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The USA in the Time of Ulysses S. Grant
1869-1877
By Mike Donovan
“Grantism” - VP Schuyler Colfax – 20 cigars a day – Credit Mobilier – “Era of Good Stealings” - Sam beat a Horatio and a Horace - US Army 1843-1854 – US Army 1861-1869 - The first punching bag for Republican bashers – #18 - Whiskey Ring -
Grant defeated Horatio Seymour, the liberal Governor of New York in the election of 1868 by a score of 214-80. The he demolished Liberal Republican Greely in 1872.
Grant always had a look on his face like he knows he let the stove on back at the house.
Alleged drunkard, unqualified to be president, surrounded by evil and corrupt men, Ulysses S Grant won two elections in a landslide.
Grant was one of the finest horseman in the country, and once in 1871 got a $20 speeding fine in Washington for driving his horses too fast. The very patriotic policeman had the courage to give a speeding ticket to the President of the United States. No greater respect for the flag has ever been shown by a constable on patrol. The policeman died from beer poisoning a few days later, but that's beside the point.
President Grant was charged with an evil he apparently invented, “Grantism.”
What was “Grantism?”
First of all surround yourself with corrupt greedy men. Then puff on a cigar while Rome burns and the entire Cabinet is on the take. Grantism was being a decent and likable guy, but politically passive as the South mistreats the blacks as much as it can get away with.
The only thing we can say in his defense on the race issue is that Grant was passive on all political issues. He wasn’t singling out the blacks when he did not lift a finger to either help or hurt them.
I feel sorry for Grant because every historian calls him an inferior man, yet there must have been something great in his personality, some spark in his soul that came out in his eyes or his voice when he met people in order for him to “accidentally” rise as far as he did, both in the military profession and in politics. Is it really possible to accidentally rise to number one in both of these important professions? Lincoln talked with Grant in person many times. Abraham tested his mettle. Then he chose him to lead the Union Army. The public met him thousands of times. They elected him twice. His photographs are compelling in a mysterious way. If only we had audio-tapes. “Speak, so that I may see thee.”
Grant takes such a beating from the historians. But what is so bad about a born quiet leader of average intelligence without the hostile macho ego streak that most men are bedeviled with? Was it an accident that he stepped foreword and played his role in history when he did? The historians never say anything good about him except that he probably didn’t realize how corrupt everyone else around him had been and therefore was probably not personally culpable in the multiple scandals in his house. That’s hardly a compliment.
It is admittedly a task to try to defend his record as a politician. Trying to defend Grant is like trying to swim Lake Superior in a hurricane on your 78th birthday. Only Nixon is harder to defend.
Popular vote 1868
Grant R) 3,013,000 (45.0%)
Seymour D) 2,706,000 (47.3%)
Popular vote 1872
Grant R) 3,596,000 (55.6%)
Greeley LR) 2,843,000 (43.9%)
Congress reigned supreme under the passive Grant. The capitol gang had just intimidated the administration of Andrew Johnson, and Grant wasn’t about to overturn that momentum.
This time there was no struggle for power between the branches, since Grant was not offended by the concept of a strong-willed Congress the way Johnson had been. The Republican Party bosses kept everyone in line and key Congressional committees were the center of political power, not the White House.
Ulysses Grant is one of the "bad" presidents. Which leads us to the Golub Thesis. Professor Charles Golub of U-Mass once told me that,
"The only great presidents are bad ones. The Grants, the Chester Arthurs, the Gerald Fords. They're not great. They ruled in an era of peace. They were disqualified. Let's face it. The only way to be a ‘great’ president is to get the United States into a war, like Washington, Lincoln, McKinley, Wilson, Roosevelt. Give me those second-rate presidents any day.”
Grant was a Methodist but was never formally religious.
He smoked big black cigars and played whist with the cabinet.
Juts for the record I lasted five months at U-Mass and Golub was an Algebra professor.
Grants Cabinet
Secretary of State----------------------E. B. Washburn---1869
Hamilton Fish---1869-1877
Secretary of War---------------------J.A. Rawlins-----1869
W.T. Sherman---1869
W.W. Belknap-1869-1876
Alphonso Taft---1876
J.D. Cameron---1876-1877
Secretary of Treasury---------------G.S. Boutwell---1869-1873
W.A. Richardson-1873-1874
B.H. Bristow------1874-1876
L. M. Morrill-----1876-1877
Attorney General--------------------E. R. Hoar -------1869-1870
A.T. Ackerman-1870-1871
G.H. Williams----1871-1875
Edwin Pierrepont-1875-1876
Alphonso Taft----1876-1877
Secretary of the Interior Jacob Dolson Cox—1869-1870
CABNOTES
Payola, graft and corruption was in stock on almost all the shelves in the cabinet. All but two, that is.
Jacob Cox and E. R. Hoar resigned in protest before the end of Grants first term. They couldn’t go along with all the payola and deceit. Cox and Hoar refused to prostitute themselves.
There are so many corrupt stories in this list it could make Ed Meese shiver.
BIO
Ulysses Grant was born in the Era of Good Feelings on April 22, 1822 at 5 a.m. in Point Pleasant Ohio, not far from Cincinnati. Grant was a Monroe baby.
The family moved the infant one county east to Georgetown, Ohio, the place that can truly claim the 18th President.
Dad was a tanner from Pennsylvania. Jess Grant was loud and outgoing, a total contrast to the shy boy. It was probably a cause and effect situation as the loud parent creates the quiet child, the contrast logical, not a paradox.
Young Ulysses worked diligently at his chores but did not like helping his father at the foul tannery. Ulysses was great with horses even as a child and made extra money transporting locals from place-to-place in the family wagon. He loved these big beautiful animals all his life. Naturally, the horse slaughterhouse was not the boy’s cup of tea.
In 1836 it was off to Seminary school in Maysville, Kentucky (of the famous ‘Maysville Road’), and, believe it or not, at 16 years of age Ulysses attended the Presbyterian Academy in Ripley, Ohio.
Jesse Grant in the meantime had secretly arranged to have his son appointed to West Point. Ulysses was highly displeased. He would never have chosen a career in the military arts, but his father and fate had other plans.
Grant finished 23rd out of 39 students in the West Point class of 1843 and was assigned to the infantry as a brevet second lieutenant, whatever that is.
In 48 he took the plunge. He married Julia Wade Boggs Dent, the daughter of a plantation and slave owner from a little west of St. Louis.
How Ulysses popped the question is a famous story. One day he was on a date with her when they had to cross a small bridge that was partly underwater.
Julia was nervous. “I’m going to cling to you no matter what happens,” she said.
Ulysses replied, “How would you like to cling to me for the rest of your life?” That was his proposal and it scored, the sly fox.
US and Julia were married on August 22, 1848.
Mrs. G. was born in January of 1822 on her daddy’s White Haven Plantation (Plantations had names). One historian describes Julia as ‘plain’ but it’s hard to judge this by one or two bad 160-year-old black and white photographs. Give her a break. Any woman that could inspire a marriage proposal like that must have been pretty enough.
The young officer Ulysses served in the Mexican War under both Zachary Taylor and Win Scott. Grant participated in almost every famous battle of the Mexican War. Politically however, Grant was opposed and ashamed of the American role in starting it. He later wrote that he should have had the moral courage to resign from the army.
Following the Mexican Invasion/War Grant experienced the entire country. The Army gave him the eyes. USG was stationed in such places as Vancouver, in Oregon Territory, Detroit, New York, and San Francisco, being promoted to captain in 1853. He had joined the Army and seen the world, at least the American one.
In 54 U.S. resigned from the U.S. army, allegedly for drinking alcoholic beverages too often (why say 'for drinking' when everyone has to do that or they will die), though this cannot be proven. He went back to Mighty Mo to start a life with Julia on her father’s farm. Grant’s day now consisted of slappin’ the hogs, and plowin’ the field, and selling wood in St Louis on the side.
The Grants had their own little plot called they called “Hard Scrabble”. These farm years 54 to 58 were also drinking years. It was hard scrabble and hard cider for Ulysses. As Kirk Douglas yelled in a movie, “More wine for Ulysses!” In the summer of 58 Ulysses became severely ill and could not cut the mustard as a farmer. He had to sell the farm.
That winter, Grant tried to start a real estate business with a relative named Harry Boggs. They made no money and called it quits. Its doubtful at this point that Grant imagined he would some day become the man on the fifty-dollar bill.
But amidst it all he did show signs of the political bug, running for county commissioner in St. Louis and losing.
After a brief job working at the United States customhouse, USG moved to Galena Illinois to work as a clerk in his father’s leather goods store. It was while toiling aimlessly at this menial job with his two brothers that he heard the call for volunteers from Abe Lincoln. Grant rejoined the army and volunteered to organize a regiment from Galena. His skills and experience were needed, and he rose to brigadier general in a few short weeks.
In the Election campaign of 1868 much use was made of the image of Grant as the common man. He was called “The tanner from Galena” on campaign signs. The public already knew him as a war hero. The party tried to sell him as Jacksonian wholesome, too. And really, he was.
Grant liked the happy juice, and some critics called him stupid, but one thing for sure. U.S. Grant was a true regular guy if there ever was one, definitely one of our most regular presidents. This was a man who when commanding all of the Union Armies would be easy to spot; he was the shabbily dressed chubby unshaven little man whittling on wood under a tree all by himself. U. S. earned his working mans stripes before his rise to military glory and high office. The man matched the image he was sold with, unlike Old Tippecanoe in 1840, the Harrison hoax.
Ulysses Grant was not politically minded before he became the President. He admitted that he had only voted once for President and that was in 1856 when he voted for the Democrat Buchanan. In 1860 US would have voted for Democrat Stephen Douglas but did not meet the requirements in the town he was living.
This was no political animal, more just a guy who liked animals. One senator complained of him in 1867 that ‘As quick as I’d talk politics, he’d talk horses.’
USG certainly had no political experience when the Republican Party nominated him in 1868. Professor Lingley says of him that he had "never visited a state capitol except to capture it." That doesn't mesh with the fact that he had seen more of the United States in his Army service than most Americans saw in three lifetimes. Lingley also called him a "pathetic" figure in the White House.
