Reading presidential rankings feels like a bad joke. Four to twelve years of a term summed up in thirty words.
How can anyone rank presidents with a straight face is beyond me but they do it.
Ulysses S Grant is usually low in the rankings but was given a bump by many lists post 2020. He typically ranks behind LBJ and Truman for instance. It’s clear that being on the list has a lot to do with winning a war and no man was more responsible for winning the Civil War than Grant, it just didn’t happen when he was president.
Grant is still considered a horrible president other than what he did for black people. And maybe he was a horrible president because he should have been King.
Grant was chosen as the president in the election of 1868. He didn’t run for president or even campaign. The country chose him because he was the winner of the Civil War. A man who proved himself in the most trying time of the nations history and came out victorious. He didn’t prove himself in Congress or in fund raising or in running a political machine though and that was his downfall.
America elected a king and made him the president of a democracy and then it tore him a part.
Grant should have been king the way Washington was king. The way a great man wins a great battle and everyone decides “we should just put him in charge” was always allowed to be king.
Reading about Grant in the war and then reading about Grant in politics is like watching Jordan with the Wizards.