Grant, Ulysses S.
Ulysses S. Grant
John Y. Simon
ULYSSES S. GRANT did not need or want the presidency and entered the White House with considerable reluctance. His dazzling rise to fame during the Civil War had elevated him within three years from a former captain working for a younger brother in their father's leather-goods store in Galena, Illinois, to commander of all the armies of the United States. In one more year, he ended the war and prepared to reap the rewards of victory. Citizens of Gale-na gave Grant a handsomely furnished house, which he retained as a voting residence and visited occasionally, and for a time the Grants lived in Philadelphia, in another house presented to the victorious general; but command of the army required Grant's presence in Washington, where Grant, happily married and a devoted father to four children, united his family. Promoted to general of the army as of 25 July 1866, Grant held military rank higher than any other American except George Washington, drew a comfortable salary with many perquisites, and fulfilled grave responsibilities. Indeed, grateful citizens of the North intended to honor and reward the man who deserved more credit for the continued existence of the United States than anyone except President Abraham Lincoln.
The advantages of Grant's position as general in chief included lifelong tenure, no small benefit to a man who had encountered grinding poverty in the years between resignation from the army in 1854 and reentry into military service in the Civil War in 1861. As a young officer, he had received promotions during the Mexican War, but the peacetime army offered little hope of advancement. Assigned to Pacific Coast duty in 1852 and prudently leaving behind his pregnant wife, Grant encountered inflated prices and felt the financial pinch of army pay. Unable to make a success of investment or farming, lonely and unhappy, Captain Grant resigned his commission. He left the Pacific Coast to rejoin his family, intending to farm the land in Saint Louis County, Missouri, that his father-in-law had given to his wife, Julia, but despite dogged efforts he succumbed to the Panic of 1857 and eventually lost the farm and the unfinished log house, ruefully named Hardscrabble, which he had built with the aid of neighbors. In the years following, Grant never prospered in anything he tried. At one low point, he pawned his watch two days before Christmas, perhaps so that he could buy gifts for his wife and children. The move to Galena in 1860 to take the job his father provided may have been an even greater humiliation.
Such poverty left scars. For the rest of his life he gratefully remembered friends who had stuck by him in his years of adversity and those who helped him gain command in the Civil War and refuted critics of his generalship. He wanted personal loyalty and returned it overgenerously. Grant valued security and stability above glory and wealth. During the Civil War he began to use his military pay to purchase the land he had once farmed, attempting to re-create his father-in-law's estate, White Haven. An avid horse fancier, Grant looked forward to eventual retirement and the satisfactions of a gentleman farmer, but promotion to lieutenant general in 1864 gave him the prospect of an equally pleasant life in the peacetime army as a desk general with a settled family life.
Politics had no appeal for Grant, perhaps in part because it had fascinated his father. Jesse Root Grant, a self-made man who never allowed others to forget it, had risen from poverty to affluence in the leather business, educating himself along the way. He wrote letters to newspapers on a variety of subjects, plunged into political controversy, and was elected mayor of Georgetown and later of Bethel, Ohio. (Ulysses was raised in Georgetown but had been born in Point Pleasant on 27 April 1822.) Perhaps in reaction his son developed such a taste for privacy and modesty that through a long public career he never corrected the common misapprehension that his middle name was Simpson, his mother's maiden name (he had been named Hiram Ulysses but his first name was never used); he could not even bring himself to deliver a political speech until several years after leaving the White House. Jesse had insisted that his unwilling eldest son go to West Point and did little to help him start farming in Missouri. As Ulysses rose to fame during the Civil War, the proud father tried to promote his son's career through letters to newspapers; as a result, Grant noted, Cincinnati newspapers, those most accessible to Jesse, gave Ulysses the most unfavorable coverage of any in the North. Writing to a potential biographer of Ulysses, Jesse acknowledged where his son got his character:
Like his mother, he rarely ever laughs, never sheds a tear or becomes excited—though always in a pleasant humor—never says a profane word, or indulges in jokes—always says what he means and means what he says—always expressing himself in the fewest possible words, and never had a personal controversy with man or boy in his life.
In 1856, Grant voted for Democrat James Buchanan for president, later explaining that he did so to avert secession and because "I knew Frémont." In 1860, although ineligible to vote as a newcomer to Galena, Grant favored Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. Yet Grant received his first commission in the Civil War from a Republican, Governor Richard Yates; and his appointment as brigadier general, which preceded his first encounter with the enemy, came through the efforts of another Republican, Congressman Elihu B. Washburne of Galena. Grant's conversion to the Republican party proceeded imperceptibly as he sought to avoid all involvement in political issues, but by 1864 he understood the importance to battlefield victory of the reelection of Lincoln and allowed Washburne to use his letters as campaign literature. Grant supported the reelection of Lincoln through the Union party, something more than a false front for the Republicans, as evidenced by its nomination of Andrew Johnson, an avowed and unrepentant Democrat, for vice president.
In 1864, political speculation already centered on the military hero, and Grant received exploratory correspondence from Democrats as well as Republicans. Before nominating Grant as lieutenant general, Lincoln had sought an assurance that Grant had no presidential ambitions. At the Union convention, Missouri delegates sought to enter a Radical protest by voting for Grant for the presidential nomination, though all other votes went to Lincoln. Grant's sound reasons for rejecting political overtures in 1864 no longer applied after Appomattox.
Grant met Lincoln for the first time in March 1864, when Grant went to Washington to receive his commission as lieutenant general. They had apparent similarities as products of the new West, but their differences were more important. Lincoln retained the aura of frontiersman while Grant cultivated gentility, with Lincoln winning fame for telling dirty stories, and Grant, a reputation for refusing to listen to them. Lincoln's style was indirect, and it is doubtful whether, in their infrequent meetings, Grant fully understood the man or his policy. While Grant received the impression that the president had put the war into his hands, Lincoln retained his supervisory role as commander in chief. When Grant sought to have the president remove a troublesome and incompetent subordinate, Major General Benjamin F. Butler, Lincoln insisted that Grant take responsibility for this decision. Grant's appointment of Lincoln's son Robert to his headquarters staff relieved Lincoln of the onus of withholding his own son from a war to which he had sent so many other sons. Robert's relatively safe position also solved one of Lincoln's problems with Mary Lincoln, whose increasingly bizarre behavior sometimes took the form of irrational fears about the safety of Robert. Mary's tantrums kept the Lincolns and Grants apart, most notably leading to a declined invitation to Ford's Theater. All in all, Grant learned little from Lincoln.
Grant and Johnson
Unfortunately, the president with whom Grant spent far more time, Andrew Johnson, taught negative lessons. Lincoln did not conceal a vein of coarseness, but Johnson displayed it proudly. By emphasizing his humble origins and rise to prominence through his own efforts, Johnson may have seemed reminiscent of Grant's father, whom, not incidentally, Johnson appointed postmaster of Covington, Kentucky, in an embarrassingly blatant attempt to obligate his son.
Johnson and Grant headed toward a collision over policy. Both men had owned slaves before the Civil War, but Johnson had gloried in his ownership, had once declared his dream that every American family might own one, and based policy upon his firm conviction in the superiority of whites. Grant had worked Hardscrabble with slaves supplied by his father-in-law, and Julia continued to own slaves during the Civil War; but Grant freed one slave he owned himself in 1859, at a time when he desperately needed the money that sale of a slave could bring. At the onset of the Civil War, he dreaded a slave insurrection, which he assumed would have to be suppressed by the armed force of both North and South.
Just as he changed from Democrat to Republican during the Civil War, his attitude toward blacks shifted. From the earliest days of the Civil War, blacks contributed to a Union victory as they flocked through northern lines bringing information of southern strength and plans. Once within the lines, they gratefully accepted employment in support of the army, working at tasks that released white men for combat. Grant saw the first black troops in his army prove their capacity as soldiers by their defense of Millikens' Bend in June 1863. By the close of the Civil War, 10–12 percent of the Union army consisted of black troops; an important component of the armies, they had proved themselves on many battle-fields.
Thus, Grant, the last former slaveholder elected president, was forced by his military role to consider blacks both as human beings and as soldiers. If he did not transcend the racism of his day, as commanding general he assumed responsibility for all men who served in the army, white and black. Like Lincoln, he believed that governmental responsibility extended to veterans; denying civil rights and citizenship to men who had fought offended his sense of duty. Yet Grant shared some of Johnson's sympathy with the whites of the South: after all, he had firm friendships with many southern officers of the old army, had married a southerner (a cousin of the Confederate general James Longstreet), and had never participated in the bitter sectional debate before the Civil War.
Johnson, appointed brigadier general at the time he was named military governor of Tennessee, had really served in a civil capacity. Ever the politician, Johnson tried to manipulate the army to serve his goals both in Tennessee and in the White House. Sent on a tour of inspection of the South by Johnson, Grant returned with a report that emphasized the willingness of southerners to reaffirm their allegiance, a view that suited Johnson, but did not recommend withdrawal of troops or elimination of the Freedmen's Bureau, an agency established to care for, and protect, former slaves.
Johnson's policy of rapid restoration of political rights in former Confederate states exposed Union soldiers to suits filed in state courts by their former enemies. Grant issued orders in January 1866, authorizing removal of such cases to federal courts or to those of the Freedmen's Bureau. Johnson soon embarked on open warfare with Congress, which passed the Freedmen's Bureau bill and the civil rights bill over his vetoes. Johnson and Grant soon found themselves in quiet conflict over the enforcement of congressional legislation by the army.
The conflict remained quiet because Grant, as a soldier, was determined to obey the commander in chief and because Johnson needed Grant's popularity to shore up his political power. Johnson dragged Grant along on a "swing around the circle," a trip ostensibly to dedicate the Douglas tomb in Chicago but really a political tour to allow Johnson to argue before the voters his case against congressional Radicals, who demanded sweeping political and social change in the South. Johnson's undignified harangues disgusted Grant, who temporarily left the party at Cleveland, leading staunch supporters of Johnson to charge that Grant had withdrawn to recover from excessive drinking. Recognizing the dangers of their eroding relationship, Johnson tried to send Grant on a mission to Mexico and to bring William T. Sherman to Washington in his place; Grant flatly refused to go, insisting that the president had no authority to order an officer on a civilian mission.
Congressional Republicans took advantage of the estrangement through the first Reconstruction Act, whereby they established five military districts in the former Confederacy in which army officers would supervise compliance with Reconstruction policy. On 2 March 1867, Congress overrode Johnson's veto of the first Reconstruction Act and passed an appropriation bill for the army containing a rider that became known as the Command of the Army Act, requiring that all presidential orders pass through the general in chief and prohibiting his removal or relocation. Soon after the Reconstruction Act went into effect, its rigorous enforcement by Major General Philip H. Sheridan in the Fifth Military District (Louisiana and Texas) irritated Johnson, whose hands were tied by the fact that Sheridan was a great favorite of Grant.
In August, Johnson struck at Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who had long been a Radical agent in the presidential camp and was protected by congressional allies through the Tenure of Office Act, which prohibited removal of cabinet officers without the consent of the Senate. Johnson suspended Stanton and appointed Grant acting secretary of war. Johnson knew that he could not succeed in his high-handed removal of Stanton without replacing him with the most popular man in the country; Grant accepted rather than allow the army to fall into unfriendly hands.
Johnson and Grant managed this uneasy partnership until Congress reassembled at the end of 1867, quickly evincing a determination to reinstate Stanton and placing Grant in the untenable position of obeying either his commander in chief or Congress. Grant told Johnson that he intended to resign the office of secretary of war because to hold firm would make him liable to fine and imprisonment under the Tenure of Office Act. Johnson asked Grant to delay his resignation and believed that he had agreed to do so. Through misunderstanding (as Grant's friends believed) or bad faith (as Johnson believed), Grant surrendered the office to Stanton before Johnson had an opportunity to nominate an alternative candidate who might have garnered enough Republican support to achieve confirmation. The restoration of Stanton led to a stormy cabinet confrontation during which Johnson accused Grant of lying. Publication of the exchange of acrimonious correspondence that followed the cabinet meeting completed the process of rupture between president and general.
Johnson's renewed efforts to remove Stanton led to an impeachment trial, with Grant now considered a firm supporter of the removal of Johnson. The break with Johnson provided adequate evidence to Republicans that Grant could be counted in their party. Grant's dislike of Johnson and his policies had increased to the point that he believed that duty demanded his acceptance of a presidential nomination, despite his personal preference for remaining in the army.
Election of 1868
Grant's nomination by the Republican party was inevitable; nobody else received serious consideration, and the convention vote was unanimous. For its vice presidential candidate, the convention chose Schuyler Colfax, a glib and unimportant Indiana congressman. Grant's nomination served to protect the Republicans from answering such hard questions as the length they intended to push Reconstruction policy and the extent of their commitment to the freedmen. The platform advocated enfranchising blacks in the former Confederacy, leaving the matter elsewhere to the states. War's end endangered the fragile alliance of men with widely differing economic policies; midwestern farmers and eastern manufacturers disagreed on crucial currency issues, the tariff, and much more. The concluding words in Grant's letter accepting the nomination, "Let us have peace," became a Republican rallying cry, valued all the more for its banality.
Democrats possessed all the strengths and weaknesses of a national party. Vociferous support from persons who had so recently fought to overthrow the government proved a mixed blessing. Even in the North, the record of the party during the Civil War proved embarrassing; the party had split into war and peace factions, with the latter denying that the war could be won and sometimes acting to fulfill the prophecy. Accusations of lack of patriotism suggested to some leaders the wisdom of abandoning all war-related issues and focusing instead on economic policy, but Democrats North and South refused to abandon issues that they believed so important; furthermore, questions of Reconstruction demanded attention.