EVENTS
ELECTION OF 1868
TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD COMPLETED 1869
WYOMING WOMEN VOTE 69
15TH AMENDMENT RATIFIED
BLACK SENATORS
FORCE ACTS 1870-71
THE REDEEMERS
CHICAGO AND BOSTON FIRES
CREDIT MOBILIER SCANDAL
ALABAMA CLAIMS SETTLED
ELECTION OF 1872
DEATH OF GREELEY
COLFAX MASSACRE 73
WHISKEY RING
PANIC OF 1873
BUFFALO DOWN
SANTO DOMINGO
RED RIVER WAR 1874
CHAUTAUQUA 1874
REVOLUTION IN CUBA
CIVIL RIGHTS ACT 1875
MOLLY MAGUIRES 1875-6
LITTLE BIG HORN JUNE 1876
CRUISHANK REDEMPTION 1876
ORVILLE REDDENBACHER BABCOCK TRIAL
CENTENNIAL AT PHILADELPHIA MAY- NOV 1776
TELEPHONE INVENTED 1876
GLOBAL TOUR
ELECTION OF 1868
The three big issues for 1868 were Reconstruction policies for the Southern states, Negro (male) suffrage, and hard versus soft money.
President Andrew Johnson wanted to run for re-election but neither his old nor his new party wanted anything to do with him. Both saw AJ as a traitor to their cause. The Democrats never forgave him for remaining loyal to the Union in 1861 and the Republicans hated him for attempting to block their Congressional Reconstruction programs in 1866-7.
Both parties on the other hand wanted U. S. Grant to run on their ticket, but he naturally gravitated towards the party under which he had conducted the War of the Rebellion. It is often if not always said that he was not political and could have run on either slate, but lets be sensible about this. War is a continuation of politics by other means and in winning the Civil War Grant was very much a political figure in the Republican Party history. The Dems still gripe historically at the Republicans over both Grant and Eisenhower over this issue. Grant, they moan, the two-term Republican wasn’t really a Republican. Maybe so. But in his deeds he fought their fight. He was not a RINO he was a RIFO, a Republican in Fact Only. In political background he had never previously joined the Republicans or wanted to. He just happened to always side with them.
So what if he had empty-headed convictions? If a moral man does nothing and an immoral man does the right thing, who is the better man?
Historian A.K. McClure even states that Grant before the Civil War was a radical pro-slavery Democrat! He doesn’t have any real proof, but even if he did, what difference does it make? Grant lent his star-power name to keeping the white supremacist Democrats out of the White House for another 8 years. The Democratic Party didn't seat a black delegate to their Presidential convention until 1924. The Republicans did it in 1868.
Historically, if Democrats are interested in remaining true to their liberal principles, they should be glad that a Republican won the White House in 1868 and again in 1872, even allowing for the famous cabinet scandals. After all, it was the Democratic Party that was determined to deprive the black man of the vote in the South in these times and it was the Republicans who were determined to grant equal suffrage to the entire country’s adult males. So even if Grant were a sitting-duck malleable tool in the hands of either party, let us all be glad he chose Republican hands.
Chicago hosted the Republican convention in 1868, and unlike the Democratic Convention held there exactly a hundred years later, there was no police riot outside the hall.
The RNC convened only four days after the last impeachment vote in the Johnson Senate trial. It was hardly an atmosphere in which Andy Johnson could hope to be nominated. Young John McCain gave the opening speech.
So it was Grant for the Republicans. For Vice President there was a better battle than there was for the number one spot. Wilson of Massachusetts was in the hunt, as well as the very radical Ben Wade of Ohio. The Republicans settled on Shuyler Colfax of Indiana, a man so friendly that he was nicknamed “Smiler Colfax” (I’ve had the nickname ‘smiley’ at times too, but for sarcastic reasons). Because of his light blonde hair, Schuyler was also sometimes called ‘Sandy’ Colfax.
The DNC was held in spanking new Tammany Hall in NYC on the Fourth of July. In the chase for the Democrats was Chief Justice of Supreme Court Salmon Chase, who'd been perfectly willing and ready to run for President as a Republican at Chicago. But the Republicans chose Grant, the Salmon swam upriver to the DNC to seek the nomination there. Sal Chase was once a Democratic Ohio US Senate, but he had voted with Lincoln during the war and many powerful Dems resented Sal.
It was his daughter Kate Chase that actually attended the Convention on behalf of Daddy, who was now a Democrat again. Salmon stayed in DC while Kate promoted her father at the DNC. It helped that Katie Sprague was married to Rhode Island Senator William Sprague (D).
Sal Chase favored amnesty for Southern Rebel officials but he also supported black suffrage which made him insufferable to most Democrats.
The chairman of the convention was Horatio Seymour of New York. 21 fruitless ballots were divided up between General Winfield Hancock, Ted Hendricks of Indiana, and a few for the suddenly Democratic Andrew Johnson. The convention then turned to the chairman for president. Seymour sincerely declined to accept the nomination but the crowd drowned out his protests.
Horatio Seymour became the unanimous Democratic nominee for President in 1868 on the 22nd ballot.
Horatio Seymour was the two-time Governor of New York. He came from a political family. Tragically, his father committed suicide in 1837 when the boy was 27. Maybe I shouldn't have added 'tragically.' That sort of goes without saying.
Seymour was a man of his convictions. He favored hard currency, which ran against the Democratic Party's inflationary paper platform, and Seymour would not back down. During the Civil War as NY Governor Seymour had been critical of Lincoln. That wasn’t good.
The Dems were hurt by the participation at the convention of some of the old leaders of the Confederacy, even if they weren’t actually running for top spots on the ticket.
For the number two spot the Democrats chose Frank Blair of Missouri who was so extreme in his hatred of Republican Reconstruction that he did more harm than good for “the Democracy” in the general voting.
Neither man went out and campaigned, at least at first. When the hour started getting late Seymour knew he was probably going to lose and went out to 'press the flesh' like one of today's office-seekers. Horatio would see more flesh but it was too late to stop the Grant steamroller. Most American spoke of him like a living icon and even Southerners never forgot his magnanimous terms to Lee at Appomattox.
There was the usual dirty fighting. The Democrats spread a story around that Grant had stolen a Mississippi lady's silverware during the war. It's so stupid on so many levels, but some people bought it. What the hell was he going to do with expensive silverware in the middle of a war? Grant had way too much on his plate to be thinking about silverware. Can you imagine the scene where someone asks Grant what time we should attack and as he begins to speak several spoons and forks come crashing from his pocket with a rattle at they hit the floor. Grant was no stooge.
On the other side, the Republicans said that Seymour's father had committed suicide because of insanity, and that Horatio showed symptoms of insanity too.
Grant won by an EC score of 214-80
Many of the great historians complain that Grant only won because he carried six southern states, and he could not have carried those states if so many white voters had not been disenfranchised by Reconstruction. Many white votes were thrown out because of rad rules. But the same historians never gripe that Grover Cleveland could never have won two non-consecutive terms if blacks had not been disenfranchised through racist Jim Crow backlash in 1880 and 1888. Their outrage is selective. The black vote across the nation was not fully organized and employed in 1868 and if it was, Grant still could have won, even if the no whites were disenfranchised by radical Reconstruction.
And why was it that many white votes were not allowed? The white votes were disallowed as punishment for the South disenfranchising black votes. The losers of 1868 have only themselves to blame. If they wanted a fair election on 1868 they could have had it if they had just left the rope and the hate in the closet. The 'Bloody Shirt' label, of course, is only reserved for Northern Republicans, as though Southern Democrats didn't try to use manage it too.
Seymour carried two states in the deep south, Georgia and Louisiana, and came within a thousand votes of winning both California and Indiana. Many of the old “Constitutional Union Party” voters, temporary Republicans, had returned to the old pre-war Democratic fold, making the tally in a few Northern states close.
Again, the historians consistently point out how if this or that had been different then Seymour could have and perhaps should have beaten Grant. They gripe about the hypocrisy in the North where some states still refused black men the right to vote while the same franchise for blacks was “imposed” on the South. But they conveniently forget this factor when analyzing the close vote in the North for the Democrats! If all the Northern states had liberally allowed the black franchise as it was being forced on the South, then the voting throughout the North wouldn’t have been that close.
INAUGURAL
Grant’s Inauguration speech of March, 1869 is best remembered for the phrase, “Let us have peace,” which is only slightly more exiting than if he had proclaimed, “it’s rather cloudy this afternoon.”
Both of Grant’s parents attended the inaugural. It was the first time any US president had been inaugurated while both parents were still alive. (If McCain had won in 2008 it would have been the first time in US history that a president was inaugurated while his great great great great grandchildren were still alive.)
JOBBERY
The Radical Republican had their fingers crossed when it was time for Grant to start giving out jobs. They wanted Radicals in the cabinet but knew their hopes were limited since Grant was no Rad.
Grant gave the post at Treasury to S.E. Stewart, who owned one of the biggest department stores in the country and had no other qualifications. The Senate rejected Stewart because of his business interests and a law that declared that a conflict of interest. 'Stewie' offered to put his big business in receivership for the duration of the Grant presidency but the Senate made it clear they just didn't want him. Grant instead picked Boutwell, a truculent R party loyalist.
Ben “The Beast” Butler of Massachusetts had been opposed to the nomination of Grant because Grant wasn't Radical. But President Grant quickly extended the olive branch to Butler who accepted it and the two former adversaries became friendly for the next eight years.
But not close friends. The only close friend Ben Butler ever had was his mirror. His immodest autobiography Butler’s Book, speaks for himself. I have a nice old copy but can’t crack it open without a bucket beside me at the ready. There's no excuse for that breathtaking level of conceit. Ben Butler makes Dick Morris seem humble.
