
Rights as President.

                          ____________________