The Democrats had a plethora of candidates for nomination, none of them outstanding. Johnson deserved consideration because of his stubborn defense of Democratic principles, and Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who had defected from the Democrats over the slavery issue in 1854, announced his return to the party just in time to seek the nomination. George Pendleton of Ohio advocated redeeming bonds issued to finance the Civil War with greenbacks, the fiat currency introduced as a war measure, and this inflationary scheme had enthusiastic support from hard-pressed debtors, especially midwestern farmers. The nomination of Winfield Scott Hancock presented the option of confronting the victor of Appomattox with the hero of Gettysburg and a general whose Reconstruction administration of Louisiana had even pleased Johnson.
As prominent candidates canceled out each other, the convention dragged on for ballot after ballot. Finally the weary delegates settled for Horatio Seymour, the wartime governor of New York, who was presiding over the convention and had dis-avowed any interest in the nomination. Seymour's reluctance to furnish troops during the war and his inept conduct during the draft riots in New York City constituted liabilities that the Democrats hoped to counter by nominating Francis P. Blair, Jr., for vice president. Blair negated his asset of having been a commander under Sherman, which should have given him the needed aura of patriotism to balance Seymour, by inflammatory criticism of Reconstruction governments as barbarous and despotic.
Grant ostentatiously ignored the ensuing campaign. At its peak, Grant, accompanied by Sherman and Sheridan, left for a combination inspection and vacation tour of the West, going as far as Denver. When election returns were telegraphed to Grant's home in Galena, he took remarkably little interest in them.
When the votes were all counted, Grant had defeated Seymour with 214 electoral votes from 26 states to 80 electoral votes from 8 states: New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maryland. Yet the Republican popular majority (3 million to 2.7 million) was only slightly more than 300,000. Assuming that 90 percent of the 500,000 votes cast by blacks went to Grant, Seymour received a majority of the votes cast by whites. Nonetheless, Grant profited by the same electoral arithmetic that gave victory to Lincoln in 1860 with under 40 percent of the popular vote.
Election returns in 1868 demonstrated the strength and resilience of the Democratic party, saddled with a deplorable record during the Civil War and unappealing candidates in 1868. Given the facts that no presidential vote was recorded in Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas; that Republican victories in southern and border states depended on black votes (by no means assured as a permanent feature on the political scene); and that the Democrats could carry some northern states and make the race tight in others, the Democratic party could still be considered the majority party in the United States. If black votes had not elected Grant, they had not hurt him either. Black votes put six states of the former Confederacy in the Republican column, and Republican hopes for the future depended heavily on continued black political participation. Republican leaders knew that Grant's personal popularity had served as a major campaign asset; they might have lost with any other nominee.
Grant believed that he owed his election to the American people—not to the Republican party. As he prepared for inauguration, he kept his own counsel about his inaugural address and cabinet appointments, rebuffing politicians eager to assist. Republican leaders thought they had done him a favor by giving him the presidency; Grant thought they had given him a burdensome office with unstable tenure. Republican leaders thought they had created a politician; Grant thought they had created an administrator.
Grant's success as a general owed much to his unmilitary attitude. Sent to West Point against his will, he had never enjoyed the traditions of military life. He believed that laws of war as generally conceived were meant to be broken under new conditions. In the war's final year, he accompanied the Army of the Potomac without displacing its commander, Major General George G. Meade, and took on the responsibilities of overall command without leading troops into battle. He employed Major General Henry W. Halleck, his predecessor as general in chief, as chief of staff, setting the United States Army on the road to modern military bureaucracy. This un-military general now chose to become an unpolitical president.
There was a key difference in the situation presented him by the presidency. Grant had spent fifteen years in the army from his entrance into West Point until his resignation in 1854, and during the Civil War he was fully cognizant of those laws of war he disobeyed. He understood the procedural details of conventional military organization and was clear-headed about those he hoped to change. His ability to innovate was based upon a knowledge of the fundamentals of his job, something he lacked when he entered the White House.
Grant's obvious distaste for politics disconcerted the politicians but delighted the public. The long battle between Johnson and Congress had grown wearisome; in this sense, the slogan "Let Us Have Peace" had struck home to the voters. They expected little from the president, and Grant prepared to satisfy them.
The powers of the office had been enormously increased by Lincoln under war conditions. At the start of the conflict, he had not called Congress into session but had immediately issued a call for troops, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and taken other emergency measures that he expected Congress to ratify. When Congress proved an obstacle to Lincoln's concept of the proper conduct of the war, he set policy through the Emancipation Proclamation and his plan for Reconstruction.
Events proved that Johnson could not wield power as Lincoln had. Grant had cooperated with Congress to curb what both regarded as executive usurpation, and he had no intention of fighting the battle over again, this time unnecessarily. If Grant had followed this policy consistently, his White House years would have been an uneventful period of careful administration of existing legislation with few presidential initiatives, but he believed that he was the only person elected by all the people of the nation, putting him in a position different from that of congressmen elected from individual states. He had a responsibility to carry out the popular will, which he believed he could discern. As a quintessential American, he could think nothing else. He would have no quarrel with Congress over policy, but he would fulfill what he interpreted as moral imperatives.
In his inaugural address, Grant clearly expressed his views: "The office has come to me unsought; I commence its duties untrammeled." He pledged that "all laws will be faithfully executed, whether they meet my approval or not," a statement that might have seemed a platitude had it not followed Johnson's exit from the White House. He argued that bonds issued during the war should be paid in gold as a matter of national honor, adding that this upright policy would enable the government to borrow at lower interest rates in the future. Perhaps the only major surprise was a statement calling for reform of Indian policy, a matter otherwise on the periphery of popular concern.
The cabinet appointments, announced after much popular speculation, surprised the country. Grant named Elihu B. Washburne as secretary of state, an appointment intended as a courtesy to an old friend, who was expected to leave the post after a few days to become minister to France. In Paris, Washburne could answer proudly when asked about his previous employment. To succeed him, Grant named Hamilton Fish, former governor of New York, a man whose political career seemed to be behind him. For secretary of the treasury, Grant named Alexander T. Stewart, an enormously wealthy New York City merchant, who was quickly found to be ineligible because of a law passed in the early days of the Republic prohibiting anyone engaged in trade or commerce from holding that office. An embarrassed president asked Congress to change the law, and to add to his embarrassment, Congress declined to do so. George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, a congressional Radical, was appointed instead.
For secretary of war, Grant named John A. Rawlins, a Galena attorney who had joined his staff early in the war and become a close friend. Grant originally intended to send the tubercular Rawlins to Arizona to recover his health but changed his mind because Rawlins insisted on a major appointment. The nominations of E. Rockwood Hoar of Massachusetts as attorney general and Jacob D. Cox of Ohio as secretary of the interior added men respected for ability and integrity. The choice of John A. J. Creswell of Maryland as postmaster general was also suitable. For secretary of the navy, Grant picked Adolph E. Borie, an elderly and wealthy Philadelphian who had no interest in serving and did so only long enough to save the president embarrassment.
In contrast, Lincoln had appointed to his original cabinet leaders of the Republican party, his chief rivals for the nomination, and had also balanced party factions and geographical regions. Grant risked his political popularity by assuming that choosing able men would suffice.
Republican leaders, mystified by these appointments, too often credited them to ineptitude—certainly a factor—while overlooking their logic. Grant's strong feelings about personal loyalty led to the appointments of Washburne and Rawlins. His choice of Fish, his most successful, reflected his conservatism. Politicians forgot that Johnson made Grant a Republican, not a Radical. During the war, Grant's attitude had been one of sympathy for southerners but not for their rebellion. Only when the South continued to defy the supremacy of the federal government after the war did Grant reluctantly come to support Radical Reconstruction and black suffrage. Grant sought to appoint those most likely to achieve sectional harmony and obedience to law, and so he avoided Radicals. Overlooking prominent Republicans was no accident; the appointment of men whose primary loyalty might shift from the executive to Congress held serious risks, since appointees still had the protection of the Tenure of Office Act, another law Grant unsuccessfully asked Congress to change.
Reconstruction
As Grant took office, Reconstruction issues took precedence. Only a week before Grant's inauguration, Congress proposed the Fifteenth Amendment, which declared that the right to vote could not be denied "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." In his inaugural address, Grant stated that the issue of suffrage was "likely to agitate the public" until settled; "I entertain the hope and express the desire," he declared, that its settlement "may be by ratification of the fifteenth . . . amendment." Grant played a quiet but persistent role in ratification, at one point asking the governor of Nebraska to call a special session of the legislature to speed the process. In almost precisely one year, he could declare that the Fifteenth Amendment was the law of the land, the very law he had sworn to uphold.
On inauguration day, four states—Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas—remained unrepresented in Congress and subject to the Reconstruction Acts. One year after Grant's inauguration, all states of the former Confederacy except one were represented in Congress, and on 24 February 1871, Georgia seated its senators, having complied with congressional Reconstruction legislation and with the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed the right of blacks to vote. Reconstruction was, in these respects, complete.
By historical consensus, Reconstruction formally ended in 1877 with the withdrawal of the last United States troops from the South by President Rutherford B. Hayes. Outward compliance of white southerners with Reconstruction, grudgingly given and with many reservations, tied the hands of the conservative administration of President Grant. Any effort to maintain the spirit as well as the letter of Reconstruction legislation collided with older and valued concepts of states' rights.
The years of the Grant administration constituted a gradual retreat from Reconstruction, initiated in the South but increasingly tolerated by the North. Grant certainly wanted as rapid as possible an end to the special status of the former Confederacy as a domain of federal intervention. The basic question for him and his countrymen was what price to pay for this peace. From the start, southerners made clear that the road to reunion lay over the rights of their former slaves.
Although the relationship between black votes and Republican majorities in these states was generally understood, Grant spurned any intervention for political advantage; as president, he could intervene only to uphold the law and could officially recognize only clear-cut violations. Aware of this policy, opponents of Reconstruction governments often tried to subvert it through clandestine means, such as the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, which would accomplish the purpose without provoking federal intervention. Using hindsight, critics have argued either that the Grant administration did too much or that it did too little to maintain Reconstruction.
Reconstruction state governments controlled by carpetbaggers (northern whites who went to the South with a mixture of crass and idealistic motives), scalawags (white southerners who supported Reconstruction, again from a mixture of motives), and former slaves possessed varying degrees of integrity. Critics portrayed these state governments as carnivals of corruption, rarely drawing parallels to cases of malfeasance in the North, such as the notorious Tweed Ring in New York City. Promises that Reconstruction governments would be supplanted by honest, competent, and conservative regimes tempted many northerners to ignore the issue of black civil rights.
While the Grant administration erred in intervening too little to uphold Reconstruction legislation, Grant did not ignore violence, intimidation, and disorder in the South. He used enforcement legislation for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and he asked Congress for the legislation ultimately known as the Ku Klux Act (20 April 1871), which enabled him to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and impose martial law in areas in which local officials did not protect the rights of all citizens. Armed with the law, Grant enforced it in parts of South Carolina, sending in troops and initiating prosecutions. Here and elsewhere he recognized opponents of Reconstruction as the same men he had faced in battle, men determined to use force to reverse the results of the war. In upholding Reconstruction, Grant increasingly acted on his own; in fact, the administration proceeded past the point at which it had adequate popular or congressional support. Enforcement declined as the years progressed, as northerners recognized that frustrating any attempt by southern whites to control state governments and to subjugate the black population accomplished no more than buying time and led to efforts to accomplish the same purpose by other means. Any condemnation of the Grant administration for abandoning Reconstruction requires a general condemnation of the nation. As the war years receded, the whites regained control of the South.
Enforcement of Reconstruction was accompanied by extension of amnesty. In May 1872, an administration-favored bill gave amnesty to all but about five hundred former Confederates who had left the United States government to take arms against it. While Johnson's generosity in granting amnesty had infuriated Radicals, the passage of time enabled Grant to enlarge the policy.
Financial Affairs
The basic conservatism of the Grant administration found fullest expression in the handling of financial issues. On 18 March 1869, Congress passed the Public Credit Act, which pledged the repayment of the bonded debt in gold and thus ended years of uncertainty over whether the nation might follow an inflationary course by redeeming bonds with the greenbacks issued during the Civil War, a policy advocated by some Republicans as well as Democrats. Basically, the government followed a policy of hard currency, economy, and gradual reduction of the national debt.
Grant's own ideas about finance were relatively simple, and he seemed to have absorbed some of them from the wealthy businessmen who so assiduously courted him. Aware of Grant's attraction to the financially successful, James Fisk and Jay Gould devised a plan to snare him into a scheme for their own profit. Greenback currency fluctuated in relation to gold; government could affect the price by selling or withholding gold. Gould and Fisk planned to drive up gold prices by convincing Grant that such an increase would benefit farmers, and they enlisted Abel Rathbone Corbin, who was married to Grant's sister and claimed greater influence with the president than he actually possessed. Corbin assisted Fisk and Gould in gaining social access to Grant, something that enhanced the reputations of the unscrupulous pair in New York financial circles.
Gould and Fisk bought up gold, intending to persuade the president to take steps to drive the price upward. While Grant visited relatives in out-ofthe-way Washington, Pennsylvania, Corbin wrote him a letter, delivered by special messenger, that argued the case for the public benefits of higher gold prices. Suspicious at last, Grant asked his wife to write Mrs. Corbin a letter telling her to have her husband stop his speculations. Gould double-crossed his partner by secretly unloading his holdings, while Fisk continued to buy until he had driven the price to unprecedented heights on "Black Friday" (24 September 1869). On that same day, Grant and Secretary of the Treasury Boutwell decided to sell gold, and the price immediately plummeted. In the gyrations, fortunes were made and lost, and the whole affair became the subject of a congressional investigation embarrassing to Grant and his wife. The president, although guilty of indiscretion and naïveté, could not be charged with personal profiteering.
