The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Ulysses S. Grant (Executive Calendar)” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the in the Senate section section on pages S2176-S2178 on April 27.
The Department is one of the oldest in the US, focused primarily on law enforcement and the federal prison system. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, detailed wasteful expenses such as $16 muffins at conferences and board meetings.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Ulysses S. Grant
Mr. COTTON. Madam President, 200 years ago today, one of our Nation's greatest heroes was born. Ulysses S. Grant rose from humble beginnings to stand next to Lincoln and Washington as one of America's indispensable men. This great defender of America won our bloodiest war, crushed the darkest forces of disunion, bandaged our deepest national wounds, and bridged the greatest political divides. He was an unshakable pillar of strength upon which this Nation's future rested time and again.
Virtually no one foresaw Grant's rise to greatness before the Civil War. Although he had graduated from West Point and distinguished himself as a soldier in the Mexican-American War, he had later stumbled from one failure to another in business.
In 1861, Grant was a man bent by humiliation and ridicule but unbroken. After the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, Grant rose from his knees as destiny called, he redonned his uniform, and he marched into the history books.
For the first 3 years of the Civil War, Grant fought on the western front, winning several of the Union's early victories while commanders in the East dithered. After Grant's first great victory, his Confederate counterpart sued for peace and asked what terms he would give them. Grant firmly responded that he would accept ``no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender.'' This earned him the nickname ``Unconditional Surrender'' Grant and resulted in the largest capture of enemy troops in the history of the Western Hemisphere up to that time.
Grant waged a relentless form of warfare. He knew that, in his words,
``the art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.''
Grant's warrior spirit famously moved President Lincoln to declare
``I can't spare this man--he fights.'' When Grant's enemies spread the rumor that he was an alcoholic and should be dismissed, Lincoln wryly responded that if he could find out what brand of whiskey Grant drank, he would send a barrel of it to all the other commanders.
Grant's famous determination and grit were on full display during the brutal Battle of Shiloh, one of the bloodiest episodes of the Civil War. In the first day of fighting, Grant's army was mauled by Confederate forces under the command of Albert Sidney Johnston, the Confederacy's most competent general at the time.
William Tecumseh Sherman approached Grant that rainy night beneath a great oak tree and he said, ``Well, Grant, we have had the devil's own day, haven't we?''
Grant replied, between puffs of his ubiquitous cigar, ``Yes. Lick em tomorrow though.'' He made good on this promise, threw back the Confederate forces, and won the carnage-filled battle.
Sidney Johnston was killed in the fighting, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis later wrote that ``it was the turning point of our fate.''
This story remains so legendary in the Army today that it was commonplace for young officers in the Iraq war to conclude a hard day by borrowing from Grant: ``Lick em tomorrow.''
Grant continued his brilliant streak of victories, and on July 4, 1863--the 87th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence--he seized the fortress city of Vicksburg on the Mississippi, splitting the Confederacy in two and securing the Union's control of that mighty river. This was perhaps the greatest strategic victory of the war, and combined with the victory at Gettysburg the previous day, Grant's seizure of Vicksburg put the Union on the path to victory.
Soon after Grant's decisive victory in the Battle of Chattanooga a few months later and capture of the supposedly impregnable heights of Missionary Ridge, Lincoln promoted him to the rank of lieutenant general--a position that no one had held since George Washington. A few days later, Lincoln also named him commander of Union forces.
In his new command, Grant quickly turned eastward and confronted Robert E. Lee, a skilled tactician who had run circles around the Army of the Potomac for 2 years. Lee had spooked Union commanders for so long with his audacious battle plans but not Grant. He said:
I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault and land in our rear and on both our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.
What Grant did was pursue Lee's army ruthlessly. As he marched into the Confederacy, he told a reporter:
If you see the President, tell him from me that whatever happens, there will be no turning back.''
In the weeks and months that followed, Grant attacked Lee's army again and again. Whether he won or not, Grant continued to advance deeper into the Confederacy. Grant's army fought in the burning forests of the wilderness and in the muddy trenches of Petersburg, experiencing extraordinary hardship but never allowing Lee to regroup or reinvigorate his shrinking army. Less than a year after Grant began his overland campaign, the Union forces finally took the rebel capital of Richmond and broke the back of Confederate resistance.
