And in particular, he noted, we needed politicians who didn't exploit religion to win elections or make laws based on religious dogma.
"Keep the church and state forever separate," Grant said as he wrapped up his speech. "With these safe-guards I believe the battles which created us 'The army of the Tennessee' will not have been fought in vain."
Grant saw, in his lifetime, the possibility of a multiracial American republic slip away with the end of Reconstruction. It wouldn't resurface again until a century later with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in 1964/65.
And now that "conservatives" on the US Supreme Court have gutted most of the Voting Rights Act, the white supremacists who took over Grant's Republican Party in 1968 with Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" are again trying to reverse the "second Reconstruction" of LBJ's Great Society of the 1960s. As a result, America again finds itself at a crisis point.
The old Confederacy, like Freddy Krueger, is trying to rise from the dead and slash our nation with its "superstition, ambition and ignorance."
They've formed all-white armed militias across the nation and even stormed the US Capitol, complete with Confederate flags, in an attempt to finish the job they declared in 1861.
And like a reincarnation of old Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote the Dred Scott decision that helped kick off the Civil War, Chief Justice John Roberts has declared that state laws whose effect is to suppress the votes of people of color are once again entirely acceptable.
Republican legislators in 17 states have taken Roberts up on his offer and have, just since January 6th, passed 28 new voter suppression laws.
The multiracial democratic republic that Ulysses Grant was willing to lay down his life for is once again in danger of slipping away.
If America is to ever become a truly multiracial republic that fulfills the ideals of democracy, the Senate must end the filibuster now so they can reverse these egregious Supreme Court decisions and guarantee the right of all Americans to vote.