by H. W. Brands
Other Grant comments bore on contemporary topics. The summer of 1877 saw the greatest labor strike in American history when rail workers responded to wage cuts by walking off the job and paralyzing transport from coast to coast. Violence followed the walkout, with workers battling private security forces and freelance arsonists piling in. Grant supported Hayes’s decision to use federal troops to suppress the violence. “The United States should always be prepared to put down such demonstrations promptly and with severe consequences to the guilty,” he wrote a friend. But he thought it ironic that many of the American papers that now praised the use of force to protect the property of the railroads had been quick to condemn his earlier use of force to protect the rights of Southern blacks and Republicans. “It does seem the rule should work both ways,” he said.
Months later Congress passed a bill to expand the currency by minting new silver coins. Hayes vetoed the bill but Congress overrode, and the Bland-Allison Act became law. Grant thoroughly disapproved. “The country, and the country’s credit, has not received so severe a blow since the attempt of the Southern states to secede,” he wrote William Sherman. “We stand more or less disgraced.” To banker Anthony Drexel he said of the law: “It shows a willingness on the part of a majority to repudiate a percentage of their indebtedness, and people who will do that are capable of repudiating the whole. The man who would steal a lamb would not be safe to trust with a sheep.”
At times he felt gloomy about the direction of American politics. The Democrats were gaining, and as they did they corroded the meaning of the Union victory in the war. “It looks to me that unless the North rallies by 1880 the government will be in the hands of those who tried so hard fourteen—seventeen—years ago to destroy it,” he wrote his sister’s husband. Grant suspected that when he eventually returned to America he would be called upon by his old supporters to rescue the republic, and the Republicans, once more. “They have designs for me which I do not contemplate for myself,” he told Adam Badeau.
He found himself refighting the war in other ways. Badeau was completing what would be published as the Military History of Ulysses S. Grant; he regularly wrote Grant for his recollections of this battle or that campaign. Sherman had published his own memoir, and his descriptions of some of his superiors provoked spirited rejoinders. Grant was informed he was among those Sherman criticized. “I cannot tell you how much I was shocked,” he told a reporter. “I could not believe it in Sherman, the man whom I had always found so true and knightly, more anxious to honor others than win honor for himself.” He sent for a copy of the book and prepared to write a rebuttal. “I do not think I ever ventured upon a more painful duty.” But as he read, his mind was put at ease. “When I finished the book I found that I approved every word—that it was a true book, an honorable book—creditable to Sherman, just to his companions, to myself particularly so—just such a book as I expected Sherman to write.… You cannot imagine how pleased I was.… Sherman is not only a great soldier but a great man. He is one of the very great men in our country’s history.… As a writer he is among the first. As a general I know of no man I would put above him.… There is not a false line in Sherman’s character.”
Sherman’s memoir aside, Grant thought the South was getting the better of the war writing. “Everything that our armies did was wrong, could have been done so much better,” he paraphrased the commentary on the war. “Everything that our opponents did was perfect. Lee was a demigod, Jackson was a demigod, while our generals were brutal butchers.… The Southern generals were models of chivalry and valor; our generals were venal, incompetent, coarse.… If we won a battle like Shiloh, for instance—one of the most useful victories of the war, one of the most important in its results—our own papers set to work to belittle the victory and give the enemy as much advantage as possible.” Accounts of other battles were similar. “I do not recite these things to complain especially,” Grant said. “I have nothing to complain about.… Having conquered, it is not for us to say anything unkind or in disparagement of our enemies. That is not my purpose. I merely mention these points in a general way, as points which our historians overlook.”
He was happy not to be at home. More than happy, in fact: “It is bliss to be out of the United States just at a time when every bad element in the country are seemingly carrying every thing before them,” he wrote Elihu Washburne. But the ill wind couldn’t blow forever. “It is to be hoped, and I think confidently to be relied upon, that all the isms will have run their course before ’80.”
He might stay away till then. By the autumn of 1878 he and Julia had completed their tour of Europe and the Mediterranean. “We have seen the capitals and most of the principal towns, and the people, of every country,” he observed. “I have not yet seen any to be jealous of. 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.”
The travelers headed east again, embarking from Marseilles in January 1879. “Anchored outside the harbor of Alexandria last night,” Grant wrote at the end of the month in a journal he had just started keeping. They proceeded toward the Suez Canal. “Weather charming, fields green and flourishing. Party much pleased with the picturesque dress and manners of the people.” A sunken ship delayed their passage of the canal, but eventually they made the Red Sea. “Heat increasing.… Light clothing coming into requisition.” They reached Aden at the end of the first week of February. “All the land seems to be of volcanic origin and entirely barren. The natives are of a low order of savages; hair dyed—or colored from some process—red, curled into small corkscrew tufts. It is fortunate that enlightened nations”—Britain in this case—“take possession of such people and make them, and their soil, produce something for the advancement of civilization of the human race.”