A lot of mean things are written about Butler and I figured I'd get a much more positive opinion if I read his book. That is usually the case. When a man or woman is maligned, and they write a book defending themselves, I usually come away with an appreciation for their side of things and there are usually falsehoods that the writer corrects in self-defense with evidence or good argument, if not proof. With Butler it was the reverse. Here he is telling his carefully edited version of his life and makes himself look like a really despicable man.
Grant did name a couple of Radicals to the cabinet but at no time could his administration ever be said to have been under the dominance of the Radical wing of the Republican Party.
Grant wouldn’t tell his Party leaders who he was planning to appoint to his cabinet. They would have to learn of the choices only after they had been publicly announced. That way, he wouldn’t give anyone a chance to talk him out of his choices. He revealed the new names on March 5.
Elihu Washburn was named Secretary of State. “Wash” was an old pal from Galena Illinois and people said (and historians still say) that he had no qualifications for the job, about as much qualification for the job as Grant had to be president.
But is that fair? Washburn was a lawyer, a Harvard grad, and had been elected nine times to the United States Congress. That hardly qualifies him to be called completely unqualified. Hillary Clinton was named Secretary of State by President-elect Barak Obama. She was a two-term Senator, and former First Lady. No one suggested she was not qualified to be Secretary of State.
Anyhow, Elihu Washburn resigned quickly and took a job as U.S. foreign minister in Paris. Grant explained later that he never really intended to let Washburn become acting Secretary of State, but was giving his friend a moment of glory as a personal gesture.
The real Secretary of State was then named. Hamilton Fish did an excellent job according to all the historians. I say he botched it all up. I don't have any evidence, but someone has to mix it up.
THE GOLDEN SPIKE
May 10, 1869 was a glorious day in American history, one that was celebrated all over the nation with church bells ringing and cannon firing.
At Promontory Point in Utah a solid gold spike was driven down amid great ceremony into a rail marking the linking of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific lines. The UPR built its way west from Omaha Nebraska while the CP laid itself eastward from Sacramento CA.
People had wondered in conversation fro decades when this day would come. One could now go from coast to coast by safe rapid train transportation. Before this day a President or a millionaire could not travel from one coast to the other without grave danger from elements and Indians.
The Indians didn't celebrate the Golden Spike quite so much. For them it was like a giant barbed wire fence had cut the nation in half across the center, further attritting their nomadic and free way of life. They preferred a golden spike in whitey's head.
It is difficult to underestimate the significance of the Spike of 69. The alternative was the horse and wagon or an ocean trip around South America via Tierra del Fuego. Although the official elimination of the frontier happened only at the end of the century, the golden spike of Promontory marked the beginning of the end of it.
Unfortunately the explosion in railroads stimulated by the coast-to-coast excitement also created excessive speculation in railroad stock. These gamblings would cause problems in the economy, especially in the Panic of 73.
The railroads became the dominant economic factor in the USA for the entire period between the Civil and Spanish American Wars, after which oil, steel, and the automobile would begin to make their presence dominant. The railroads seemed to stimulate the dream of Jefferson of an agrarian nation. Farmers could be shipped west in bulk and at great speeds, while their products could be shipped back east in the same manner to feed the great demand of the booming east coast cities which were in turn being re-stocked with new immigrants at a faster rate than these cities were pumping emigrants to the American west. The railroads did a lot of advertising in Europe, trying to bring as many immigrants to help build the roads and settle along side of them.
But while the railroads created millionaires, and improved the lifestyle of the average American in countless way big and small, they were a mixed blessing. The ads in Europe did not tell of the down side of life along the tracks. The railroads were sadly the focus of evil in the modern USA. They were a hotbed of corruption, greed, avarice and oppression, and those were their good points. The railroads were such a monopoly as to have even the middle class at their mercy through unfair rebates, political graft, insider trading, and price gouging whenever possible. Instead of the beloved institution it could have been, the railroad industry became the most hated thing in America, causing political disunity, and creating left wing hatred for all big business, the aftereffects of which have tricked down to this very day. The ancestors of those who hate Mobil, Halliburton, and Walmart today hated the railroads in the time of Grant and his immediate successors. The golden spike of 5.10.69 that united the nation physically was also driving a wedge into the national fabric that began the permanent division of it politically. Many if not most of the terrible labor violence of the period from 1870 to 1899 was centered on railroad issues, and it’s almost impossible to read up on these disputes without throwing in your lot with the lefties. The railroads railroaded the American people for several shameful decades. A story that could have and should have been a glorious one for American history instead became a sad record of bullying the poor. The millionaire bums could have stayed very rich and given the American people a fair shake. But merely very rich was not enough. They had to get filthy rich instead and they stepped on millions of decent hard working American to achieve this avaricious goal. And they stirred all kinds of left-wing trouble.
The railroads abused the freedom they were granted by the state and federal government. Railroads had not only been granted extensive lands free of charge, they had become a nation within a nation. Zones of land ownership were granted for miles along both sides of virtually all railroad routes. Railroad administrative regions were many times larger in size than the railroads themselves. They were a rolling tornado of land grab the width of a couple of towns, slicing up the US West in all directions. Draw a pen mark of the lines of these railroads on a US map and the thickness of the ink is accurate. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1872 granted 170 million pro bono acres of American soil to the railroads. And what the feds didn’t give them the states kicked in. By the end of the 80’s the railroads owned more than one fifth of the land in 7 western states!
On the positive side, the George Pullman Sleeping Car was introduced in 1865 and came on line during the Grant Years. George gave rich people a chance to travel in style and comfort. At last you didn't have to sit up all night like O'Hare passengers in a 17 hour blizzard. Pullman donated free passage for Lincoln's body from Washington to Illinois on one of these new cars. The new Pullman Sleeping Car got a zillion dollars worth of advertising, as all Americans read all the details about that funeral train, and sales jumped.
In 1867 Pullman formed the Pullman Palace Car Corporation. The sleeper was just the beginning. Now the public could book a trip on a rolling hotel. There were dining cars, sleeping cars, casino cars, and even a stand-up comedy club car where bad acts got thrown overboard at 60 mph and no one reported it.
There were improvements in gauge. The train tracks were made of different distances between the rails. Gradually the country was coagulating into a standard gauge of 4 feet 8 and a half inches. If you are exactly 4 feet 8 inches tall you can lay between the rails waiting to be rescued.
Pullman could have been one of the great names of American history. But in 1894 he was the villain in one of the worst strikes, probably the worst strike, in American labor history.
Improvements were under way for time. There was a George Carlin bit where he does a fake news broadcast opening in four different voices,
“It's 11 o:clock in Los Angeles.
It's 9 o:clock in Chicago.
It's 8 o:clock in New York.
In Baltimore it's 6:42.”
In Grant's time there were places where that joke was real! Not only were there no times zones, there were no standard times at all. Each community could set its clock as it saw fit. The railroads worked hard to unify the country into a standard time to make rr schedules efficient. The railroads led the push towards the time zones that were adapted a little later.
FIRST GREAT LABOR UNION IN THE UNION
Labor unions were not unheard of through the first two thirds of 19th century America. It was Unions with clout that were unheard of. The formation in 1869 of the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor changed all that. Beginning with a small organization of garment cutters, the Knights of Labor grew into a nationwide union with political influence, eventually earning the begrudging respect of capitol.
The Knights were inclusive. They welcomed both skilled and unskilled workers. Some skilled workers naturally resented this and would branch off later on to form exclusive unions. Several stand-up comedians refused to join because they were to be classified as “unskilled worker.”
The Knights of Labor were progressive and liberal for their time, most of them welcoming women and blacks in their ranks, and favoring co-operative ownership of companies by labor and capitol. The Knights were conservative radicals, the oxymoron notwithstanding, who were strictly against the use of the strike. The KOL wanted the workers to have a share in the means of production and this way both sides would co-operate cheerfully so that everyone could make money. The no-strike rule became contentious down the road, but in its early years the Knights did not threaten the public interest with strikes.
Only ‘toilers’ were welcome in the KOL. Merchants, as well as unskilled laborers were considered toilers, but many were barred. Professional gamblers were among the groups excluded from membership. Others barred included bankers, lawyers, liquor salesmen, and mimes.
Previous unions did not charge admission. But the Knights put an end to the free ride. They introduced the ‘head tax on labor.’ We know it today as Union dues.
SANTO DOMINGO 6.30.70
Grant wanted to be an expansionist in the tradition of Jefferson or Polk but it didn’t work out for him.
The first major move of his administration was to present to the Senate a treaty for the annexation of Santo Domingo (today’s Dominican Republic).
SD was in political turmoil. Seward, of Alaska fame, had been working on the Santo Domingo deal under President Andy Johnson. Grant’s new head of the State Department advised abandoning the Santo Domingo project but Sam went ahead anyway. He sent his personal secretary to undercut the Secretary of State and made a separate deal.
What is today called the ‘White House Chief of Staff’ was in Grant’s time called the ‘personal secretary.’ Grant’s personal secretary, was Orville Babcock, one of the ‘bad guys’ of American History. Babs went to Santo Domingo and negotiated a treaty of annexation with a general Diaz who was only one of the claimants to leadership in that troubled country.
Another Dominican named Cabral had his own cabal and they supported his claim to the presidency. Cabral hadn't signed the Babcock-Diaz treaty.
Grant and Babcock had a weak document. They claimed that the United States had now acquired Santo Domingo by this treaty. There was included in the plan a back-up treaty in case the first one for full annexation failed. The second treaty agreed only that the United States would be granted a 99 year lease on the Dominican port of Samana Bay (Bahia de Samana.)
Grant called a cabinet meeting and presented the Washington assemblage with the new treaty and an assortment of physical items from the Dominican Republic to show the men what a valuable and useful addition it would be to the USA. He had on the table a pineapple, a sugar cane, a sapphire, and a shortstops glove.
When Ham Fish, the Secretary of State learned of the SD initiative he felt injured for not having been consulted on this important mater. Fish went to see Grant and told him what he could do with the Secretary of State job. Grant calmed him down and the Fish stayed in the tank.
