by Ron Chernow
During the growing tug-of-war between Congress and Johnson to curry favor with Grant, Johnson recommended and Congress passed on July 25 an act to create especially for Grant the new grade of “General of the Army of the United States,” with an annual salary of $20,000. As Mark Twain said, it gave Grant “that supreme and stately and simple one-word title, ‘General,’” placing an unprecedented four stars on his shoulder straps and making him the first person since George Washington to hold the full general title.31 In the reshuffling of military ranks that followed, Sherman became lieutenant general while Rawlins retained his chief of staff post.
Grant’s elevation and the George Washington analogy inevitably spurred discussion about his possible ascent to the presidency. During the House debate, Thaddeus Stevens drew laughter when he volunteered his willingness to lift “this Marlborough, this Wellington” to “a higher office whenever the happy moment shall arrive.”32 When Sherman told Grant that spreading disillusionment with politicians was leading to a popular groundswell for him as president—a move Sherman thought would harm his pure-hearted friend—Grant did his best to reassure him: “All that I can say to discourage the idea of my ever being a candidate for an office I do say.”33 As a Democratic-leaning president and a Republican-dominated Congress vied for his favor, Grant tried to tiptoe modestly along the political tightrope suspended between them.
Of course, the one person who claimed to read Grant’s mind with telepathic clarity was his father. In a published letter, Jesse ruled out a near-term presidential run by his son: “You know ULYSSES is not and never was an aspirant for any personal favor or promotion . . . to accept the Presidency would be to him a sacrifice of feeling and personal interest.” At the same time, Jesse brashly opened the door for a future presidential race for his son, asserting that “if there should seem to be the same necessity for it two years hence, as now, I expect he will yield.”34 This letter appeared in The New York Times on September 24, 1866, as Grant labored to spike such speculation. As he had long since learned, it was impossible to curb these eruptions from his self-important, busybody father.
Political tensions flared on July 30 when racial violence broke out at a mostly black convention at the Mechanics’ Institute in New Orleans, convened to remodel the state constitution and secure black voting rights. Goaded by Mayor John Monroe, a Confederate pardoned by Johnson, the local press had published inflammatory stories about the gathering. Around 1 p.m., a procession of black delegates marched to the institute, brandishing an American flag, when it clashed with a white mob, backed by police, many of them Confederate veterans. The whites stomped, kicked, and clubbed the black marchers mercilessly. Policemen smashed the institute’s windows and fired into it indiscriminately until the floor grew slick with blood. When blacks inside shook a white flag from a window, the white policemen ignored it and invaded the building. They emptied their revolvers on the convention delegates, who desperately sought to escape. Some leapt from windows and were shot dead when they landed. Those lying wounded on the ground were stabbed repeatedly, their skulls bashed in with brickbats. The sadism was so wanton that men who kneeled and prayed for mercy were killed instantly, while dead bodies were stabbed and mutilated. Dr. Anthony Dostie, a well-known white Republican, was shot five times and slashed with a sword for good measure. “Let Dostie’s skin be forthwith stripped and sold to [P. T.] Barnum,” the Mobile Tribune taunted, “the proceeds to go to the Freedmen’s Bureau and negro newspapers.”35
In the end, the riot left 34 blacks and 3 white Republicans dead, with 160 wounded, in a chilling display of racial hatred. The son of Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln’s first vice president, commented on the sickening butchery: “I have seen death on the battlefield but time will erase the effects of that; the wholesale slaughter and the little regard paid to human life I witnessed here on the 30th of July I shall never forget.”36 This violence seemed a grotesque continuation of the Civil War by other means, and one member of the white rabble went so far as to brag, “We have fought for four years these god-damned Yankees and sons of bitches in the field, and now we will fight them in the city.”37
The melee had occurred in the military bailiwick of Phil Sheridan, who was in Texas at the time. At first Sheridan branded the black delegates “political agitators & revolutionary men,” vowing to arrest them.38 Yet when he hurried back to New Orleans to investigate, he was revolted by the white mob’s behavior, telling Grant how two hundred blacks were attacked with “fire-arms, clubs & knives in a manner so unnecessary & atrocious as to compel me to say it was murder.”39 The next day, Sheridan delivered a sterner indictment. “It was no riot, it was an absolute massacre by the police which was not excelled in murderous cruelty by that of Fort Pillow.”40 This was provocative language, Fort Pillow having witnessed the most notorious slaughter of black soldiers during the war. On August 13, after further probing, Sheridan wrote that “I believe that at least nine tenths of the casualties were perpetrated by the police & citizens stabbing and smashing in the heads of many who had been already wounded or killed by policemen.”41 Only the presence of federal troops restored order to the turbulent city.
