Grant

By Ron Chernow

The matter required a delicate next step. Jesse needed to write to his local congressman, Thomas Hamer, who had to nominate his son for West Point. There was time pressure involved: Hamer was a lame duck whose term ended March 4. Far more worrisome was that Jesse Grant and Thomas Hamer, quondam friends, had not spoken since they parted company over Jacksonian politics, when Jesse accused him of “gross deceit.” Ulysses later said both men, regretting the breach, wanted a rapprochement. Jesse addressed a businesslike letter to Hamer, making no allusion to past unpleasantness. It reached Hamer the night of March 3 and, instead of being vindictive, he graciously agreed to submit Grant’s name. In his haste, he listed the applicant as Ulysses S. Grant. The confusion came about either because Hamer confused Ulysses with his younger brother Simpson or because he assumed Ulysses was his first name and he had taken Hannah’s maiden name for his middle name. (Grant himself blamed Senator Morris for the long-lived error.) The mistaken name, which persisted at West Point and beyond, was the bane of the young man’s life and seemed symbolic of his almost comic passivity under Jesse’s heavy-handed tutelage. As Grant later confessed to his wife in frank exasperation, “You know I have an ‘S’ in my name and don’t know what it stand[s] for.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.17-18)

Upon arrival at West Point, Grant registered under the name U.H. Grant, inscribing his name as Ulysses Hiram Grant in the adjutant’s office. He then discovered, despite his unavailing protests, that he had been nominated for West Point under “Ulysses S. Grant” and perhaps began to suspect that fate had pasted this label permanently on him. As soon as fellow cadets, including William Tecumseh Sherman, spotted the name “U.S. Grant” on the bulletin board, they made great sport of it and promptly branded the newcomer Uncle Sam Grant, or “Sam” Grant for short. Henceforth, he would be known as Sam Grant among cadets. By the end of four years at West Point, he had capitulated to the tyranny of the clerical error and adopted Ulysses S. Grant as his new moniker for life.

(Chernow 2017, pp.20)

In time, Grant emerged as a staunch critic of slavery. As he stated in his Memoirs, “Southern slave-owners believed that … the ownership of slaves conferred a sort of patent of nobility … They convinced themselves, first, of the divine origin of the institution and, next, that that particular institution was not safe in the hands of any body of legislators but themselves.” At this period, however, Grant, like many northern whites, felt more ambivalent, opposing slavery in theory yet also fearing that outright abolitionism might lead to bloody sectional conflict. Julia still clung to a paternalistic attitude toward slavery, associating it fondly with her girlhood and the southern traditions represented by her father.

(Chernow 2017, pp,99)

That Grant was progressively more troubled by the immorality of slavery became patently clear that spring. He had acquired from Colonel Dent the mulatto slave named William Jones who had worked on Dent’s farm and was noe thirty-five years old. It was the only time Grant ever owned a slave and Jones may have come as a gift. Then, on March 29, 1859, Grant appeared at circuit court in St. Louis to file papers that declared “I do hereby manumit, emancipate & set free said William from slavery forever.” Still struggling financially, Grant could have earned a considerable sum had he chosen to sell Jones rather than liberate him. Instead he made good on his pledge to set free Dent slaves when it came within his power. In the inflamed political atmosphere in St. Louis, this bold step planted Grant firmly on the side of those critical of the South’s “peculiar institution.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.106)

On November 19, 1861, Major General Henry W. Halleck succeeded Fremont as commander of the renamed Department of the Missouri, which also encompassed western Kentucky and Arkansas. Fremont had fallen victim to corruption allegations as well as Lincoln’s emphatic displeasure with his ill-timed emancipation proclamation. The rest of the western command, including Tennessee and the rest of Kentucky, would now fall to the Department of the Ohio under the command of Don Carlos Buell. In Washington, the military boy wonder, thirty-four-year-old George B. McClellan, had superseded the aging Winfield Scott to become field commander of the Army of the Potomac and the youngest general in chief in American history. The conservative McClellan stressed to Halleck that the war was being fought solely to preserve the Union and had nothing to do with freeing slaves. As a result, Halleck banned fugitive slaves from Union camps under his command and Grant duly obeyed.

(Chernow 2017, pp.162)

By early December 1862, Grant had zeroed in on Jewish traders as the source of the trouble. During his southward advance, he issued orders that all traders should stay in the rear of his army, but on December 5 he complained to Sherman that “in consequence of the total disregard and evasion of orders by the Jews my policy is to exclude them so far as practicable from the Dept.” In a mood of mounting anger, Grant was not content to chastise Jewish traders: he wanted to banish all Jews. On December 17, he issued the most egregious decision of his career. “General Orders No. 11” stipulated that “the Jews, as a class, violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, and also Department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department. Within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order by Post Commanders, they will see that all of this class of people are furnished with passes and required to leave.” It was the most sweeping anti-Semitic action undertaken in American history.

On the same day Grant issued the order, he wrote a letter expressing a conspiratorial view of Jewish traders, endowing them with almost diabolical powers, saying “they come in with their Carpet sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it. The Jews seem to be a privileged class that can travel anywhere. They will land at any wood yard or landing on the river and make their way through the country. If not permitted to buy Cotton themselves they will act as Agents for someone else who will be at a Military post, with a Treasury permit to receive Cotton and pay for it in Treasury notes which the Jew will buy up at an agreed rate, paying gold.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.233)

With a presidential election in the offing, Grant was drawn into a controversy over whether soldiers in the field should be allowed to cast ballots. Writing to Stanton on September 27, he displayed growing political maturity and made an eloquent argument for permitting this. Conceding that in the past this practice was faulted as “dangerous to constitutional liberty and subversive of Military discipline,” he noted the novel circumstance of having a large portion of the electorate under arms. “In performing this sacred duty, [soldiers] should not be deprived of a most precious privilege. They have as much right to demand that their votes shall be counted, in the choice of their rulers, as those citizens, who remain at home; Nay more, for they have sacrificed more for their country.” However much he wished to see Lincoln reelected, Grant remained studiously nonpartisan. Even though newspapers and campaign literature flowed freely in Union camps, he barred political meetings or attempts to harangue soldiers for particular candidates. In the end, many states permitted absentee ballots, although Grant, a Galena resident, couldn’t vote because Illinois didn’t allow that. At Stanton’s behest, Grant allowed Delaware soldiers to return home on furlough to vote in a state that denied voting rights in the field.

The election posed a major test of whether American democracy could persist under stringent wartime conditions, and everybody acknowledged the overriding importance of the outcome. “Seldom in history was so much staked on a popular vote,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said, articulating a familiar sentiment. “I suppose never in history.” Grant might consider a Union victory a foregone conclusion, but skeptics wondered how the North, with twenty million citizens, had been held at bay for two and a half years by five million recalcitrant white southerners. With so much at stake, the election dove straight down into gutter politics, with Democrats accusing “Black Republicans” of promoting “miscegenation” – a loaded word they introduced into the political lexicon during the campaign.