Grant sent a message to Congress, much of which was about about Santo Domingo. The president said that acquisition of Santo Domingo would reverse the negative trade balance plaguing the American economy. Grant had good reason to worry about the trade deficit. The United States trade deficit was equal to all of the currency in circulation. Grant campaigned hard on Capitol Hill to gain support for his expansionist project.
Santo Domingo on the whole was eager and willing to be purchased by the USA.
One of the problems facing passage of either treaty was Senator Sumner. The Mass man had control of the Foreign Relations Committee and had two influential friends, Hoar and Karfut, in the President’s cabinet. Sumner was good friends with the Secretary of State and the United States Minister to England. Sumner had more influence in the Republican Congress than Grant did and this was a basis for their bad relationship. Sumner had blocked more than one of Grant’s earlier initiatives. Grant now had to court Sumner for Dominican annexation. Grant swallowed his pride and walked over to Sumner’s house at dinner time.
Charles was dining with two newspaper editors when he heard the doorbell. A voice was chatting with the butler and the diners recognized it. Someone dropped his spoon in shock. The President of the United States had dropped by to pay a social visit to his nemesis, Senator Sumner!
Grant was welcomed into the living room. The President turned down a glass of sherry and began to talk about Santo Domingo.
One of the newspaper men interrupted and inquired about a Radical named Ashley who had been unjustly removed from office as Governor of Montana Territory. Grant instantly got mad and said that Ashley was a no good bum. Then the president calmed down and resumed his sales pitch to Sumner about the benefits to our nation of the treaty of annexation with the Dominican Republic.
At the end of the visit Grant asked Sumner if he would be supporting the treaty. Sumner knew that his answer was important and so it was carefully spoken. There are four accounts of what he said. They only vary in exact wording but they are all similar enough, and a fair composite would be, “You have my full support on all matters as a member of the Republican Party. I will give the treaty my fullest consideration.”
Now personally I would have read this as a ‘no.’ But Grant took it as a decided ‘yes.’ Sumner’s answer was like that of the agent that sees the magic act and says, “You’re very talented. We’ll keep your name on file and if anything comes up that seems right for what you do we’ll give you a call.” Translation, “We aren’t going to book you ever for anything.” Yet some acts walk out of that office thinking, on the basis of what the guy said, that they're on the way to great gigs.
When Sumner presented the DR treaty to the Senate for debate and vote, he presented it without a recommendation pro or con. By protocol, this was a decided gesture of disrespect. It is in effect a virtual 'no' vote from the presenter.
Massachusetts in general thought that the acquisition of the Dominican Republic was rank imperialism. Charlie was not alone. And plenty of the rest of the country felt that way. There would have been plenty of opposition even without Sumner's leadership.
To further the cause of the opposition there was evidence floating around that some supporters of Dominican annexation in Congress were to be rewarded with trade concessions there once the deal went through. Now the Dominican deal had both the stench of imperialism and scandal on its side. The Senate voted the treaty of annexation down on June 30, 1870 by a score of 28 to 28.
One of the reasons that the treaty failed was that the public was only beginning to get used to the idea of the recent gigantic Alaska acquisition. The Senators were listening to their constituents when they rejected Santo Domingo. They felt that the country was getting too big too fast. The western wilderness hadn’t even been conquered yet and the USA was planning to expand in far away lands. Santo Domingo came up to bat at the wrong time.
The downing of Grant’s balloon caused tensions between Sumner and Grant to reach breaking point. Both U Grant and Ham Fish were by now so hostile to Sumner that the Republicans decided that Sumner’s influence was detrimental to their getting their favorite bills passed. Charlie was winning his battles but losing the war. Charles Sumner got the boot. He was deposed from the head of the Foreign Relations Committee in 1871.
Charlie Sumner died in 1874. He was a great man. Every politician thinks they are on the side of justice. The winners are the ones that, in the hindsight of history, definitely were. Charles Sumner is one of those men. What does it matter if he was personally dislikable? It’s not relevant to me. I’ve played sports with complete jerks who were loyal and true friends on the field, and with nice guys who can’t be depended on in the clutch. So what does it matter if Sumner was a snob? I visit his house and his grave here in Cambridge and Boston. He’s my idol.
But he was wrong on the Dominican. The results would have been good in the long run. It certainly would have changed the history of the Caribbean and of the US Navy. A U.S. owned Dominican Republic would negate any need for Guantanamo.
If Grant had seized the Dominican Republic when Congress was not in session and then presented it before Congress for approval after the press and the public had got used to the idea, it might be the 51st state today.
15th AMENDMENT
There was only one way the Radical Republican in Congress could hope for the successful passage of the 15th Amendment protecting the right of everyone (i.e. blacks) to vote. A clever plan was devised whereby the Southern states would have to pass the 15th Amendment as a condition for re-admittance to statehood. It was progressive blackmail. You can stay under federal military occupation, or pass the progressive 15th Amendment and become a state. They were two pretty bad choices for the likes of Georgia or Alabama. The South said uncle and signed up for another run at being part of the USA. Besides, they could always overcome this new federal ruling with state, county, and municipal laws that would throw sand in the face of Uncle Sam as he tried to protect all his people.
WOMEN GET THE VOTE IN WYOMING
In 1869 Wyoming became the first state to grant the vote to women. There was some ulterior motive involved because the state desperately needed women. The males dominated the census by a six to one margin and the place had a reputation for lawlessness. The franchise for women would hopefully attract female settlers.
Social progressivism was always advanced in the west. It was hard to enforce Philadelphia morals on the frontier. There was no great protest in Wyoming when the state proposed to let women vote.
Colorado was next, granting women the vote in 1876 … only in school elections. Big deal.
Three cheers for Wyoming. It gave us Curt Gowdy and the female vote.
HIRAM REVELS AND COMPANY
In 1870 the first African-American Senator took his seat in the Capitol in Washington. His name was Hiram Revels and he had been elected by the state of Mississippi. If this alone didn’t tick off the white supremacists, Revels took over the seat formerly occupied by Jefferson Davis!
Ouch!
Mr. Revels was an educated man and an ordained Methodist minister. Hiram was born in North Carolina but had lived in the North as well, being educated at Knox College in Illinois. After the war, he went back South to Natchez MS, making him, I suppose, something of a carpetbagger.
Another black man, Blanche K. Bruce, also from Mississippi, followed Revels in the Senate.
In the other House, 16 blacks served as U.S. Representatives between 1869 and 1880.
White historians, especially in the first half of the 20th century, have painted a pernicious and disgraceful picture of black legislators in this time of jubilee. They are described as ignorant, corrupt, inefficient and not worthy of the office. Black legislators are blamed for all the corruption in southern state governments, as though whites of both parties did not play their part. It’s pure racist reaction, revising the story to fit their emotional needs. The historic lies were more widely believed in 1940 than they were in 1882; that’s the scary part. Carpetbagger whites were more corrupt than new black Congressmen, but the “corrupt Negro rule” is the corrupt historian complaint.
After federal troops left the south in the time of Hayes, white supremacy returned to the Capitol. The “bloody shirt” was not such a naïve fear after all. The Blanches and Bruce’s of Grant’s time were a false spring.
THAT STUFF IS NASTY
In 1870 a nasty cartoonist gave the Democratic Party a new and permanent mascot, and our language a new word. In a cartoon in Harper’ Weekly, Thomas Nast represented the Democratic Party as a donkey. The symbol has stuck to the present day (the Republican Party is of course represented by a giraffe.)
The word nasty is derived Nast, for his edgy sense of humor.
Nast certainly had more of a knife out for the Republicans than for the Democrats in his long career. Nast probably tried to be even handed, but after reading a hundred of his cartoons I don’t think he pulled it off.
I don't like his art. I think he is unpleasant to read. Unrewarding. Nasty. The shoe fits. Every history book makes you read his cartoons. I wish they forced me to read something less nasty in style. There's something mean-spirited about Tommy's drawing style. It's the supreme opposite of whoever drew the Archie and Veronica comic books in the 1960's.
Thomas Nast 'toons are accurate on what's already a known point, but they offer no original insight. He entertained, he rarely stimulated.
FORCE ACTS
The South was so clearly oppressing its black citizens through both legal and illegal means that Congress passed and Grant autographed a series of laws called the Force Acts. One of the Force Acts was specifically labeled after its target Ku Klux Klan Act. The federal government let it be known that it would use military force to protect the rights of the blacks in the Redeemer infested South.
The historians always harp on how Grant had no mind of his own, no moral fiber, and no qualities of leadership. Well he certainly had his head on straight when it came to the Klan and the unrepentant South. He said “let us have peace” but he wasn’t going to take any garbage either. After all the South had tried to kill him for five years.
Grant showed everyone he meant business when he put nine South Carolina counties under martial law. The ghosts of the Confederate dead were not going to scare Grant or the federal government.
TREATY OF WASHINGTON 1871
Relations with Great Britain were stuck in the mud because of the old Alabama claims. That Confederate raider, built in England, went around sinking Union shipping throughout the war and now the victorious North was trying to stick the UK with the bill for the damages.
Since 1866 the US had been demanding reparation for the work of the Bama and since 1866 the English had been haughtily rejecting any such claims. Senator Sumner, a powerful member of the Foreign Relations Committee had gone so far as to extend the US demand to include the cost of prolonging the war. Charlie wanted the Brits to pay up not only for direct, but for indirect damages done by the English built raider. By his extrapolations into how much the extension of the war cost his government in lost gains plus direct losses, Sumner figured the United Kingdom owed the United States 879.3 trillion dollars.
A treaty settling a number of minor issues between the US and UK went to the Senate early in 1871. The Senate rejected it almost unanimously because it didn’t address the Alabama claims. For the first time, the British began to take the Alabama problem seriously. The Franco-Prussian War had just begun in Europe and England knew it could easily become involved in that one. Not only did England need trade with America in the event of a European war, there was also the concern that America might exact its revenge by allowing a European enemy of England to build raiders in the United States.
The first break in the icy impasse came when President Grant decided that the first step would be for the United States to pay the claims of US citizens against Britain with US money. That way the dispute would be focused only on direct diplomatic relations. The legal procedures of American citizens would be removed from the equation. The British considered this a little bit of a magnanimous gesture and it softened their attitude somewhat.