To Stanton, Grant recommended that New Orleans “be kept under martial law until the causes of the riot are ascertained and the guilty parties brought to punishment”—an action Stanton readily endorsed.42 After conferring with Johnson, Stanton informed Sheridan that he had “full authority for the maintenance of the public peace and safety.”43 It is important to note that such military rule by the North was not imposed lightly or capriciously but in direct response to a total collapse of southern justice in its treatment of defenseless blacks. As chief general at a time when the South gradually fell under military rule, Grant could not escape a central role, try though he might to be neutral. As attention focused on which side he would choose, one worried Louisiana Republican lectured, “Gen. Grant must be told not to listen to the cowardly dog Andrew Johnson.”44 It was already apparent that Grant’s sympathies lay with the threatened black community and the need for a forceful military presence in the South.
On August 6, Sheridan sent the president a detailed account of the veritable orgy of sadism unleashed against blacks at the New Orleans convention, which he saw as a turning point in the question of whether the South would respect the rule of law. “No steps have as yet been taken by the Civil Authorities to arrest Citizens who were engaged in this Massacre, or policemen who perpetrated such cruelties,” he reported a week after the violence.45 It was bootless to appeal to Andrew Johnson on this issue; even before the riot, he had notified Louisiana’s lieutenant governor that the black convention could be disrupted. Instead of blaming police for atrocities, he assailed “the radical Congress” and its misguided desire to enfranchise the “colored population.”46 In response, Radical Republicans began to wonder darkly whether they would need to impeach the president. Reflecting their extreme apprehension, Thomas Nast published a scathing cartoon in which a grinning President Johnson stood in a doorway, watching as white men hacked to death a host of helpless black figures.
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IN THE WAKE of the New Orleans riot, Grant found President Johnson and his policies increasingly intolerable. On August 18, 1866, Johnson entertained at the White House a delegation from the National Union Convention in Philadelphia, his chosen vehicle for packing Congress with conservative supporters, and invited Grant. Although Abraham Lincoln ran under the National Union banner in 1864, its Republican membership had dwindled and it had settled solidly into the Democratic camp. The gathering had acquired such a “coppery” hue, said one journalist, that Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the perpetrator of the Fort Pillow massacre, was named a vice president. Profoundly unsettled by this summons to a baldly political event, Grant felt duty-bound to honor Johnson’s request. Outwardly it would appear—as Johnson clearly intended—that Grant was lending the event his prestige. Greeted by applause at his entrance, Grant strode up to Johnson
and shook hands amid a round of cheers. To one reporter, Grant’s behavior seemed to imply, “I am with your gentlemen. I endorse your proceedings.”47
Appearances could be grossly deceiving: an outraged Grant was persuaded that the president had selfishly manipulated him. As Badeau explained, Grant went “to the White House with the intention of excusing himself, but the President had already taken his place in the East Room, and sent for the General-in-Chief to join him there. Again Grant thought that without positive rudeness he could not refuse. So he stood by Johnson’s side during the entire demonstration, greatly to his own disgust and chagrin, and returned to his headquarters afterwards full of indignation . . . and beginning to detest the policy of the President.”48
Grant’s relationship with Johnson soon worsened. Against the warnings of his advisers, the president planned a speaking tour of northern states, popularly dubbed a “swing around the circle,” to publicize his pro-southern policies, berate congressional Republicans, and woo Democrats in the fall elections. The pretext for this three-week, two-thousand-mile extravaganza was to dedicate a monument to the late Stephen A. Douglas in Chicago, but the whole thing soon smacked of crude political theater. Johnson dragooned Grant into joining the cavalcade so it would seem as if Grant subscribed to his views. Repeatedly Grant rebuffed Johnson’s offer until the president grew so insistent that Grant felt “it would be indecorous any longer to object,” wrote Badeau.49 Many Americans believed Grant adhered to the president’s policies, when he actually detested Johnson’s chicanery and “was in reality doing more than all the country besides to thwart Johnson’s designs.”50 In addition to Grant, Admiral David Farragut, William Seward, Gideon Welles, and George Gordon Meade made up the retinue.