(Chernow 2017, pp.452)

Four of Mary’s five Kentucky brothers fought with the Confederates, which did not endear her to the northern public, feeding scurrilous commentary about “treason in the White House.” That one brother died at Shiloh and the other at Vicksburg may have unconsciously contributed to her pronounced dislike of Grant. Elizabeth Keckley, the black seamstress who worked for Mary, recorded her invective against him: “‘He is a butcher’ she would often say, ‘and is not fir to be at the head of an army.’” When Lincoln rebutted her, citing Grant’s victories, Mary insisted that “he loses two men to the enemy’s one. He has no management, no regard for life.” Lincoln, who disliked confrontation, sought to mollify her with a mixture of mild humor and forgiving tolerance. “Well, Mother, supposing that we give you command of the army. No doubt you would do much better than any general that has been tried.” In 1864 Adam Badeau was amazed to learn from Mrs. Stanton that she had stopped seeing Mary Lincoln altogether. That was not possible, Badeau responded. “I do not go to the White House,” she repeated. “I do not visit Mrs. Lincoln.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.481)

Chewing a cigar, writing fluently, Grant drafted the surrender terms on a small, oval wooden table, while Lee sat at a squarish, marble-topped table. With no premeditated formula, Grant trusted to the moment’s inspiration. Wreathed in cigar smoke, he scribbled the terms rapidly in a “manifold order book” that enabled him to make three copies. Using magnanimous language, he began his transformation from scourge of the South to its unlikely champion: “The Arms, Artillery and public property to be parked and stacked and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them … This done each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes not to be disturbed by United States Authority so long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they may reside.” This last sentence was significant, making southern soldiers immune from treason prosecutions and setting the stage for postwar reconciliation – or so it was hoped. Afraid Lee would become a martyr and his sword a holy relic, Grant made a point of not asking Lee to surrender his sword; he also didn’t care to humiliate him. Finally, Grant omitted the noxious words “unconditional surrender,” lest they grate on Lee’s proud sensibility. With no tinge of malice, Grant’s words breathed a spirit of charity reminiscent of Lincoln’s second inaugural address.

When he finished writing, Lee cleared the small table before him, wiped his steel spectacles, crossed his legs, and reviewed the language with close scrutiny, asking for only minor revisions. With special delight he saw that officers would be allowed to save face by retaining their sidearms and horses and could return home to resume their lives unmolested. With quite fervor, he said this “would have a most happy effect, and accepted the terms,” Grant recalled. “I handed over my penciled memorandum to an aide to put into ink, and we resumed our conversation about old times and friends in the armies.” Lee seemed hugely relieved. When Grant asked if the terms were satisfactory, he answered, “Yes, I am bound to be satisfied with anything you offer. It is more than I expected.”

The business concluded, Grant brought in his staff officers, but Lee only deigned to engage in conversation with General Seth Williams, his former adjutant when he was West Point superintendent. Apart from this exchange, Horace Porter wrote, “Lee was in no mood for pleasantries, and he did not unbend, or even relax the fixed sternness of his features.” At first Grant assigned Theodore Bowers to prepare a fair copy of the surrender agreement, while Marshall drew up an acceptance letter for Lee to sign. Because Bowers’s hand quivered nervously and he botched three or four sheets, Grant reassigned the task to his Senecan aide, Ely Parker. When introduced to the swarthy Parker, Lee blushed deeply, eyeing tensely his complexion. “What was passing in his mind no one knew,” Porter said, “but the natural surmise was that he at first mistook Parker for a negro, and was struck with astonishment to find that the commander of the Union armies had one of that race on his personal staff.” Another onlooker thought Lee momentarily offended since he believed “a mulatto had been called on to do the writing as a gratuitous affront.” Evidently Lee relaxed when he realized Parker was a Native American. “I am glad to see one real American here,” he ventured, shaking his hand. To which Parker retorted memorably: “We are all Americans.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.508-510)

it was Grant who set the stage for Lee’s high-minded behavior by treating him tactfully, refusing to humiliate him, and granting him generous terms that allowed him to save face in defeat.

Whatever his reservations about Lee as a general, Grant applauded his “manly course and bearing” at Appomattox. Had Lee resisted surrender and encouraged his army to wage guerrilla warfare, it would have spawned infinite trouble, Grant believed. Such was Lee’s unrivaled stature that his acceptance of defeat reconciled many diehard rebels to follow his example. At the same time, it was Grant who set the stage for Lee’s high-minded behavior by treating him tactfully, refusing to humiliate him, and granting him generous terms that allowed him to save face in defeat.

Once Lee had disappeared, Grant’s officers stooped to a rapacious frenzy as they snapped up every conceivable memento of the meeting. Wilmer McLean pocketed $20 from Sheridan for the table on which Grant composed the surrender agreement; the next day, Sheridan gave it as a gift to Libbie Custer, wife of George Armstrong Custer, who, legend says, flew off with the prize on horseback. General Ord paid $40 for Lee’s table and later tried to give it as a gift to Julia Grant, who diplomatically redirected it to Mrs. Ord. In retrospect, Wilmer McLean forfeited his treasures at bargain prices, and his family claimed that Union officers ransacked the house for souvenirs without paying compensation. One journalist left a vignette of this crazed hunt for sacred relics: “Cane bottomed chairs were ruthlessly cut to pieces … Haircloth upholstery was cut from chairs, and sofas was [sic] also cut into strips and patches and carried away.” The episode presaged a postwar rapacity that would supersede the noble sentiments enunciated at Appomattox.

Curiously absentminded, Grant forgot to notify Washington of Lee’s surrender and had to be prodded by his staff. At 4:30 p.m., he stopped by the roadside, sat down on a boulder, and wrote a message to Stanton that was singularly devoid of self-congratulation: “Gen. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Va this afternoon on terms proposed by myself. The accompanying additional correspondence will show the conditions fully.” Stanton replied with fervor: “Thanks be to Almighty God for the great victory with which he has this day crowned you and the gallant army under your command.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.511-512)

On the rainy morning of April 10, Grant rode out to meet Lee a second time, bringing a bugler and staff officer waving a white flag. On a small hillside beside the road, he and Lee held a parley alone on horseback while their staff officers, in “a most beautiful semi-circle,” said Parker, kept a respectful distance. The two men behaved with impeccable courtesy, each lifting his hat to the other. They spoke frankly. Lee claimed the war had reduced him to poverty. Grant’s main concern was that Lee should exert his moral authority to bring the war to a speedy conclusion, inducing other commanders to relinquish their weapons. Lee endorsed the need to pacify the country and bring the South back into the Union fold. At heart, he asserted, he had always been a Union man and blamed extremist politicians for bringing on the war. He contended that southerners stood resigned to the end of slavery.

