U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant predicted that the following civil warfare could be “between patriotism and intelligence on one facet, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the opposite.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, the U.S. Capitol was attacked by a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters looking for to forestall certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump within the 2020 presidential election. One of many many information reviews that adopted within the aftermath of that occasion famous the existence of “far-right talk of a coming civil war” among the many Capitol rioters, who had been motivated by false claims propagated by Trump that the election had been “stolen” and “rigged.”
In that local weather, social media customers started circulating a purported citation from Ulysses S. Grant, Commanding Basic of the U.S. Military in the course of the American Civil Struggle, and 18th president of america from 1869 to 1877. In accordance with that citation, Grant as soon as predicted that “if we’re to have one other contest within the close to way forward for our nationwide existence,” that warfare wouldn’t be waged between regional factions, however “between patriotism and intelligence on one facet, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the opposite”:
This assertion is recorded as having been uttered by Grant. The event was a speech gave on the Annual Reunion of the Military of the Tennessee in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sept. 29, 1875.
As Grant approached his final full 12 months within the White Home, and the approaching of the nation’s centennial celebration, he spoke of the significance of making certain an informed citizenry and sustaining the separation of church and state with a purpose to shield the rights enshrined within the U.S. Structure — and to go off a battle with the forces of “superstition, ambition, and ignorance”:
I don’t deliver into this assemblage politics, definitely not partisan politics, however it’s a
truthful topic for troopers of their deliberations to contemplate what could also be essential to safe the prize for which they battled in a republic like ours. The place the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, the place no energy is exercised besides by the desire of the folks, it will be important that the sovereign — the folks — ought to possess intelligence.The free college is the promoter of that intelligence which is to protect us as a free nation. If we’re to have one other contest within the close to way forward for our nationwide existence, I predict that the dividing line is not going to be Mason and Dixon’s, however between patriotism and intelligence on the one facet, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the opposite.
Now on this centennial 12 months of our nationwide existence, I imagine it a great time to start the work of strengthening the muse of the home commenced by our patriotic forefathers 100 years in the past, at Harmony and Lexington. Allow us to all labor so as to add all needful ensures for the extra good safety of free thought, free speech, and free press, pure morals, unfettered spiritual sentiments, and of equal rights and privileges to all males, regardless of nationality, colour, or faith.
Encourage free colleges, and resolve that not one greenback of cash appropriated to their help, irrespective of how raised, shall be appropriated to the help of any sectarian college. Resolve that the State or Nation, or each mixed, shall furnish to each baby rising up within the land, the technique of buying a great common-school schooling, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistic tenets. Depart the matter of faith to the household altar, the church, and the personal college supported totally by personal contributions. Hold the church and state eternally separate. With these safeguards, I imagine the battles which created the Military of the Tennessee is not going to have been fought in useless.
