Fred Thompson credited as playing...
President Ulysses S. Grant
- General Sherman: [after Custer and his men are massacred at the Battle of the Little Bighorn] The man was a fuckin' idiot. Splits his forces? Daylight raid, high noon?
- Henry Dawes: An idiot, perhaps, but he had his orders, Mr. President. Drive the Sioux out of the Black Hills onto the ration rolls, so we could get to that damn gold. The Sioux resisted.
- General Sherman: Resisted? Bullshit!
- Henry Dawes: They *resisted*, General Sherman.
- President Ulysses S. Grant: Blocking a roundhouse to the chin is "resistance", Henry. Massacring five companies of cavalry...
- Henry Dawes: I am not defending their brutality, Mr. President. The Sioux resisted because by the '68 treaty, this land is theirs, and we had no legal...
- General Sherman: That treaty was also only supposed to feed them for four years. And yet here we are, eight years later, and you Senators are passing a million-a-year appropriation to keep filling their bellies. Why?
- Henry Dawes: To keep them from starving, General.
- President Ulysses S. Grant: And that's all it's done. Made them beggars. Hasn't advanced them one bit. Those smart enough not to sign...
- General Sherman: Do this!
- Henry Dawes: They were attacked by us first.
- General Sherman: [chuckles] And what would you have us do, Dawes? Cut and run?
- Henry Dawes: Mr. President, this is a senseless argument.
- General Sherman: A senseless argument? Do you know what they did to those men on that hill? They did things even I've never seen before.