ULYSSES S. GRANT

H. W. Brand, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace (New York: Doubleday, 2012) ("The business of the military is war, and war is simple and straightforward. In war the objective is plain and the measure of success undeniable. Your side wins or it loses; you live or you die. War is brutal, but its brutality allows differences of opinion to be resolves definitely. In politics things are never so straightforward. In politics differences of opinion are rarely resolved and almost never definitively; in politics the best outcomes are typically compromises that leave all parties grumbling. In politics the ignorant and venal have as much right to their vote as the educated and upstanding." Id. at 2. "'It is men who wait to be selected, and not those who seek, from whom we may always expect the most efficient service.'" Id. at 293. "But he couldn't send Congress off without requesting legislation to give substance to the promise of political equality. Grant appreciated the momentous nature of the latest development. 'The adoption of the Fifteen Amendment to the Constitution completes the greatest civil change and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came to life,' he declared in a special message to Congress. Scarcely a decade earlier the Supreme Court had ruled that blacks were not citizens and had no rights the government and the white majority were bound to respect; now blacks were the political equals of whites. Yet he understood that paper promises often required concrete action to make them real. To this end he requested that Congress support education for the freedmen. 'The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republican government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people,' he said. 'If these recommendations were important than, with a population of but a few million, how much more important now, with a population of forty million?' He left the details to Congress, but he urged the legislators 'to take all the means within their constitutional powers to promote and encourage popular education throughout the country' and 'to see to it that all who possess and exercise political rights shall have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge which will make their share in the government a blessing and not a danger.'" "Congress wasn't so generous. The egalitarian zeal that had inspired the educational programs of the Freedmen's Bureau was waning; new benefits for blacks, if they cost money, were out of the question." Id. at 466. Time passes; the song remains the same.).