Columnist John J. Miller said this of Grant, Let us not insist that Grant was a great president. But he was a solidly good one, whose hard-money policies fought inflation and who kept the peace with foreign powers. Miller adds, Some claim he didn't do enough to help blacks in the South secure their rights in the 1870s but this is grossly unfair, because Grant was hobbled by a Congress and a public that didn't want to go as far as he did. Furthermore, Grant's administration may have been corrupt, but the corruption was not categorically worse than what has been found in several other administrations and it did not reach to the top of the organizational chart.
Historians who continue to rank Grant near the bottom of the presidential pile are partisan and unfair. Grant deserves better. He was good. If I were to rank all forty-two presidents from best to worst, Grant would fall somewhere between seventeen and twenty-one. He is underrated.
