Response to Dr. Williamson Murray’s essay, “The American Left Needs a History Lesson” https://www.newsweek.com/american-left-needs-history-lesson-opinion-1518488
When some of the participants in protest marches commit indiscriminate vandalism and engage in looting, there is little to defend it. That is insufficient reason to disparage the whole movement with accusations of historical ignorance. Dr. Williamson Murray’s essay, incidentally, has a few problems of its own.
The 54th Massachusetts Regiment was not “the first Black regiment recruited to fight against the Confederacy,” although it was the first raised in the North. Many other regiments had already been raised and were serving in the South. Admittedly, the 54th Massachusetts’ memorial in Boston is an inappropriate target. It should be recognized, however, that the U.S government failed to commission Black officers (except in a very few cases) or to pay Black enlisted men equivalently with Whites (until much later in the war).
Of course, there was also no reason to topple the statue of Colonel Hans Christian Heg. Dr. Murray could have added that a nearby monument suffered a similar, unjust fate. The “Forward” statue was an allegory of devotion and progress. Just because the United States has not achieved its lofty ideals is no excuse for such destruction.
Dr. Murray is correct that the case of the San Francisco statue of Ulysses S. Grant was “far more complex” than the simple fact that he had once owned a slave. Grant’s reputation has soared in the last few decades. He is credited with being a victorious commander during the American Civil War and the Union’s general-in-chief for the last year of it. As president for eight years in the era of Reconstruction, he led the Republican Party in ensuring civil rights to the country’s Black population.
But Dr. Murray goes too far in his adulation. Ulysses S. Grant did not declare bankruptcy. He manumitted William Jones, his slave, but it is supposition to assert that Grant could have “considerably reduced his debts.” We do not know the condition of Mr. Jones nor the conditions of his manumission. Grant’s own admission on August 30, 1863, that “I never was an Abolitionest, [n]ot even what could be called anti slavery,” suggests that the freeing of William Jones did not stem from Grant’s convictions. He, his friends, and his family did not even acknowledge this act. Grant, furthermore, had the benefit of multiple slaves for multiple years. He was avowedly pro-slavery into the Civil War.
Apart from these pro-slavery views, Grant did not support suffrage for Blacks in the first years after the war. Only after he began to side with the Radical Republicans did he become a strong civil rights supporter. Even then, his new stance may well have been due to political calculations, as well as to notions of human equality. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant do not reveal Grant’s “wholehearted support behind the passage of the 15th Amendment” or his making “every effort to ensure its passage by the states.” His acquiescence to, and even willing complicity in, the pervasive corruption of his presidency should not be overlooked, as this essay does.
Grant’s reputation as a military genius and reliable chronicler of the Civil War can likewise be questioned, despite a sterling reputation as an officer and gentleman and as the author of the renowned Personal Memoirs. He suffered the biggest surprise of the war, committed the worst official act of anti-Semitism on U.S. soil, and came closest of all Union commanders to losing Washington. Defenders even rank his generalship above Robert E. Lee’s, but to do so, they must ignore his simplistic, pugnacious strategies that led to a war of attrition, as well as his amateurish tactics of impetuous frontal assaults, all along the line against fortified positions. He relied on favoritism to decide military matters, trashing personal enemies, elevating friends, and arranging battle plans to fit his prejudices. Grant’s Memoirs are quite undependable.
All of this, assuredly, is still completely insufficient reason to tear down statues of Grant.
P.S. On a grammatical note, the pejorative use of the word “blackened” might need to be rethought, especially given the circumstances.