Despite these encouraging generalities, Lee balked at specifics. As Grant recollected: “General Lee said that his campaign in Virginia was the last organized resistance which the South was capable of making – that I might have to march a good deal and encounter isolated commands here and there; but there was no longer an army which could make a stand. I told Lee that this fact only made his responsibility greater, and any further war would be a crime.” While conceding that the war had ended, Lee insisted he couldn’t undertake helpful measures without consulting Jefferson Davis, now a fugitive from justice. Grant regretted Lee’s inability to break free from his blighted leader: “I saw that the Confederacy had gone beyond the reach of President Davis, and that there was nothing that could be done except what Lee could do to benefit the Southern people.” When Grant urged Lee to go and speak directly with President Lincoln, Lee again invoked the need to confer with David, missing a historic opportunity.

After thirty minutes of discussion, Grant and Lee reenacted the courtly ceremony of lifting their hats to each other and Lee rode off to bid farewell to his army. A couple of days later, after surrendering their arms and folding their colors, the Army of Northern Virginia dispersed in a peaceful manner that demonstrated the wisdom of Grant’s clemency. Led by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the soldiers in blue lifted rifles to their shoulders in a respectful gesture that touched southern hearts. Grant allowed the defeated men to ride home free of charge on government transportation and military railroads.

(Chernow 2017, pp.514-515)

Before, he noted, “monarchical Europe generally believed that our republic was a rope of sand that would part the moment the slightest strain was brought upon it. Now it has shown itself capable of dealing with one of the greatest wars that was ever made, and our people have proven themselves to be the most formidable in war of any nationality.” He added the important caveat that the war had been “a fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of avoiding wars in the future.”

The Civil War had been a contest of incomparable ferocity, dwarfing anything in American history. It claimed 750,000 lives, more than the combined total losses in all other wars between the Revolutionary War and the Vietnam War. The historian James M. McPherson has calculated that, as a portion of the total population, the Civil War killed seven times as many American soldiers as World War II. While the North lost more men in absolute terms, death took a far graver toll in the South, where the population was smaller, with young and old alike indiscriminately conscripted; by the end, more than one-fifth of the southern white male population had perished. Grant was sobered by the horrifying roster of casualties, saying future generations would look back at the Civil War with almost incredulity that such events could have occurred in a Christian country and in a civilized age.”

For the rest of his life, Grant had to deal with the charge that he had merely been the lucky beneficiary of superiority in men and resources. He grew touchy on the subject because it addressed the larger question of whether he had crudely consigned young men to their death, winning by overwhelming force. The plain fact was that six Union commanders before him had failed, with the same men and materiel, whereas Grant had succeeded. It vexed him that the North denigrated its generals, while southern generals were idealized. As he remarked bitterly, “The Southern generals were [seen as] models of chivalry and valor – our generals were venal, incompetent, coarse … Everything that our opponents did was perfect. Lee was a demigod, Jackson was a demigod, while our generals were brutal butchers.”

Over the years, Grant adduced many reasons why the South had the advantage in the war, starting with its political unity versus constant northern divisions. “We had to send troops to suppress riots in New York; we had enemies in our midst. In every Northern State there was a strong party against the war; always rejoicing over disaster, always voting to paralyze our forces; ready for any concession or surrender.” The South, by contrast, could mobilize fully, recruiting all able-bodied men. Four million slaves had worked the farms, supported the economy, and freed the white population for military service – at least before they flocked in large numbers to Union lines. And the Confederacy almost always fought on home turf, with all the obvious advantages that entailed for Lee.

What Lee thought of Grant as a general is somewhat contradictory. As already mentioned, he later said George McClellan was the foremost Union general. But the Reverend George W. Pepper, a chaplain in Sherman’s army, said Lee named Grant as the premier Union general: “Both as a gentleman and as an organizer of victorious war, General Grant has excelled all your most noted soldiers.” Another story, printed years later, said Lee was distressed when somebody argued that Grant had merely profited from fortunate circumstances. “Sir,” Lee upbraided him, “your opinion is a very poor compliment to me. We all thought Richmond, protected as it was by our splendid fortifications and defended by our army of veterans, could not be taken. Yet Grant turned his face to our capital, and never turned it away until we had surrendered. Now, I have carefully searched the military records of both ancient and modern history, and have never found Grant’s superior as a general.” The authenticity of this quote has been questioned. What has never been doubted is Lee’s gratitude to Grant for his behavior at Appomattox, which he commended as “without a parallel in the history of the civilized world.”

Grant betrayed only qualified admiration for Lee: “Lee was of a slow, conservative nature, without imagination or humor, always the same, with grave dignity. I never could see in his achievements what justifies his reputation. The illusion that nothing but heavy odds beat him will not stand the ultimate light of history.” Strangely enough, Grant derided Lee as a desk-bound general even though Lee was almost invariably engaged in the field. It seemed to bother Grant that Lee was reserved and aloof while he himself had “always kept open house at head-quarters, so far as the army was concerned.” Perhaps the person who best explained Grant’s strategic superiority was Sherman, who stated that while Lee attacked the front porch, Grant would attack the kitchen and bedroom. In his earthly way, Sherman expressed the view that Grant engaged in total warfare that eroded enemy supply lines and infrastructure, while Lee remained tightly focused on the battle at hand, without a long-term strategy for winning the war.

For all the endless horrors of the war, Grant believed the country was stronger for having endured it: “We are better off now than we would have been without it and have made more rapid progress than we otherwise should have made.” The country had become more cosmopolitan, its citizens more worldly, its economy more productive, its military more potent. Most important, Union forces had struck a major blow for freedom and equality. Like Lincoln, Grant deemed the war “a punishment for national sins that had to come sooner or later in some shape, and probably in blood.” Four million slaves had been emancipated and would shortly receive the right to vote, send their children to public schools, and enjoy the benefits of citizenship – progress that would be savagely resisted. For Grant, the war had validated the basic soundness of American institutions. Before, he noted, “monarchical Europe generally believed that our republic was a rope of sand that would part the moment the slightest strain was brought upon it. Now it has shown itself capable of dealing with one of the greatest wars that was ever made, and our people have proven themselves to be the most formidable in war of any nationality.” He added the important caveat that the war had been “a fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of avoiding wars in the future.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.516-518)