Financial concerns again claimed Grant's interest when the Supreme Court decided Hepburn v. Griswold (7 February 1870) by declaring the Legal Tender Acts unconstitutional as applied to contracts made prior to their enactment. Conservative Republicans who dreaded the inflationary impact of increased issuance of greenbacks equally feared the deflationary shock of their sudden disappearance as lawful currency. Grant soon filled two vacancies on the Court with justices believed to favor the Legal Tender Acts. As a result, the Court reversed its stand in ruling on two additional greenback cases, Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis (1 May 1871). Inevitably, Grant was accused of packing the Court, a charge justified to the extent that he had some idea in advance of how his appointees would vote. Nonetheless, he had appointed two qualified men and had no obligation to select justices who might create financial upheaval.
Foreign Affairs
The handling of foreign affairs illustrates the uneven record of the Grant administration. The most important problem confronting the incoming president was the settlement of the Alabama Claims against Great Britain, a complex of grievances centering on the depredations committed against American shipping during the Civil War by the Alabama, a Confederate cruiser improperly purchased in England. During the war, Senator Charles Sumner, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had grown so angry over the lack of true British neutrality that he now demanded immense reparations, perhaps to the extent of annexing Canada to settle the matter. Sumner had taken the lead in rejecting a settlement treaty negotiated by the Johnson administration and later provoked the government to increased militancy.
Fish recognized that American claims against Great Britain for granting belligerent status to Confederates were jeopardized by American pressure to grant the same rights to Cuban rebels, who had less claim under international law to such status but much American support for their revolt against Spain. Grant, inclined to sympathize with the Cubans, a course urged by Secretary of War Rawlins, prodded Fish to recognize Cuban belligerency. Concerned about the effect on negotiations with Great Britain, Fish delayed the process by continuing negotiations in Madrid for a peaceful settlement. Rawlins' death on 6 September 1869 removed the leader of the militants, and the failure of the Cuban insurgents to make solid gains lessened United States enthusiasm for active support. For a time, the divergence between Grant and Fish on Cuban policy threatened to throw the issue to Congress, where recognition of Cuban belligerency commanded strong support. Ultimately threatening to resign, Fish forced Grant to send a message to Congress that averted recognition.
Resolution of the Cuban issue permitted Fish to conclude negotiations with Great Britain. He arranged a meeting of commissioners that resulted in the Treaty of Washington, signed 8 May 1871, which acknowledged violations by Great Britain during the Civil War and provided for monetary settlement of American claims by an international commission in Geneva. Sumner argued that Great Britain had prolonged the war for two years at a cost of $2 billion but did not block Senate ratification. Although the commission eventually awarded the United States only $15.5 million, Americans had reason for pride in the settlement of the controversy in favor of the United States without belligerent actions and in the establishment of a precedent for settling international claims through arbitration.
Yet the diplomatic achievements of the Grant administration were shadowed by the Santo Domingo fiasco, the origins of which lay in United States interest in a Caribbean naval base to protect a future isthmian canal and in the inability of the Dominican government to manage its finances. American promoters working with President Bonaventura Báez approached Fish with an offer to sell the country to the United States. Suspicious of where the money would go and dubious about expansion, Fish tried to shelve the proposition, but Grant expressed interest in pursuing the matter. Grant sent his secretary, Orville E. Babcock, to Santo Domingo to investigate, though Fish ensured that he carried no diplomatic authority. Babcock, the Iago of the Grant administration, returned with a draft treaty of annexation.
The pluck and ambition of his bright young secretary captured Grant's admiration. Properly accredited for a second visit, Babcock returned with a treaty of annexation and, in case this was rejected, an agreement for the lease of Samaná Bay as a naval station. To further the treaty, Grant paid a surprise visit to Sumner's house, where he talked about the advantages of annexation and Sumner argued for a territorial appointment for an old antislavery ally. As Grant left, he understood Sumner to assure him of support; Sumner recalled that he had only promised to consider the matter carefully. In fact, Sumner was adamantly opposed to elimination of black self-government in Santo Domingo and led the Foreign Relations Committee to a 5–2 rejection of the treaty. Despite administration pressure, the full Senate rejected annexation by a 28–28 vote, with 19 Republicans joining the opposition.
Just as Grant had slogged south after Lee had stopped him at the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, his rebuff on the Santo Domingo issue made him even more determined on eventual victory. Heroism in war became pettiness in peace. He dismissed John Lothrop Motley, minister to Great Britain, an appointment made initially to please Sumner, and played a role in Sumner's deposition as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Attorney General Hoar and Secretary of the Interior Cox, both lukewarm in supporting annexation, eventually left the cabinet, the latter replaced by Columbus Delano, who returned the Interior Department to spoilsmen. While Grant could do nothing to secure annexation, he refused to abandon the cause and even brought it up again in his last message to Congress.
Domestic Affairs
Unfortunately, he lacked such persistence in the cause of reform of Indian policy. In his inaugural address, he had pledged to encourage Indians toward "civilization and ultimate citizenship," and soon astonished the nation by the unprecedented appointment of an Indian, Ely S. Parker, a former staff officer, as commissioner of Indian affairs. He followed this by appointing the Board of Indian Commissioners, an unpaid group of advisers to the secretary of the interior who were charged with implementing the "peace policy," based on the appointment of churchmen as Indian agents. In his zeal to serve the Indians, Parker antagonized both board and bureaucrats; he resigned in 1871. The remainder of the peace policy disintegrated amid denominational squabbling, the counterattack of entrenched economic interests, and the unwillingness of the Indians to surrender their way of life to the concepts of white reformers. By the end of Grant's second term, reservation Indians were again at the mercy of a corrupt Interior Department; others were the charges of a United States Army still smarting from the death of George A. Custer at the Little Big Horn in 1876.
A similar fate awaited civil service reform. Filling government positions with nonpartisan appointees through competitive examination had the enthusiastic support of Congressman Thomas A. Jenckes of Rhode Island, Senator Carl Schurz of Missouri, and George William Curtis, editor of Harper's Weekly, and of Cox, Hoar, and Boutwell, who tried to implement reform within their departments. Asked by Grant to legislate reform, Congress returned the problem to the White House by asking the president to appoint a civil service commission to draw up rules. Grant appointed Curtis to head the commission and accepted its recommendations, to take effect on 1 January 1872. Civil service had Republican party support when applied to ill-paid clerkships but encountered resistance when it encroached upon such lush pasturage as the New York Customhouse, the preserve of Senator Roscoe Conkling, a loyal supporter of the president. Repeatedly Congress failed to enact civil service legislation; in 1875, it refused to appropriate funds to maintain the commission. Congressional resistance eventually persuaded Grant himself to abandon civil service procedures.
Reformers cooled toward Grant even before Grant cooled toward reform. Disappointment with failures to implement civil service reform, disgust with Reconstruction governments, and dismay with high-tariff policy (when free trade and laissez-faire represented the best economic thought) brought together a group eventually christened Liberal Republicans, who, embellishing their cause with cries of "Grantism," denounced corruption, inefficiency, and nepotism. Led by Schurz, Cox, Sumner, Lyman Trumbull, Charles Francis Adams, and Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, they moved toward independent political status. In 1872, they passed over such logical presidential nominees as Adams and Judge David Davis to nominate Greeley for president, a choice soon ratified by opportunistic Democrats. Greeley's eccentricities, high-tariff views, and record of unqualified abuse of the Democratic party played into the hands of the Republicans.
Grant won reelection easily. Economic prosperity, combined with debt reduction, temporarily lowered tariffs, and repeal of the income tax, hurt the opposition, as did the initial implementation of civil service. Ku Klux Klan outrages in the South reminded voters of Civil War issues, as did Republican orators. When doubts arose, Grantism seemed a small price for peace and prosperity. Grant received 3.6 million votes to 2.8 million for Greeley, who carried only six states: Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, Maryland, and Kentucky. Of 366 electoral votes, the Greeley states had 66. The electoral college refused to count 14 disputed votes for Grant from Arkansas and Louisiana or 3 cast for Greeley, who had died shortly after the election, so the official tally gave 286 for Grant to 63 divided among four Democrats. Grant received the largest percentage (55.6 percent) of the popular vote of any candidate since Andrew Jackson's 56 percent in 1828. Grant rather smugly proclaimed the victory a personal vindication. Loyal Republicans crowed that their party had been purified by the departure of Liberal Republicans; history later proclaimed the opposite. Charges against Grant in the second election campaign were even nastier than those aired in the first, and some came from former allies, now Liberal Republicans. President Grant ignored the charges in public but inwardly seethed. His tendency to overvalue loyalty increased when he felt betrayed, and after 1872 he established a network of party stalwarts around him, men who seldom questioned his policy but instead furthered it. Ironically, Grantism increased in the second term.
The Grant family had settled comfortably in the White House. Julia's original apprehensions about her social role eased when she received assistance and advice from the wife of Secretary Fish. Fred Grant, the oldest son, graduated from West Point; Ulysses, Jr., scraped through Harvard and served his father as presidential secretary. Daughter Nellie enjoyed a White House wedding in 1874, much publicized throughout the country, even though people would have preferred she not marry an Englishman, and Walt Whitman, unacknowledged poet laureate of the Grant administration, wrote a poem in her honor. Jesse, the youngest son, ran happily through the White House in a manner reminiscent of Tad Lincoln, to the delight of his doting parents.
Grant himself usually worked in his office from ten in the morning until around three in the afternoon and then drove his carriage through Washington. Long summer vacations at Long Branch, New Jersey, drew criticism, as did other trips away from Washington, though none could claim that Grant neglected his duties. In fact, the business of the presidency proved so undemanding that Grant gained some thirty to forty pounds in the White House, apparently the happiest years of his life.
As the nation moved rapidly from an agricultural to an industrial economy, the effects of the business cycle increased. The Panic of 1873 represented the American phase of a depression that spread from Europe and settled over the United States for the remainder of the Grant administration. Railroad overbuilding hastened the onset, and efforts by railroad corporations to maintain profit squeezed farmers already hurt by low prices abroad. Economic distress enabled the Democrats, aided by militant farmers organized as Grangers, to gain control of the House in 1874 for the first time since the firing on Fort Sumter.
The Panic of 1873 raised the greenback issue once again. During the Johnson administration, the Treasury had retired some 10 percent of the $400 million issued; the Grant administration left the remainder in circulation. When the panic struck, Secretary of the Treasury William A. Richardson reissued some of the greenbacks, with mild inflationary effects, but hard-pressed westerners clamored for more. Congress passed legislation (14 April 1874) for the reissue of the remaining $18 million, hardly a large amount of money even then or likely to create inflation, but its reissue was an important symbolic act, demonstrating governmental willingness to acknowledge financial distress.
Grant sympathized with the unemployed and even hoped to create public works programs to provide jobs until he was persuaded to accept the conventional wisdom that government must retrench when revenues fall. His first reaction to the inflation bill was positive, and he drafted a message giving the reasons for his support, but he continued to agonize, found himself unconvinced by his own arguments, and eventually vetoed the bill. Even opponents admired his conscientious approach to the issue and regarded the veto as an act of courage.
The Scandals
During the second term, scandal rocked the Grant administration. Before the second inauguration came the exposure of Crédit Mobilier, a scheme to siphon off the profits made in building the transcontinental railroad, which soiled both Vice President Colfax and his successor, Henry Wilson. Regardless of the fact that the bribery of congressmen took place under Johnson and involved Democrats also, airing the details in 1872 stung the Grant administration. Congressman Benjamin F. Butler's scandalous salary grab paired a reasonable pay increase for government officials (the president's salary was doubled to $50,000) with an outrageous provision making the increase retroactive for two years for congressmen, including those defeated in the last election.
Grant's persistent problems in making suitable appointments were exacerbated by his increased self-confidence after reelection. In this spirit, he re-appointed his brother-in-law as collector of the port of New Orleans although the appointee's initial term had drawn criticism. Charges of corruption against "Boss" Alexander R. Shepherd, director of public works for the District of Columbia, did not prevent Grant from appointing him territorial governor. When Chase died, Grant first asked Conkling to serve as chief justice, influenced both by gratitude for his political support and Julia Grant's belief that black robes would set off Conkling's blond curls. When Conkling declined, Grant went to the opposite extreme by approaching Fish, who also declined. Grant finally nominated Attorney General George H. Williams, whose name was withdrawn after discovery that he had used government funds to supply his wife's carriage. Grant next nominated Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts, whose name was then withdrawn because Cushing had written a letter to Jefferson Davis in March 1861, recommending someone for a position in the Confederate government. Grant eventually came up with Morrison R. Waite of Ohio, who served ably.
Unfortunately, Grant had to make a great many appointments. In all, twenty-five men served in seven cabinet posts, and the frequency of changes increased as the administration reached its conclusion: there were five new department heads in 1876. Even good appointments backfired, as Grant learned when he chose Benjamin F. Bristow as secretary of the treasury in 1874. Scrupulously honest, Bristow pursued the trail of fraud wherever it led, even into the White House. His investigators uncovered the "Whiskey Ring," which schemed to avoid taxes on liquor by bribing the agents who should have collected them; some of the payments ended up in Republican party coffers. An especially odious degree of corruption existed in St. Louis, involving men who had known Grant before the Civil War and who traded on his friendship. Informed of this, Grant wrote, "Let no guilty man escape if it can be avoided."
