Biographer Jean Edward Smith, Who Brought Grant And Eisenhower Out Of Obscurity, Has Died At 83

Smith not only cleared up the reputation of President Ulysses Grant – showing that “Grant’s poor reputation as president had been fostered in part by biased graduate students at Columbia University who wrote the first studies of Reconstruction” – but restored to prominence the contributions of John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. (And he also wrote a scathing biography of the 43rd president, George W. Bush.) – The New York Times