That night, the Grants attended a party at the Stanton household with military bands performing outside. Before they arrived, Sergeant John Hatter, standing guard on the doorstep, was accosted by a mysterious man in a dark suit who inquired whether General Grant was inside. In a portrayal perhaps colored by later events, the stranger was described as a “small, delicate-looking man with pleasing features, uneasy black eyes, bushy black hair, and an imperial, anxious expression shaded by a sad, remorseful look.” Hatter pegged him as a curiosity seeker out to glimpse Grant. “If you wish to see him,” Hatter said, “step out on the pavement, or on the stone where the carriage stops, and you can see him.” The man reacted oddly, stopping to muse a moment before he disappeared. Later on he returned as the Stantons and Grants filed onto the front steps to witness fireworks. Approaching Major Kilburn Knox, who was stationed in front of the two prominent couples, he inquired, “Is Stanton in?” “I suppose you mean the Secretary?” replied Knox. “Yes. I am a lawyer in town. I know him very well.” Although Knox warned him not to bother Stanton, the stranger spotted Stanton and stood behind him for a time. Finally he entered the house and was asked to leave, especially since he seemed to be intoxicated. He turned out to be Michael O’Laughlen, a former Confederate soldier and boyhood friend of John Wilkes Booth who had plotted with him to kidnap Lincoln. Later fingered by Hatter and Knox, he was charged with stalking Stanton and Grant, with intent to kill, and was sentenced to life in prison. It’s quite possible that O’Laughlen was guilty as charged, but his lawyers argued that he had “walked away” from the Booth conspiracy and gone unarmed to the Stanton household. One historian has even claimed it was “far more likely that he stopped at Stanton’s house to warn him of Booth’s plot, but lost his nerve.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.520)

By the time the Grants took a carriage to the station to catch a 6 p.m. train, the weather had turned cool and gusty. Julia sat in the backseat beside the wife of General Daniel Rucker while her husband democratically shared the front with the driver. The journey was forever imprinted on the memory of young Jesse Grant: “I remember clearly the drive down Pennsylvania Avenue to the depot, the iron-tired wheels of our carriage rattling and bumping over the cobblestones. It was in the early evening, but the Avenue was deserted and quiet as midnight. We were nearing the railway station when a man on horseback overtook us, drew alongside, and leaning down, peered into our carriage. Then he wheeled his horse and rode furiously away.” Julia Grant also had lasting memories of the horseman who flashed by twice “at a sweeping gallop on a dark horse,” then circled around the dashed back toward them, thrusting his face at Grant and glaring at him both times. Julia recognized the rider as the same dark, pale man who had menacingly toyed with his spoon at lunch and told her husband so. Grant was likewise disturbed by this stranger flitting by and eyeing them. “I do not care for such glances,” he remarked. “These are not friendly at least.” Grant later learned the glowering horseman was John Wilkes Booth, who had been conferring on the sidewalk with his actor friend John Mathews when the Grant carriage sped by and he set off in pursuit of it. From the heaped-up baggage, he must have confirmed that the Grants were leaving town and would not be at Ford’s Theatre. “It seems I was to have been attacked,” Grant stated, “and Mrs. Grant’s sudden resolve to leave deranged the plan.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.525)

This saddest day of his life would be etched in black in Grant’s memory. Aside from losing the greatest leader he had ever known, he had lost a dear friend of the past thirteen months: “To know [Lincoln] personally was to love and respect him for his great qualities of heart and head, and for his patience and patriotism.” Because the South sorely needed Lincoln’s broad understanding, his death was “the greatest possible calamity to the country, and especially to the people of the South.” He feared for the peace process consecrated at Appomattox: “I did not know what it meant. Here was the rebellion put down in the field, and starting up in the gutters; we had fought it as war, now we had to fight it as assassination.” Another cause for concern arose when Julia asked whether Adnres Johnson would ascend to the presidency. “Yes,” Grant replied, “and for some reason I dread the change.” Before long Grant would criticize Johnson for his excessively cozy relationship with white southerners. At this point, however, he worried that his hostility toward former rebels “would be such as to repel, and make them unwilling citizens … I felt that reconstruction had been set back, no telling how far.” Soon after, it was learned that George A. Atzerodt, who had been assigned to kill Johnson, had roamed around the capital and gotten drunk instead.

(Chernow 2017, pp.527)

Just a week earlier, Grant had behaved with exceptional generosity toward Lee and his men. Now, as apocalyptic fears convulsed Washington, worries arose that the disbanding rebel army might be teeming with secret conspirators and assassins. Executing a temporary volte-face, Grant was especially preoccupied with Virginia. John T. Ford, manager of the theater where Lincoln was slain, was in Richmond. Grant had Ord arrest him and send him under guard to Washington. In a striking retreat from his recent forgiving mood, Grant submitted to atypical rage, rashly asking Ord to arrest the mayor and members of the old Richmond city council as well as paroled officers who had not taken oaths of allegiance. “Extreme rigor will have to be observed whilst assassination remains the order of the day with the rebels.” Ord sent back an admirably coolheaded reply, noting that if he arrested Lee and members of his staff in Richmond, the Civil War might resume. Upon reflection, Grant tempered his hasty response, telling Ord that arresting the Richmond politicians was merely a suggestion, not an order.

The post-assassination hysteria attained such a fever pitch that Grant feared Joseph Johnston might be tempted to resume the fight. Not taking any chances, he dispatched Sheridan to move promptly with six to eight thousand cavalry men to join Sherman and stymie any chance for Johnston’s army to escape. Nonetheless, he continued to believe that a just policy toward Confederate soldiers was far more likely to reconcile them to Union victory than a punitive one. When a group of Mosby’s partisans asked to surrender and be paroled, Grant leapt at the chance, telling Stanton, “It will be better have Mosby’s …men… as paroled prisoners of War than at large as Guerrillas.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.529)

Abraham Lincoln was rudely snatched away just as many Americans had learned to appreciate his benevolence and farsighted wartime leadership. Nobody could have served as a fit successor to Lincoln, but the rise of Andrew Johnson to the presidency was an especially cruel stroke for the nation. About five feet ten inches tall and solidly built, Johnson was a humorless, pugnacious man, thin-skinned and vindictive, with a fiercely turbulent expression and close-set, beady black eyes. He was placed on the ticket with Lincoln in 1864, not for outstanding talent or intelligence, but because Republicans hoped to broadcast their status as a full-fledged Union party by drafting a border state Democrat from Tennessee. As the only senator from a secession state to retain his seat in the U.S. Congress – a courageous stand that endeared him to Republicans – a heroic aura had burnished Andrew Johnson for a time.

His accidental presidency started promisingly enough when he announced plans to retain members of Lincoln’s cabinet. Widely accused of being drunk at Lincoln’s second inaugural, he worked to project a more presidential demeanor. When George Templeton Strong visited his temporary office at the Treasury Department, where Johnson had hung two flags – the one draped over Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theatre, the other showing the long gash where Booth’s spur had slashed the fabric as he leapt to the stage – he was pleasantly surprised by Johnson’s sedate behavior, finding him “dignified, urbane, and self-possessed.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.531)

Fresh from Appomattox, Grant was initially dismayed by the way Johnson lashed out at ex-rebels. “They surely would not make good citizens,” he later wrote, “if they felt that they had a yoke around their necks.” Before long, however, he grasped the hidden psyche of Andrew Johnson and saw lurking behind his grievances against southern planters a burning wish to emulate them. Instead of punishing his social betters, he would pose as their champion to win them over. As Grant put it, “As soon as the slave-holders put their thumb upon him … he became their slave.” A Democrat with a devout faith in limited government and states’ rights, Johnson wasn’t ready to extend federal power to protect blacks. Before long, Grant wrote, Johnson came “ to regard the South not only as an oppressed people, but as the people best entitled to consideration of any of our citizens.” The new president planned to win a second term through an alliance of southern white Democrats and moderate northern Republicans.