The British minister in Washington was Edward Andre Thornton. ET proposes a joint commission to meet and settle the dispute peacefully. The Thornton group met at Washington for two months in the spring of 1871 and emerged with the Treaty of Washington, which was an agreement to submit all claims to a fair arbitration. The Alabama claims would be submitted to a five person tribunal made up of one representative of five different countries. The US and UK would have only one member each. Italy, Brazil and Switzerland provided the other three.
Other disputes included disagreements over the fisheries, and settlement of the northwest boundary disagreement in the area of present day Seattle/Vancouver.
Hamilton Fish proposed that the fish dispute be settled later at Halifax.
The Northwest boundary dispute was submitted to the Emperor of Germany for dispensation. He decided in favor of the USA, awarding many islands in Puget Sound to Uncle Sam at the expense of the Brits.
The big one of course was the Alabama claims. Sumner had been demanding more than a hundred million dollars in reparations (I exaggerated the first time). England agreed to pay “not a shilling.”
\ The five man tribunal in the end awarded the United States 15 million dollars in direct damages, and none for the indirect claims of Sumner for the prolongation of the Civil War.
Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John Quincy, represented the USA on the arbitration panel. The tribunal decision was non-partisan. To the United Kingdom it was worth the cash to see good diplomatic and trade relations restored between the two countries.
CHICAGO FIRE OCTOBER 1871
A great fire destroyed the center of the city of Chicago in October of 1871.
The fire began in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn and was probably started by two guys, one of who was nicknamed ‘Peg-leg.’ This hobo blamed it on Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, claiming that it kicked over a lantern. History blames poor Mrs. O’Leary when it was actually two male drunks that hung out in her barn and they probably started it with a discarded cigar or match.
The Chicago Fire burned for three days, October 8-10, 1871. More than three square miles in center city were destroyed. 300 people died, and more than 90,000 people were homeless for the winter. In the 1970's a professional football team had the nerve to name itself ‘The Chicago Fire.’
The Chicago Fire was not a self-contained disaster. Chicago was an important commercial city and its setback hurt the U.S. economy overall. On the other hand the destroyed areas became a perfect site for the new ‘skyscrapers’ that were already being planned.
Just over a year later, on November 9, 1872, the downtown area of Boston, Massachusetts burned to the ground. 20 people died and monetary damage rivaled that of Chicago. The two fires contributed to the downfall of a tottering economy by draining the insurance companies of 273 million dollars. This fiery tale of two cities helped to launch the Panic of 73.
AMNESTY ACT 1872
Time was partially healing the wounds of the Civil War. In 1872 Congress passed the Amnesty Act by which most of the former Confederates that had been disenfranchised for traitorous actions were forgiven. A vast majority of the apostates were restored their full political rights, with only 500 or so hard-liners still in the doghouse. Many of the misfortune 500 would get their pardon when Hayes took over.
ELECTION OF 1872
Sam Grant was the overwhelming choice for the Republicans in 72. He faced no challengers at the convention and won the nomination unanimously on the first ballot. This was only was because countless Republicans were so disgusted with him that they had deserted the Republican Party and formed a new opposition party, the Liberal Republican Party. The pseudo-libs left the conventional Republican field to Grant and fought him like Whigs.
There was much opposition to the Radicals from within the Republican Party. By 1872 it had reached crisis proportions. Their radical Radical powers were growing weaker. Famous leaders like Sumner and Stevens were dead and there weren’t quite so many within the party who still harbored hatred for the defeated South.
The new Republicans were more interested in promoting American business than in old fashioned Radical values such as the rights of poor blacks in the new South. The new Republicans saw the new South as place to grow new millionaires, whether they were composed of carpetbaggers, scalawags, old Rebs, or absentee Northerners. The old Republicans had tried to win by getting tough with the defeated South. The new Republicans wanted to win by appeasing the South. The Liberal Republicans wanted throw the ‘Bloody Shirt’ into the washing machine and let white supremacy return to the South. That's your “Liberal” Republican Party of 1872. They liberally promoted white money power in the North and looked the other way with regard to the return of white political power in the South.
These rebels within the party were a minority but were too substantial to sit idly by and fall in line. Leaders such as Cassius Clay were unabashed anti-Grants. Cassius Clay wanted to KO Grant with a flurry of uppercuts. The anti-Grants had to do something to let their voice be heard.
The separatist Liberal Republicans held their convention in Cincinnati in May of 1872. There were several names in the LR hunt.
Charles Francis Adams was a leading possibility. Chuck was the grandson of the two Adams Presidents and had the same amount of charm as those two, meaning none. Adams ducked out. CFA wrote a letter to a friend saying of the Liberal Republicans, “take me out of that crowd,” which effectively took him out of the old ball game. I feel exactly the same way about today's Tea Party movement. “Take me out of that crowd.” I changed my registration for 2011 to Independent after 26 years a Republican.
Lyman Trumbell was being considered as was Mr. David Davis (who will figure prominently in the next election.)
The obvious choice however was the second most famous living person in the country, Horace Greeley. “Go West” Greeley had been a famous newspaper person since the 1840’s and was always calling them as he saw them. Unlike the soft clay positions of Grant, Greeley’s opinions were made of hard iron.
The Democrats liked Greeley because he was relatively tolerant towards the racist white ex Confederates of the South. Greeley had been one of the toughest anti-slavery men in the world before the war, but after the war he wanted to forgive and forget. In other words he was completely naïve about the Jim Crow backlash brewing in the South, and in fairness he would have adjusted his opinions if he could see the future. The Democrats disliked Greeley because he had been attacking the Democratic Party in print for a living for decades.
But the Democrats were willing to overlook the dart holes Greeley had put in them for 40 years if that was the price to be paid for getting the hated Reconstructionist President Grant out of office. The Dems let it be known that if Greeley were nominated, they would endorse him in a general election. It was a unique moment in American history, the Democrats running a Republican for President!
So the Democrats held their Convention in Baltimore in July and nominated for President and Vice-President the same two men that also happen to have already been nominated by the Liberal Republican Convention, Horace Greeley and B. Gratz Brown. It was a three party race with two Parties having the same ticket and these two ostensibly from historic opposition Parties.
Bizarre. The Election of 1872 became a primary between two wings of the Republican Party with winner take White House, and the Dems backing one of the wings of the Republicans.
The Democrats were tired of being beaten for President by its Civil War baggage, which was another reason they fell in with this strange-bedfellow arrangement. You couldn’t wave the “bloody shirt” at a Northern Republican.
But the Democrats of ‘72 bet on the wrong horse in the Liberal Republican Horace. Greeley got killed in the Election of 1872. Some believe literally. Not only was Horace slow and past his prime, but he died three weeks after the election on November 24, 1868. Even if he had won, he never would have taken office! Instead the Presidency would have been turned over to his running mate, Clem Kadiddlehopper III.
The combo ticket seemed promising and Greeley was actually confident he might win as October came around. But early state elections showed markers for an impending Liberal Republican shellacking.
Greeley lost because the double party strategy backfired. Sure, lots of disgruntled Dems went along with the plan to help the Republicans buck their party nominee Greeley. Sure, lots of Republicans were unhappy with Grant and Grantism. But for every two votes won by this strategy three were lost. Registered Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Greely endorsed by the hated Democrats. And disgruntled Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to vote for any member of the Republican Party, even if it was one from its rebellious win.
Greeley was a little shell shocked from the attacks he had received during the campaign and said that he wasn't sure whether he was running for the presidency or the penitentiary. He was sure that he was the greatest figure in America and loved by all but the most ardent racists.
As the election drew close he was often at the bedside of his wife who was grievously ill. Just a few days before the election she died. Just a few days after losing the election Greeley suffered a breakdown and had to be sent to an asylum. Horace Greeley died on November 24, 1872. Even if he had won, he would not have been alive to take the oath of office the following March (unless you figure that if he had won he wouldn't have died.)
Some historians (most I’d say) speculate, and others say outright, that the abuse he suffered during the campaign of 72 caused Greeley to die too soon. The historians presumed it to be true, mostly because it makes better writing and reading than ‘Greeley would probably have died on or around November 24, 1872 even if he had been a librarian or a farmer.’ If anything, it was the death of his wife, less than two weeks before the election that broke his will to live, not the mere loss of the Presidency.
As a result of Greeley dying, when the Electoral College met, the LR Electoral votes were split among minor opposing candidates. So the official results of the Electoral College in 1872 is misleading.
RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SECOND TERM
COLFAX MASSACRE IN LOUISIANA
1873 and 1874 there was a civil war in Louisiana. The following two stories showcase the awful problem of Reconstruction for President Grant to deal with. One carpetbagger governor pulled a Jeffords and went over to the conservatives. For this he was impeached by the group supporting the Radicals on whose platform he had been installed. The state of Louisiana had two legislatures, one conservative and one Radical and US Army troops were sent in to support you know which side. These controversies led to much violence.
THE COLFAX MASSACRE OF APRIL 13 1873
Colfax is a little town, far from the big cities of Louisiana. I go there for the annual Pecan Festival. (It's one of the best, not quite as good as the one in Anderson SC.) Colfax was named for the Vice President under Grant, Mr Shuyler Colfax. And Colfax was the county seat for Grant Parish, named after guess who. The white people, the Redeemers, didn't like their old place names taken away from them and decided to take a stand at Colfax. The excuse for starting a race war was a local election for sheriff. All over the state there were dual election returns between Republican and Democrat counting boards. In Grant Parish, a man named Christopher Columbus Nash felt that he had been robbed of his win by corrupt counting methods. He organized the bad white people in three counties and made himself a little army. Christopher Columbus was going to rediscover America and make it just like the good old days before the war.
A lot of blacks heard that the whites were planning on seizing the county courthouse and install Nash and every other Democratic candidate who had lost. So about 100 black men surrounded the courthouse and began digging trenches. These brave black volunteers, many of them local officials, were going to take on a military defense of the standing legitimate Republican-backed government of Colfax, Louisiana. For several days the blacks dug in, with numbers growing. Nash knew he had to strike before their defenses became too strong.
