DAN MCLAUGHLIN: Rethinking President Grant (Part I).

Along with a parallel campaign to portray Grant as a plodding general who won the war only through the advantages of men and materials, therefore, it was necessary to paint him as a weak president giving free rein to the worst instincts of others.

Second, besides Reconstruction, the other main theme of Grant’s presidency was the dawn of Gilded Age capitalism as America transitioned rapidly into an industrial nation. Historians of a left-wing economic bent tended to paint Grant’s entire era (including Reconstruction) as a riot of plutocracy.

Third, Grant was looked down on, in life and thereafter, by intellectuals from the Northeast. Grant was a humble, plainspoken Middle American with ordinary tastes and little pretension. His mental gifts were precisely the sort that tend to be underrated by intellectuals, wrapped in precisely the kind of blunt, terse man-of-action persona that can leave these gifts unappreciated. As with Eisenhower and some other Republican presidents, these factors combined to make Grant an irresistible target for the gibes of the Eastern highbrow set, even though expert military historians held him in high regard, and his memoirs enjoyed a reputation as a classic of the form.

Fourth, Grant’s reputation suffered from simple Democratic partisanship.

The more things change…