Smith wrote that "the common thread is strength of character—an indomitable will that never flagged in the face of adversity ... Sometimes he blundered badly; often he oversimplified; yet he saw his goals clearly and moved toward them relentlessly." Brooks Simpson continued the trend in the first of two volumes on Grant in 2000, although the work was far from a hagiography. H. W. Brands, in his more uniformly positive 2012 book, wrote favorably of Grant's military and political careers alike, saying: As Reconstruction scholar Eric Foner wrote, Brands gave "a sympathetic account of Grant's forceful and temporarily successful effort as president to crush the Ku Klux Klan, which had inaugurated a reign of terror against the former slaves." Foner criticized Grant for not sending military aid to Mississippi during the 1875 election to protect African Americans from threats of violence. According to Foner, "Grant's unwillingness to act reflected the broader Northern retreat from Reconstruction and its ideal of racial equality." According to historian Brooks Simpson, Grant was on "the right side of history". Simpson said, "[w]e now view Reconstruction ... as something that should have succeeded in securing equality for African-Americans, and we see Grant as supportive of that effort and doing as much as any person could do to try to secure that within realm of political reality." John F. Marszalek said, "You have to go almost to Lyndon Johnson to find a president who tried to do as much to ensure black people found freedom." In 2016, Ronald C. White continued this trend with a biography that historian T. J. Stiles said, "solidifies the positive image amassed in recent decades, blotting out the caricature of a military butcher and political incompetent engraved in national memory by Jim Crow era historians." Presidency and post-presidential world tour Grant was largely praised among Republicans for being a Union war hero and his nomination as president on the Republican ticket was inevitable. Upon his winning the nomination for president at the 1868 National Union Republican Convention, he received all 650 votes from delegates, with no other candidate being nominated. Union veterans were convinced that since he was an effective battle commander and general during the Civil War, he would be an effective President of the United States. Grant won the presidency by 300,000 popular votes out of 6,000,000 voters, while he won the electoral college vote 214 to 80. According to