What pretty much guaranteed that Johnson would side with white supremacists was his benighted view of black people. No American president has ever held such openly racist views. “This is a country for white men,” he declared unashamedly, “and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.” In one message to Congress, he contended that “negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people.” He privately referred to blacks as “niggers” and betrayed a morbid fascination with miscegenation. In his inverted worldview, he wanted to ensure that the “poor, quite, unoffending, harmless” whites of the South weren’t “trodden under foot to protect niggers.” Not only did he think whites genetically superior to blacks but he refused to show the least respect to their most brilliant spokesmen. When Frederick Douglass came to the White House with a black delegation, Johnson turned to his secretary afterward and sneered: “He’s just like any nigger, & would sooner cut a white man’s throat than not.” Such a president could only picture southern blacks picking cotton for low wages on their former plantations.

In May, Johnson unveiled his Reconstruction program with a pair of proclamations. One promised to restore full citizenship to most southerners who agreed to take an oath of allegiance. The second outlined steps by which rebel states would be readmitted to the Union. The president would name provisional governors who would call elections to assemble conventions that would bring forth new state constitutions. These elections, of course, would be limited to white male voters. Whatever hopes Radical Republicans cherished about Johnson were rudely thwarted as he began granting wholesale pardons to white southerners. The conservative men he chose as southern governors showed he didn’t intend to “reconstruct” the South at all or upset its traditional power structure. With presidential acquiescence, the old slave owners would reclaim their firm hold on power.

Grant and Johnson clashed sharply over a possible treason prosecution for Robert E. Lee. Johnson’s amnesty proclamation excluded Confederate military leaders, who were required to apply directly to the president for pardons. Grant knew he would never have extracted the Appomattox agreement if it hadn’t exempted Confederate officers from future punishment, but many northerner still bristled at coddling Lee. As Ralph Waldo Emerson protested, “General Grant’s terms certainly look a little too easy, as foreclosing any action hereafter to convict Lee of treason.” A vociferous campaign in the northern press advocated trying Lee on treason charges, with Ben Butler assuring the president that Grant “had no authority to grant amnesty” at Appomattox. The issue was a highly charged one. Memories of the war were fresh, the wounds were still raw, and many dead bodies lay unburied around Appomattox Court House and Sayler’s Creek. Johnson insisted that as commander in chief he could override anything done by Grant at Appomattox. Grant objected that the rebels had surrendered on these terms, Lincoln had honored them, and there would have been “endless guerrilla warfare” without this leniency.

(Chernow 2017, pp.549-551)

Ever since Grant had fought there as a young soldier, Mexico had exerted a powerful romantic charm over his imagination. A confirmed republican, he feared the French action was “a foothold for establishing a European monarchy upon our continent … I, myself, regarded this as a direct act of war against the United States.” There was so much cross-border skulduggery between France and the rebels during the Civil War – the Confederacy regularly smuggled supplies across the Rio Grande while its soldiers used Mexico for sanctuary – that Grant classified Napoleon III as “an active part of the rebellion.” Convinced his position reflected the sentiments of many Union soldiers, he lobbied President Johnson and Secretary of State Seward for postwar action against Mexico. Right after Appomattox, a young staff officer recalled, Grant returned to his office one day and announced, “Now for Mexico.” According to Matias Romero, a Mexican minister allied with Benito Juarez who plotted with Grant to liberate his country, the lieutenant general told him that “60,000 veterans for the United States would march into Mexico as soon as they were mustered out, and this government would not oppose that action.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.555)

On March 27, Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill, denouncing it for trespassing on states’ rights. Instead of viewing it as a brave attempt to remedy historic injustice, he denigrated it for surpassing anything the federal government “has ever provided for the white race.” Perversely, he interpreted it as a case of reverse discrimination “made to operate in favor of the colored and against the white race.” He heaped further insults on the black community by stating that immigrants had superior claims to American citizenship because they better understood “the nature and character of our institutions.” The veto was a reckless move by Johnson, the original bill having passed both houses by overwhelming margins. In a stunning rebuke, Congress dealt a resounding defeat to Johnson by overriding his veto. Johnson had damaged his standing, leading even moderate Republicans to distance themselves from him. “The feud between Johnson and the ‘Radicals’ grows more and more deadly every day,” observed George Templeton Strong, “and threatens grave public mischief.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.571)

The actions taken by Sheridan were detested by the Klan. He ordered mayors in Louisiana and Texas to draw at least half their police officers from former Union soldiers, meaning black veterans would be hired. He also presided over a budding civil rights revolution, starting with the desegregation of New Orleans streetcars. Previously blacks had been forced to ride on separate streetcars with stars stamped on their sides. When they crowded onto white streetcars in protest, transport companies appealed to Sheridan to banish these black passengers. Instead Sheridan warned that if companies permitted discrimination, he would bar them from the streets. Sheridan informed Grant that once the original hubbub over desegregated streetcars subsided, the locals had “cheerfully adopted” the new system and “the excitement died out at once.” This startling early revolution in civil rights would be all but forgotten by later generations of Americans.

(Chernow 2017, pp.588-589)

To an obsessive extent, the political world speculated about the political complexion of Grant’s mind. Prodded by Senator John Thayer of Nebraska, John Forney, the editor of the Washington Daily Chronicle, printed a lengthy article on November 7 that examined Grant’s political utterances since leaving Galena, removing any doubts about his Republican leanings. The two men took an advance copy to Rawlins, who marched into Grant’s office with it. Grant sat closeted with the piece for some time before Rawlins emerged to say that “General Grant is quite pleased with your statement of his political record, and surprised that he proves to be so good a Republican.” If this encouraged the visitors, Rawlins also relayed the sobering message that Grant didn’t care to be president, for he worried about the monetary consequences. “He is receiving from seventeen to twenty thousand dollars a year as General … a life salary. To go into the Presidency at twenty-five thousand dollars a year is, perhaps, to gain more fame; but what is to become of him at the end of his Presidency? … Eight years from the 4th of March, 1869, he will be about fifty-six years old.” It was revealing that Grant, still haunted by his prewar fear of poverty, analyzed the presidency through the lens of financial security.

When the new Congress assembled in late November, the House Judiciary Committee, by a 5 to 4 vote, called for Johnson’s impeachment. Some allegations against him were relatively trivial, revolving around vetoed bills or signed pardons. More consequential was the charge of disobeying the Tenure of Office Act, but the crucial underlying issue remained Congressional Reconstruction. Representative John Churchill of New York, who cast the committee’s decisive vote, explained that he had voted against Johnson because the president intended to “prevent the reorganization of the southern states upon the plan of Congress.”