Further probing revealed that Grant's secretary Babcock had dealings with some of the chief culprits in St. Louis. Grant's belief in Babcock's innocence was so strong that he initially refused to believe that one of the ringleaders in St. Louis was guilty, simply because the man was a close friend of Babcock. Even convictions in St. Louis did not shake this faith. As evidence emerged of Babcock's role, Grant believed that political manipulators had devised a plot to strike at him through his trusted secretary, and he blamed Bristow. Grant acquiesced when Babcock, who had retained military status, demanded a court of inquiry to forestall indictment in St. Louis, but the grand jury acted too quickly and refused to surrender its papers to a military tribunal. When Babcock went to the city to stand trial, Grant intended to accompany him to testify in his behalf. Dissuaded by his cabinet, Grant instead prepared a deposition in Babcock's defense before Chief Justice Waite. Although Babcock eventually won acquittal, enough evidence emerged to require his dismissal from the White House, a move Grant made tardily and only after prodding by Fish. Grant eventually forced Bri-stow to resign, blaming him unfairly for the ruin of Babcock.
A worse scandal followed. William W. Belknap, who had succeeded Rawlins as secretary of war, was charged with receiving bribes from a man who had been appointed to a lucrative tradership at a western army post and who, in turn, let another man actually conduct the business in return for regular cash payments. The case was complicated by the fact that the money paid to Belknap was given to his wife, who died in 1874, and when Belknap married his deceased wife's sister, the payments went to her. As Congress investigated, Belknap realized that he must resign and hurried to the White House one morning, babbling something to the president about protecting a woman's honor, words inducing Grant to accept the resignation immediately. Two Republican senators hurried in, too late, to advise Grant not to accept the resignation. That afternoon the House voted to impeach Belknap. In the ensuing trial, the fact that Grant had accepted the resignation before impeachment played a role in acquittal; even then the Senate voted 37–25 for conviction, which required a two-thirds vote. During the trial, Mrs. Grant continued to receive Mrs. Belknap at the White House; afterward both Belknaps called on the Grants, who received them cordially and continued to express belief in the former secretary's innocence.
Grant believed that the prosecution of Belknap was politically motivated, and surely the fact that 1876 was a presidential election year had not escaped the notice of the Democratic majority in the House, which also investigated the minister to Great Britain, Robert C. Schenck, who had used his position to peddle stock in a dubious silver mine to English investors, and Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson, who was accused of profiting by awarding contracts to a specially favored firm. Grant had already nipped a budding third-term movement in 1875 by writing a public letter, carrying it to the mailbox himself, and then informing his wife, who would have tried to dissuade him. Republicans nominated Hayes, whose two terms as governor of Ohio gave him a reputation for integrity and kept him away from Washington. Grant somewhat resented Hayes for running as a reformer but consoled himself with the thought that Bristow had not been nominated. The scandals of the Grant administration, however salient in retrospect, appear to have had little influence on the presidential election.
Election of 1876
The abandonment of Reconstruction played a greater role in the outcome of the election. During the 1870s, popular opinion in the North swung away from maintaining Reconstruction governments, some of which fell because Republican infighting gave Democrats their opportunity to "redeem" those states; Grant's intention to uphold the laws was circumvented by more sophisticated opponents who combined outward compliance with outrageous subversion. In Mississippi, redeemers overthrew the carpetbag governor, Adelbert Ames, through quiet intimidation of black voters, avoiding the overt violence of earlier campaigns and working so skillfully that Grant refused to answer Ames's anguished pleas. "The whole public are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South," Grant wrote—a statement callous but true.
When the votes were counted in 1876, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden had won a clear majority of the votes cast by whites, and Grant privately stated his belief that Tilden had won the election. But Republican strategists realized that the electoral votes of the remaining Reconstruction governments in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana would enable them to claim the election for Hayes, and illegal disfranchisement of blacks and fraud by whites in all three provided grounds for the case. Urged by party leaders to use the army to assist Republicans in the three states, Grant instead argued that "no man worthy of the office of President should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed there by fraud." As the outcome of the election hung in the balance, Grant withstood pressure to intervene and supported the electoral-commission plan devised by Congress that finally ended the stalemate. His position alleviated a potentially explosive situation.
An Appraisal
In 1872, Greeley and Sumner had advocated an amendment to limit the president to one term. Although designed to injure Grant, enactment would have proved a blessing. If Grant had left the White House after his first term, he might rank among the ablest presidents, remembered for his staunch enforcement of the rights of freedmen combined with conciliation of former Confederates, for reform in Indian policy and civil service, for successful negotiation of the Alabama Claims, and for delivery of peace and prosperity. Black Friday and Santo Domingo might have appeared as minor blemishes on an otherwise outstanding administration. Babcock and Belknap would have left with him, their sins undiscovered.
The second term was another story, in part because the Liberal Republican movement had deprived the president of the aid and counsel of so many reformers and intellectuals, in part because the Panic of 1873 created a situation Grant could not alleviate but for which he could be blamed. As the issues of war receded, so did much of the idealism they had evoked. Aspects of his first term looked backward to continue the work of the Lincoln administration; much in his second term foreshadowed the administrations of Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley. As Grant settled comfortably into the routine of the presidency, he lost some of his independence of thought, falling prey to the influence of party chieftains.
When President Hayes took office, the age of the Civil War and Reconstruction ended. Much won at Appomattox was lost at the Wormley Hotel in Washington, where southerners confirmed prior negotiations with supporters of Hayes to put a Republican president in office in return for the withdrawal of United States troops from the South. In the presidential election of 1872, southern blacks had voted more freely and safely than they would in any succeeding election for nearly a century. In his second term, Grant had relied more heavily on stalwart Republican politicians, successful businessmen, and Fish, none willing to crusade for black civil rights. The wisdom and steady hand of Fish at the State Department had led to successful diplomacy in 1873 when Spanish authorities seized the Virginius, a ship carrying arms to Cuban rebels, even though it flew the American flag (improperly), and summarily executed the crew, which included American citizens. Fish had circumvented the clamor for revenge, instead
receiving an apology and indemnity from the Spanish government. Fish's thorough conservatism and aristocratic disdain for Reconstruction governments had played a less helpful role in domestic policy. Although Republican leaders called for executive action in the South to save the 1876 election, Grant recognized that the time for action had been allowed to slip away.
During the Grant administration, the nation moved into an age of industrialization. Like most of his countrymen, Grant understood the old far better than the new. He sympathized with few of the concerns of militant farmers or workers and regarded Grangers and socialists as dangerous troublemakers. Elected with no clear mandate, Grant proceeded to give the nation a minimal presidency, a pattern broken only by the pressure of events and his own personal idiosyncrasies. Grant dreaded a resurgence of the turmoil that had thrown the nation into war, and the tumultuous aftermath of the presidential election of 1876 indicated that such fears were not altogether unrealistic.
Similarities exist between the presidencies of Grant and Eisenhower. Two West Point graduates with long military service elected as wartime heroes after major wars and two Republican presidents who served two full terms in office, both presided over periods of relative political calm, peace, and prosperity. Eisenhower, as a product of the modern bureaucratic army, had a far better grasp of administration and a low-key personal style that enabled him to quell controversy. Grant's two outstanding faults, a tendency to carry personal loyalty too far and un-yielding stubbornness, suggest a comparison with President Harry Truman, whom he also resembled in blunt, outspoken honesty.
Historical judgment on the Grant administration has commonly been harsh, with Grant ranked among the great failures in the White House. This may be due in part to the contrast between his military and civilian roles and in part to his saliency in American history. Certainly in 1868 and 1872, Democrats exhibited no greater aptitude for government and produced presidential candidates less suitable than Grant. President Grant was charged with the faults of his countrymen: the willingness of the North to abandon the principles of Reconstruction, the unwillingness of the government to assume responsibility for the economic welfare of its citizens, and the acquiescence of Americans in racism and corruption.
The judgment can stand some modification. Grant proved responsive to the people when they wanted peace and prosperity rather than reform. The pendulum of public opinion had swung from high resolve to complacency. Frequent scandals rocked the administration, none of which blemished the president's integrity, however much they impugned his judgment. In his final message to Congress, Grant acknowledged his errors:
It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training.. . . Under such circumstances it is but reasonable to suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred.. . . Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various duties of administering the Government.. . . History shows that no Administration from the time of Washington to the present has been free from these mistakes.. . . Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.
Many presidents who could have written something similar did not, and Grant's candid statement of fact has sometimes been misread as an apology for his presidency.
Soon after leaving the White House, the Grants began a two-and-a-half-year tour around the world that combined elements of a private vacation and state visit. After his return, Grant again encountered third-term sentiment, not discouraged this time, that came close to success at the 1880 Republican convention. Somewhat at loose ends, Grant entered the Wall Street firm of Grant and Ward, a partnership of his second son, Ulysses, Jr., and Ferdinand Ward. He settled into a comfortable life in New York City with only minor demands on his attention from the firm, in which he was a silent partner, but the one whose reputation attracted investors. In 1884 the firm collapsed, Ward was exposed as a swindler, and Grant's reputation was sullied. Faced with poverty, Grant began to write accounts of his battles for the Century to provide money for his family and unexpectedly found that he enjoyed writing enough to undertake book-length memoirs. Stricken by cancer, Grant battled excruciating pain to finish his book while the entire nation watched with admiration the final struggle between death and Grant's indomitable will. Grant amazed his physicians by living long enough to complete his memoirs. On 23 July 1885, a few days after the last pages went to the publisher, he died quietly. Grant's friend and publisher, Mark Twain, jotted in his notebook when he learned of Grant's death: "He was a very great man—& superlatively good."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For a brief, incisive, and highly readable biography of Grant, nothing surpasses Bruce Catton, U. S. Grant and the American Military Tradition (Boston, 1954). Lloyd Lewis began a multivolume biography but died after completing Captain Sam Grant (Boston, 1950), which covers Grant's life to the outbreak of the Civil War. Catton carried this superb biography through the Civil War in Grant Moves South (Boston, 1960) and Grant Takes Command (Boston, 1969).
The only major study of Grant focusing on the presidency is William B. Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant: Politician (New York, 1935), now outdated. Two popular biographies of Grant that cover the presidency are W. E. Woodward, Meet General Grant (New York, 1928), and William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York, 1981). Both Woodward and McFeely portray Grant as a symbol of his America. Woodward writes as a neo-Confederate, and McFeely as a modern liberal; both dislike Grant. A biography that goes to the opposite extreme in defending Grant is Louis A. Coolidge, Ulysses S. Grant (Boston and New York, 1917). Brooks D. Simpson, Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), also takes a uniformly favorable view of Grant. A better-balanced account is available in John A. Carpenter, Ulysses S. Grant (New York, 1970). Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant: His Life and Character (New York, 1898), incorporates information from interviews with people who knew Grant.
Grant told his own story in Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (New York, 1885–1886), which stops at the end of the Civil War. This important and readable literary classic served as the point of departure for chapter 4 of Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War (New York, 1962). A comprehensive edition of Grant's own writings is John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill., 1967–), of which twenty-four volumes have been published to date, with chronological coverage through October 1870. Mrs. Grant's charming autobiography is available in Simon, ed., The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York, 1975).
Allan Nevins, Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration (New York, 1936), a detailed account enriched with numerous extracts from Fish's diary, remains indispensable for both foreign and domestic policy. An anecdotal account by Grant's secretary Adam Badeau, Grant in Peace (Hartford, Conn., 1887), not wholly reliable, contains information unavailable elsewhere. Southern policy receives detailed analysis in William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869–1877 (Baton Rouge, La., 1979). Indian policy has evoked a copious literature, notably Robert H. Keller, Jr., American Protestantism and United States Indian Policy, 1869–1882 (Lincoln, Nebr., 1983). Standard books for approaching crucial issues include Ari Hoogenboom, Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865–1883 (Urbana, Ill., 1961), and Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879 (Princeton, N.J., 1964).
Recent works include Geoffrey Perret, Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier and President (New York, 1997), and Jean Edward Smith, Grant (New York, 2001).
Grant, Ulysses S.
Ulysses S. Grant
Born April 27, 1822
Point Pleasant, Ohio
Died July 23, 1885
Mount McGregor, New York
U.S. president, Civil War general
"The country having just emerged from a great rebellion, many questions will come before it for settlement in the next four years which preceding Administrations have never had to deal with. In meeting these it is desirable that they should be approached calmly, without prejudice, hate, or sectional pride, remembering that the greatest good to the greatest number is the object to be attained."
Ulysses S. Grant was president for eight of the twelve years of the Reconstruction era (1865–77). The popular Civil War general hoped to help reunify North and South and accepted the Republican nomination for president in 1868 with the statement "Let us have peace," which became his campaign theme. As president, however, Grant became upset at how slow respect for the civil rights of African Americans came, and pursued aggressive action against Black Codes (laws intended to limit the rights of African Americans) and violence in Southern states. Meanwhile, the Grant administration was riddled by several scandals—none of which involved the president, but all of which showed Grant's poor judgment in selecting officials for his administration. A weak economy also plagued the Grant years.
Expert on horses
Grant was born with the name Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822. Most often called Ulysses by his family, he was the oldest of six children of Jesse Grant and Hannah Simpson Grant. The family soon moved to a farm in Georgetown, Ohio, to be nearer to the raw materials Grant's father needed for his tanning business. (A tanner produces leather from the hides of horses.) Growing up around horses, Grant quickly learned how to handle and care for them and to appraise their health and value.
Grant attended school in Georgetown and then moved on to the Maysville Academy across the Ohio River in Maysville, Kentucky, when he was fourteen. He studied at the Academy from 1836 to 1837, and the following year he attended the Presbyterian Academy in Ripley, Ohio. As Grant was completing his schooling, his father asked the local U.S. representative, Thomas L. Hamer (1800–1846), to help secure an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy for his son. Hamer agreed and filled out the necessary paperwork. However, Hamer wrote in Grant's first name on the paperwork as Ulysses (instead of Hiram) and his middle name as Simpson (the maiden name of Grant's mother). Grant kept the name change and left for the Military Academy at West Point in 1839.
