What are some quotes from Ulysses S. Grant?

In all this I can see but the doom of slavery. The North do not want, nor will they want, to interfere with the institution. But they will refuse for all time to give it protection unless the South shall return soon to their allegiance.

As the Civil War began in the spring of 1861, Grant wrote the above in a letter to his father-in-law, Frederick Dent. The observation proved to be prescient, as the war spelled the end of slavery in the United States—though, as Grant wryly notes, the North would have tolerated the continuation of the hated institution if the South hadn't rebelled.

Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. . . . Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.

This practical advice, published in an article in 1896 about Grant by General Horace Porter in The Century Magazine, shows why Grant was a military leader Lincoln could count on: Grant was down-to-earth and unwilling to be intimidated by Southern generals like Lee.

I have given the subject of arming the negro my hearty support. This, with the emancipation of the negro, is the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy.

Grant over and over showed great faith in the ability and effectiveness of black soldiers and tirelessly advocated for enlisting them, as he does in this August 23, 1863 letter to Abraham Lincoln.

Laws are to govern all alike—those opposed as well as those who favor them. I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

Grant made the above statement in his Inaugural Address of March 4, 1869. He shows his practical streak once again in stating that if people feel the results of bad laws they will work to get rid of them.