General Ulysses S. Grant, having played a pivotal role in defeating the Confederate States of America, afterward won the 1868 and 1872 presidential elections. A century after the beginning of the America Revolution — and six months after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1875 — Grant, addressing the men he had earlier led into battle, argued that the separation of religion and state was necessary for true freedom.
Grant biographer Jean Edward Smith noted that Grant used the occasion to give “both Protestants and Catholics a stern lecture on religious tolerance and the separation of church and state.” Following his address, the president, having grown up in the Methodist faith, also declared “if any Methodist friends should ever undertake to divert public funds to the support of sectarian schools, they and I would be at outs.”
On some issues of his day, Grant was far from exemplary. His defense of secular public schools, however, squarely aligned with constitutional church-state separation.
Selected portions of Grant’s religious freedom speech are reprinted below.
Ulysses S. Grant: Remarks at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Army of the Tennessee in Des Moines, Iowa — September 29, 1875
COMRADES: It always affords me much gratification to meet my old comrades-in-arms of ten to fourteen years ago, and to live over again the trials and hardships of those days, hardships imposed for the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions …
It is to be hoped that like trials will never befall our country. In this sentiment no class of people can more heartily join than the soldier who submitted to the dangers, trials and hardships of the camp and the battle-field, on which ever side he may have fought. No class of people are more interested in guarding against a recurrence of those days. Let us then begin by guarding against every enemy threatening the perpetuity of free republican institutions.
I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics; but it is a fair subject for our deliberation to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled. In a republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign, and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence. The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.
Now, in this Centennial year of our national existence, I believe it a good time to begin the work of strengthening the foundation of the house commenced by our patriotic forefathers one hundred years ago at Concord and Lexington. Let us all labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech and a free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiments and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color or religion.
Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school. Resolve that either the State or nation, or both combined, shall support institutions of learning sufficient to afford to every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good, common school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan or atheistical tenets. Leave the matter of religion to the family circle, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contribution. Keep the Church and State forever separate. With these safeguards I believe the battles which created us “The Army of the Tennessee,” will not have been fought in vain.