Grant

by Ron Chernow

  On February 3, the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified and its acceptance required for every southern state readmitted to the Union. On March 30, as one hundred guns boomed in the capital in celebration, Grant composed an unusual message to Congress celebrating that the amendment had become part of the Constitution that day, and his words fervently embraced black suffrage: “A measure which makes at once Four Millions of people heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land, not citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so, voters in every part of the land, the right not to be abridged by any state, is indeed a measure of grander importance than any other one act of the kind from the foundation of our free government to the present day . . . The adoption of the 15th Amendment . . . constitutes the most important event that has occurred, since the nation came into life.” It was a stunning statement of Grant’s faith in the new black electorate. He further urged Congress to promote popular education so that “all who possess and exercise political rights, shall have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge which will make their share in the government a blessing.”52

  That evening, to commemorate the landmark amendment, thousands marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in a torchlight procession. When they gathered outside the White House, Grant came out to address them and stressed the extraordinary importance he attached to the amendment, lauding it as a seminal act and saying there had been “no event since the close of the war in which I have felt so deep an interest . . . It looked to me as the realization of the Declaration of Independence.”53 Grant’s brother-in-law Michael John Cramer later explained that Grant had initially worried about bestowing voting rights upon black citizens, some of them still illiterate. Ku Klux Klan terror wiped away that hesitation, for as the Klan “endeavored to suppress the political rights of the freedmen of the South by the use of unscrupulous means, etc., he, the head of the army, became convinced . . . that the ballot was the only real means the freedmen had for defending their lives, property, and rights.”54

  This fateful moment presented Grant with a domestic challenge as daunting as that faced by any American president, for it inspired hope among blacks and smoldering resentment among many whites. Before long, southern blacks held office as lieutenant governors, militia officers, state legislators, and secretaries of state, not to mention coroners, constables, judges, and county magistrates; six hundred served as southern legislators during Reconstruction. Black gains can be overstated and certainly were by an alarmed white community: fewer than 20 percent of state political offices in the South were held by blacks at the height of Reconstruction. Still, these represented spectacular gains for people so recently chained in bondage.

  The dread of black suffrage drove many former secessionists to new heights of indignation. Although blacks made up 13 percent of the total U.S. population, they constituted 36 percent of the South, with outright majorities in Mississippi and South Carolina. The Fifteenth Amendment meant that blacks, armed with the vote, could exercise real power and invert, in an astonishingly short period, the power structure that had long suppressed them. Many southern whites found this insupportable and argued that hapless, newly enfranchised blacks were being manipulated by scheming northern Republicans. Woodrow Wilson would express this stereotypical view: “Unscrupulous adventurers appeared, to act as the leaders of the inexperienced blacks in taking possession, first of the conventions, and afterwards of the state governments . . . [Negroes] submitted to the unrestrained authority of small and masterful groups of white men whom the instincts of plunder had drawn from the North.”55 Not surprisingly, the Fifteenth Amendment incited a violent backlash among whites whose nerves were already frayed by having lost the war and their valuable holdings of human property.

  Hardly had the ink dried on the new amendment than southern demagogues began to pander to the anxieties it aroused. In West Virginia, an overwhelmingly white state, Democratic politicians sounded the battle cry of electing a “white man’s government” to gain control of the governorship and state legislature. “The spirit of the late rebellion is in the ascendant,” one Republican politician admitted. “Hostility to negro suffrage was the prime element of our defeat.”56 To circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment, white politicians in Georgia devised new methods of stripping blacks of voting rights, including poll taxes, onerous registration requirements, and similar restrictions copied in other states. With a violent backlash well under way, the party of Lincoln began to pay a price for being the vocal paladin of African Americans. As Senator Henry Wilson observed in 1869, there was not “a square mile of the United States” where Republican advocacy of black rights hadn’t resulted in the loss of white votes.57