Although Grant was an average student at West Point, he performed especially well in mathematics and finished first in his class in horsemanship. After graduating in 1843, Grant was assigned to the infantry (where he was trained to fight on foot) and stationed near St. Louis, Missouri. His roommate at West Point, Frederick Tracy Dent (1821–1892), lived near St. Louis and invited Grant to his family's home. Grant met Dent's sister, Julia, during those visits. She shared his love for horseback riding.
The couple was riding in a horse and buggy one day to attend a wedding when they came to a bridge that was nearly flooded over. Julia grabbed hold of Grant's arm and said, "I'll cling to you no matter what happens." After they passed safely over the bridge, Grant proposed to her. He began by saying, "I wonder if you would cling to me all of my life." The couple became engaged in 1844, but did not marry until 1848 because Grant left to fight in the Mexican-American War (1846–48). They would have four children: Frederick, Ulysses Jr., Ellen, and Jesse.
From military hero to hard-luck farmer
Shortly after Grant became engaged, he was sent to serve in Louisiana. When a dispute about the location of the border between Mexico and Texas led to war, Grant served in the Mexican-American War under two distinguished commanders, Zachary Taylor (1784–1850), who would be elected president in 1848, and Winfield Scott (1786–1866), who would lose the presidential election of 1852. Grant fought with distinction and earned several citations for bravery.
After the war, Grant returned to St. Louis and married. Julia Grant joined him on assignments in New York and Michigan. The couple returned to St. Louis in 1850, where their first child was born. Grant was returned to duty in New York in 1851 before being transferred to Fort Vancouver in the Oregon Territory in 1852. (The Oregon Territory comprised the present-day states of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.) Grant was unhappy in the Northwest and resigned from the army in 1854.
As a civilian, Grant endured a series of failures over the next few years. He tried to make a living as a farmer, but met with poor crop yields on the farm he called "Hardscrabble." He lost the farm altogether in 1857. He was not successful as a real estate agent, either. Finally, in need of money and a job to support his family, Grant began working in his father's store and moved his family to Galena, Illinois, in 1860. He had only ever been professionally successful as a soldier. Grant returned to the military after forces of the Confederate States of America (CSA) fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 18, 1861, and the Civil War (1861–65) began.
Civil War leader
As the man with the most military training and experience in Galena, Grant chaired a town meeting to discuss enlistment, then began training recruits. He was appointed colonel and charged with commanding the Twenty-first Volunteer Infantry Regiment by Illinois governor Richard Yates (1815–1873). When President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; served 1861–65) expanded the Union army in August 1861, Grant was promoted to brigadier general. His command encompassed Missouri and Illinois, with a base in Cairo, Illinois, a town on the Mississippi River.
While the Union army was performing poorly during the early part of the war, Grant led his troops in successful campaigns in Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee. In April 1862, Grant regrouped his troops to hold their line in the major and bloody battle of Shiloh, Virginia. Some military leaders questioned Grant's preparedness for the battle, but Grant was supported by President Lincoln. Later that summer and early autumn, Grant's forces won battles in Mississippi. Grant was then instructed to overtake the Mississippi town of Vicksburg, the Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River.
After failing to take Vicksburg during December 1862, Grant moved his forces through back country in the spring of 1863 and took control of Jackson, Mississippi, before laying siege on Vicksburg. After almost two months of fighting, Grant accepted the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863. That same day, Union forces won a major battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The two victories helped turn the tide of the war in favor of the Union.
President Lincoln had changed his commanding generals several times during the war, wanting a leader who was aggressive. In March 1864, Lincoln appointed Grant the supreme commander of Union forces. Grant led the Wilderness Campaign, a large offensive to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, which left nearly thirty thousand dead and ended in a stalemate. More heavy casualties occurred in the Battle of the Bloody Angle as the Union offensive continued from the summer of 1864 to the winter of 1865. Union forces won many battles throughout Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, while Grant besieged the forces of Confederate general Robert E. Lee (1807–1870; see Confederate Leaders entry). Finally, on April 9, 1865, General Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War.
Political battles begin
Grant's triumphs during the war made him the most popular man in the United States. He was commissioned by Congress as General of the Army, a position that only former president George Washington (1732–1799; served 1789–97) had held previously. With the approval of President Lincoln, Grant had allowed lenient terms of surrender for the Confederacy. After Lincoln was assassinated days after the end of the war, Congress planned a stricter and more punitive policy toward the Southern states that had seceded. Congress became embroiled in a power struggle with Andrew Johnson (1808–1875; served 1865–69; see entry), who succeeded Lincoln as president and proposed an even more lenient program of Reconstruction than Lincoln.
Grant became involved in a tense political battle between the president and Congress. He agreed to serve as secretary of war after President Johnson had fired Edwin M. Stanton (1814–1869; see entry) from the position. Congress demanded the right to vote on the removal, and when the president refused, Congress voted to impeach Johnson. Meanwhile, after completing his assignment as secretary of war, Grant decided against continuing in the position, claiming he had only planned to hold it on a temporary basis. Johnson felt betrayed, and Grant began to show his support for powerful Republican leaders in Congress—the so-called Radical Reconstructionists who opposed Johnson and wanted a harsher Reconstruction policy.
In 1868, Republicans nominated Grant as their candidate for president. He easily defeated former New York governor Horatio Seymour (1810–1886) in the November election. In his inaugural address, Grant called for an end to regional conflict, but he would have a troubled administration. The end of the Civil War did not end racial oppression (persecution); the Republican majority in Congress exerted great federal power over the Southern states as they reentered the union; and Grant showed poor judgment in his selection of officials for his administration.
Problems of the Reconstruction
Just prior to Grant's inauguration, Congress proposed the Fifteenth Amendment, which declared that the right to vote could not be denied "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Within a year, the amendment was accepted by state legislatures and became law. Grant contributed to the passage of the amendment by requesting that Nebraska governor David Butler (1829–1891) call a special session of the state's legislature to quickly debate the amendment.
However, racial problems persisted, and Grant responded to incidents of violence, intimidation, and disorder in the South. The Enforcement Act of 1870 empowered him to use federal troops to protect the voting rights of African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was directed specifically toward a white supremacist group that organized violence against African Americans. The law empowered Grant to impose martial law (military control over an area). Despite several uses of federal force, however, little improvement was made in race relations.
During his second term, in 1874, Grant sent federal troops to Vicksburg, following a mass murder of African Americans. Grant supported the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited racial segregation (separation) in public housing and transportation. The act was later declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1883. The Court ruled that the federal government could not force states and local communities to act against segregation.
Grant faced economic crises after taking office in March 1869. During the Civil War, the government had printed money, called "greenbacks," to help farmers and workers pay for the necessities of life. Unlike coins, green-backs were not backed by gold reserves (valuable gold the government held to represent the value of money it minted) and their value became unstable—sometimes a greenback was equal to a dollar, sometimes two greenbacks equaled a dollar. Grant delayed in addressing the problem.
Meanwhile, two wealthy men, Jay Gould (1836–1892) and Jim Fisk (1834–1872), bought large amounts of gold, making the precious metal even more valuable and making greenbacks even less valuable. The gold purchase created a financial crisis in the stock market. The market closed on September 24, 1869, a day called "Black Friday." Grant acted quickly to authorize the U.S. government to sell some of its gold reserves—making more gold available on the market and helping reduce its value.
Fisk and Gould had wanted to involve the president in their scheme. They were assisted by Abel Rathbone Corbin, who was married to Grant's sister. Corbin provided the financiers with access to the president. Grant not only turned away Fisk and Gould, he quickly and effectively acted against them, but the relationship became the subject of a congressional investigation and some public embarrassment for Grant.
Nevertheless, Grant was a popular president. Economic conditions were improving in 1872, lower taxes on imported goods kept prices downs, and repeal of an income tax that had been instituted during the Civil War all contributed to his easy reelection that year.
The Grant family prospered, meanwhile, while Grant was president. Fred Grant, the couple's oldest son, graduated from West Point; Ulysses Jr. graduated from Harvard and became a presidential secretary; and daughter Nellie enjoyed a lavish, well-publicized White House wedding in 1874.
In foreign affairs, the Grant administration was led by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish (1801–1893) (see box). Fish inherited the controversy over the Alabama, a cruiser purchased by the Confederacy in Great Britain and used during the Civil War. The purchase violated British neutrality during the war and contributed to a group in rebellion against the United States. Fish negotiated the Treaty of Washington, signed by Grant in 1871, where Great Britain acknowledged violations and agreed to arbitration over monetary settlement (in arbitration, two parties in conflict submit claims to an impartial third party that decides on a settlement). The arbitration commission awarded the United States $15.5 million in damages.
Grant became interested in annexing (claiming as U.S. territory) Santo Domingo, a nation in the Caribbean Ocean that had won independence from Spain. Representatives aligned with Santo Domingo president Bonaventura Báez approached Secretary of State Fish with an offer to sell the country to the United States. A treaty of annexation was negotiated. Because all treaties negotiated by the president are subject to approval by the U.S. Senate by a two-thirds majority, the annexation proposal went to a vote; it failed. Grant continued to press for annexation of Santo Domingo after the annexation treaty was rejected in 1871, despite no sign of additional support. At the very end of his second term, Grant raised the issue again in his last message to Congress.
Troubled second term
The economy took a downturn in 1873. The poor business conditions affected financier Jay Cooke (1821–1905; see entry), whose system of banks had made loans to the Northern Pacific Railroad, which was building a cross-country line from Duluth, Minnesota, to Tacoma, Washington. Cooke could not make money through investments to support the loans he had provided and could not compensate customers who had deposited their money with Cooke's banks. The collapse on September 18, 1873, of Jay Cooke and Company started a large-scale financial recession called the Panic of 1873. Stocks quickly lost value. Beginning on September 20, 1873, the New York Stock Exchange closed for ten days.
During the first year of Grant's second term, Congress completed an investigation of the Crédit Mobilier scandal that implicated Schuyler Colfax (1823–1885), vice president during Grant's first term, and Henry Wilson (1812–1875), vice president from 1873 to his death in 1875 during Grant's second term. Grant's secretary of the treasury, William A. Richardson (1821–1896), was implicated in a tax fraud scheme. Pressured to remove Richardson from office, Grant
Hamilton Fish
In an administration riddled by scandal, Hamilton Fish served with distinction as secretary of state under President Ulysses S. Grant. Fish was born on August 3, 1808, in New York City. His father, a politician, named his son after his friend, the late statesman Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804). Fish studied at a private school before going to Columbia College, from which he graduated in 1827. After three years of studying in a law office, Fish formed a law partnership with William B. Lawrence. Fish married Julia Kean on December 15, 1836, and the couple had eight children.
After becoming involved in New York politics, Fish won a seat in Congress in 1842. He was not reelected, but in 1848 he was elected governor of New York. His administration helped establish free public schools throughout the state. From 1851 to 1857, Fish served in the U.S. Senate. As a member of the Whig Party, which existed from the mid-1830s to the mid-1850s, he was against the expansion of slavery. Fish joined the Republican Party after it was formed in 1854. The Party was comprised of former Whig Party members as well as former Democrats who were against slavery.
Fish and his family traveled in Europe for two years before returning to the United States in 1860. Fish began campaigning for Abraham Lincoln, the Republican nominee for president. During the Civil War, Fish served on the Union defense committee of New York and as a commissioner of the federal government for the relief of prisoners, contributing to the negotiations for an agreement on exchanges of prisoners between the warring sides.
After being elected president in 1868, Ulysses S. Grant wanted Fish in his administration. When Grant offered him the position of secretary of state, Fish refused, but later decided to take the post. Fish was involved in three major foreign policy areas for the Grant administration: the attempt to annex Santo Domingo; the pursuit of war reparations (compensation) from Great Britain for having aided the Confederacy during the Civil War; and tense relations with Spain over its colony of Cuba.
Santo Domingo had won independence from Spain, but a small group wanted to reunify with Spain. Some Grant administration officials envisioned an American naval base in Santo Domingo as a means for more power in the region. Santo Domingo government officials approached Fish with an offer to sell the country to the United States. Fish negotiated a treaty of annexation as a first option and an agreement for a naval station as a second option. But when the proposal was taken to a vote, the U.S. Senate failed to approve the treaty. Previous to the vote, it was revealed that Orville E. Babcock (1835–1884), a secretary to Grant, had offered $100,000 and weapons to assist Santo Domingo president Bonaventura Báez with opposition in his country. Fish was not involved in the situation, which brought embarrassment to the Grant administration.
Fish's most notable achievement as secretary of state was settling a controversy with Great Britain. During the Civil War, Britain had equipped or supplied Confederate boats in British ports, a violation of Britain's neutrality. The boats caused damage to commercial and military vessels of the North. Americans demanded huge reparations and some wanted Great Britain to cede (give) Canada, then a part of the British empire, to the United States. Fish successfully negotiated the Treaty of Washington (1871), which provided for arbitration of U.S. claims. An arbitrator set the amount of damages paid to the United States at $15.5 million.
Fish's other major foreign concern was the Spanish colony of Cuba. A rebellion in Cuba was put down by Spain, and in the process some Americans were injured. In addition to seeking reparations for the injuries, the United States demanded reform in the ways Spain governed the island. Tensions were easing until, in 1873, a ship called the Virginius registered as American and, with a mainly American crew, was captured and taken into a Cuban port because the vessel belonged to a Cuban revolutionary group based in New York. Spanish authorities murdered the captain and fifty-three of the crew and passengers. Amid cries for retribution and war with Spain, Fish negotiated a settlement that included reparations for families of the deceased Americans.