On November 30, President Johnson read aloud to his cabinet his shrill defense against any attempted impeachment or arrest: “You no doubt are aware that certain evil disposed persons have formed a conspiracy to depose the President of the United States, and to supply his place by an individual of their own selection.” After issuing articles of impeachment, he warned, these conspirators might move to arrest him or remove him from office, and he accused them of plotting “a revolution changing the whole organic system of our Government.” An unrepentant Johnson served notice he would fight any impeachment effort. “I cannot deliver the great charter of a Nation’s Liberty to men who, by the very act of usurping it, would show their determination to disregard and trample it under foot.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.597-598)

For pro-impeachment forces one complicating factor was that Johnson had no vice president, so that if he were removed, the office would fall to the president pro tempore of the Senate, Benjamin Wade of Ohio, whose Radical Republican views offended moderate Republicans and Democrats alike, one chiding him for being “the first to secure the nigger suffrage enactment.” As the impeachment trial approached, an apocalyptic mood seized the country, arousing fears of a violent confrontation. For weeks, Gideon Welles had warned Johnson that Congress meditated a military coup, employing Grant as its cat’s-paw. After Johnson was impeached, General Ord told Grant that someone had asked him “what I thought would be the course of Army officers if the President should … call on them to support him as against the Congress – and I told him that nine tenths or perhaps more of the officers would Certainly support Congress.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.610)

As befit the political custom of the time, Grant did not actively campaign or make formal speeches. Lacking the big, overflowing personality or oratorical skills of a lifelong politician, he was lucky to have that custom in effect. Dating back to the early days of the Civil War, he had maintained a firm belief that one’s worth should be recognized instead of being crassly promoted, and he refused to allow party leaders to hatch any deals to secure his election. Back in Washington, Rawlins and other party stalwarts drafted letters and gave speeches as his surrogates, while James H. Wilson and Charles A. Dana pumped out laudatory campaign biographies.

In early June, Grant traveled to St. Louis, where he had gained possession of White Haven and an additional 280 acres from the Dent family. It was another strange, dreamlike transformation of his life from his dreary years there in the 1850s. Now he was master of the plantation he had first visited fresh out of West Point, and Colonel Dent, having suffered a crippling stroke, depended upon him and Julia. Grant planned to spend several weeks there yearly, planting strawberries and other fruits and breeding blooded horses. To banish any lingering remnants of slavery, he had his steward, William Elrod, demolish a dozen slave cabins. As president, he would closely manage the farm through Elrod.

After St. Louis, Grant moved on to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he joined Sherman and Sheridan for a two-week western tour. Although they inspected forts, they participated in a new type of military campaign, this one to garner votes, with a crew of reporters tagging along to chronicle the journey. Grant, having never set eyes on the Great Plains, wanted his son Buck to see them “whilst still occupied by the Buffalo and the Indian, both rapidly disappearing now.” Like many travelers of the day, the party carried carbines to shoot buffalo, helping to hasten their demise. When they journeyed by stagecoach to Denver, they took frequent potshots through the windows at herds of antelope, killing two of them. Grant rhapsodized about the beauty of the American West, only regretting the “three epidemics” that had plagued it: the pistol, the bowie knife, and whiskey.

(Chernow 2017, pp.617-618)

The publisher Joseph Medill was so upset by a possible Jewish crossover vote to the Democrats that he suggested to Elihu Washburne that Grant submit an expiatory letter to “leading and influential” Jewish leaders as a way of “smoothing the matter over.” Grant took personal responsibility, disavowing his wartime order as a thoughtless, misguided action that a moment’s reflection might have blocked. To Isaac Morris, who was Jewish, he insisted in September, “I have no prejudice against sect or race but want each individual to be judged by his own merit.” He admitted that General Orders No. 11 “does not sustain this statement … but then I do not sustain that order. It never would have been issued if it had not been telegraphed the moment penned, without one moment’s reflection.” This letter traveled widely in the Jewish community. Grant also sat down with David Eckstein, a Jewish leader from Cincinnati, and convinced him that he regretted his wartime action and was free of any anti-Semitic taint. He told the lawyer Simon Wolf that his wartime order was “directed simply against evil designing persons, whose religion was in no way. Material to the issue.” In the end, Jewish voters across the country forgave and endorsed Grant, who began a systematic effort to atone for his atrocious decision.

(Chernow 2017, pp.620)

“The office has come to me unsought, I commence its duties untrammeled.”

Once the swearing-in ended, Grant fished from his coat pocket the inaugural address that he had kept a secret, releasing no advance copies. In composing it, Grant again displayed the extreme self-reliance that had marked his career. Three weeks earlier, he had given Badeau a handwritten copy, told him to stash it in a drawer, and even his it from a frustrated Julia. Now he delivered that speech almost verbatim. Once again the secretive Grant had forgone the insights of old political hands who might have made some constructive suggestions. As he began his speech, the huge throng pressed forward to hear his soft, almost inaudible, voice. Most of the speech, a mere twelve hundred words, was businesslike and uninspired. Grant declared himself an independent, not a professional politician: “The office has come to me unsought, I commence its duties untrammeled.” Striking the conciliatory Appomattox note, he drew a discreet veil over the violence tearing apart the South and promised to approach remaining war issues “calmy, without prejudice, hate or sectional pride.” No one knew better than Grant the war’s cost and he left no doubt that, as a hard-money man, he wished to bolster American credit and pare down debt. “To protect the national honor every dollar of Government indebtedness should be paid in gold unless otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract.”

The speech lacked soaring cadences or memorable lines, yet it touched on two explosive issues at the finale. He advised Native Americans that their days as a hunting, gathering people were numbered and that he favored “civilization, christianization and ultimate citizenship” for them. Then, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Grant championed black suffrage. “It seems to me very desirable that the question should be settled now, and I entertain the hope … that it may be by the ratification of the fifteenth article of amendment to the Constitution.” All winter long, he had stood foursquare behind the amendment, telling delegates from the first national black political convention in Washington that as president he would ensure that “the colored people of the Nation may receive every protection which the law gives them.” By late February, the amendment, having won the needed two-thirds vote in Congress, went to the states for ratification. It suffered from decided limitations – it disappointed feminists, who hoped it would encompass women, and didn’t bar discriminatory tests to keep blacks from voting – but it qualified as a stunning triumph nonetheless. “Nothing in all history,” William Lloyd Garrison wrote, equaled “this wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of human beings from … the auction-block to the ballot box.” Grant termed it “the most important event that has occurred, since the nation came into life.” George Boutwell, who had introduced the proposed amendment in the House, said Grant had thrown his immense prestige behind it and that “its ratification was due, probably, to his advice … Had he advised its rejection, or had he been indifferent to its fate, the amendment would have failed.”