  Behind the Fifteenth Amendment’s idealism lay the stark reality that a “solid South” of white voters would vote en masse for the Democratic Party, forcing the Republicans to create a countervailing political force. Under Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution, slaveholding states had been entitled to count three of every five slaves as part of their electorate in computing their share of congressional delegates. Now former slaves would count as full citizens, swelling the electoral tally for southern states. This was fine as long as freed people exercised their full voting rights. Instead, over time, the white South would receive extra delegates in Congress and electoral votes in presidential races while stifling black voting power. “It was unjust to the North,” Grant subsequently lamented. “In giving the South negro suffrage, we have given the old slave-holders forty votes in the electoral college. They keep those votes, but disfranchise the negroes. That is one of the gravest mistakes in the policy of reconstruction.”58

  Just as the Fifteenth Amendment was enacted, Grant was given an unusual opportunity to reshape the Supreme Court. Shortly after taking office, he had signed a bill expanding the current team of justices from eight to nine, effective December 1869. To fill the new vacancy, on December 14 he nominated his attorney general, Ebenezer Hoar. Uneasy with two Massachusetts men, Hoar and Boutwell, in his cabinet, Grant imagined a court appointment for Hoar offered an elegant solution to the problem. An estimable jurist, with extensive experience on the Massachusetts high court, Hoar seemed an unexceptionable choice, but a week later, the Senate tabled his nomination. Senators were irked by Hoar’s stiff opposition to the spoils system and his sparring with Radical Republicans over Reconstruction. Instead of withdrawing the nomination, the stubborn Grant dug in his heels and became combative as he took on entrenched senators. In his diary, Hamilton Fish noted that Grant had decided to “withhold political patronage” from senators opposed to “the policy or attitude of the Administration.”59 Nevertheless, Hoar was voted down decisively. The episode perpetuated the tension between the president and the Senate that had flared up so unforgettably under Andrew Johnson.

  Meanwhile, an elderly associate justice, seventy-five-year-old Robert C. Grier, who was elevated to the court by President Polk in 1846, notified Grant that he was resigning for medical reasons, opening a second vacancy. At this point, Grant turned to a well-known aspirant for the court, Edwin Stanton, who had enjoyed a prosperous prewar legal career, arguing cases before the high court. His wish to join the court was fiercely held, dating back to Lincoln’s cabinet, and he now hungered for the honor, aided by his congressional admirers. Stanton was still weak from his wartime labors and had recently suffered from poor health. When he made a courtesy call at the White House soon after Grant became president, Julia was shocked that he “looked pale and feeble.”60 Because of his shaky medical condition, she claimed, her husband was eager to give Stanton his last shot at the court.

  Never slow in self-assertion, Stanton boasted to a friend in October 1869: “There is a vacancy on the Supreme Bench for which I have adequate physical power, & so far as I can judge of my intellect, its powers are as acute & vigorous as at any period of my life—and perhaps more so.”61 Some in the press wondered whether the cantankerous Stanton possessed an even judicial temperament. Nonetheless, he e
nlisted enthusiastic supporters on Capitol Hill, including Vice President Colfax and House Speaker James G. Blaine, who bombarded Grant with lists of legislators clamoring for his appointment. On December 20, bowing to pressure, Grant nominated Stanton to replace Grier. Thanking Grant, Stanton reflected that a Supreme Court seat was “the only public office I ever desired, and I accept it with great pleasure.”62

  Stanton’s name flew through the Senate confirmation process, winning approval by a 46 to 11 vote; then he died of heart failure days later, at age fifty-five. Whatever his reservations about Stanton’s abrasive personality, Grant eulogized him as one of America’s “most distinguished citizens and faithful public servants” and ordered the White House draped in mourning and government offices shut for the funeral.63 Stanton’s death gave the country a chance to pay tribute to one of the gigantic figures generated by the war. It also left Grant in a forgiving mood, and he attempted to advance the fortunes of Stanton’s son, making him his personal attorney. “If I were asked to name the greatest men of the Republic,” Grant later opined, “I certainly should include Stanton among them.”64 Although Stanton never served a day on the high court, Grant sent his widow, Ellen, as a keepsake, his lapsed commission as a Supreme Court justice.

