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” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the in the Senate section section on pages S2215-S2216 on April 28.
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. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and 18th President of the United States, who was born in Point Pleasant, OH, 200 years ago this week.
In honor of the bicentennial of Grant's birthday, which took place yesterday on April 27, 2022, I joined Senator Blunt of Missouri to introduce a concurrent resolution in the Senate. This resolution honors Grant for his efforts and leadership in defending the union of the United States of America, recognizes his military victories, and affirms him as one of the most influential military commanders in our Nation's history. I spoke about President Grant's accomplishments briefly on the floor yesterday, but want to take this opportunity to elaborate on my remarks.
Ulysses S. Grant was a proud Ohioan, born in Point Pleasant, OH, to Jesse Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant on April 27, 1822. I know a number of celebrations were held in Ohio to honor the 200th anniversary. Grant's family soon moved to Georgetown, OH, in Brown County. Grant spent the remainder of his youth in the house his parents built in Georgetown. Both his birthplace and boyhood home are preserved as historic sites that draw visitors to Ohio communities today. In 1839, Grant left Ohio to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1843.
Grant was instrumental to the Union victory in the Civil War, leading Union forces to critical early victories in the West at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. After President Lincoln appointed him Lieutenant-General of the Army in 1864, he commanded all Union armies until the conclusion of the war. At Appomattox, Grant prescribed terms of surrender intended to set the stage for postwar reconciliation.
Grant's legacy extends beyond his role in the Civil War. Grant was elected the 18th President of the United States in 1868 and was decisively elected to a second term in 1872, the only two-term President between Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson. As President, he oversaw the orderly readmittance of States following the Civil War, completing the restoration of the Union by 1871.
An ardent supporter of Reconstruction, President Grant championed the ratification of the 15th Amendment to prohibit discrimination in voting rights on the basis of ``race, color, or previous condition of servitude.'' In 1870, he oversaw the creation of the Department of Justice, essential to the prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan and enforcement of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the ``Reconstruction Amendments.''
Grant was an advocate for civil rights, endorsing and then signing the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to outlaw racial segregation in public accommodations, schools, transportation, and juries, nearly a century before such protections would be effectively enforced.
And although President Theodore Roosevelt is most often associated with our National Parks, it was President Grant who designated Yellowstone as the first National Park in 1872.
After his presidency, Grant traveled the world and wrote his memoirs.
``The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant'' became a bestseller and garnered lasting critical acclaim, praised by Mark Twain for its
``clarity of statement, directness, simplicity, unpretentiousness, manifest truthfulness, fairness and justice toward friend and foe alike, soldierly candor and frankness, and soldierly avoidance of flowery speech.''
As I said yesterday on the Senate floor, history has not always been kind to Grant. But as we commemorate his 200th birthday, his legacy is being reevaluated and his far-reaching impact more fully appreciated. Frederick Douglass eulogized Grant as ``a man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point.'' I urge my colleagues to join Senator Blunt and I in honoring one of Ohio's finest, Ulysses S. Grant, for these remarkable qualities, for his role in preserving the Union of the United States as a general in the Civil War, and for his defense of Reconstruction and Civil Rights as President.
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