When Grant finished his speech, a wild cheer went up from the crowd and he bowed gratefully. He then bent over, planted a kiss on Julia’s cheek, and handed her the address. “And now, my dear,” he said facetiously, “I hope you’re satisfied.” Thirteen-year-old Nellie bounded over in a bright blue dress, golden tresses tumbling down her shoulders, to kiss her father. In a sharming gesture, the new president left the platform holding her by one hand and Schuyler Colfax by the other. Grant’s speech was derided as flat and platitudinous. It didn’t announce a transformative presidency, nor did it articulate a sweeping vision or enlist followers in a grand social movement. Still Republicans thought it true and honest, a reflection of Grant’s pragmatic authenticity. “I think it the most remarkable document ever issued under such circumstances,” said James Wilson. “The beauty of it is, that every word of the address is Grant’s.” Grant would prove a far more assertive president than his modest inaugural address had suggested.

(Chernow 2017, pp.631-362)

When the committee formed to arrange the inaugural ball had convened in January, the bashful Grant had startled them by saying it might be best to skip the affair altogether. Far from heeding his advice, the committee brought forth a ball of unusual opulence, held in an unfinished new wing of the Treasury Department and conducted with something less than military precision. By the time the Grants arrived at 10:30 p.m., with Julia decked out in a white satin dress, it was clear the function had degenerated into an expensive fiasco. More than a thousand guests crowded into an airless space, thick with marble construction dust, and several ladies celebrated the incoming administration by fainting on the spot. Although a blizzard hit the city, nobody had worked out a system to check coats or hats or arrange carriages for departing guests. Some people ended up spending the night in frantic searches for missing wraps, while others slogged home through the snowy mess without their overcoats. Some surely wondered whether these slipshod arrangements presaged trouble ahead for the Grant administration.

(Chernow 2017, pp.633)

Grant quickly saw he would spend disproportionate time in fights over revenue collectors, Indian agents, postmasters, marshalls, and customs collectors. Within weeks of becoming president, a harried Grant was already worn down by throngs of job claimants, who stalked him everywhere. “I scarcely get one moment alone,” he told his sister Mary. “Office-seeking in this country … is getting on be one of the industries of the age. It gives me no peace.” Grant knew that, for every friend he won through an appointment, he earned a hundred enemies in rejected suitors. Under the spoils system, the president had to appease congressmen who dispensed patronage in their districts and grew powerful perpetuating this unsavory system. Gideon Welles observed that “corruption is not confined to one party. It is the disgrace and wickedness of the times.”

Despite such pressures, Grant made extraordinary strides in naming blacks, Jews, and Native Americans to federal positions – a forgotten chapter of American history. The minor story of nepotism has overshadowed this far more important narrative. Forty years before Theodore Roosevelt incurred southern wrath by inviting Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House, Grant welcomed blacks there. On April 2, he met with the first black public official ever to visit the White House, Lieutenant Governor Oscar J. Dunn of Louisiana. On New Year’s Day, citizens always lined up to pay their respects to the president. Before crowds started to arrive on January 1, 1870, the police asked Grant whether they should honor the custom of having blacks and whites enter separately and he said yes. When informed, however, that “a number of colored people” wished to come in with whites on an equal basis, Grant “at once gave direction to admit all who wished to come,” Babcock recalled.

(Chernow 2017, pp.641)

Grant’s effort transcended high-profile appointments as he named a record number of ordinary blacks to positions during his first term in office. During the 1872 presidential campaign, Frederick Douglass totted up black employees sprinkled throughout the federal bureaucracy, citing customs collectors, internal revenue assessors, postmaster, clerks, and messengers, and was simply staggered by their numbers: “In one Department at Washington I found 249, and many more holding important positions in its service in different parts of the country.” Grant integrated the executive mansion, appointing Albert Hawkins as his stable chief and coachman; he also cared for a Grant menagerie that included dogs, gamecocks, and a raucous parrot. For his personal servants, Grant picked George W. “Bill” Barnes and John Henry Whitlow. The able Barnes had been a runaway slave who showed up when Grant was in Cairo in 1861 and had turned himself into an indispensable valet.

Mortified at memories of General Orders No. 11, Grant compiled an outstanding record of incorporating Jews into his administration, one that far outstripped his predecessors’. The lawyer Simon Wolf estimated that Grant appointed more than fifty Jewish citizens at his request alone, including consuls, district attorneys, and deputy postmasters, with Wolf himself becoming recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. When Grant made Edward S. Salomon governor of the Washington Territory, it was the first time an American Jew had occupied a gubernatorial post. (When Salomon proved corrupt, Grant handled his case leniently, letting him resign.) Elated at this appointment, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise said it showed “that President Grant has revoked General Grant’s notorious order No. 11.”

Grant also introduced a crusading spirit in protecting Jewish tights abroad, even if it clashed with other foreign policy interests. In the past, such concerns had been criticized as interfering with the internal affairs of other nations. Now Grant set a new benchmark for fostering human rights abroad, growing out of his concern for persecuted Jews. In November 1869, reports surfaced that Russia had brutally relocated two thousand Jewish families to the interior on smuggling charges – an episode faintly reminiscent of Grant’s own wartime order. After conferring with American Jewish leaders, Grant responded in exemplary fashion. “It is too late, in this age of enlightenment,” he told them, “to persecute anyone on account of race, color or religion.” He protested to the czar while the American ambassador in Russia formulated a state paper documenting coercion against Russian Jews. The New York World professed satisfaction at how superior this Grant was to “that General Grant who issued … an order suddenly exiling all the Jews from their homes within the territory occupied by his armies.”

A still more menacing episode of anti-Semitism emerged in June 1870 with reports of “fearful massacres” against Romanian Jews, at least a thousand of whom were said to have been murdered in a pogrom. (The reports proved exaggerated.) Walking over to the State Department, Grant ordered Fish “to obtain full and reliable information in relation to this alleged massacre, and in the meantime to do all in his power to have the [neighboring] Turkish government stop such persecution.” In discussing this Romanian bloodletting with Simon Wolf, Grant declared that “respect for human rights” was the “first duty” of any head of state and that blacks and Jews should be elevated to a rank of “equality with the most enlightened.” Grant showed surprising passion on the subject saying “the story of the sufferings of the Hebrews of Romania profoundly touches every sensibility of our nature.”

In December, Grant appointed Benjamin Franklin Peicotto, a Sephardic Jewish lawyer and journalist from San Francisco, as U.S. consul general to Romania. Grant spelled out Peicotto’s mission in a groundbreaking statement that stands as a landmark in American diplomatic annals: “Mr Peicotto has undertaken the duties of his present office more as a missionary work for the benefit of the people who are laboring under severe oppression than for any benefits to accrue to himself … The United States knowing no distinction of her own citizens on account of religion or nativity naturally believe in a civilization the world over which will secure the same universal liberal views.” For the next five years, without an official salary, Paixotto performed major work investigating conditions in Romania and the Balkans, opposing anti-Semitism, and even providing sanctuary in his own home for Jews menaced by oppression.