After Grant's second term as president ended in 1877, Fish retired to private life in New York. He was sixty-eight at the time. He stayed active in the development of Columbia College (now Columbia University), from which he had graduated in 1827. Fish died in New York on September 6, 1893.
fired him from his cabinet post and then appointed Richardson as a judge on the U.S. Court of Claims.
Benjamin H. Bristow (1832–1896) replaced Richardson and began an investigation of a conspiracy involving taxes paid on whiskey. More than two hundred people were involved in what became known as the Whiskey Ring. Grant's private secretary, Orville E. Babcock (1835–1884), was among those implicated for misuse of tax collection on the sale of whiskey. Meanwhile, Grant's secretary of war, William W. Belknap (1829–1890), was discovered to have illegally taken money the government earned from sales of forts and trading posts to the public.
Grant entered office in 1869 hoping for improvement in relations with Native Americans. However, Americans continued moving westward and inevitably ran into conflicts over land with Native Americans. Chief Joseph (1840–1904), the famous Native American leader of the Nez Perce, helped convince Grant to issue an Executive Order in 1873 that recognized the Wallowa Valley of Oregon as Nez Perce territory. Two years later, however, Grant rescinded the order after pressure by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to permit the building of a wagon road that would bring more settlers into the valley. In 1876, Native Americans surprised and defeated the forces of General George A. Custer (1839–1876) at the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana.
Despite scandals, none of which involved Grant directly, economic hardships, and ongoing sectional and racial problems, Grant remained a popular president. Many Republicans wanted Grant to run for an unprecedented third term, but Grant had enough of the presidency. Instead, the Grant family went on a world tour. Grant was an honored guest at ceremonies in several nations. After visiting Europe, Africa, and Asia, the Grants settled in New York City. In 1880, Republicans again wanted Grant to run for president, but after early support at the party's convention, Grant was passed over.
Grant remained active, serving as president of the Mexican Southern Railroad Company beginning in 1881 (at the age of fifty-nine). He helped negotiate a trade treaty agreement between the United States and Mexico in 1883. However, Grant went bankrupt in 1884. He had invested his life savings in his son's investment firm, but financial scandals drove the firm out of business.
To make some money, Grant contributed articles on his Civil War experiences to Century magazine. Grant's friend, writer Mark Twain (1835–1910), urged him to expand his articles into memoirs. For close to a year and in ill health, Grant wrote his autobiography, which was published as PersonalMemoirs of U. S. Grant in 1885. He died a few days after completing his memoirs, which went on to be a best-seller.
A crowd of mourners estimated at over one million people lined the streets of New York City to witness Grant's funeral procession. His body was laid in a temporary cemetery until Grant's Tomb was completed in 1897. The tomb bears the inscription, "Let us have peace."
For More Information
Books
Grant, Ulysses S. Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. New York: C. L. Webster & Co., 1885. Multiple reprints.
Mantell, Martin E. Johnson, Grant and the Politics of Reconstruction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973.
O'Brien, Steven. Ulysses S. Grant. New York: Chelsea House, 1991.
Smith, Jean Edward. Grant. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Web Sites
"The American Experience: Ulysses S. Grant." PBS.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/grant/ (accessed on July 13, 2004).
"Ulysses S. Grant Association." Southern Illinois University.http://www.lib.siu.edu/projects/usgrant/ (accessed on July 13, 2004).
Ulysses S. Grant Home Page.http://www.mscomm.com/~ulysses/ (accessed on July 13, 2004).
Ulysses S. Grant Network.http://www.css.edu/usgrant/ (accessed on July 13, 2004).
Grant, Ulysses S.
Grant, Ulysses S. 1822-1885
Born as Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822, at Point Pleasant, Ohio, the son of Jesse Root and Hannah Simpson Grant, Grant grew up in nearby Georgetown. In 1839 he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating in the middle of his class in 1843; it was at this time that he became Ulysses S. Grant, a result of a West Point clerical error. During the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), he saw action in several battles, despite the fact that he served as quartermaster and commissary officer for his regiment. Marrying Julia Dent in 1848, he found peacetime military service frustrating professionally and personally, and resigned his commission as captain in 1854. Over the next seven years, Grant struggled to provide for his family, which eventually included four children. A combination of bad luck, uncertain health, and the impact of the economic panic of 1857 left him impoverished before he took a position at his father’s general store in Galena, Illinois, in 1860. With the outbreak of the Civil War (1861–1865) the following year, he offered his services, eventually securing a colonel’s commission; before long he found himself a brigadier general, courtesy of the influence of his hometown congressman.
In 1861 Grant led U.S. forces southward into Kentucky and Missouri, securing Paducah in September. The following year, forces under his command, aided by a gunboat flotilla, captured Fort Henry (February 6, 1862) and Fort Donelson (February 16, 1862), along with some twelve thousand Confederate soldiers. Two months later, he fended off a Confederate attack at Shiloh, Tennessee (April 6–7, 1862), although the high losses he suffered and his lack of preparedness brought him under heavy criticism.
Late in the fall of 1862, after fending off several Confederate efforts to retake western Tennessee, Grant began planning to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, the major remaining Confederate stronghold along the Mississippi River. After several abortive efforts, he took the city on July 4, 1863, following a campaign of marching and fighting that kept superior enemy forces off balance. The victory secured his hold on an important command: In November he scored another triumph at Chattanooga, Tennessee, a victory that paved the way for President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) to elevate him to overall command of the armies of the United States in 1864. In less than fourteen months from assuming command, Grant devised the grand strategy and coordinated the campaigns that led to the collapse of the Confederacy. He took charge of the forces opposing the Confederacy’s leading general, Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), and in some six weeks of bloody campaigning forced Lee back to defend the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Holding Lee in check while other Union armies triumphed (as did Lincoln in his reelection bid), Grant pushed Lee out of Richmond at the beginning of April, tracked him down, and forced him to surrender what remained of his army on April 9, 1865.
Immediately after the war, Grant urged reconciliation between North and South, but he quickly came to oppose white supremacist violence and to support recognizing black civil and eventually political rights. His popularity as a war hero made him an ideal presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 1868: His triumph came in the first election in which black Americans voted in large numbers, enough to secure Grant’s majority in the popular vote. Having run for the presidency in the belief that only he could stave off a Democratic resurgence and preserve the fruits of military victory, Grant unsuccessfully attempted to balance sectional reconciliation with federal protection of black equality before the law.
During Grant’s first term, the former Confederate states completed their return to civil government, while the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment appeared to safeguard black voting. His efforts to subdue terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan enjoyed initial success, although eventually a combination of white supremacist persistence, eroding public support, adverse court decisions, and inadequate institutional foundations led to the recapture of the former Confederate states by the Democratic Party. Although Grant oversaw the establishment of a stable deflationary monetary policy and a peaceful settlement of outstanding issues with Great Britain, his efforts to build a political base through patronage to help him pass his agenda, especially the attempted annexation of the Dominican Republic, only spurred greater opposition within his own party. Eventually, these opponents formed the short-lived Liberal Republican movement, which unsuccessfully tried to thwart Grant’s bid for reelection in 1872.
The onset of economic depression and the revelation of corruption within the administration marred Grant’s second term, as did the collapse of his peace policy toward Native Americans. Leaving office in 1877 after playing a critical role in resolving the disputed election of 1876, Grant took a trip around the world, returning to fail in a bid for the 1880 Republican presidential nomination. Moving to Wall Street, Grant tried his hand at business once more, only to be impoverished when he became the victim of a swindler. Soon thereafter, he learned he had throat cancer. In order to provide for his family, Grant commenced writing his autobiography, completing the manuscript, widely praised as a masterpiece, only days before his death at Mount MacGregor, New York, on July 23, 1885. He was buried in New York City; in 1897 his remains were reinterred in a massive tomb overlooking the Hudson River.
As a general, Grant displayed a doggedness and aggressiveness that sometimes overshadowed his ability to plan and conduct major campaigns and coordinate his forces, skills not evident in his predecessors in high command. Critics claim that he was a blundering bloody butcher, but the indictment does not stand up under examination. He also displayed a shrewd willingness to cooperate with his civil superiors and came to embrace both emancipation and the waging of hard war as keys to victory. As such, he has been cited as a model for military leadership and business management, something of an irony given his failures in business. Assessments of his presidency as a flat failure have given way to a more balanced view that takes into account the difficult problems Grant faced and gives him due credit for his successes and for exhibiting some political skill.
SEE ALSO Ku Klux Klan; Lee, Robert E.; Lincoln, Abraham; Mexican-American War; Native Americans; Presidency, The; Reconstruction Era (U.S.); Republican Party; Slavery; Terrorism; U.S. Civil War
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bunting, Josiah, III. 2004. Ulysses S. Grant. New York: Times Books.
Simon, John Y., et al., eds. 1967–2005. The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Simpson, Brooks D. 2000. Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Brooks D. Simpson
Grant, Ulysses S.
Graduating in 1843, he was assigned to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis County. In the Mexican War, 1846–48, Grant displayed commendable gallantry under Zachary Taylor, but chafed at assignments as quartermaster and commissary in the army of Winfield Scott until the final approach to Mexico City provided opportunity to earn brevet (temporary) promotion to captain. Grant encountered different styles of command and management, maintained an aversion to military protocol, and believed that the war represented aggression against Mexico.
In 1848, Grant married Julia Dent, daughter of a Missouri slaveholder, and in 1850 they had a son. Grant was soon separated from his family when the army assigned him to the Pacific Coast. Paid too little to reunite the family in California, he was miserably unhappy; nonetheless, tales of his heavy drinking then and later are unsupported. He resigned in 1854 to begin farming on his father‐in‐law's estate in St. Louis County. When his farm failed in the Panic of 1857, he could not find employment in St. Louis. By 1860, necessity forced him to his father's leather goods store in Galena, Illinois.
When the Civil War began, Grant, impelled by a sense of patriotic obligation, reluctantly left his wife and four children. He served Governor Richard Yates of Illinois temporarily as aide and mustering officer but failed to find an appropriate command in the frenzied pursuit of officerships for units of U.S. Volunteers. Yates eventually gave him a regiment, and Grant quickly established discipline and marched the 21st Illinois to Missouri. Before he engaged the enemy, he acquired promotion to brigadier general chiefly because an Illinois congressman had no superior candidate in his home district. Chance placed Grant in command at Cairo, Illinois, just as the Confederates occupied Columbus and Hickman on the Mississippi River in previously neutral Kentucky. Grant then boldly occupied Paducah and Smithland at the mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. On 7 November 1861, he led 3,000 troops from Cairo to Belmont, Missouri. Initially successful in overrunning a Confederate camp, Grant was unprepared for the counterattack that drove his men back to their transports in disarray. Because Grant had displayed aggressiveness and suffered no greater casualties than he had inflicted, this indecisive encounter provided experience without damaging his prospects.
In January 1862, Grant wrung permission from his conservative superior, Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, to attack Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Union gunboats compelled the fort's surrender (6 February) before the arrival of all Grant's forces, and much of the garrison fled to Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. Grant followed, sending gunboats to the Cumberland and troops overland. Rather than await expected reinforcements, Grant then besieged the 21,000 Confederates with his own army of 15,000. On 14 February, the gunboats attacked unsuccessfully. The next day, while Grant visited the wounded naval commander on shipboard, a surprise Confederate attack rolled up the Union right and opened the road for escape. As the Confederate commander dawdled, Grant returned and launched a counterattack that removed all options save “unconditional surrender”—Grant's phrase that matched his initials and provided a popular nickname. Grant captured about 15,000 men and compelled the Confederates to fall back from Kentucky and much of middle Tennessee. The first major Union victory of the war won Grant promotion to major general.
Advancing up the Tennessee River to attack Corinth, Mississippi, Grant assembled troops at Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee, where Confederates unexpectedly attacked at Shiloh Church (6 April) in the Battle of Shiloh. Pushed to the edge of destruction on the riverbank after a frightful encounter, Grant used reinforcements for a second day of fighting that recaptured the field. Grant's resilience and indomitability won acclaim, but heavy casualties and rumors raised questions that temporarily cost him his command. Not until Halleck left for Washington as general in chief did Grant resume leadership.
His campaign in the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, began in late 1862 with setbacks. Confederate cavalry captured Grant's supply base at Holly Springs and William Tecumsch Sherman's premature assault on Vicksburg failed. After a winter of frustration, Grant's supporting fleet ran past the batteries and landed troops south of Vicksburg. Grant then unexpectedly struck at Jackson, Mississippi, before turning toward Vicksburg. His lightning moves prevented the cooperation of two Confederate armies in Mississippi and led to eventual surrender of the besieged citadel of Vicksburg in July 1863. Grant's military masterpiece virtually opened the river and bisected the Confederacy. A smashing victory against Gen. Braxton Bragg at Chattanooga in November 1863 firmly established his reputation as the Union's finest commander.
Promoted to lieutenant general and given command of all Union forces in March 1864, Grant left Halleck in Washington as chief of staff while he accompanied the Army of the Potomac in Virginia. He planned a coordinated campaign with two western armies converging on Atlanta and three eastern armies aimed at Richmond. In spring 1864, Grant faced Robert E. Lee in a bloody series of encounters, including at the Battle of the Wilderness (5–6 May), fighting at Spotsylvania (7–19 May), North Anna (23–26 May), and Cold Harbor (1–3 June) in the Wilderness to Petersburg Campaign. Shocking Union casualties accompanied Grant's approach to Richmond, but a brilliant crossing of the James River then brought his armies to thinly defended Petersburg, Virginia, where subordinates immediately bungled a dazzling opportunity to end the war. Grant settled uncomfortably into siege. Four of five armies had failed to achieve their missions; only Sherman's victory in the Battle of Atlanta (2 September) redeemed his strategy.
