ULYSSES S. GRANT—A CIVIL RIGHTS PRESIDENT. Jennifer Maloney pointed out some things about Ulysses Grant’s presidency that I had not known in a short review in the Wall Street Journal (September 2) of AMERICAN ULYSSES: A LIFE OF ULYSSES S. GRANT by Ronald White. She writes: “During Reconstruction…President Ulysses S. Grant ignored his own cabinet’s advice and took aim at the Ku Klux Klan’s violent intimidation of black voters. He pushed through legislation empowering the president to use the military to enforce the 14th amendment and appointed the nation’s first solicitor general to conduct government lawsuits.”
It is Maloney’s next sentence that I find remarkable: “In 1871 alone, federal grand juries brought 3,000 indictments.” A major effort under difficult circumstances.
Public figures have begun dividing the classification of terrorist acts between “domestic terrorism” and “traditional terrorism,” with the connotation seeming to be that of radical Islam.
However, “traditional terrorism” in the United States, in my mind, is the reign of terror perpetrated against black Americans, particularly in the South during Reconstruction.
Point well taken.