This Should Not Have Happened

On June 19th - of all days - a statue of Ulysses S. Grant was toppled in Golden Gate Park by protesters. This should not have happened.

There is justification in bringing down any and all relics of the Confederacy. It was formed to not only prolong slavery but to lay waste the American democratic experiment.

Above all else, Ulysses S. Grant was a patriot. He was an ordinary man who was anything but ordinary when the still young United States of America faced existential ruin. Those determined to destroy Grant's honors today need to accept how much humanity gained while he walked the earth.

For starters, there would be no "Juneteenth" without General Ulysses S. Grant. No ratification of the 13th Amendment nor even drafting of the 15th Amendment. More than likely, there would not be 50 stars on the American flag.

From the first Battle of Bull Run, with the exception of the battle of Antietam, Union armies in the Eastern Theater failed miserably against the Army of Northern Virginia led by General Robert E. Lee. In the Western Theater, along the Mississippi, Grant's armies reigned. Key Confederate forts along the river surrendered to Grant in successive fashion, in some cases with little actual fighting, in other with unprecedented bloodshed.

By the spring of 1863, despite Lee's domination, the Confederacy needed help to overcome the Union blockade of Southern ports. Manpower, food and munitions were increasingly in short supply. After a stunning victory at Chancellorsville, Lee and President Jefferson Davis decided to seize the moment and invade the North.

It was time to bring fear to the citizenry, in the hope that Northern support for the war would wane and that other Nations would finally recognize the Confederacy as a "sovereign state." Though France and England had not yet done so, both were still considering the option. The Union's failure to defeat Lee weighed heavily in the debate.

Time was running out for Lincoln. The possibility that the only democratic nation on the planet would split in two - one slave, one free - was increasingly likely. The term "existential crisis" was never more apt.

For nearly three months, Major General Grant tried seven different plans to position his army and a flotilla of ironclads to attack the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Each attempt failed.

Control of Vicksburg, the "Gibraltar of the Confederacy," ensured that food and supplies would continue to sustain Southern forces and citizenry across the South. Lincoln described Vicksburg as the "key" to the war's outcome.

"See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key. The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket."

Grant understood the stakes and the limit of time called for bold action. General William Tecumseh Sherman was so certain of its failure that he wanted his negative view of the plan be put in writing. Lincoln expressed doubt and reminded Grant that another failure would be devastating to public support and his efforts to block foreign intervention.

The plan worked as Grant scripted. In 17 days, Grant's army marched more than 200 miles, winning five battles before besieging the city. On July 4, 1863, after holding out for 47 days, with no reinforcements and low on food and supplies, Maj. Gen. John C. Pemberton unconditionally surrendered the city to Grant. Nearly 30,000 Confederates were paroled; the second time in the war that Grant had captured an entire Confederate army. [Grant's Vicksburg Campaign was so masterful that it is, to this day, taught at West Point.]

On this same day, in the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, General Lee instructed Major General George Pickett to lead 12,500 men in nine infantry brigades for three-quarters of a mile over open fields headlong into the center of Union Army of the Potomac. Lee's army retreated back to Virginia the next morning.

If Grant had failed to take Vicksburg, the intact supply chain could have replenished and sustained Lee's army. As it was, despite the devastating loss at Gettysburg, Lee mustered enough men and materiel to fight for nearly two more years.

Lincoln brought Grant east to lead all Union forces, land and sea. As was his wont, Grant immediately set in motion a coordinated effort of all Union forces that ultimately - and finally - led to surrender of the Confederate Army of the Potomac near Appomattox, Virginia. The bulk of the fighting ended almost four years to the day from whence it began.

Ulysses S. Grant, justifiably, was a national hero. When Grant died in 1885, 1.5 million people attended his funeral procession in New York on a national day of mourning. Frederick Douglass gave the eulogy:

Grant was “a man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point. In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.”

For any man, the most one can hope for, and the most that any other man can ask, is to leave the world a better place. Ulysses S. Grant did just that - as General and as President - for all Americans, not just in the 19th Century but for as long as the government of, by and for the people endures. Any monuments that honor him should stand for just as long.