Grant

by Ron Chernow

  By virtue of his position, Grant received panoramic accounts of conditions in the South that portrayed a region seething with white hatred and sometimes black as well. In mid-April, he dispatched Orville Babcock and Horace Porter to report on southern Reconstruction. The two men gave an optimistic verdict on the progress of blacks, who had embraced citizenship with an enthusiam that heartened northern abolitionists and terrified white supremacists. As Babcock wrote from New Orleans, “The negro is learning very fast. they will soon be the best educated class in the South, if they continue at their present rate of progress.”117 The Freedmen’s Bureau had helped to sign up 130,735 students in classes, but teachers, white and black, continued to be murdered and burned out of schools and homes. Babcock and Porter witnessed an ominous upsurge of Confederate sentiment, with Confederate symbols employed to intimidate blacks. In Georgia, wrote Babcock, “the police in most of the cities are in a grey uniform, the real confederate uniform.”118 Certain states resisted Reconstruction more passionately than others. After visiting three Texas cities, Porter wrote, “This is, by far, the worst State in the Union, and it is only by the adoption of strict and decided measures that it is kept from giving a great deal of trouble.”119

  Antiblack animus in the South now assumed more sinister forms. In mid-1866, Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, founded a club called the Ku Klux Klan, its arcane name derived from the Greek word kuklos, for band or circle. By the time of the First Reconstruction Act, what had started out as a social club began to shade into a quasi-military organization, recruiting Nathan Bedford Forrest as a leader. It was less a tightly structured organization than a free-floating network of thuggish white groups adopting similar methods and rituals to terrorize blacks. Members vowed to support “a white man’s government” and carry weapons at all times.120 Before long, former privates in the Confederate army were taking orders from their old officers in the Klan. To hide their identities, Klansmen donned outlandish hoods to terrorize their former slaves into believing they represented the ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers. They carried out murders and mutilations in a grotesque spirit of sadistic mockery. Despite these disguises, the freedmen often knew and feared the identities of their tormentors. By no coincidence, the Klan would spread rapidly across the South during the 1868 elections, targeting as it did black voters.

  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.”121 This startling early revolution in civil rights would be all but forgotten by later generations of Americans.

  Never a man for halfway measures, Sheridan in early June removed Governor James M. Wells of Louisiana, who had brazenly defied Reconstruction. In typically hot-blooded language, Sheridan blasted Wells as “a political trickster and a dishonest man,” whose “conduct has been as sinuous as the mark left in the dust by the movement of a snake.”122 Many people concurred—the New Orleans Times quipped that “All’s well that ends Wells”—but the action remained highly controversial.123 Sheridan believed that if civil officers could flout military commanders with impunity, Reconstruction was bound to fail. Writing to him in confidence, Grant emphasized that Stanton supported the Wells removal, while he himself rendered a more qualified judgment. “I have no doubt myself but that the removal of Governor Wells will do great good in your command if you are sustained, but great harm if you are not sustained.”124

  Already irate with Sheridan, Johnson reprimanded him and told him to defer his action. Bent upon foiling the Congressional Reconstruction pushed by Radical Republicans, he elicited from Attorney General Henry Stanbery an opinion that flagrantly challenged the policy, alleging that military commanders should refrain from suspending political officials. This provoked a bruising cabinet battle with Stanton hotly denouncing this crabbed interpretation of the law. When Johnson ordered Grant to circulate Stanbery’s opinion to district commanders, Grant betrayed his true sympathies by letting them know they could freely interpret it as they chose. Although Grant was usually dutiful in following civilian policy, he believed Johnson had subverted the will of Congress in a way that bordered on treason. It grated on Johnson that Grant, a mere subordinate, had been endowed with such godlike powers over Reconstruction.

  By this point, there was no magical way to balance ambitious Reconstruction policies mandated by Congress with the obstructive arts of a hostile president. On June 27, Welles reported a “nervous and apprehensive” Johnson living “in constant dread of impeachment.”125 However much he disagreed with the president, Grant prayed this extreme remedy would be averted “unless something occurs hereafter to fully justify it.”126 While Radical Republicans were ready to banish the hated president, party moderates remained skittish about forcing him from office. On July 18, Grant testified before the House Judiciary Committee, which had begun to consider possible impeachment, and he contrasted his humane treatment of Lee and other paroled officers with the harsh action favored by Johnson, who thought “they should be tried and punished” and treason “made odious.”127 He reiterated his long-standing contention that Lee wouldn’t have surrendered had he believed “he was going to be tried for treason and hanged.”128 Grant was honest without being vindictive toward Johnson and won plaudits from the press. “The responsibility, the fidelity, the sagacity of Gen. Grant constitute the only guarantee . . . for the adequate enforcement of the conditions dictated by Congress in the spirit in which they were conceived,” wrote The New York Times.129

  The day after Grant testified, Congress approved the Third Reconstruction Act, which confirmed the power of district commanders to fire civilian officials and expanded their supreme power over voting rights. When Johnson vetoed the bill, Congress promptly overrode it. Though the legislature adjourned the next day, a committee lingered in the capital to take testimony that might yield grounds for impeachment. Instead of focusing on Reconstruction—the true issue—they chose a more roundabout method, hoping to find Johnson guilty of improper conduct. Specifically, they hoped to prove he had corresponded with Confederate politicians, misappropriated federal funds, and chosen unqualified figures to govern southern states.

