Sunday - May 12, 2002
Ulysses S. Grant was a Terrible President (and why you should read good
history books)
I was watching another PBS show again, this time
a biography of Ulysses S. Grant was on. It was an interesting refresher of the
Reconstruction period. I was surprised at how this man was honored as being
great despite every evidence of stupidity they presented. I have no doubt that
Grant was personally honest, everyone who knew him vouches for his personal
integrity, and it is appropriate to acknowledge his success in battle, but he
was never great, nor was he even good. In fact, his blundering led to some
horrible results.
To his constant and continuous scandals as
President where he allowed others to manipulate him and cause an economic
disaster worse than the Great Depression of the twentieth century, we can add
the pathetic embezzlement of money he collected from families and former
comrades-at-arms. He may have been a nice guy, but he was a drunk (despite
denials which were obligatory for the times), a fool, and a butcher. Only the
last quality served him well because it allowed him to conduct total war,
ignoring the thousands of deaths he caused with his newer, more effective
tactics.
History loves a winner, and
his butchery is excused because it allowed him to be on the winning side. With
this I agree, wars should be won at all costs, but I don't wish to dwell on his
particular career. What I want to rant about today is how history rarely records
what really happened in an objective
way.
The twentieth century's equivalent
to Grant is Harry Truman. There are a lot of people still alive who remember
him, yet almost all the politicians today claim his legacy, on both sides of the
aisle. Why? I have no idea. Truman was a bumbler, a tool of one of the most
corrupt political machines in the nation, yet somehow people want to believe
that he became a paragon of virtue and wise leadership once he took office. The
list of his stupidities is as long as his two terms of office. Roosevelt didn't
trust him. His incompetent policies allowed China to become communist, Russia to
take control of half of Europe, and his treatment of the people in Indo China
directly led to the Vietnamese War. His irresoluteness caused the North Koreans
to think that we would not protect South Korea if they invaded. He failed
miserably in controlling the military and allowed MacArthur to set himself up as
a potentate in Japan, inflating his already substantial ego and making him
intolerable after Inchon. I could go on, but he isn't the point of my rant
either.
Going back to the nineteenth
century, Abraham Lincoln is almost universally admired as near god-like. Yet, if
you read contemporary accounts, he was hardly loved by all. No one ever, ever
questions his precipitating the War Between the States by refusing to evacuate
Fort Sumter. No one wonders if 600,000 lives killed in his demonic obsession
with keeping the union whole might have been avoided had he simply ordered the
fort abandoned. He completely ignored the entire principle that created our
nation, that of self-determination, and chose instead to invade sovereign
states. He chose to kill people who didn't want to be taxed to favor the
northern states. If the Boston Tea Party took place during his reign, he would
have rounded up the Sons of Liberty and hanged them all. Then he would have
jailed Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, just like he actually did jail
newspaper editors who criticized him during the war. He is most remembered for
freeing slaves, but the truth* is that he never freed a single slave.Yet,
Lincoln is deified. It is not certain that secession couldn't have been avoided
and once it occurred it is clear that he had no right to oppose it. If a
different President were elected perhaps a peaceful way of ending slavery might
have been found. We don't know, but to admire a man who did his level best to
destroy the fundamental principles of our nation is just another example of how
historians and cultures simplify knowledge of the past, either to promote an
agenda, or just from laziness.
Could
this one-sidedness be simply an attempt by cultures to avoid re-fighting and
re-arguing old debates?
Even though the
arguments against a Federal Bank are as valid, or more valid today than 200
years ago, the issue is rarely debated anymore. Even though George Washington's
brutal suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion was controversial when he ordered
it, hardly anyone mentions it as a failure that led to growing federal abuse of
power. Washington was a great man, one of the greatest, but this was one of his
bad decisions. I have almost never seen this event portrayed as anything but a
brave decision, even though it was contrary to everything Washington and his
army fought for, and it led to unnecessary impoverishment of people who fought
the war with him for the main purpose of avoiding taxes on whiskey
production.
Historians no longer
present the past in an objective way. They don't even present both sides of an
argument. They ignore the legitimate claims of one side, not always the losing
side, and present events as inevitable, as definitive events that could not have
occurred in any other way.
I'm reminded
of experiences I've had in the Marine Corps and even more so in the corporate
world, which I'm sure anyone else will have seen too. When a person is assigned
to lead a project, sometimes it will be led with such skill and such competence
that it goes smoothly, with all parties working cooperatively, all contingencies
anticipated, and all results better than expected. These people almost never get
rewarded, yet those who cause chaos in their projects often get rewarded because
they make the job look like it was difficult. This is true of military leaders
as well. We remember Normandy as a great battle, which is was. But we don't
remember where the battle was successful, we only recall Utah beach where
everything went wrong. People remember the Battle of the Bulge as a great
victory, yet it was one of the biggest lapses of leadership our army has ever
experienced.
Lincoln is remembered as
great, despite his destruction of the American ideal of self-determination.
There were no wars during the term of Calvin Coolidge. I don't even recall any
large scandals, though there might have been one or two. Why isn't Coolidge
remembered as the greater president? I'm sure he could have invaded Mexico on
some pretext or another and have been thought of as
great.
The last objective historian was
Thucydides back around 430 BC. Most of those who followed were pikers. Those of
us who don't read first-hand accounts of history to understand events as they
occurred are likely to have a distorted view of what happened, and thus a
mistaken idea of what is happening, and a potentially dangerous plan for what
should happen.
* The Emancipation
Proclamation only freed slaves in territories not yet conquered by Lincoln's
invading armies. It was a cynical attempt to create a larger burden on the South
by fomenting more rebellion. Those slaves in the states that he already had
conquered, and those that never seceded were kept in bondage and they were used
as slave labor during the war. Lincoln stated many times that he had no desire
to free the slaves.
Go Back to the Start, Do Not Collect $200 Send me your two cents
|