A smooth steam across the Arabian Sea carried them to Bombay, a cosmopolitan marvel. “Description could not convey an accurate idea of either the city or the people,” Grant wrote. “Every nationality of the East is represented here.” After a few days they traveled to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. “The splendor of this monument surpasses all the descriptions given of it.” At Delhi Grant toured the site of the 1857 siege of British colonial rulers by Hindu nationalists. “It was fully explained by an intelligent officer, Colonel Harris, who was present at the siege and badly wounded.” Beyond the city, on the North Indian plain, he observed the Indian method of irrigated farming. One man drew water from a well and poured it into a narrow raised ditch running along the edges of separate small fields. The owners of the fields diverted water onto their plots by breaching the ditch with their hands. The process was repeated throughout the dry season. “It is a matter of mystery—to the American traveler particularly—how a country less in area than that part of the United States east of the Mississippi River, with vast portions of this totally barren and uncultivated, can feed 230,000,000 people. But it does, and has large exports besides.”
The travelers reached Benares at night. “Benares is regarded by the Hindoo as a sacred city and is believed by them to have existed from the beginning of time. It is well and solidly built, many of the houses going up three or four stories high. The streets are very narrow and many of them do not admit even a pack animal. The sight of the natives worshipping, which seems to be their principal occupation, is a curious one. There can be no doubt about their sincerity. It is a grave question whether they should be disturbed in their faith. It teaches no cruelty to beast or man, and sets up a good system of morals for the guidance of its followers.”
Journeying again by ship, they landed at Rangoon in March. Burma’s culture was close enough to India’s to afford a comparison and different enough to draw contrasts. “The contrast is all in favor of the Burmese. In India they are divided into castes.… Females have no rights and must not remain single. They may be betrothed at any time from conception to the age of puberty. By the latter time they are disgraced if not married.… M
any become widows before they are five years of age”—on account of the deaths of their much older fiancés—“and can never after marry. Through widowhood—life—they are disgraced and despised.” In Burma, on the other hand, women were honored. “Marriage is a matter of choice between the contracting parties. The man must ask and the girl give consent.” Nor was there a caste system in Burma. “All can compete to better their condition.” The culture was broadminded. “The Burmese are not bigoted and do not object to the intermarriage of their race or religion with people of any other race or religion.” They were more prosperous than the Indians. “Labor here commands about three to four times the amount it does in India, and servants receive twice as much.”
Still farther eastward the party traveled. In Siam—Thailand—Grant met many dignitaries, including King Chulalongkorn. “The latter is a young man, 25 years of age, quite impressive in appearance and intelligent, speaks English fairly well and understands perfectly. He is evidently a progressive but is restrained by the older men in council.” Hong Kong was stunning. “This colony is on an island reaching 1700 feet above the sea. The city is well built—mostly of granite—and the harbor is a magnificent one both in scenery and security.” Canton was differently impressive. “The population is very dense and must far exceed one million of people.” The Chinese people were as frugal and hardworking as any Grant had ever seen—but they got no respect from others for their industry. “The Chinese are badly treated at home by Europeans as well as when they emigrate.… I should not blame them if they were to drive out all Europeans—Americans included—and make new treaties in which they would claim equal rights.” Grant supposed the Chinese would, in time, do just that. “My impression is that the day is not very far distant when they will make the most rapid strides towards modern civilization and become dangerous rivals to all powers interested in the trade of the East.”
He spoke with Li Hung-chang, the Chinese viceroy. Americans, especially in the West, were agitating to limit Chinese immigration; in an era of otherwise open American doors, this was accurately seen as a slap at China. Grant found himself an interpreter of American attitudes and policy. “I am ready to admit that the Chinese have been of great service to our country,” he told Li. “I do not know what the Pacific Coast would be without them. They came to our aid at the time when their aid was invaluable.” But there were problems. “The trouble about your countrymen coming to America is that they come under circumstances which make them slaves.… Their labor is not their own, but the property of capitalists.” Grant was referring to the “coolie” system of contract labor. “We had slavery some years since, and we only freed ourselves from slavery at the cost of a dreadful war, in which hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and thousands of millions of dollars spent. Having made those sacrifices to suppress slavery in one form, we do not feel like encouraging it in another, in the insidious form of coolie emigration.… If you can stop the slavery feature, then emigration from China is like emigration from other countries.” Grant suggested a temporary halt in emigration—“three or five years”—to let the labor market sort itself out. Li explained that the Chinese government officially discouraged emigration. Grant replied that the government, then, would not object to a moratorium.
