Ulysses S. Grant’s fight against voter suppression

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University stated earlier this month that “14 states will have new voting restrictions in place for the first time in a presidential election.” Enacted by Republican legislatures, “the new laws range from strict photo ID requirements to early voting cutbacks to registration restrictions.” (The states are Alabama, Arizona, Indians, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.) As for what the Brennan Center calls the “myth of voter fraud,” their ongoing examination found that such fraud is “very rare.”

One of the central stories in the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant involved his fight against voter suppression. This son of Methodism, whose faith story has been overlooked, made what he called “moral courage” the marching orders of his life as Civil War general and as president. Although he was raised in an antislavery family, it took encounters with thousands of slaves—who were attempting to get inside Union lines as Grant led his army deeper and deeper into the South—to transform him into a passionate foe of slavery.

Grant won the popular vote for president in the 1868 election, but he lost a majority of white voters. His victory relied on the votes of 400,000 African-Americans. A Republican, Grant fought a courageous battle against voter suppression waged by Democrats tied at the hip with the Ku Klux Klan. While the violent tactics of the Klan in the 1870s and the maneuvers of state legislatures today are different in kind, the goal is the same: denying the vote to African-American citizens. When Grant saw he could trust neither state legislatures nor local courts in the south, he determined to wield the power of the federal government to ensure the right to vote.