At exactly high noon on Easter Sunday 1873, more than 400 heavily armed whites, half on horseback, attacked 150 blacks trying to defend Colfax Court House. After an initial charge, the whites took some shelter and started firing. For about an hour it was a shootout from a cheap old black and white movie with few casualties on either side. But the whites had one piece of heavy artillery, and when they got it in position the board changed. Two shots blew holes through the black defense and killed several. There was panic in the ranks. The Colfax crusaders lost all discipline. Most of them fled the courthouse, while others tried to find some corner to hide in.
The whites chased down the fleeing black men and slayed them in various ways and places. Their bodies floated down the Red Rover and flattened a spot of crops. Most of those inside the courthouse were killed. Near sundown, Satan took a nap and 50 black men were rounded up, set aside and allowed to live. Near midnight Satan woke up and got back to work. The 50 black prisoners were all executed in cold blood.
This was the worst atrocity in the history of the Reconstruction. Altogether, more than 120 black men were killed. Two whites died in the Battle of Colfax Court House. They really could just add that title to the Battles of the American Civil War.
Two of the white men who killed black people on Easter Sunday were tried before the United States Supreme Court and acquitted. The Redeemers had a hero in a man named Cruishank. That decision was rendered in 1876. More on that later.
The Colfax Massacre is certainly one of the under-publicized episodes of American History. Most people who like to read history don't know about. In the last few years two new books about it have been published, giving it more ink than it's had in the last 50 years before this.
The movie The Great Escape makes a big deal of how the Germans executed 50 American PW's (Omar Bradley always called them PW's and that's good enough for me.) That was in a declared war, the escapes were draining German resources in the hunt to catch them, thus inflicting German casualties indirectly. What happened at Colfax as much worse. The blacks were only defending a public building from armed aggression, and it was American against American. And everyone who did it got away with it.
The Great Escape says at the end, “This Film is Dedicated to The Fifty.”
This little book is dedicated to The Fifty.
THE LOUISIANA CIVIL WAR CONTINUES
This was civil war.
The Louisiana version of the Mi Colfax Lai massacre won the approval of much of the racist South. A major newspaper ran the headline “WAR AT LAST!” to mark the Colfax massacre.
The unrepentant Democrats of Louisiana were full of hate towards the Republican government of the state, largely because it included black legislators. There were people who would be furious to have ride in the same Jules Verne balloon with one black person in order to escape danger. Now they had to allow blacks to “rule” over them. That's how they saw their state legislatures all of a sudden; something that ruled over them. Ordinarily the legislatures and local institutions only “governed” them, but since they included blacks and northern white liberals, suddenly the noble white south was being “subjected” to “Negro and Carpetbagger rule.”
The Governor was of Louisiana was Republican W.P. Kellogg.
After winning re-election “Special K” faced a rebellion. The losing Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor, McEnery caused much of the trouble and was the leader of the rebel rabble-rousing redeemers. On March 3, 1873 McEnery’s army of racially prejudiced Democrats assaulted two police stations. They also took over the state legislature. The McEnery Democrats declared themselves the rightful government of Louisiana. The state of Louisiana had fallen in a coup!
The federal government, heavily Republican at the time, would not allow this for some obvious reasons. By the end of March 6 the entire McEnery Louisiana Legislature was in jail where they were free to make pass any laws they wanted regarding conditions inside their individual cells.
As an answer to this little setback, the racist Dems of Louisiana (who perceived themselves to be persecuted martyrs) decided to organize an extralegal paramilitary group. By early in 1874 the “White League” was under way. It was the Louisiana version of the KKK except it was aimed almost specifically Governor Kellogg and his 'Negro and Carpetbagger' state legislature.
The White League led the counter-attack. An army of angry pale-skins assaulted the Baton Rouge state legislature on September 14, 1874. In the violence of that day 27 people died. Once again, the white Democrat racists took over the state government of Louisiana. They actually believed that the feds would allow this to stand as the new and permanent government.
The next day the Democrats began to conduct state government business as though they hadn’t taken power illegally by French Revolution style violence and 27 people had not been killed. The Federal government rebounded again and by the end of the 17 of September 1874 Kellogg, the Republicans, and legitimacy were back in control of Louisiana.
Many historians cite these incidents and then state calmly that as a result, three years later when Federal troops left the South, the Democrats returned to control of Louisiana. This is untrue and it has come down as historic orthodoxy American. As if the Democrats weren’t going to return to power as soon as the federal troops left no matter what. As if the Republicans and the federal restoration of power in the wake of the Kellogg massacre were somehow to blame for the angry reaction of the Democratic party in 1878 when the Hayes bargain of 1876 (more on that later) allowed the federal troops to depart the South.
The hate and bitterness of the Democrats towards Republican and federal rule was a fact of life even if nothing had happened in the Louisiana state government revolution. Attributing Democratic reaction in 1877 Louisiana to the events of 1873 and 1874 is like saying that US Marines in the Pacific really became angry with Japan after they found out that two Marines recently were murdered in a POW camp.
PANIC OF 1873
The big economic issues in Grant’s time were the tariffs, the income tax, and, as always in the Golden Years, currency.
There was no longer a need for revenue from the high tariffs but Congress voted to keep them high anyway.
The federal income tax, initially a Civil War measure, was finally abolished in 1872. It would be later be revived by that no-good Taft.
In the currency contest it was silver versus gold versus paper. On an on it goes throughout the 19th century as the debtors want more paper money printed and the creditors want to see hard coin as the only useable currency.
The Panic of 73 began when Philly banker Jay Cooke ran out of money. His bank was the biggest in the USA and it failed on September 17 1873, mostly from gambling in railroad stocks and bonds. The Panic of 1873 was on. The railroad boom went bust. “Seven out, line away, it’s the don’ts you have to pay.”
This overCooking triggered a stream of bank failures, which triggered mass business failures. 18,000 were buried in Grant's tomb by the end of 1875. At the end of Grant's term three million Americans were unemployed. The lucky ones who kept their jobs had to face wage cuts, which led to class tension and sometimes conflict. Labor and capitol, ideally mutually supportive, became antagonistic with the hard times. There were strikes and riots and murders. The American mind was fast becoming more Marx and Engels than Grant and Cooke. It was high tide for bitter socialist reaction among the American working masses. The stage was set for the Populist Revolt.
MID TERM-ELECTIONS
The Democratic Party obtained its first slice of power in 74 when they obtained a majority in the House of Representatives. The economy was in the ravine, the South had regained admission to the USA, the Radical platform was passé, and scandals were mudding Grant’s cigars. The Democrats took the reigns of the House in a big upset victory in 1874. The presidency seemed right around the corner. But the Democrats did not get the White House until the victory of Grover Cleveland, in 1884.
THE VIRGINIUS AFFAIR
The Virginius was a small ship that was built by the Rebs in the Civil War and after the war became property of the U.S. Navy.
The Navy sold it to private owners who took it to Cuba, which was in the middle of the 10 Years War, a war of revolution against Spanish rule. Anti-government rebels used the Virginius in the cause of freedom.
In late 1873 the Cuban government seized the Virginius on the high seas and executed 53 of the crew in Havanna Square before a cheering throng. Four of those who died as convicted pirates were American.
The USA protested and Spain remained defiant. It could have led to a war. Cuba/Spain backed down and returned the Virginius to the United States, although it sank on the way home anyway.
RED RIVER WAR IN TEXAS
Not a lot of good things seem to happen along Red Rivers in Grant's time. The Colfax Massacre took place along the Red River in Louisiana. Out west a whole war was based on another Red River.
Many Indian tribes in the southwest had taken advantage of the Civil War to break out of their pens and roam free again. The South was preoccupied with the white-on-white Civil War. Now that the Civil War was long over the USA wanted the Indians to go back inside their reserved areas.
The Indians of the southern plains resisted forced settlement in the Texas Oklahoma region. Commanches and Cheyenne Indians assaulted a post named Adobe Walls in Texas in 1874. A series of pitched battles then took place in the Texas panhandle and in the Red River region. On one side were the US Army and the Texas militia, on the other the rebellious Indians. I’ll give you three guesses as to which side won the Red River War.
EADES BRIDGE SPANS THE MISSISSIPPI 1874
Genius Jimmy Eades was in his glory one summer day in 1874 when his new bridge opened at St. Louis, crossing the mighty Mississippi. James Buchanan Eades already was a famous American for his work building a bridge across the Niagara River, that one completed in 1855.
The new bridge over the Mississippi wasn’t the first bridge ever to cross it, but it was the first large modern bridge to span the wide central part of it. The Eades could take on both road and rail traffic simultaneously and was definitely tornado-proof. That’s because it was destroyed by a tornado while under construction so when it was re-built it was tornado-proofed.
The new span opened up a new world in east-west cross country travel and commerce. The Eades had three prominent arches, so I presume that is the origin of the symbolic arch of St. Louis. General Sherman was there to drive in the ceremonial last spike. President Grant attended the opening ceremonies. The Eades is still being used today.
I went up the Arch in 1976 when I was cross-country hitchhiking. The window you see out of is the size of a postage stamp and has a zillion scratches. A three hour line to see nothing. And the elevator goes up at a bizarre unpleasant angle.
CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
Imagine an amusement park for intellectual adults in a beautiful natural rural setting. What a concept.
A special resort opened up in 1874 at the extreme western tip of New York State. On the shore of Lake Chautauqua a summer getaway resort for intellectually starved adults was founded.
It started small. Two Methodist ministers named Vincent and Miller founded Chautauqua as a summer school for Sunday school teachers but it quickly bloomed into much more. Miller was a well to do manufacturer and a Sunday school superintendent.
Chautauqua lasted until 1924 and the institution inspired a national craze for self-education among adults called ‘The Chautauqua Movement.’
This was a time when the average middle class adult had little access to the great books and advanced education, even the self kind. Free public libraries were coming on but were still rare. Worse, this was such an age of rapid spectacular intellectual changes that even if one did have a collection of the great books at home for classical learning, that did not cover the latest exiting fashions in thinking. Advanced university education was available for the teen-aged children of the rich, but what was there for the middle-class adult?