Grant maintained pressure on Lee as Sherman's march to the sea again divided the Confederacy. In late March 1865, Grant launched another lightning campaign that drove Lee from Richmond and to surrender at Appomattox Courthouse (9 April). President Andrew Johnson tried to harness Grant's popularity in an effort to restore Southern statehood at the expense of the freed slaves. Grant's refusal to abandon his soldiers or his black veterans frustrated Johnson's attempt to replace Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton with Grant and drove him to support the Republican Party. Grant's reputation as a wartime commander carried him on to two terms as president (1869–77). Contrast between expectation and fulfillment in the political arena dimmed Grant's fame, which revived shortly after his death with posthumous publication of his Memoirs—a splendid military autobiography written with fairness, candor, and surprising humor.
Grant's popular reputation as an impassive “butcher” whose victories depended on luck and larger armies arose amid strivings for sectional reconciliation. Military analysis by the English soldier‐scholar J. F. C. Fuller and later by American military historians T. Harry Williams and Bruce Catton promoted reappraisal. Lincoln's understanding that Grant deplored politics but valued freedom in military matters formed the cornerstone of their effective partnership. Sherman, who also deferred to Grant's military mastery, became his ideal lieutenant. Grant's resilience, unpredictability, and strategic grasp continue to challenge scholars, as does Grant's meteoric rise from provincial clerk to military eminence. “The laws of successful war in one generation would insure defeat in another,” he wrote, but arguments that his innovations foreshadowed modern total warfare lack historical perspective.
[See also Civil War: Military and Diplomatic Course; Commander in Chief, President as; Reconstruction.]
Bibliography
U.S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols., 1885–86.
Horace Porter , Campaigning with Grant, 1897.
J. F. C. Fuller , Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, 1933.
T. Harry Williams , Lincoln and His Generals, 1952.
Bruce Catton , Grant Moves South, 1960.
John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 20 vols. to date, 1967–.
Bruce Catton , Grant Takes Command, 1969.
William S. McFeely , Grant: A Biography, 1981.
Brooks D. Simpson , Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868, 1991.
John Y. Simon , Grant, Lincoln, and Unconditional Surrender, in Gabor S. Boritt, ed., Lincoln's Generals, 1994.
John Y. Simon
Ulysses Simpson Grant
Ulysses Simpson Grant
Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-1885), having led the Northern armies to victory in the Civil War, was elected eighteenth president of the United States.
As a general in the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant possessed the right qualities for prosecuting offensive warfare against the brilliant tactics of his Southern adversary Robert E. Lee. Bold and indefatigable, Grant believed in destroying enemy armies rather than merely occupying enemy territory. His strategic genius and tenacity overcame the Confederates' advantage of fighting a defensive war on their own territory. However, Grant lacked the political experience and subtlety to cope with the nation's postwar problems, and his presidency was marred by scandals and an economic depression.
Ulysses S. Grant was born on April 27, 1822, in a cabin at Point Pleasant, Ohio. He attended district schools and worked at his father's tannery and farm. In 1839 Grant's father secured an appointment to West Point for his unenthusiastic son. Grant excelled as a horseman but was an indifferent student. When he graduated in 1843, he accepted an infantry commission. Although not in sympathy with American objectives in the war with Mexico in 1846, he fought courageously under Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, emerging from the conflict as a captain.
In subsequent years Capt. "Sam" Grant served at a variety of bleak army posts. Lonely for his wife and son (he had married Julia Dent in 1848), the taciturn, unhappy captain began drinking. Warned by his commanding officer, Grant resigned from the Army in July 1854. He borrowed money for transportation to St. Louis, Mo., where he joined his family and tried a series of occupations without much success: farmer, realtor, candidate for county engineer, and customshouse clerk. He was working as a store clerk at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861.
Rise to Fame
This was a war Grant did believe in, and he offered his services. The governor of Illinois appointed him colonel of the 21st Illinois Volunteers in June 1861. Grant took his regiment to Missouri, where, to his surprise, he was promoted to brigadier general.
Grant persuaded his superiors to authorize an attack on Ft. Henry on the Tennessee River and Ft. Donelson on the Cumberland in order to gain Union control of these two important rivers. Preceded by gunboats, Grant's 17,000 troops marched out of Cairo, Ill., on Feb. 2, 1862. After Ft. Henry surrendered, the soldiers took Ft. Donelson. Here Confederate general Simon B. Buckner, one of Grant's West Point classmates (and the man who, much earlier, had loaned the impecunious captain the money to rejoin his family), requested an armistice. Grant's reply became famous: "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." Buckner surrendered. One of the first important Northern victories of the war, the capture of Ft. Donelson won Grant promotion to major general.
Grant next concentrated 38,000 men at Pittsburgh Landing (Shiloh) on the Tennessee River, preparing for an offensive. He unwisely neglected to prepare for a possible Confederate counteroffensive. At dawn on April 6, 1862, the Confederate attack surprised the sleeping Union soldiers. Grant did his best to prevent a rout, and at the end of the day Union lines still held, but the Confederates were in command of most of the field. The next day the Union Army counterattacked with 25,000 fresh troops, who had arrived during the night, and drove the Southerners into full retreat. The North had triumphed in one of the bloodiest battles of the war, but Grant was criticized for his carelessness. Urged to replace Grant, President Abraham Lincoln refused, saying, "I can't spare this man—he fights."
Grant set out to recoup his reputation and secure Union control of the Mississippi River by taking the rebel stronghold at Vicksburg, Miss. Several attempts were frustrated; in the North criticism of Grant was growing and there were reports that he had begun drinking heavily. But in April 1863 Grant embarked on a bold scheme to take Vicksburg. While he marched his 20,000 men past the fortress on the opposite (west) bank, an ironclad fleet sailed by the batteries. The flotilla rendezvoused with Grant below the fort and transported the troops across the river. In one of the most brilliant gambles of the war, Grant cut himself off from his base in the midst of enemy territory with numerically inferior forces. The gamble paid off. Grant drove one Confederate Army from the city of Jackson, then turned and defeated a second force at Champion's Hill, forcing the rebels to withdraw to Vicksburg on May 20. Union troops laid siege to Vicksburg, and on July 4 the garrison surrendered. Ten days later the last Confederate outpost on the Mississippi fell. Thus, the Confederacy was cut in two. Coming at the same time as the Northern victory at Gettysburg, this was the turning point of the war.
Grant was given command of the Western Department, and in the fall of 1863 he took command of the Union Army pinned down at Chattanooga after its defeat in the Battle of Chickamauga. In a series of battles on November 23, 24, and 25, the rejuvenated Northern troops dislodged the besieging Confederates, the most spirited infantry charge of the war climaxing the encounter. It was a great victory; Congress created the rank of lieutenant general for Grant, who was placed in command of all the armies of the Union.
Architect of Victory
Grant was at the summit of his career. A reticent man, unimpressive in physical appearance, he gave few clues to the reasons for his success. He rarely communicated his thinking; he was the epitome of the strong, silent type. But Grant had deep resources of character, a quietly forceful personality that won the respect and confidence of subordinates, and a decisiveness and bulldog tenacity that served him well in planning and carrying out military operations.
In the spring of 1864 the Union armies launched a coordinated offensive designed to bring the war to an end. However, Lee brilliantly staved off Grant's stronger Army of the Potomac in a series of battles in Virginia. Union forces suffered fearful losses, especially at Cold Harbor, while war weariness and criticism of Grant as a "butcher" mounted in the North.
Lee moved into entrenchments at Petersburg, Va., and Grant settled down there for a long siege. Meanwhile, Gen. William T. Sherman captured Atlanta and began his march through Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, cutting what remained of the Confederacy into pieces. In the spring of 1865 Lee fell back to Appomattox, where on April 9 he met Grant in the courthouse to receive the generous terms of surrender.
Postwar Political Career
After Lincoln's death Grant was the North's foremost war hero. Both sides in the Reconstruction controversy, between President Andrew Johnson and congressional Republicans, jockeyed for his support. A tour of the South in 1865 convinced Grant that the "mass of thinking men" there accepted defeat and were willing to return to the Union without rancor. But the increasing defiance of former Confederates in 1866, their persecution of those who were freed (200,000 African Americans had fought for the Union, and Grant believed they had contributed heavily to Northern victory), and harassment of Unionist officials and occupation troops gradually pushed Grant toward support of the punitive Reconstruction policy of the Republicans. He accepted the Republican presidential nomination in 1868, won the election, and took office on March 4, 1869.
Grant was, to put it mildly, an undistinguished president. His personal loyalty to subordinates, especially old army comrades, prevented him from taking action against associates implicated in dishonest dealings. Government departments were riddled with corruption, and Grant did little to correct this. Turmoil and violence in the South created the necessity for constant Federal intervention, which inevitably alienated large segments of opinion, North and South. In 1872 a sizable number of Republicans bolted the party, formed the Liberal Republican party, and combined with the Democrats to nominate Horace Greeley for the presidency on a platform of civil service reform and home rule in the South. Grant won reelection, but as more scandals came to light during his second term and his Southern policy proved increasingly unpopular, his reputation plunged. The economic panic of 1873 ushered in a major depression; in 1874 the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 16 years.
Yet Grant's two terms were not devoid of positive achievements. In foreign policy the steady hand of Secretary of State Hamilton Fish kept the United States out of a potential war with Spain. The greenback dollar moved toward stabilization, and the war debt was funded on a sound basis. Still, on balance, Grant's presidency was an unhappy aftermath to his military success. Nevertheless, in 1877 he was still a hero, and on a trip abroad after his presidency he was feted in European capitals.
In 1880 Grant again allowed himself to be a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination but fell barely short of success in the convention. Retiring to private life, he made ill-advised investments that led to bankruptcy in 1884. While slowly dying of cancer of the throat, he set to work on his military memoirs to provide an income for his wife and relatives after his death. Through months of terrible pain his courage and determination sustained him as he wrote in longhand the story of his army career. The reticent, uncommunicative general revealed a genius for this kind of writing, and his two-volume Personal Memoirs is one of the great classics of military literature. The memoirs earned $450,000 for his heirs, but the hero of Appomattox died on July 23, 1885, at Mount McGregor before he knew of his literary triumph.
Further Reading
The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (2 vols., 1885-1886; rep. 1962) is a starting point for a view of Grant's generalship. Important primary sources are the accounts by Grant's military aide, Adam Badeau, Military History of Ulysses S. Grant: From April, 1861 to April, 1865 (3 vols., 1868-1881) and Grant in Peace: From Appomattox to Mount McGregor (1887). The best one-volume study of Grant's military leadership is J. F. C. Fuller, The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant (1958). Lloyd Lewis, Captain Sam Grant (1950), carries Grant's career to the outbreak of the Civil War. Bruce Catton's Grant Moves South (1960) and Grant Takes Command (1969) provide the best account of Grant's military career. Still the fullest study of Grant's presidency is William B. Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant, Politician (1935). □
Grant, Ulysses S.
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) rose from unremarkable beginnings to become a well-known figure in history. His bravery and leadership as a Union general were essential elements to the Union victory during the American Civil War (1861–65). As a national hero, Grant easily won election to the presidency in 1868 and again in 1872. Though his terms were marked by corruption and scandal around him, President Grant worked hard to establish national stability during a very difficult time.
Early years
Hiram Ulysses Grant was the name given to Ulysses Simpson Grant at his birth on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio. His parents, Jesse and Hannah Simpson Grant, owned a successful tanning business. When Grant was only a year old, the family moved to Georgetown, Ohio, to be closer to the raw materials needed for the business.
His father's success allowed Grant to have a better than average education, and he attended good schools throughout his youth. Having no interest in his father's business, Grant worked on the family's farm and pursued his passion for working with horses. Toward the end of his schooling, Grant was still uncertain about what career to follow. Though he was not enthusiastic about a military career, his father obtained an appointment for Grant at the U. S. Military Academy. In 1839, Grant left for West Point.
It was during enrollment at West Point that Grant's name was changed. Noticing that his initials spelled HUG, he intended simply to switch his first and second name to prevent certain teasing from other cadets. The congressman who filled out the appointment papers on Grant's behalf, however, mistakenly incorporated his mother's maiden name, writing his name as Ulysses Simpson Grant. Grant kept the name and abandoned Hiram altogether.
Grant's years at West Point were generally unremarkable. Though his horsemanship skills stood out, academically he finished twenty-first in his class of thirty-nine cadets in 1843. He hoped his skill with horses would earn a position among the ranks of the calvary, but he was disappointed. He was assigned to the Fourth Infantry in St. Louis, Missouri .
Grant's friend and former roommate from West Point, Frederick Dent (1786–1873), was also assigned to St. Louis. Since it was near Dent's family home, Grant often visited the family and fell in love with Dent's sister, Julia Boggs Dent (1826–1902). They were engaged in 1844. Grant's military activity delayed a wedding until August 28, 1848. Together they had four children.
Though Grant served with distinction during the Mexican-American War (1846–48) and was promoted to first lieutenant, he was not enthusiastic about his military career. Eventually he was promoted to captain while serving in California , but he hated being apart from his family. Inclined to drink too much due to his depression, Grant decided to resign in 1854.
By late August, Grant was home with his family again, but now in need of money and an occupation. He pursued a series of different positions upon his return, but was unsuccessful with each. Eventually he settled into a post as a clerk in his father's store in Illinois . The outbreak of the Civil War would lead him back to the military and personal success.
Civil War
In April 1861, Confederate forces fired upon the federally controlled Fort Sumter in South Carolina . As President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865, served 1861–65) called for troops, volunteers began to gather. While Grant took the lead in gathering volunteers from his hometown of Galena, he pursued a higher position in the forming Union army.
