American Minute with Bill Federer
Ulysses S. Grant was commissioned JULY 25, 1866, as General of the Army, the first ever to hold that rank and wear the four silver star insignia.
Popularity from Civil War victories resulted in him being chosen as Republican candidate for President in 1868.
Earlier, while farming in Missouri, Grant inherited a slave from his wife’s father, a 35-year-old man named William Jones. Though they were in a dire financial situation, Grant freed his slave in 1859 rather than sell him for badly needed money.
Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, limiting Democrat vigilante and lynching activity of freed slaves in the South.
Elected the 18th President, Grant supported ratification of the 15th Amendment guaranteeing freed slaves the right to vote.
Grant stated in his Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1873:
“Under Providence I have been called a second time to act as Executive over this great nation…
The effects of the late civil strife have been to free the slave and make him a citizen. Yet he is not possessed of the civil rights which citizenship should carry with it. This is wrong, and should be corrected. To this correction I stand committed.”
Grant worked to stabilize the country’s currency by having it backed by gold, as during the Civil War the Federal Government printed an excess of paper money with no backing except ‘faith’ in the Federal Government.
In his First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant stated:
“Every dollar of Government indebtedness should be paid in gold…
It looks as though Providence had bestowed upon us a strong box in the precious metals locked up in the sterile mountains of the far West, and which we are now forging the key to unlock, to meet the very contingency that is now upon us.”
Of his Indian policy, Grant stated in his First Annual Message, December 6, 1869:
“The Society of Friends…succeeded in living in peace with the Indians in the early settlement of Pennsylvania…
These considerations induced me to give the management of a few reservations of Indians to them.”
President Grant stated in his 2nd Annual Message, December 5, 1870:
“Religious denominations as had established missionaries among the Indians…are expected to watch over them and aid them…to Christianize and civilize the Indians, and to train him in the arts of peace.”
President Grant wrote to Congress, January 1, 1871:
“Indians of the country should be encouraged…to adopt our form of government, and it is highly desirable that they become self-sustaining, self-relying, Christianized, and civilized.”
President Grant stated in his 3rd Annual Message, December 4, 1871:
“I recommend liberal appropriations to carry out the Indian peace policy, not only because it is humane and Christianlike…but because it is right.”
Grant, being the youngest President to that date, 46 years old, had a military training of trusting subordinates, leaving him ill-prepared for dealing with political intrigues, hidden motives and greed of Washington politicians.
As a result, a number of those in his Administration were involved in granting government favors and monopolies in exchange for bribes and insider deals.
Called the “Gilded Age” by Mark Twain, a friend of Grant’s, America saw:
-Immigrants arriving in record numbers;
-Railroads crossing the nation;
-Industry and manufacturing expanded;
-Iron, steel production rising dramatically;
-Western resources of lumber, gold and silver; and the
-Oil industry replacing the use of whale blubber oil, saving the whale.
Industrialists, called “Robber Barons,” amassed great wealth by providing more goods to people at cheaper prices, raising the country’s standard of living:
John Jacob Astor (real estate, fur);
Andrew Carnegie (steel);
James Fisk (finance);
Henry Flagler (railroads, oil);
Jay Gould (railroads);
Edward Harriman (railroads);
Andrew Mellon (finance, oil);
J.P. Morgan (finance, industrial);
John D. Rockefeller (oil);
Charles M. Schwab (steel); and
Cornelius Vanderbilt (water transport, railroads).
Ulysses S. Grant did not personally profit from being in office and even went bankrupt as a result of naively trusting investors.
Struggling financially, and suffering from throat cancer in his later years from cigar smoking, Grant was encouraged by Mark Twain to write his Memoirs of the Civil War in order to provide an income for his wife after his death.
Encouraged by the outpouring of support from people across the country, Ulysses S. Grant, who was a Methodist, wrote in 1884:
“I believe in the Holy Scriptures, and whoso lives by them will be benefited thereby. Men may differ as to the interpretation, which is human, but the Scriptures are man’s best guide…
I did not go riding yesterday, although invited and permitted by my physicians, because it was the Lord’s day, and because I felt that if a relapse should set in, the people who are praying for me would feel that I was not helping their faith by riding out on Sunday….
Yes, I know, and I feel very grateful to the Christian people of the land for their prayers in my behalf. There is no sect or religion, as shown in the Old or New Testament, to which this does not apply.”
Just days after delivering his final manuscript to the printer, Ulysses S. Grant died, July 23, 1885.