On August 29, the presidential caravan reached New York City, where large, boisterous crowds turned out. Preceded by his distinguished entourage, Johnson stood in an open carriage, bowing and playing melodramatically to the masses. When the group went for a drive in Central Park, Grant took the reins of his carriage and challenged another driver to a race, winning easily. Rawlins, who accompanied the tour, hoped it would “fix [Grant] in the confidence of Mr. Johnson, enabling him to fix up the Army as it should be.”51 It soon grew apparent, however, that Grant and Farragut, not the president, received the bulk of applause, and newspapers gleefully recounted how Johnson writhed with envious embarrassment. “He Becomes Incensed at the Repeated Cheers for Grant,” read one headline. “The People Cry Aloud for Grant, and do not want to hear A.J.,” said another.52
By August 31, a disenchanted Grant wrote to Julia from Auburn, New York, hometown of William Seward: “I am getting very tired of this expedition and of hearing political speeches. I must go through however.”53 The visit was marred by a freakish incident: a young boy named Clarence Richardson was so eager to rush up and meet Grant that he slipped under a carriage, crushing his leg. Once Grant learned of this, he went to console the boy. Later on he was devastated when he heard his leg had been amputated and promptly wrote to him: “How sad now to hear that you have suffered amputation! and then too that I should have been innocently the cause of this mishap!”54 Grant kept in touch with Clarence, swapping photographs with him.
As the tour wound through midwestern cities, it degenerated into a public relations nightmare for the president, showcasing the coarse, vulgar side of his nature. Some observers thought he was frequently drunk, and Senator John Sherman snickered that the trip had “sunk the Presidential Office to the level of a Grog House.”55 When angry crowds heckled him, the boorish Johnson lashed out in return. As Johnson aired his disgust with Radical Republicans and expressed disdain for blacks, Grant, feeling mortified and exploited, attempted to shrink into the background. Running into his old friend Daniel Ammen, he openly declared his disgust with the tour. “Perhaps on no other occasion [save this one] have I seen General Grant discomposed,” Ammen commented.56 To a reporter Grant complained that he didn’t “consider the Army a place for a politician.”57 To another he grumbled that “I am disgusted at hearing a man make speeches on the way to his own funeral.”58
Since the war Grant had steered clear of the bottle, but the trip so unnerved him that en route from Buffalo to Cleveland, he began to indulge with Surgeon General Joseph Barnes, who had attended to Abraham Lincoln on his deathbed. His omnipresent watchdog, Julia, was absent, but even Rawlins, part of the retinue, could not stave off the binge, underscoring Grant’s extreme distress. According to Sylvanus Cadwallader, “The Cleveland Reception Committee on the train had a refreshment car loaded with eatables and potables, and waiters passed constantly through the cars, plying everybody to eat and drink. Gen. Grant had to be taken into a baggage car; compelled to lie down on a pile of empty sacks and rubbish; and remain there . . . till we reached Cleveland. Gen. Rawlins and myself stood guard over him, alternately, every mile of the way; locked out all callers for him; and protected him from observation as far as possible.”59 This sounds exaggerated—Cadwallader had embellished the Satartia story—until we note that Postmaster General Alexander Randall claimed to see Surgeon General Barnes “go up to Grant to feel his pulse” only to find Barnes “so drunk that he tumbled down on him.”60 Gideon Welles confirmed that Grant had grown “garrulous and, stupidly communicative” on the way to Cleveland.61 The episode fits Grant’s pattern of drinking on visits to distant cities, far from the critical eyes of his staff and wife, and it was one of the last times it happened.