(Chernow 2017, pp.642-644)

In dealing with these changes, Grant inevitably bore a sizable load on his shoulders. He knew the postwar economic boom was uneven, the South having surrendered half its wealth, while four million freed slaves struggled to find their niche in American society. He had to deal with the paradox that while demands upon the presidency had grown exponentially, the Congress-dominated system of the Johnson years had drastically weakened the executive branch. In the nineteenth century, Congress was infinitely more powerful that in the twentieth and senators ruled as headstrong barons whose power often rivaled that of presidents. Grant had a special political conundrum to figure out. The Radical Republicans who formed his power base were the very people who had asserted congressional power during Andrew Johnson’s impeachment. The deep-seated habit of promoting congressional prerogatives against the president would be fiendishly difficult to subdue, many senators having grown accustomed to exercising unchecked power.

(Chernow 2017, pp.645)

After a tumultuous first term in office, Grant occasionally dreamed of returning to his farm in St. Louis. “I was not anxious to be President a second term,” he confided to a reporter, “but I consented to receive the nomination simply because I thought that was the best way of discovering whether my countrymen … really believed all that was alleged against my administration and against myself personally.” While Grant said memorably that he “probably had the least desire for [the office] of anyone who ever held it,” the habit of power, perhaps imperceptibly, had acquired an inescapable hold over him. As Adam Badeau observed drily, “After he had been long in power he was not insensible to the sweets of possession, and was decidedly averse to relinquishing what he had enjoyed.” Like most presidents, he yearned for affirmation and a general vote of confidence from the electorate.

(Chernow 2017, pp.739)

For Grant, the election was about more than personal vindication. He had long warned that a Democratic victory in 1872 would overturn the result of the Civil War, degrading the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments into “dead letters.” So deeply did he believe this that he stated “it would have been better never to have made a sacrifice of blood and treasure to save the Union than to have the democratic party come in power now and sacrifice by the ballot what the bayonet seemed to have accomplished.” Grant had striven to protect the black community, met regularly with black leaders, and given them unprecedented White House access, making global abolitionism an explicit aim of American foreign policy. In his annual message of December 1871, he applauded emancipation efforts in Brazil, deplored ongoing bondage in Cuba and Puerto Rico, and asked Congress for legislation to forbid Americans from “holding, owning, or dealing in slaves, or being interested in slave property in foreign lands” – a practice that hadn’t ceased with emancipation at home.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.744)

“the dividing line will not be Mason & Disons but between patriotism, & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other.”

Grant started out by emphasizing the importance in a republic of a knowledgeable citizenry: “The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation.” With an unaccustomed rhetorical flourish, he affirmed that in the near future “the dividing line will not be Mason & Disons but between patriotism, & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other.” He wound up with an eloquent appeal for separating church and state: “Encourage free schools and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school … Leave the matter of religion to the family circle, the church & the private school support[ed] entirely by private contribution. Keep the church and state forever separate.”

Some observers construed the speech as a transparent attack on the Catholic Church and one Catholic periodical said Grant sought to “ostracize” Catholics “socially and disfranchise them politically.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.811-812)

As rebel banners were waved defiantly across the South, Grant worried that a rejuvenated Democratic Party would demand compensation for freed slaves. He especially dreaded a growing southern canard that the Civil War had been a war of northern aggression, with a moral equivalence drawn between the two sides. As he told a newspaper, he regretted Democratic claims that Confederate soldiers “fought honestly as American citizens for an honest purpose and in as good a spirit as the Northern soldiers who have been pensioned, and that they were provoked and driven into the War by the North.” This revisionist thesis was propagated by Lost Cause ideologues, who venerated Lee and depreciated Grant as a butcher who had only defeated his rebel counterpart by dint of superior manpower.

(Chernow 2017, pp.839)

It was Grant who helped to weave the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments into the basic fabric of American life.

Ultimately, the appraisal of Grant’s presidency rests upon posterity’s view of Reconstruction. Grant took office when much of the South still lay under military rule; by the time he left, every southern state had been absorbed back into the Union. For a long time after the Civil War, under the influence of southern historians, Reconstruction was viewed as a catastrophic error, a period of corrupt carpetbag politicians and illiterate black legislators, presided over by the draconian rule of U. S. Grant. For more recent historians, led by Eric Foner, it has been seen as a noble experiment in equal justice for black citizens in which they made remarkable strides in voting, holding office, owning land, creating small businesses and churches, and achieving literacy. About two thousand blacks served as state legislators, tax collectors, local officials, and U.S. marshals, while fourteen served in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate. The South witnessed a civil rights movement that briefly introduced desegregation and vouchsafed a vision of a functioning biracial democracy. Since Grant was president during this period, his standing was bound to rise with this revisionist view. Even as his party and cabinet became bitterly divided over Reconstruction, he showed a deep reservoir of courage in directing the fight against the Ku Klux Klan and crushing the largest wave of domestic terrorism in American history. It was Grant who helped to weave the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments into the basic fabric of American life.

(Chernow 2017, pp.856)

“The fact is we are the most progressive, freest and richest people on earth, but don’t know it or appreciate it. Foreigners see this much plainer than we do.”

Grant finished the summer in Vienna, where he met with Emperor Franz Joseph I, and in Salzburg, where he met the German emperor Wilhelm I. After fifteen months abroad, Grant concluded that nobody had ever covered so many countries in that length of time. Writing from the Austrian Alps, he confessed that “I miss English speaking people. I find that I enjoy European travel just in proportion as I find Americans to associate with.” Many countries that Grant visited levied onerous taxes on their subjects to service massive debt and maintain standing armies, giving him a fresh appreciation of republican government in America. “The fact is we are the most progressive, freest and richest people on earth, but don’t know it or appreciate it. Foreigners see this much plainer than we do.”

(Chernow 2017, pp.876)

Though Garfield had long been a faithful Republican, Grant had never especially warmed to him, but neither had he criticized him. “He is a good man,” Grant commented after the convention in a less than rousing endorsement. “Garfield has always been right.” During his southern tour, Grant had come to believe he could dent Democratic dominance in the region whereas he saw no chance of Garfield making such inroads. When Democrats gathered in Cincinnati in late June and nominated Winfield Scott Hancock as their standard bearer, Grant’s attraction to Garfield intensified overnight. To a reporter, he sardonically recalled Hancock’s vainglorious reaction to receiving a single vote at the 1864 Democratic convention, recalling how “from that time [Hancock] had had the Presidential bee in his bonnet.” Mocking Hancock as an inexperienced political lightweight, Republicans printed up a pamphlet entitled “Hancock’s Political Achievements,” a work that contained nothing but blank pages.

(Chernow 2017, pp.903-904)

References

Chernow, Ron. 2017. Grant. N.p.: Penguin Publishing Group.

ISBN 978-1-59420-487-6