  Stymied in his bid to hobble Congressional Reconstruction, Andrew Johnson was especially enraged by his belief that Edwin Stanton had authored the new Reconstruction bill. Armed with the new powers, Grant took strong measures to deal with looming racial strife in Memphis. Nothing alarmed the white South more than black power at the polls, which was why most terror was directed there. Stanton had received warnings of “a formidable and bloody riot” in Memphis, scheduled for its August 1 election, “to prevent negroes voting.”130 Grant didn’t care to “wait until people are killed and the mob beyond control” and sent troops in advance of the election.131

  After his testimony, Grant felt badly in need of a breather from the poisonous atmosphere of Washington. For the first time, he and Julia took a seaside cottage in Long Branch, New Jersey, a hideaway where Grant could revert to a life that suited him more. The town had recently become a fashionable watering hole for millionaires. The waterfront house on Ocean Avenue was three stories high with a shingled roof and two glassed-in observatories. Twice a day Grant rode in a carriage to breathe in tangy salt air before returning to the house and poring over mail and newspapers on the verandah. Staying in Long Branch s
truck him as a guilty pleasure. “Every day that I am absent from Washington,” he informed Stanton, “I see something in the papers or hear something, that makes me feel that I should be there.” At the same time, he admitted wistfully that “I have got so tired of being tied down that I am nearly ready to desert.”132

  Grant had many things to ponder about his future since second-guessing his presidential aspirations had become a popular parlor game. With the benefit of hindsight, Andrew Johnson said Grant had supported him for two years then saw the “Radical handwriting on the wall, and heeded it . . . Grant did the proper thing to save Grant, but it pretty nearly ruined me.”133 Grant was outwardly a sphinx upon whom people could project their preferred ideology, and Radical Republicans searched for assurances that Grant stood on their side. With a select group of people he was frank about his views, but never in public. People knew he had cast his lone vote for president for James Buchanan and still wondered whether he was a Republican or a Democrat. But for Grant, the Democrats had nothing to offer him, only a repudiation of the war and all its sacred goals.

  To unravel the mystery of his political affiliation, Radical Republicans dispatched Senator Benjamin Wade to Covington to quiz Jesse Root Grant about his son’s politics. Jesse and Hannah were out of town and Michael John Cramer, Grant’s brother-in-law, received the senator instead. Once seated in the parlor, Wade pressed Cramer for Grant’s views on Reconstruction, saying he wished to know whether Grant was “a good Republican; for we desire to bring him forward as our candidate for the presidency; yet we do not exactly know where he stands on these questions.” When Cramer replied that Grant was “a thorough Republican” who could be fully trusted, Wade twirled his hat into the air and accidentally smashed a chandelier, then proclaimed, “That settles the matter; we shall propose Grant as the candidate for the Republican Party for the presidency. I am greatly relieved . . . With him we are sure to win.”134

  For those seeking clues to Grant’s political opinions there was no surer source than a speech on Reconstruction delivered in Galena that June by John Rawlins. Knowing people saw Rawlins as his surrogate, Grant reviewed the speech carefully and gave it his private imprimatur. The speech was so detailed and corresponded so perfectly with the Radical Republican agenda that it was widely reprinted. Rawlins said it made no sense to emancipate slaves if they weren’t entitled to the law’s full protection. Because southern governments failed to adapt their constitutions to new political realities, Congress had a duty “to sweep from existence any and all governments in any States that were anti-Republican.” He applauded Congress for barring former Confederate states that hadn’t guaranteed suffrage to all “without distinction of race or color.” Only through voting could freed people protect their liberties. In a rousing peroration, Rawlins described Radical Reconstruction as “the result of a wise exercise of the unquestionable power of the law-making branch of the Government . . . the South must accept the situation fully and unreservedly.”135 That Grant allowed Rawlins to make this fervent speech removed any residual doubt as to where he stood on the cardinal issue of the day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

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  Volcanic Passion

  RELATIONS BETWEEN GRANT and Edwin Stanton had never been noticeably warm. Partly the problem stemmed from Stanton’s dyspeptic personality and brusque treatment of Grant and partly it reflected turf disputes. After Appomattox, Grant wished to retain his supreme wartime powers and have army orders funneled through him, leaving Stanton to handle military matters requiring presidential approval. Stanton wanted the War Department to reclaim its traditional prewar powers, thus weakening Grant. At one point, Grant threatened to resign if Stanton continued to usurp what he deemed his rightful authority. Despite such conflicts, Grant retained unalloyed respect for Stanton’s wartime accomplishments, deeming him an irreproachable patriot with a fiercely “volcanic” passion for the Union.1 He sided with Stanton on Reconstruction and shared his dismay over Johnson. As he noted, Stanton “believed that Johnson was Jefferson Davis in another form, and he used his position in the Cabinet like a picket holding his position on the line.”2