He spoke with Prince Kung, the emperor’s son and the ruling family’s managing partner. Like Li, the prince wanted to modernize China, to improve the lot of the Chinese people and to unify and strengthen China against foreign powers. Grant was the living symbol of American unity and strength; the prince probed him for advice, particularly about the nation-building role of railroads. Grant acknowledged the enormous value of the railroad industry to American development. “To it we owe a great deal of our material prosperity,” he said. “It is difficult to say where we would be now in the rank of nations but for our railway system.” The prince invited Grant to elaborate. Grant continued: “The value of railroads is to disseminate a nation’s wealth and to enable her to concentrate and use her strength. We have a country as large as China.… We can cross it in seven days by special trains, or in an emergency in much less time. We can throw the strength of the nation upon any required point in a short time. That makes us as strong in one place as another. It leaves us no vulnerable points. We cannot be sieged, broken up and destroyed in detail, as has happened to other large nations. That, however, is not the greatest advantage. The wealth and industry of the country are utilized. A man’s industry in interior states becomes valuable because it can reach a market. Otherwise his industry would be confined necessarily to his means of subsistence.… This adds to the revenue of the country.”
The prince was well briefed on Grant’s biography and itinerary; he knew that Grant had been feted in many of the great capitals of the world and was headed for Japan, with which China was in dispute over the Loochoo—Ryukyu—Islands of the East China Sea. “We all know how vast your influence must be, not only upon your people at home but upon all nations who know what you have done, and who know that whatever question you considered would be considered with patience and wisdom and a desire for justice and peace. You are going to Japan as the guest of the people and the emperor, and will have opportunities of presenting our views to the emperor of Japan and of showing him that we have no policy but justice.” The prince explained that the Ryukyus had long been ruled by an independent monarchy, one with which China had had friendly relations. The Japanese had recently deposed the monarch and were asserting their own sovereignty. China could only take offense and alarm; war was not out of the question.
Grant hoped matters wouldn’t come to that. “Any course short of national humiliation or national destruction is better than war,” he said. “War in itself is so great a calamity that it should only be invoked when there is no way of saving a nation from a greater. War, especially in the East, and between two countries like Japan and China, would be a misfortune, a great misfortune.”
“A great misfortune to the outside and neutral powers as well,” Prince Kung said. “War in the East would be a heavy blow to the trade upon which other nations so much depend. That is one reason why China asks your good offices.” The prince hoped Grant would convey to the Japanese government China’s seriousness and resolve on the Ryukyu issue and would stress to the Japanese the justice of China’s case.
Grant reminded the prince that he held no official position. He was a tourist and had no business to conduct with the Japanese.
“We have a proverb in Chinese,” the prince rejoined, “that ‘no business is business’—in other words that real affairs, great affairs, are more frequently transacted informally, when persons meet, as we are meeting now, over a table of entertainment for social and friendly conversation, than in solemn business sessions.”
A cholera epidemic in Japan kept the travelers from seeing all they wanted. “Nagasaki we found a most beautiful city located on the slope of green hills at the head of a narrow bay some nine miles in from the Yellow Sea,” Grant wrote. He received the rare honor of meeting with the Meiji emperor, who had put Japan on a westernizing path. Grant offered encouragement. “Japan is striving to become both liberal and enlightened,” he said. “She deserves success, for her efforts are honest and in the interest of the whole people.” But the efforts weren’t uniformly appreciated. After the fact Grant learned that Japanese reactionaries had plotted to assassinate him for profaning the emperor’s divinity by his western presence.
The Japanese government understood that Grant had been speaking to the Chinese about the Ryukyus, and it presented Japan’s view of the case. “What I have learned in Japan is far different from what I was told in China,” Grant replied to the Meiji emperor. “I can see how her case has features that cannot be answered. A nation having gone as far as Japan, and having acted as she believed in her unquestioned sovereignty, must consider what is due to her people.” All the same, Grant continued: “There is an aspect to the Loochoo affair which, seen from the Chinese point of view, is worthy of attention.�
� China feels that she has not received from Japan the consideration due to her as a sovereign power, as a friendly nation, as a nation which had for a long time enjoyed a certain relation to Loochoo.” Grant didn’t propose to tell the Japanese emperor what to do. Yet he made a suggestion. “It seems to me that this feeling in the minds of Chinese statesmen should be well considered by Japan, and that Japan in a spirit of magnanimity and justice should make concessions to China. The importance of peace between China and Japan is so great that each country should make concessions to the other.
“I would say one word more on this question,” Grant went on. “In your discussions with China on Loochoo, and on all matters at issue, do not invite or permit, so far as you can avoid it, the intervention of a foreign power. European powers have no interests in Asia, so far as I can judge from their diplomacy, that do not involve the humiliation and subjugation of the Asiatic people. Their diplomacy is always selfish, and a quarrel between China and Japan would be regarded by them as a quarrel that might ensue to their own advantage.”