As some of you may have noted, I have been reading his memoirs for the longest time. They are simply brilliant, and ... they make me proud to be an American.
I don't say "proud to be an American" very often, unless I'm in some country bar in NYC, listening to Hank Williams, Patsy Cline or Merle Haggard.
What we should honor and remember by honoring Ulysses Grant is that his vision of racial justice was the will of the American people-- all its people -- and that the following hundred years of segregation was an illegitimate betrayal of that democratic will. In that, Grant was the true founder and implementor of the modern American nation of equal rights and if the flowering of that nation was delayed for a century with his departure from office, that's all the more reason to remember his original vision and courage-- and defy those who try to bury that memory.