Revisionism..................................

     When Reconstruction was pilloried as a byword for political abuse, Grant was accused of going too far in advancing black civil rights and foisting "bayonet rule" on the South.  Recent revisionist historians have sometimes swung to the other extreme, criticizing him for backtracking on Reconstruction during the last two years of his presidency, when he hesitated to sent troops to police elections in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana.  They condemn him for not undertaking extensive land reforms in the South—a fine idea, but perhaps quixotic in a region dominated by the Klan and other terrorist groups.  The true wonder is not that Grant finally retreated from robust federal intervention, but that he had the courage to persist for so long in his outspoken concern for black safety and civil rights, as he faced ferocious backlash from Democrats and even his own party.  By the end of his second term, northern support for Reconstruction had largely disappeared.  As the Indiana senator Oliver P. Morton recognized, if Reconstruction failed, it was not because of Grant, but because it had been "resisted by armed and murderous organizations, by terrorism and proscription the most wicked and cruel of the age."

Ron Chernow,  Grant