Douglass On Grant

This passage about U. S. Grant from a pamphlet written by Frederick Douglass in 1872 might be illuminating:

There are many dissemblers and falsifiers of the Greeley party in the South who are seeking the control of the colored voters, by declaring to them that President Grant is not, and never has been, a faithful and sincere friend of my race. . . . President Grant’s course, from the time he drew the sword in defense of the old Union in the Valley of the Mississippi till he sheathed it at Appomattox, and thence to this day in his reconstruction policy and his war upon the Ku-Klux, is without a deed or word to justify such an accusation. . . .

I have often been called upon to reconcile my exalted opinion of President Grant with the fact that I failed to be invited with the Commissioners of Inquiry to Santo Domingo to dine with the President at the White House. I have two answers to those who inquire of me on this point. First. The failure of the President to invite me could not have been because my personal presence on account of color would have been disagreeable to him, for he never withheld any social courtesy to General Tate, the Minister Plenipotentiary from the Republic of Hayti, a man of my own complexion. . . . It is, besides, impossible that color is the explanation of the omission to invite me, because the gentlemen whom he did invite had dined with me daily during ten weeks on an American ship, under an American flag, and in presence of representatives of the leading presses of the United States, and this doubtless by the President’s special direction. It is further obvious that color had nothing to do with the omission, because other gentlemen accompanying the expedition to Santo Domingo equally with myself, though white, failed to receive an invitation to dine at the White House. . . . My second answer is that my devotion to General Grant rests upon high and broad public grounds, and not upon personal favor. I see in him the vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of my race from all the malign, reactionary, social, and political elements that would whelm them in destruction. He is the rock-bound coast against the angry and gnawing waves of a storm-tossed ocean saying, thus far only shalt thou come.

Wherever else there may be room for doubt and uncertainty, there is nothing of the kind with Ulysses S. Grant as our candidate. In the midst of political changes he is now as ever—unswerving and inflexible. Nominated regularly by the time honored Republican party, he is clothed with all the sublime triumphs of humanity which make its record. That party stands to-day free from alloy, pure and simple. There is neither ambiguity in its platform nor incongruity in its candidates. U.S. Grant and Henry Wilson . . .—the soldier and the Senator—are men in whom we can confide. No two names can better embody the precious and priceless results of the suppression of rebellion and the abolition of slavery. We can no more array ourselves against these candidates and this party than we can resume our chains or insult our mothers.