Nine years earlier, President Grant wrote to the Editor of the Sunday School Times in Philadelphia, June 6, 1876:
“Your favor of yesterday asking a message from me to the children and the youth of the United States, to accompany your Centennial number, is this morning received.
My advice to Sunday schools, no matter what their denomination, is: Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet anchor of your liberties; write its precepts in your hearts, and practice them in your lives.
To the influence of this Book are we indebted for all the progress made in true civilization, and to this must we look as our guide in the future.
‘Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.’ Yours respectfully, U.S. Grant.”
The Moral Liberal contributing editor, William J. Federer, is the bestselling author of “Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion,” and numerous other books. A frequent radio and television guest, his daily American Minute is broadcast nationally via radio, television, and Internet. Check out all of Bill’s books here.
Battle of Gettysburg ended July 3, 1863
American Minute with Bill Federer
Washington, D.C., was in a panic!
72,000 Confederate troops were just sixty miles away near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
After the Confederate victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Robert E. Lee was under a time deadline.
Mounting casualties of the war were causing Lincoln’s popularity to fall, so if Lee could get a quick victory at Gettysburg, he could pressure Lincoln to a truce.
But this window of opportunity was fast closing, as Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was about to capture Vicksburg on the Mississippi, which would divide the Confederacy and free up thousands of Union troops to fight Lee in the east.
Unfortunately for Lee, his successful General, “Stonewall” Jackson had died two months earlier, having been mistakenly shot by his own men.
On the Union side, Lincoln replaced Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker with Maj. Gen. George Meade to command the 94,000 men of the Union Army of the Potomac.
The Battle of Gettysburg began July 1, 1863.
After two days of intense combat, with ammunition running low, General Robert E. Lee ordered “Pickett’s Charge.”
12,500 Confederate soldiers made a direct attack on the Union position at Cemetery Ridge.
After an hour of murderous fire and bloody hand-to-hand combat, the Confederates were pushed back and the Battle of Gettysburg ended JULY 3, 1863, with over 50,000 casualties.
The next day, Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant, giving the Union Army control of the Mississippi River.
When news reached London, all hopes of Europe recognizing the Confederacy were ended.
On July 5, 1863, President Lincoln and his son visited General Daniel E. Sickles, who had his leg blown off at Gettysburg.
General James F. Rusling recorded that when General Sickles asked Lincoln if was anxious before the Battle, Lincoln answered:
“No, I was not; some of my Cabinet and many others in Washington were, but I had no fears…
In the pinch of your campaign up there, when everybody seemed panic-stricken, and nobody could tell what was going to happen,
oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went to my room one day, and I locked the door, and got down on my knees before Almighty God, and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg.
I told Him that this was His war, and our cause His cause, but we couldn’t stand another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville.
And I then and there made a solemn vow to Almighty God, that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg, I would stand by Him…”
Lincoln continued:
“And He did stand by you boys, and I will stand by Him.
And after that (I don’t know how it was, and I can’t explain it), soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that God Almighty had taken the whole business into his own hands and that things would go all right at Gettysburg.”
Twelve days after the Battle of Gettysburg, July 15, 1863, Lincoln proclaimed a Day of Prayer:
“It is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the Almighty Father and the power of His hand equally in these triumphs and in these sorrows…
I invite the people of the United States to…render the homage due to the Divine Majesty for the wonderful things He has done in the nation’s behalf and invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has produced and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion.”
In his Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln ended:
“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom –
and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
At the Gettysburg Battlefield, May 30, 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt said:
“On these hills of Gettysburg two brave armies of Americans once met in contest…
Since those days, two subsequent wars, both with foreign Nations, have measurably…softened the ancient passions.
It has been left to us of this generation to see the healing made permanent.”
In his 3rd Inaugural Address, President Franklin Roosevelt said, January 20, 1941:
“The spirit of America…is the product of centuries….born in the multitudes of those who came from many lands…
The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history…
Its vitality was written into our own Mayflower Compact, into the Declaration of Independence, into the Constitution of the United States, into the Gettysburg Address…
If the spirit of America were killed, even though the Nation’s body…lived on, the America we know would have perished.”
Bill FedererThe Moral Liberal contributing editor, William J. Federer, is the bestselling author of “Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion,” and numerous other books. A frequent radio and television guest, his daily American Minute is broadcast nationally via radio, television, and Internet. Check out all of Bill’s books here.
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