President Ulysses S Grant

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of Grant’s presidency on Americans in the years after the Civil War in which he, with Lincoln, had led the Union Army to victory. His predecessor, Andrew Johnson, was prepared to let the Southern States decide for themselves which rights to allow freed slaves; Grant supported equal rights, and he used troops and Enforcement Acts to defeat the Ku klux Klan which was violently suppressing African Americans. In later years Grant was remembered mainly for the corruption scandals under his terms of office, and for his failure to support or protect Native Americans, but in more recent decades his support for reconstruction has prompted a reassessement.

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Guests

• Erik Mathisen No other episodes
  Lecturer in US History at the University of Kent
• Susan-Mary Grant 3 episodes
  Professor of American History at Newcastle University
• Robert Cook No other episodes
  Professor of American History at the University of Sussex

Reading list

• The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant
  Charles W. Calhoun (University Press of Kansas, 2017) Google Books →
• Grant
  Ron Chernow (Head of Zeus, 2018) Google Books →
• Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship
  J. F. C. Fuller (Indiana University Press, 1957) Google Books →
• The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant
  J. F. C. Fuller (Da Capo Press, 1956) Google Books →
• Personal Memoirs
  Ulysses S. Grant (ed. James M. McPherson) (Penguin, 1999) Google Books →
• Grant: A Biography
  William S. McFeely (W.W. Norton, 1982) Google Books →
• Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President
  Geoffrey Perret (Random House, 1997) Google Books →
• Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868
  Brooks D. Simpson (University of North Carolina Press, 1997) Google Books →
• The Reconstruction Presidents
  Brooks D. Simpson (University Press of Kansas, 1998) Google Books →
• U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth
  Joan Waugh (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) Google Books →
• American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant
  Ronald C. White (Times Books, 2017) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m0005f2k

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005f2k

Auto-category: 973 (United States history during Reconstruction, 1865-1877)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. When Ulysses S. Grant became the Republican US President in 1869, he'd already won the American Civil War as leader of the Union Army.