History has its eyes on him

摘要

IN 1948, a survey of historians ranked Ulysses S. Grant as the second-worst American president. Corruption had badly tarred his administration, just as it had that of the man at the bottom, Warren Harding. But recent surveys have been kinder. Grant now lands in the middle, thanks to his extraordinarily progressive work on race relations. "Treat the Negro as a citizen and a voter-as he is, and must remain," he told Congress in 1874, close to a century before the South would finally consent to doing so. The victorious general in the civil war, Grant tried to see that the principles his men had fought for endured.