University President John Garvey published commentary with Catholic News Service on people who deserve our praise.
Ron Chernow has written a splendid new biography of Ulysses S. Grant, and it has caused me to reflect on the judgments we make about historical figures.
I have long held Grant in low esteem, for several reasons. Everyone knows he had trouble controlling his drinking. But that’s not one of my reasons; he fought his demons and eventually overcame them.
I feel differently about his flirtation with the Know Nothing party and his proposal for a constitutional amendment forbidding aid to “sectarian” (read “Catholic”) schools.
During the Civil War, he expelled all Jews from the area under his command, because he thought they were guilty “as a class” of smuggling and cotton speculation. And as Amanda Foreman recently observed, his “two-term presidency turned into an eight-year spectacle of snouts in the trough.”
Hence my low opinion. But Grant was still the man who won the Civil War, and not because he was a determined butcher, as folklore has it. ...
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