In June 1861, the Illinois governor appointed Grant to colonel in the Twenty-first Volunteer Infantry Regiment. In August, as the Army expanded to meet the crisis of war, Grant was promoted to brigadier general. He was the commander of the southeast Missouri district and assigned to Cairo, Illinois. From there, he began his noted military campaigns.
Grant quickly proved to be an able leader, winning early victories as other Union generals struggled. Grant's armies eventually achieved Union control of the entire Mississippi River by 1863, providing a key turning point in the war. President Lincoln promoted Grant to major general with this development and in 1864 appointed him as the overall commander of Union forces. Grant's efforts to confront the troops of the Confederate States of America (Confederacy) on several fronts at once brought about success. On April 9, 1865, Grant's coordination and persistence paid off as Confederate general Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) surrendered unconditionally at Appomattox Courthouse . The Civil War was effectively ended, and General Ulysses S. Grant was a hero.
Presidency
General Grant easily earned the Republican nomination for president in 1868. His wartime efforts made him extremely popular with the public, and his support of the Republican Congress's Reconstruction efforts to rebuild the nation made him an easy choice for the party. Following his victory in November, he took office on March 4, 1869. He was elected again for a second term in 1872.
President Grant took office during a difficult time in the nation's history. The previous president, Andrew Johnson (1808–1875; served 1865–69), had taken office following the assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865. He oversaw the initial efforts to reunite the country, but there was still a lot of work to do. Several former Confederate states still had to be readmitted to the Union, and there was violent reaction to the new status of blacks in the South. Conflicts with Native Americans were constant as the nation expanded westward. (See Westward Expansion .) Though Grant achieved some success with these issues, the focus on both Reconstruction and Native American policy faded as the nation's economy fell into a decline.
Unfortunately for Grant, his choice of trusted advisors was not always good. Numerous scandals hurt the Grant administration, including several that involved close aides. Though Grant himself was not involved in any unethical activity, the corruption that plagued his two terms would affect the evaluation of his presidency by many historians.
The overall success of Grant's presidency can be evaluated by the state of the nation that the next president, Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893, served 1877–81), inherited. Reconstruction was effectively over, and limited progress had been made in protecting the rights of southern blacks. New directions in Native American policy began to bring peace in the west. Grant's economic policies prevented the collapse of the U.S. currency and economy. He maintained peaceful international relations throughout his terms. Perhaps the greatest challenge awaiting President Hayes was the need to repair the damaged reputation of the presidency and the government in light of the Grant administration scandals.
Later years
Many Republicans were interested in having Grant run for president again in 1876, but Grant was ready to leave office. He was encouraged again by the party in 1880 and very nearly won another nomination, but he eventually lost the nomination to U.S. representative James A. Garfield (1831–1881) of Ohio. This marked the end of politics for Grant.
Money problems challenged Grant the rest of his life, and often friends and family had to come to his aid. Through the help of his son, he became president of the Mexican Southern Railroad and settled into a house in New York City. Investments in his son's firm proved to be unwise, and Grant went deeply into debt when scandals drove the firm out of business.
In need of money, Grant consented to write some articles on the Civil War. In late 1884, Grant suspected that he was developing throat cancer as a result of his lifetime habit of smoking cigars. Urged to write his memoirs, he set about the task in order to secure an income for his wife for after he was gone. From late-1884 to 1885, Grant wrote Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. It was a financial success, but Grant did not live to see it. On July 23, 1885, only a few days after finishing his writing, Grant died from cancer. He was buried in a magnificent Victorian tomb on the upper west side of New York City.
Grant, Ulysses Simpson
GRANT, ULYSSES SIMPSON
Ulysses Simpson Grant, originally known as Hiram Ulysses Grant, was a U.S. general, the commander of the Union army during the last part of the Civil War, and the president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. During his presidency Grant's reputation was tarnished by political corruption and scandal in his administration. Though he was never personally involved with any scandal, his failure to choose trustworthy advisers hurt his presidency.
Grant was born April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio. Raised in nearby Georgetown, he was educated at local and boarding schools. In 1839 he accepted an appointment to the Army's military academy at West Point, though he did not intend to become a soldier. The appointment allowed him to obtain the education he could not afford otherwise. He graduated in 1843 and began his military career with a tour of duty during
the Mexican War of 1846–48, in which he distinguished himself in battle. After the war he was assigned to Fort Humboldt, California. During his time in California, Grant became lonely, and it has been alleged he had a drinking problem. He resigned his commission in 1854 and made several unsuccessful attempts at alternative careers, including farming and real estate. In 1860 he moved to Galena, Illinois, where he worked in his father's leather goods store.
With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Grant returned to the military as a colonel in the Illinois Volunteers. He soon was promoted to brigadier general. Grant's first major victory came in February 1862, when his troops captured Forts Henry and Donelson, Tennessee, forcing General Simon B. Buckner, of the Confederacy, to accept unconditional surrender. As a result Grant was promoted to major general.
Grant fought in the Battles of Shiloh and Corinth before forcing the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4, 1862. In 1863 his forces triumphed over those of General Braxton Bragg, of the Confederacy, at Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Grant's leadership was welcomed by President abraham lincoln, who had endured a succession of commanders of the Union army who refused to wage an aggressive war. In March 1864 Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general and gave him command over the entire Union army. In that year Grant scored another major military triumph. He commanded the Army of the Potomac against the forces of General Robert E. Lee, of the Confederacy, in the Wilderness Campaign, a series of violent battles that took place in Virginia. Battles at Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and Richmond produced heavy Union casualties, but Lee's smaller army was devastated. On April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Courthouse, Lee surrendered his forces, signaling an end to the Civil War.
After the war Grant enforced the Reconstruction laws of Congress in the Southern military divisions. President andrew johnson appointed him secretary of war in 1867, but Grant soon had a falling out with the president. Grant aligned himself with the republican party and became its presidential candidate in 1868. He defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour, former governor of New York, by a small popular vote margin. At age forty-six, he was the youngest man yet elected president. He was reelected in 1872, easily defeating Horace Greeley.
Though Grant's intentions were good, it soon became clear that his political and administrative skills did not match his military acumen. Despite his interest in civil service reform, he followed his predecessors in using political patronage to fill positions in his administration. Many of his appointees were willing to use their office for personal profit.
Grant's reputation was first tarnished in 1869 when financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk attempted to corner the gold market and drive up the price. Their plan depended on keeping the federal government's gold supply off the market. They used political influence within the Grant administration to further their scheme. When Grant found out about it, he ordered $4 million of government gold sold on the market. On September 24, 1869, known as Black Friday, the price of gold plummeted, which caused a financial panic.
During Grant's second term, more scandal erupted. Vice President Schuyler Colfax was accused of taking bribes in the Crédit Mobilier scandal, which involved a diversion of profits from the Union Pacific Railroad. And Grant's private secretary, Orville E. Babcock, was one of 238 persons indicted in the Whiskey Ring conspiracy, which sought to defraud the federal government of liquor taxes. Babcock was acquitted after Grant testified on his behalf. Finally, Grant accepted the resignation of Secretary of War William W. Belknap shortly before Belknap was impeached on charges of accepting a bribe.
In domestic policy Grant attempted to resolve the tensions between North and South. He supported amnesty for Confederate leaders, and he tried to enforce federal civil rights legislation that was intended to protect the newly freed slaves. In foreign policy he settled longstanding difficulties with Great Britain, in the 1871 Treaty of Washington.
After leaving office in 1877, Grant spent his time traveling and writing. He made a world tour in 1878 and 1879. In 1880 he unsuccessfully sought the Republican party's nomination for president. In 1881 he bought a home in New York City and became involved in the investment firm of Grant and Ward, in which his son, Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., was a partner. He invested his personal fortune with the firm and encouraged others to invest as well. In 1884 the firm collapsed. Partner Ferdinand Ward had swindled all the funds from the investors. Grant was forced to file for bankruptcy.
"The war is over—the rebels are our countrymen again."
—Ulysses S. Grant
Needing money, Grant contracted with his friend Mark Twain to write his memoirs. Despite the debilitations of throat cancer, Grant was able to complete his Personal Memoirs shortly before his death on July 23, 1885, in Mount McGregor, New York. His memoir was well received and is now recognized as a classic military autobiography. Grant and his wife, Julia Dent Grant, are buried in Grant's Tomb, in New York City, which was proclaimed a national memorial in 1959.
further readings
Smith, Jean Edward. 2001. Grant. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Perret, Geoffrey, 1997. Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President. New York: Random House.
Scaturro, Frank J. 1999. President Grant Reconsidered. Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America.
Grant, Ulysses S.
GRANT, ULYSSES S.
(b. April 27, 1822; d. July 23, 1885) General; eighteenth president of the United States (1869–1877).
Ulysses S. Grant was born at Point Pleasant, Ohio, and became an officer in the U.S. Army after graduating from West Point in 1843. He was appointed by Abraham Lincoln in 1864 as commander in chief of the Union armies, and served as president of the United States from 1868 to 1876.
Grant's father was a tanner, an occupation his son was loath to take up. He was eager for a West Point education, and his father was also enthusiastic about it, especially after he showed some promise in mathematics and an interest in engineering during his early education. Civil engineers were in great demand, and Jesse Grant petitioned his congressman, Thomas Hamer, on his son's behalf.
At first, West Point was a disappointment. Grant found himself unexpectedly on the losing end of a class battle. He was an outsider. His parents were working people, and his classmates' were not—and they let him know it. Only later, living in such close proximity to his fellow cadets and under the difficult regimen of military orders, did Grant begin to revel in the camaraderie of the place and soften toward army life.
Grant graduated from West Point in 1843 and fought in the war with Mexico (1846–1848). He took part in most of the important battles, gaining valuable experience as an officer and serving with many of the men who would later become his allies and enemies. On leave in August 1848, Grant married Julia Dent, the sister of his West Point roommate.
But trouble followed. Separated from his wife and children by his military assignment and terribly lonely, Grant indulged his latent thirst for alcohol, and he soon attracted the unfavorable notice of his commanding officer. The details of what happened next are murky, but Grant resigned his commission in 1854. He was working in his father's leather shop in Galena, Illinois, when the nation's regional tensions over slavery exploded and the Civil War began.
A soldier at heart, Grant volunteered to serve in the Union army and was commissioned colonel of the 21st Illinois Volunteers. In 1861, he was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers and reassigned to Cairo, Illinois, a small river town in the southernmost part of the state. Not longer after, Grant engineered the first notable Union victories of the war, the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, in Tennessee. For this, President Lincoln made him a major general of the volunteer forces with which he served.
More victories followed. While other generals demurred, Grant favored direct action, even at the cost of greater casualties. In him, the North had found a commander willing to fight an ugly war on its own terms. In 1862 and 1863, after repeated frustrations, Grant employed ground forces and Union gunboats to take Vicksburg, Mississippi, by siege, cutting the Confederacy in half. In 1864, President Lincoln made him commander in chief of the Union armies and an act of Congress raised him to the rank of lieutenant general, a long-dormant rank.
So positioned, Grant was free to prosecute the war on his own terms. He surrounded himself with brilliant generals such as William Sherman, George Thomas, and Philip Sheridan. With considerable strategic skill, he directed the bloody and brutal wilderness campaign against the forces of Robert E. Lee. In 1865, he contrived to cut Lee's army off at Appomattox, Virginia, effectively ending the war. A year later, Grant was named full general.
In the chaos and divisiveness that followed the Civil War, the country turned to Grant for leadership. As it had once with George Washington and Andrew Jackson, the nation looked to its wartime leader to guide it through a difficult peace. Grant was perfect for the part. No American since George Washington had risen to such high rank within the military. Grant had defeated the Confederacy and rescued the Union. He was a hero. Grant served as secretary of war under President Andrew Johnson in 1867 and in 1868 was elected president.
Grant served two turbulent terms as president. His inexperience in politics was troublesome enough, but his tendency to remain doggedly loyal to his friends, regardless of their misdeeds, and his tendency to trust and admire the wealthy proved disastrous and aggravated an already difficult national moment. Scandals blossomed. Grant's friends deceived him for their own gain and escaped unscathed through Grant's tireless beneficence. In the legislature, the demands of big business ruled the day. Worse, much of the country was bitterly divided, in large part over Grant's decision to pursue the harsh Reconstruction plan advocated by Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln's political opponents within the Republican Party. It was the disastrous continuation of a disastrous policy. A former combatant, Grant was all too-willing to view the conquered South as enemy territory, its inhabitants as adversaries. Still, much of the trouble with, indeed the ultimate failure of, Grant's reconstruction policies can be explained by the president's inability to act decisively in the face of rapidly developing circumstances. A see-saw policy of determination and resolution followed by apparent timidity and uncertainty served only to increase the nation's sense of confusion. Grant would strike hard in one instance, waver the next. To many observers in the North, Grant's reconstruction seemed feckless and ill-planned; to many enduring it in the South, it seemed reckless, arbitrary, even malicious. There, a great and abiding bitterness took shape and spread. It is unclear, as of this writing, if the wound created by that bitterness has entirely healed.
At the end of his second term, Grant retired to New York. Bankrupted by ill-advised business investments, he set about writing his memoirs to provide for his family. He died on July 23, 1885, of throat cancer. Among the mourners who attended his funeral were thousands of the
soldiers he had led so brilliantly during his nation's moment of greatest need.
bibliography
Carpenter, John. Ulysses S. Grant. New York: Twayne, 1970.
Scaturro, Frank. President Grant Reconsidered. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998.
Simpson, Brooks D. Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
Laura M. Miller
See also:Reconstruction.
Grant, Ulysses Simpson
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents