The country’s 18th president is in the news again, but this time it has nothing to do with the Civil War that made him famous or the sesquicentennial observance of that war.

The fifth annual Ulysses S. Grant Lecture and John Y. Simon Day in St. Louis scheduled for Saturday at the U.S. Grant National Historic Site has been canceled due to the federal shutdown.

The lecture, titled “Educating a General: U.S. Grant’s Preparation for West Point,” was to be given by William C. Davis, Virginia Tech history professor and program director for the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies. The location was the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site that is closed because of the budget impasse, and as the lecture was sponsored by the Grant historic site, it could not be moved to another location....