The idea behind Chautauqua was a vacation and entertainment atmosphere, but with the noble purpose of intellectual advancement as the main reason for being there.
Sure there were bands and food, and stand-up comedians, and swimming. But there were also intellectual things, such as instructional classrooms and discussion groups covering a wide range of subjects.
The biggest events were the lectures. An adult could go to Chautauqua and not only relax and have fun for 8 days, they also got to attend a long lecture by one of the great intellectual names of the times. All the greats were there. It was brain show-business. Six Presidents lectured at Chautauqua. The visitor experienced fun, intellectual gain, relaxation, beauty, good food, and both low-life and higher-plane entertainment. One left Chautauqua with bragging rights to have been there. It had to be one of the best places on the earth for single adults. It was the happening place in the USA for quite a long run.
TOMPKINS SQUARE RIOT 1874
When the New Year of 1874 began, unemployment was bad. It was bad enough in the rural areas. In the cities it was a powder keg of trouble growing worse by the week.
The unemployed of New York City decided to stage a demonstration on January 13, 1874 at Tompkins Square NYC. The lazy bums were trying to get the attention of the city, state and federal government in order to secure relief and reforms. They didn’t have much else to do so they all could definitely make it. The demonstration was given the legal sanction of the city which issued the appropriate permit in the spirit of 1776. The mayor even agreed to address the assembled hobos.
But then city officials learned that some extreme left wing agitators were going to be making speeches at the Tompkins rally. Now this was a different story. At the last moment the license to demonstrate in Tompkins Square was revoked. Thousands of unemployed of course showed up anyway, not realizing they were gathering illegally. Some angry orators got up and started in against the city and the government in general. The police went in to break up the party and you know the rest. It was a full-scale riot. No one was killed but dozens were seriously injured.
What was more ominous for labor was not so much the riot itself but the press coverage. Most newspapers blamed foreign Communist agitators for the violence, not the miscommunication about the permit.
THE CRUIKSHANK REDEMPTION 3-27-1876
The Colfax Massacre was one of the worst mass murders in all of world history. Three years later The United States Supreme Court rendered a verdict in United States vs. Cruikshank, that gave the Redeemers cause to celebrate. Not only were the individuals who started the massacre to go free, the Court Ruled that all such KKK type organizations were legal as far as the federal government was concerned.
The decision handed down on March 27 was the Dred Scott Decision of Reconstruction. The Court ruled that the states could protect people from violations of their civil rights, but the federal government could not. It was none of DC's business to enforce the provisions of the recently passed amendments protecting black people from oppression. If someone could prove that the federal government had oppressed someone's Civil Rights, then that person could go to the federal government for redress. But if the state was doing harm to someone, that was out of federal jurisdiction.
Southern whites started a war for states rights. They lost, establishing the principle that states rights were second. Then, after a half a million young widows, the Supreme Court hands states- rights victory to the Rebs on a platter! Cruikshank was Bad Day at Black Rock for the good guys. This decision dropped the bridge back over the moat. The rebels cheered the rebel yell as they charged back into the castle and took over the South, based on the Supreme Court declaring that the Federal Government had no right to stop them. It took fifty years to even begin to undo the damage from Cruikshank.
POWDER RIVER AND ROSEBUD 1876 -PRELUDE TO CUSTER
BATTLE OF ROSEBUD CREEK 6.17.76
On June 17 1876, in the prelude to Little Big Horn it was Curly versus the Crook at the Rosebud.
The prelude happened 30 miles and 8 days away from Little Big Horn River at Rosebud Creek.
Curly was the original name of Chief Crazy Horse, leader of the Sioux. General Crook, a veteran of the Civil War was representing the whites in the fight.
The Battle of Rosebud Creek took place near todays Wyoming, South Dakota border.
Neither side won, the fight went on all afternoon, with about 20 killed on each side. Crook left the region to the Indians. Many historians think that even though it was a tie, the Indians won because if Crooks forces had still been in the region a week later, Custer would have made it back home in time for Ma Custer's custard pie at Christmas. Custer didn't eat custard pie, he was custard pie.
CUSTER’S LAST STAND 6.26.76
The most famous event in 'Cowboys and Indians' history, and the most famous event of the Grant era, was the massacre of 264 US Army troops under General George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn River.
George Armstrong Custer, a decorated Civil War hero, was pursuing the Sioux Indians across the northern plains country when he received a report of the presence of about 1,000 Indians at an encampment in Southwestern Montana. He went after them, taking a couple of unfortunate journalists along to watch the action.
The report turned out to be false. There were more accurately about 5,000 Indian warriors there. He was not only up against the Sioux. He was up against a united force of Sioux, (under Crazy Horse), Hunkpapa Sioux (under Gall) as well as Lakotas.
His supply line cut off, George knew it was curtains. The hunters became the hunted and there were no prisoners taken. White men were getting scalped left and right, the lucky ones were already dead. Maybe the Sioux had read reports about the Colfax Massacre, and wanted racial justice.
This slaughter is known as "Custer's last stand." Several bad movies have depicted this event with various apocryphal embellishments. However there is one seemingly reliable recorded account by an Indian eyewitness who says that the tall blonde fought bravely and was one of the last to die. Custer had a drawn out hand-to-hand struggle with a brave before succumbing in a dramatic ending.
But the battle of LBG was only a battle. It was not the war. Sitting Bull was wise enough to say upon hearing of Custer’s defeat, “Now they will never let us rest.” He was right. The Army tripled its efforts and tracked down the offending tribes one at a time. All were defeated. The Little Big Horn was the Sioux’s’ Last Stand.
POST GAME SHOW
The Battle of the Little Big Horn has been overanalyzed. There was a Congressional investigation on who was to blame that lasted well into the Hayes Administration.
One big horned goat was Marcus Reno, the man the gambling city in Nevada was named after. Unlike the city that bears his name , Marcus Reno was not much in the gambling department.
The Custer troops were supposed to be part of a pincer movement on the Indian camp. Reno was to attack from the southeast, and just as the bulk of the braves were dispatched to win the fight against Reno, Custer's men wold come swooping in from the northeast. There was no direct communication between Reno and Custer but they both had the plan down.
When Reno reached the Indian camp he realized he was falling into a trap. The village ahead of him was deliberately a defenseless temptation while all around his flanks the armed indians just hoped he would march foreward so they could completely cut off his regiment. He advanced cautiously.
The Indians attacked from all sides and Reno ordered a retreat. It was really more of a panic as men were being pulled from their horses and hacked to bits by Indian men and children, who delighted in bringing decapitated heads home for their approving moms and uncles. Reno's trusted Indian Scout, Black Kettle, had his brains shot out all over Reno's map just as the two of them were trying to decide what to do next.
Reno's retreat sealed the fate of Custer, you'd better believe it Buster. After the war Reno never denied that he panicked and ordered a very disorganized 'every man for himself' retreat. But he also said that the situation could have withstood nothing less. An organized formal military fighting retreat was “for pencil-pushers in Washington to contemplate in hindsight.” In the heat of battle, it was death and chaos and all was hopeless. If he had tried to make everyone run away in orderly fashion, no one would have survived.
Custer might have put up a much tougher fight at 'The Horn' if he had listened to one of his lieutenants. Back at the base, the lieutenant had advised Custer to take along a couple of machine guns. Three Gatling guns were available, and even one might have turned the tide of battle. Custer scoffed at the necessity of bringing machine guns to face “small bands of rowdy injuns.” George just said no to the Gatling guns and the rest is history.
BUFFALO BILL
When I was in High School we were taught that there were exactly 573 buffalo left in North America, a tragedy because there had once been millions upon millions of bufs roaming the plains. They were almost extinct. The 19th was the worst century ever for the gentle buffalos, and the climax of this animal genocide came in the Grant years.
The buffalo was the lifeblood of the plains Native Americans. Every single part of the dead animal was used in some way to improve Indian life. The buffalo meat was food, their bones tools, their skin the cover of teepees and their ‘chips’ were fuel for the fire. The whites exterminated the buffalo to conquer the Indians. The slaughter of the buffalo was tantamount to the slaughter of the Indians.
Whitey began to systematically destroy the buffalo as a species. The insensitive pale-faces killed them and left them to die along the railroad lines without eating them or using them. Between 1872 and 1875 more than 9 million buffs were dropped in the name of the Indian war. “Buffalo Bill” Cody earned his famous nickname by killing 4,321 buffalo in 8 months (I guess he broke the old record held by “Guns” McGillicutty of 2,223 buffs in 9 months, which he set in 1866.) Traveling civilian train passengers even shot them from the windows just for fun and to do their small part to help conquer the west.
Today the buffalo have made a comeback. Some national parks have a problem with too many of them and I have seen many in the wild. Two of them heckled me at the Pierre Funnybone and were asked to leave. Buffalo burgers are now being chowed down in diners all over the Rocky Mountain West. McBuffalo’s may be opening soon. Instead of 573 left we now have 573 eaten per day. Don’t we eat enough animals without adding buffalo to the burger roll call?
HOME ON THE GRANGE
In 1867 Oliver Kelly and a couple of men from the Department of Agriculture took a tour of the nations farmlands. Kelly took sad note of the dismal drab life of the farm family.
So in 1867 OK and his friends created a social and political organization called the Patrons of Husbandry or as it was more populistly known, ‘The Grange.’
Grange meetings were gatherings of grunge farmers and their families in their local towns. The idea was to enjoy commonality in these social settings and at the same time talk politics. These discussions would lead more focus on political goals. The social fun would thus lead directly to successful political action in the interests of the farmers. All the while the meetings could claim to be non-political. The leftists hid behind the square dancers.
The power of the Grangers peaked around 1876 with membership at one and a half million people. The Grange welcomed members of both sexes and had its own secret rituals and customs.