On September 3, an especially hostile audience baited Johnson in Cleveland, where his behavior flirted with new lows. When a heckler yelled that Johnson should “hang Jeff Davis,” the president rejoined, “Why not hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips?”62 When someone in the crowd hollered, “Is this dignified?” Johnson shot back: “I care not for dignity.”63 Welles said Grant was “somewhat inebriated” in Cleveland and Johnson explained that he was “extremely ill.”64 To hide their drunken binge, Grant and Barnes were smuggled aboard a steamer bound for Detroit—“both of them intoxicated,” noted Welles—in the hope that the bracing Lake Erie air might sober them up.65 Writing to Julia from Detroit, Grant admitted that, for an unspecified reason, he had broken away from the tour. “Gen. Rawlins, Dr. Barnes and myself switched off from the party at Cleveland last night and came here by boat. The balance of the party stayed overnight there and will reach here this evening.”66
On September 9 the tour touched its nadir in St. Louis when Johnson, in another intemperate outburst, had the gall to blame Congress for the New Orleans riot: “Every drop of blood that was shed is upon their skirts, and they are responsible for it.”67 Turning himself into a martyr, he proclaimed, “I have been traduced. I have been slandered. I have been maligned. I have been called Judas Iscariot.”68 To Julia, Grant transmitted his horrified reaction: “I never have been so tired of anything before as I have been with the political stump speeches of Mr. Johnson . . . I look upon them as a National disgrace.”69 Even many northern papers that had supported his presidency turned against him, believing he had demeaned the office with these scurrilous screeds.
Contrary to Johnson’s plan to promote himself, the tour provoked a spontaneous boom for a Grant presidency. In Newark, Ohio, spectators interrupted Johnson’s speech with calls for Grant. “You cannot insult the President through General Grant,” George Armstrong Custer chastised them.70 However much Grant abhorred Johnson’s behavior, he refused to countenance actions that presented him as a presidential hopeful and asserted he would never allow the American military to “be made a party machine.”71 When a Chicago crowd gathered outside his train to further his candidacy, Grant refused to encourage the demonstration or even leave his car.
In Cincinnati, Grant arrived earlier than Johnson and was enjoying a theater outing when a military company showed up, wanting to support him and dump Johnson. Taciturn on the tour, Grant abruptly found his tongue, lecturing the group’s leader: “SIR: I am no politician. The President of the United States
is my Commander-in-Chief. I consider this demonstration in opposition to the President of the United States, ANDREW JOHNSON. If you have any regard for me you will take your men away.”72 The next day, Grant may have regretted such misplaced loyalty when the president had a well-known St. Louis Copperhead, Congressman John Hogan, introduce him to various crowds—a gaffe the victor of Appomattox simply couldn’t abide. Grant told Welles he had no desire to associate with the man: “A Rebel he could forgive, but not a Copperhead.”73
Pleading ill health, Grant departed from the tour and returned early to Washington. Compared with Johnson, he seemed the soul of sanity and thus benefited politically from the trip, even if he had not sought that outcome. As Badeau reported, “People have talked to us of Grant being made Dictator; and at any rate makes it more certain . . . that nobody else can be next President; which for him is not a consummation devoutly to be wished for.”74 Johnson confided to Secretary of the Interior Orville Browning that Grant connived for the presidency and that “there was a conspiracy on foot among the radicals to incite . . . another rebellion, and especially to arm and exasperate the negroes in the South.”75 Some Washington observers floated scenarios of a constitutional showdown in which Johnson would deploy Grant and the military to silence Congress. Suddenly Grant’s political tendencies became of more than theoretical interest. Ben Butler, now a Radical Republican, wondered privately whether “Grant can be trusted to disobey positive orders of his chief? When the hour of peril comes, shall we not be leaning on a broken reed?”76 Grant knew of this high-stakes guessing game. “No matter how close I keep my tongue,” he informed Sherman, both parties “try to interpret from the little let drop that I am with them.”77 He was so dismayed that he wanted to yield his command and travel abroad but felt obligated to stay home at such a perilous moment for the nation.