Political Memes

He was better for emancipation and reparations of freed slaves than Lincoln, he even had a history of employing them and treating them well during the war and before the great emancipation. His inaugural address alone was enough to earn points with me, but he was also responsible for changes of the Tenure of Office Act which allowed him to remove presidential cabinet members without the senate needing to vote on it, gave suffrage to people of all color via the 15th Ammendment (which almost certainly would have been vetoed by the previous Johnson who took the reigns after Lincoln was assassinated and before Grant was elected), and his administration defeated the KKK via state marshals and federal troops over his 2 terms as president.

To be clear, Grant was a radical of his time. He was fringe and far left from the norm of the time. He treated blacks as equals and as citizens when under the previous president Johnson there were massacres and riots against African American communities. To Grant, they were worth defending with the lives of servicemen like himself.

By comparison Lincoln was a moderate too afraid to give any promise of rights or eventual freedom to slaves because he wanted to avoid any and all conflict. It took two years after secession and war for Lincoln to emancipate slaves. I'm not saying Grant was perfect in every way, mind you, but if I had to pick a president whom I liked the most it would easily be Grant. (It's not a high bar).

And that's all you'll get out of me, go read a book you lazy fuck.

His administration was very corrupt, which is a black mark that can't really be re-evaluated away. Grant himself is widely accepted to have been innocent - the man died nearly penniless, and was never a prodigious spender - but he was trusting and loyal to his friends. These are actually really BAD traits for a politician, in which trust and loyalty are a big "USE ME" sign painted on your back.

However, Grant's overwhelmingly negative reputation has a lot to do with the domination of Lost Causers in historical academia up until the 70s. He was positively radical on civil rights, crushed the First KKK, pursued a policy of negotiation and attempted coexistence rather than war with Native American tribes, set up reform within the civil service, was positively inclined towards women's suffrage, created the country's first national parks, supported public schooling, and elevated African-Americans and Jewish-Americans to high posts within the government despite the racism and religious prejudice rampant in the period.