As General, U.S. Grant won the Civil War, and as President, he saved the Union. He created the Justice Department, supported the 15th Amendment and fought the Ku Klux Klan. Over a million people gathered to watch his funeral procession in 1885, and his mausoleum became one of the top tourist destinations in the nation.

Racists like President Johnson were determined to resist letting African Americans vote, and Grant agreed to run for President in large part to protect those rights. This divide of bigotry, which festered after the Civil War, continues to divide our country. After Grant’s death, the descendants of traitors promulgated the big lie (known as the Lost Cause) that the confederates were honorable, benevolent to slaves, and were the moral victors of the Civil War. To do so, they maligned Grant as a drunk, ignoring his reform efforts and associating him with corrupt officials. The campaign was effective, and Grant was often ranked among the worst Presidents.

Grant’s Indian policy illustrates the problem. Grant appointed the first Native American to be Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and Grant pledged “proper treatment of the original occupants of this land—the Indians.” Supporting peaceful reconciliation, his administration allowed many Quakers and Episcopalians to “help” the natives, instead of continuing genocide. Grant was a firm believer in the separation of church and state, but the religious people believed that converting the Natives was the best way to help them and thus erased so much of their culture. And many people still wanted to take Native American land, so well-intended land policies were similarly corrupted.

Like most of the park rangers I’ve spoken with, I’m a fan of Grant. We believe he was, generally for his time, on the right side of history and does not deserve the vitriol he received in life and death from those on the wrong side of history. I wish he had better understood the depths of and had proposed better solutions against systemic racism, but he was an ally of the Americans who were denied their rights by many white Americans. The struggle to secure the voting rights of African Americans and to restore justice to Native American communities continues over 150 years later. Grant recognized both his own failures of judgement and the moral sins of our nation. But Grant also said victory goes to those who keep fighting.

“Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions.”

Ulysses S. Grant