re: #332 HappyWarrior

Buchanan, Johnson I would say were worse. Grant isn’t as bad as the record says. I used to lean on that side but then I realized much of Grant’s presidential reputation was created by opponents of Reconstruction who would not give him credit on supporting civil rights and taking on the KKK. I wouldn’t call USG a great president but not as bad as advertised. CCJ’s pal Cal was pretty damn bad though. As bad as Hoover’s response was to the Depression, Silent Cal’s would have been worse.

Until relatively recently, US Grant’s reputation had been shaded by his detractors. While Grant had his defenders in the post-Civil War era and his memoirs actually quieted the Lost Causes down for a few years (in part because he’d wrote them while he was dying and attacking him then or shortly after he had died would have been seen as being an ass), for the most part the Lost Causers were the more determined and they simply kept YERPing until more rational people gave up and quit challenging them.