  In the end, Grant named two new members to the Supreme Court: Joseph P. Bradley and William Strong. Strong was a proficient attorney from Philadelphia, a product of Yale College and Law School. Because he was a solid Unionist and a Republican Party member since the late 1850s, Lincoln had contemplated appointing him chief justice after Roger B. Taney died in 1864. Never a judicial statesman, he was nonetheless widely respected for legal competence, and Justice Grier commended him as “an accomplished and sound lawyer.”65 He also had the right political credentials, one newspaper praising him for being “sufficiently Radical for even the most Radical Senators.”66 The other new justice, Joseph P. Bradley, son of a farmer from upstate New York, had worked as a lawyer in Newark, New Jersey, representing railroads and insurance companies. Like Strong, he had been an ardent Unionist, having written that “secession has always been treason.”67 With a court composed solely of justices from north of the Mason-Dixon Line, Grant came under pressure to add a southerner, completing the reentry of the former Confederate states, but he was deterred by skeptics. “If you yield to the clamor to nominate a southern man,” Elihu Washburne warned, “ten to one you will be sold out in the end. See how Lincoln came out in his appointments of Supreme Judges.”68 Grant appears to have heeded the advice.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

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  The Darkest Blot

  IN HIS YEAR-END MESSAGE to Congress in December 1869—Congressman George F. Hoar said Grant wrote it “without pause or correction, and as rapidly as his pen could fly over the paper”—the president evoked a thriving nation of nearly forty million people that, spurred on by the war, an industrial boom, and westward expansion, had blossomed into a global power, strong in manufacturing and stretching across the continent.1 To bind the eastern and western seaboards more tightly, he proposed a survey of the Isthmus of Darien as a possible site for a canal connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific—a visionary project that possessed his imagination for the rest of his life. The need for internal unity was paramount for Grant. He chided Georgia, which had ratified a new constitution, for having “unseated the colored members of the legislature.” Striking a very different tone from Andrew Johnson, he paid tribute to the impressive strides registered by former slaves: “The freedmen . . . are making rapid progress in learning, and no complaints are heard of lack of industry on their part where they receive fair remuneration for their labor.”2 With the Republican Party now straddling former abolitionists and conservative businessmen, Grant gave voice to both impulses. A hard-money man, he favored a gradual return to a dollar redeemable in gold, a moderate tariff to raise government revenue and protect business, and a modest income tax. He professed pleasure that the federal budget enjoyed a robust surplus.

  Grant’s message showed marks of inexperience. Inordinately long, it delved into too many policy details and quoted verbatim from internal reports. It papered over blunders he had committed during his first year in office. Still he seemed to learn from his errors and sounded sanguine about the country’s mood. “Everything seems to be progressing well in the United States,” he informed Elihu Washburne. “Our currency is increasing in value . . . and on the whole I think a very healthy political feeling is springing up.”3

  Grant was about to grapple with a grave challenge from Charles Sumner on Santo Domingo. He now had in hand the two-part treaty, negotiated by Orville Babcock, for a fifty-year lease of Samaná Bay and a gradual absorption, after a national referendum, of the Dominican republic into the United States. Grant’s cabinet was allowed to speak openly about the Samaná Bay deal, but was sworn to secrecy about Dominican annexation until the New Year. When President Báez worried about his future, Grant dispatched seven American warships to Dominican waters to assuage his concerns. In late February, Báez conducted the promised plebiscite on the American treaty and resorted to strong-arm tactics. The one-sided tally of 15,169 for annexation and only 11 against highlighted the vote’s coercive nature. It was a foolish act of bullying by Báez, since many observers agreed that the Dominican people genuinely favored an American union and would have delivered a safe majority through honest methods.