  Because of Stanton’s cordial relationship with congressional Republicans, his dealings with the president deteriorated during the summer of 1867. On August 1, Johnson summoned Grant for a lengthy talk—he fancied Grant had “just come off a debauch”—and expressed his intention to fire Stanton.3 Grant hesitated as he mulled over his response. Later that day, he sent the president a tough, candid letter, laying out legal and political arguments against Stanton’s ouster. Such a move, he asserted, would violate the Tenure of Office Act, expressly designed to protect the war secretary. He wondered why Johnson had not requested Stanton’s removal while the Senate was in session. Grant concluded his blunt missive with a blazing declaration: “I know I am right in this matter.”4 For Grant, there was now no turning back. He had declared his true allegiance, leaning toward the Radical Republican fraternity, and could no longer pretend he was intimately allied with administration policy.

  Such was Grant’s popularity that Johnson could not dismiss Stanton without Grant’s support. Grant was still adored in the North for his wartime leadership, in the South for his clemency. Johnson searched for a legal means to fire Stanton without running afoul of the Tenure of Office Act. On August 5, he sent Stanton a one-sentence letter: “Public considerations of a high character constrain me to say, that your resignation as Secretary of War will be accepted.”5 Johnson knew that if Stanton resigned, instead of being sacked, the troublesome legislation would be a dead issue. That same day, in a tart response, Stanton lectured Johnson that “public considerations of a high character . . . constrain me not to resign the office of Secretary of War before the next meeting of Congress.”6 Radical Republicans trooped to the War Department, stiffening Stanton’s spine as he took issue with the president. They knew that he was a primary shield for their Reconstruction policies. The stage was set for a constitutional impasse between Congress and Johnson, with Grant likely caught in the middle.

  On Sunday morning, August 11, Johnson told Grant unequivocally that Stanton would be suspended, not fired, to bypass the Tenure of Office Act, and he asked Grant to become the temporary secretary of war. Grant didn’t spurn the appointment, but stipulated, according to Badeau, that “on no account could he consent to hold the office after the Senate should act” on Stanton’s suspension.7 In other words, he saw himself as merely a temporary placeholder, awaiting a Senate ruling on Stanton when it reconvened. Johnson took away a quite different impression: that if the Senate overturned Stanton’s dismissal, Grant would hand the job back to him, not Stanton. Johnson assumed Stanton wouldn’t dare to override someone of Grant’s stature.

  Why did Grant take a job so fraught with peril? As a soldier, he felt the need to submit to civilian direction. He also feared that if he turned down the job, Johnson might offer it to someone who shared his conservative agenda on southern policy. As Grant told Julia, “I think it most important that someone should be there who cannot be used.”8 By holding the office, he reasoned, he could protect the army from political meddling in executing Reconstruction. Even some Grant intimates questioned his wisdom in taking a post that enmeshed him in a dense web of partisan politics. “Had I been there,” Rawlins told his wife, “I might have prevailed upon the General not to accept the position.”9 He feared Johnson would manipulate Grant in his ongoing tussle with Congress. Badeau thought Johnson wanted to destroy Grant as a presidential candidate by binding him to his administration, undercutting him while pretending to advance him.

  That same day, Grant drove to see Stanton and informed him of the president’s decision. Though a crushing blow for Stanton, it was not unexpected. When Grant received official notice of his appointment the next day, he sent Stanton a conciliatory message designed to draw the sting from the moment. “I cannot let the opportunity pass without expressing to you my appreciation of the zeal, patriotism
, firmness and ability” with which Stanton had served as war secretary.10 In reply, Stanton admitted he had “no alternative but to submit, under protest, to the superior force of the President.”11 Branding the president’s action illegal, he was convinced Congress would restore his position when it reconvened in late November.

  Occupying two positions simultaneously, Grant now spent mornings at the War Department, then strolled across the street and passed afternoons at his old army headquarters, where he was still chief general. Formal in the morning, he became more casual and unconstrained among his staff officers in the afternoon. On August 13, Grant attended his first cabinet meeting as war secretary ad interim, thrusting him squarely into the political arena. He lost no time establishing that he was a confirmed supporter of Congressional Reconstruction and would stand by his military commanders in the South. When Gideon Welles challenged him and asked if the latest Reconstruction law wasn’t “palpably unconstitutional and destructive of the government and of the Constitution itself . . . ?” Grant countered: “Who is to decide whether the law is unconstitutional?”12

  The exchange went to the heart of the dispute that led to Johnson’s impeachment. However unwise the Tenure of Office Act, were not government officers obligated to heed it until the courts overturned it as unconstitutional? Grant thought so. In cabinet meetings, he showed a self-assurance that antagonized some secretaries. “This is the second meeting of the cabinet Grant has attended,” wrote Secretary of the Interior Browning, “and both have been marked by a rather ridiculous arrogance. He has been swift to deliver his crude opinions upon all subjects, and especially upon legal questions, as if they were oracles and not to be controverted.”13 Grant was no longer the bumbling clerk from Galena. Wartime experience had acquainted him with a wide array of issues and he could be quite forceful in expressing his opinions.