But U.S. Grant wasn't a great leader simply because he won the war; he was also great because he never lost sight of the first goal of the war: to reunite our shattered Republic and restore what Lincoln had called the ``bonds of affection'' and the ``mystic chords of memory'' between Americans, North and South.
Instead of humiliating Lee at Appomattox Court House, Grant offered him generous and honorable terms. Uncompromising in war, Grant was magnanimous in peace. He allowed Confederate officers to keep their sidearms and horses, did not demand Lee's sword, and promised not to prosecute rebels who laid down their arms. As Lee departed the courthouse, Grant and his staff took off their hats in respect--a small act for the victors but an extraordinary gesture to the defeated Confederates.
Grant remained in the Army after Appomattox and continued to be a force for reconciliation and union as we stitched the stars back on Old Glory. He didn't allow vengeance or anger to overcome prudence and wisdom. He even defended his former antagonist Robert E. Lee when President Andrew Johnson tried to renege on the terms of Grant's surrender agreement. When Johnson asked Grant ``When can these men be tried?'' Grant replied ``Never, not unless they break their parole.'' He went so far as to tell his staff that ``I will not stay in the Army if they break the pledges that I made.'' To Grant, his word was more important than any office. Thanks to his principled stand, Johnson backed down, and our Nation avoided cycles of fruitless recrimination. At the same time, Grant also opposed Johnson's attempts to weaken Reconstruction and leave newly freed slaves exposed to inhumane treatment by vengeful former masters. Grant wanted neither excessive punishment nor excessive lenience; he wanted justice.
Never a politician, Grant nevertheless acquiesced to popular demand and Republican entreaties to run for President in 1868 on the simple platform ``Let us have peace.'' Although his administration was imperfect, he fought to make good on his promise. He continued his work to bring the South back into the Union, restoring the rights of citizenship to over 150,000 former rebels and bringing Robert E. Lee to the White House as a symbol of reconciliation.
Grant was also one of the greatest civil rights Presidents in our Nation's history, protecting freed slaves with laws and, when necessary, with force. When the first Ku Klux Klan terrorized the South, Grant ordered and empowered the Department of Justice and the Army to destroy it, and it was destroyed.
Grant also healed the wounds that the Civil War had inflicted on our relationship with other nations. He settled a spiraling diplomatic crisis with Great Britain, provoked by Britain's decision to allow Confederate warships to be built in its ports, which went on to sink over 150 Union ships. After years of negotiation, the United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Washington, in which Great Britain formally apologized for its support of the Confederacy. The treaty further established an independent commission to assess damages inflicted on American commerce, which in turn ordered the British to pay our country over $15 million in damages. Grant also worked to settle other outstanding concerns in the treaty, paving the path to strong relations with Great Britain in the future.
After his Presidency, Grant sadly was conned in business ventures and fell deeply into debt. But even as he lay dying of cancer, he resolved to provide for his family. A week before his death, he completed his memoirs, a monumental literary achievement that continues to rank among the greatest ever written by any statesman. He also saved his family from debt, demonstrating one last time his indomitable will.
Grant's funeral procession was the largest public demonstration in American history up to that point, with an estimated 1\1/2\ million Americans in attendance.
Frederick Douglass described Grant as ``a man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point.'' Douglass saw in Grant ``a protector'' to freed Blacks, ``a friend'' to Indians, ``a brother'' to vanquished foes, and ``a savior'' for our imperiled Nation.
Yet progressive historians, a partisan press, and political enemies tarnished his record from the beginning. They have maligned him as a drunk and a butcher and a bumbling western rube who was ill-suited to politics and probably corrupt at that. This is an ahistorical slander against a great American.
As a deeply honest man and a Washington outsider, Grant perhaps wasn't always astute in spotting the unscrupulous swindlers and grifters attracted to our capital then as now. As President, he trusted some who didn't deserve that trust. His critics have exaggerated this guilelessness as a mortal sin, using dishonesty of others to besmirch the record of a good and great man. But Douglas was right; Grant was
``a savior'' of this Republic, and his few failings pale in comparison to his extraordinary achievements. And Grant's countrymen agreed, electing him twice by historic landslides.
I have four photos hanging on the wall of my Senate office, photos of great statesmen who saved the West in our hour of crisis: Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, and U.S. Grant. Throughout his life, U.S. Grant embodied a profound patriotism and selflessness that our Nation should remember with awe and reverence. On this bicentenary of his birth, we should restore him to the pantheon of American heroes, first among Americans.