  On Sunday evening January 2, 1870, Grant swallowed his presidential pride, suppressed his distrust of Sumner, and strolled across Lafayette Square to pay an impromptu call at the senator’s house. It was an extraordinary move by a president on behalf of a treaty. Grant insisted he did not go to persuade Sumner to support the treaty but only to explain why it was conducted in secrecy: he feared that if word leaked out, harmful speculation in Dominican debt might ensue. He also wanted to outline for Sumner the island’s ample resources and convey the Dominican people’s desire for American annexation. Then dining with John W. Forney, a newspaper publisher and recent secretary of the Senate, and the journalist Ben Perley Poore, Sumner was startled by Grant’s sudden appearance. When proffered a glass of sherry, Grant declined while assuring the two guests they could stay during his chat with Sumner.

  After some talk about the treaty, Sumner broached a seemingly unrelated topic. He had received a letter from his friend James M. Ashley, who was being ousted by Grant as governor of the Montana Territory. He issued a plea to retain him or name him to a new position. Grant, visibly annoyed, couldn’t understand why on earth he should appoint a man he had just fired. Sumner read aloud two pages from Ashley’s letter, later admitting he had been crass, “taking too great a liberty with [Grant] in my own house, but I was irresistibly impelled by loyalty to an absent friend.”4 Slow to fathom Sumner’s ploy, Grant never dreamed of any quid pro quo between keeping Ashley and senatorial assent to the treaty. “It never occurred to me that [Sumner] tried to purchase a commission for Ashley by giving his support to the San Domingo treaty,” Grant told Hamilton Fish. “But in the light of his subsequent conduct, and the readiness of his friends to impute improper motives to you and I, it is a much fairer inference to impute such motives to him.”5 Wisconsin senator Timothy Howe corroborated Grant’s suspicion: “I have never doubted that Mr. Sumner . . . resolved to make his support of the treaty conditional upon Ashley’s restoration.” When Grant replaced Ashley with Ohio politician Benjamin F. Potts, Howe witnessed Sumner’s incandescent display of wrath: “I never saw him so excited as when Potts was confirmed in place of Ashley.”6

  Grant left the talk with the decided impression that Sumner was “pleased” with the proposed treaty, having expressed a desire to see a draft.7 John Forney walked away with a similar impression that Sumner admitted he “would cheerfully support the treaty.” The intransigent Sumner would hotly contest this. He insisted the language was “fixed absolutely in my memory: ‘Mr. President,’ I said, ‘I am an Administration man, and whatever you do will always find in me
the most careful and candid consideration.’”8 Secretary of the Treasury Boutwell, who dropped by Sumner’s house while Grant was there, corroborated his boss’s memory. When Sumner ended his defense of Ashley, Boutwell said, “the President rose, moved toward the door and repeated his remark that he would send the papers in the morning by Gen. Babcock. Mr. Sumner then said, after thanking the President, ‘I expect Mr. President to support the measures of your administration.’”9 When Babcock laid the treaty before Sumner a day or two later, the senator again—in Grant’s recollection—expressed unequivocal approval of it.

  The misunderstanding between Grant and Sumner was to be, in the words of a Sumner biographer, “the turning point in Grant’s administration and in Sumner’s career as well.”10 By now, the Santo Domingo treaty had become Grant’s pet policy, his private obsession, and Sumner’s betrayal would rankle for years. He had also been offended by Sumner’s condescending manner. Perhaps recollecting that night, Grant made this telling remark: “Sumner is the only man I was ever anything but my real self to; the only man I ever tried to conciliate by artificial means.”11

  On January 10, Grant conveyed two documents to the Senate—one to lease Samaná Bay, the other to annex the Dominican republic. For Grant, annexation was a patently good thing and he was mystified why it didn’t generate more popular enthusiasm. However wrongheaded, the treaty was an ambitious undertaking upon which Grant staked his prestige, and any resistance to it aroused his fighting instincts. “When he was once engaged in battle,” Badeau noted, “he was always anxious to win.”12 But it was much harder to win a legislative than a military battle and the Senate was in no mood to compromise. Grant chafed at legislative obstacles thrown into his path. When James Russell Lowell studied his face at dinner that February, he detected “a puzzled pathos, as of a man with a problem before him of which he does not understand the terms.”13