If the Grange can be said to have had one goal it was to fight the oppression of the farmers by the evil railroads. The Grange ran their own co-operative grain elevators, stores and even some banks. Grange members managed to gain control over some state legislatures (in Austin they were known as “The Texas Grangers”) getting them to pass laws protecting farmers from the capitalist bullies.
The strength of the Grange was the drab life of the farm. Make a grange meeting fun, and you're a magnet. These people have nothing to do. Their homes were too far apart and sought a true sense of town. But with the Grange lodge meetings, the people could interact as though their homes were side by side, at least for a couple of hours. It was instant town for a few hours a week.
The weakness of the Grange was that it depended on hard times for success. Prior to the Panic of 1873 it was a negligible force. After that it became a Midwestern mania. But when the depression abated, the Grange did too. Furthermore when some of their demands were met they lost their juice. The Grange was destroyed by success. Within 20 years after the Grange had died out, the two major parties had adopted virtually all of the Grange political positions. Government regulation of the railroads in the 80’s and 90’s, as slow as it was, nevertheless was the top reason the Grange disappeared.
MOLLY MAGUIRE
When Molly Maguire came knocking, you had better have a secret way out the back. Molly was not a person but a terrorist underground organization of violent American coal-miners in the 1870’s battling against the powerful owners. Five anthracite coal-mining counties in eastern Pennsylvania in the Scranton region hosted the Maguire activities. Anthracite was a hard, shiny, and prized brand of coal. I use it to heat the garage.
The Maguires killed people as readily as they threatened them. The Molly Maguires were not negotiators. They were an Irish mob, a hit squad determined to avenge the wrongs they perceived to have been committed against their hard-working people. They believed in the motto, “First you bleed, then we’ll talk.” They drew their membership from the Ancient Order of Hibernians. This is sad to me because I performed at one of their function halls just two months ago, and everyone was nice to me.
Plus I’m Irish. And name the movie providing the motto, “first you bleed, then we'll talk” - two hints; famous movie – a comedy.)
After years of harming or intimidating non-union workers and the officers of mining companies, the law regrouped and counter-attacked. They infiltrated the Molly Maguires. The biggest hero was Jimmy McParlan, undercover detective, the Donnie Brasco of his time. Jimmy Mac helped bring Molly down. Some probably wouldn't consider him a hero.
In 1875-76 the authorities roped in power of the Maguires. Ten were convicted of murder and executed on the gallows. The influence of the group declined rapidly. The demise of the
The Maguires also hurt the public perception of Knights of Labor because the secret rituals of the Maguires had unfortunate similarities to those of the Knights.
The Knights were becoming associated more and more, unfortunately for their numbers, with the socialists. With each tilt to the left, more people dropped out. By the end of the century all but the socialists had deserted the Knights of Labor.
Hollywood made a movie (that childish word) about The Mollies starring Sean Connery. It’s titled The Molly Maguires. It has very little in it of historical value. Way back in the 1970’s I often did stand-up comedy at an Irish bar in Boston called Molly’s. I had no idea that the name stood for something political and historic.
HE LET US HAVE PEACE
Santo Domingo and the Treaty of Washington have been mentioned. But in general, foreign affairs took a backseat during the Grant era. The urgency to build a canal across Central America lessened with the completion of the transcontinental railroad.
The old Southern states no longer had that old drive to find new lands to conquer for a glorious slave empire. This was another factor slowing down American expansion into the Americas.
There was so much work to be done exploring the US frontier and fighting the Indians that Grant’s foreign policy problems were essentially internal.
The Grant scandals were an impediment to putting his foreign policy plans through the suspicious Senate.
THE SCANDALS
It might be unfair to save the scandals for the end of the chapter, since this is what the Grant years are most remembered for, at least by the historians.
It should be remembered however, that while many of the offenders were members of Grant’s team, they had taken these bribes and kickbacks before Grant was elected. Many of the revelations of the abuses happened on Grant’s watch, but the crimes themselves did not. No one ever accused Grant of personal malfeasance in the most notorious scandal, the Credit Mobilier fiasco.
I find these scandals to be, like Watergate, a boring study, so seek complex detail elsewhere.
CREDIT MOBILIER
The Credit Mobilier (pronounced mo-billyer) affair. It means in French, 'Mobil Credit Card.' This was a joint stock company founded back in 1864 to build the Union Pacific Railroad of Golden Spike' fame.
The CR scandal has come down to history in mythical form, a fraction of the true account. To read most brief accounts, you would think that a great scam was launched between rich railroad investors and corrupt Congressmen in which their influence was bought and paid for with insider trading stock. Since they knew they could pass bills favorable to the railroad, it was a self fulfilled investment for them to buy the stock. In fact one of their own, Congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts was the wicked ringleader.
The truth is less horrible. Oakes Ames was the ringleader all right, but most of it was pretty much above board. Ames was a Congressman who invested heavily in the Union Pacific Railroad and put up the stock for sale, backed by his own money. In order to attract outside investors he convinced many Congressmen to buy small sums of stock. The key word is “small.” He hoped to show less famous but more wealthy men what kind of famous people were also buying the stock. He was not trading stock for legislative decision making. Some Congressmen were hesitant, so Ames offered to put up his own money for them if they would allow their names to be used as owners. Ames would would make them pay up later with the dividends he was confident the stocks would win.
When the entire affair began to generate some bad publicity the Congressmen made the crucial mistake of denying they had bought stock in Credit Mobilier. For those who had bought stock an honest admittance that they could do what they wanted in a free capitalist country could have cleared things up with spirit and pluck, but their Nixonian cover-up attempts blew the scandal sky high into the appearance of treason. For those who had allowed their names to be used without putting up any of their own money, an apology would have been in order and their careers could have survived it. The scandal came from large lying to cover up some actually small wrongs.
A few people were ruined by the Credit Mobilier scandal. The Senate passed a recommendation that one it's members be expelled but the follow-up step to actually do it was never proposed. The recommendation to expel sufficed as a censure. Congress censured Representatives Oakes Ames of Massachusetts, and James Brooks of New York (not to be confused with James Brooks the former running back for the Cincinnati Bengals.) One whose name survived the damage was a future president from Ohio, James Garfield. When Garfield ran for President in 1880 the Democrats accused him of taking stock from Ames without paying for it. Garfield denied it, even though all the evidence proved that he did. Garfield won the election of 1880.
US Grant had nothing personally to do with any of it, and all the untoward stock sales happened before his watch, but it comes down as a stain on his record. When people talk of the best and worst presidents (sadly the most popular concern of history conversations) they always rate Grant near the bottom and cite the Credit Mobilier as the first reason.
AFTER OFFICE
Almost as soon as he was sworn out of office, Grant decided to get out of town. With his wife Olympia, and his son Jesse, the beleaguered ex-prez left the country for a grand tour of Europe. The Grants departed Philadelphia on May 17, 1877 on the cruise ship Indiana. Thousands were there to give the Grants spectacular bon-voyage send-off.
He first stop was Liverpool were he was welcomed as if he was Sir Paul McCartney. In London US checked into a five star general hotel. At about 9 p.m. he heard a knock on his door. He opened it up to see before him none other than Edward the Fifth, the King of England!
Grant was scheduled to have a formal audience with the King the next day, but Edward decided to first make an informal social call. The two men cracked open a bottle and had a charming evening together, two giants in the calm private eye of the hurricane. To be a fly on the wall for that one. The next day they were grandly introduced to each other at court and pretended to meet for the first time. I wish Americans running for President would do that before the debates. I really do. Set politics aside and break open a bottle together. Be two people tonight and two politicians tomorrow. It would make them better politicians tomorrow.
Grant then went to Paris where the French treated him coldly because they felt that the United States had sided with the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
Grant then went to Berlin where the Germans treated him warmly because the Germans felt that the United States had sided with the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
In Denmark he hung out with his brother-in-law Mickey Kramer, who was the US minister to Copenhagen. Kramer was one of the typical Grant spoils gang for which he is criticized. The Danes were mad at Kramer because he drank with the working class at beer halls instead of getting stoned with the higher classes lifting fancier glasses. Plus he was a German, and the Danes didn't appreciate the choice of a racially German ambassador to the Danish court.
In Madrid, Grant insisted on wandering off through the streets alone, a loco man of the people. I hope he didn't bring his wallet. By the time he left, the US minister (the poet James Russell Lowell) said that “Grant already knows his way around Madrid better than I do.”
Ulysses visited the Holy Land of Israel too. He wanted to slip in quietly like any tourist, but his 'handlers' staged a huge entrance to his displeasure. Grant entered Jerusalem to cheering crowds packed against the streets. He waved to the crowds with a weak smile while complaining to his wife under his breath, “this is just wrong.”
There was Holland, Vienna, Ireland, and Portugal too before hopping a cruise ship from Marseilles bound for India in January of 1879. The Grants had been planning on going home, but some new money came in and they decided to keep going and circle the world.
India was too hot for Grant. The millions of starving people didn't upset him too much, just the heat. The party moved on to Siam where he bought a cat.
One of his favorite stops was China. Emperor Hung Chang and Grant hit it off well, and Grant later said his conversations with Chang almost made the whole trip. Chang taught him how to say “nee boo how!” (you no good!)
The Grants finally made American landfall on September 20 1879. The former President had left the country for a full 28 months. There were thousands of cheering fans waiting for him at the dock. He felt appreciated. A reporter asked him what he thought of President Hayes so far.
Grant replied, “President Who?”
While Grant was away, some ambitious friends began plotting his return to the White House for a third term. Grant was happy enough to be out of there, but his wife missed the high life. She loved being First Lady. She egged him on to let the conspirators do their worst to get him in the running for a third term, to succeed Hayes.
One thing that probably ruined that plan was his failure to time his return well enough to turn it into political capitol. The Republican convention was still eight long months away and the excitement of his return faded over that time. If Ulysses had stepped back on to American soil a night or two before the Republican Convention in June of 1880, it might have been a different story.
Near the end of his life Grant wrote his huge best selling two-volume memoirs of the Civil War years while battling an incurable cancer of the cigar. He wrote the entire thing as an invalid. They were published in 1885, helping to to honorably pay off all his debts before he got in the box. Grant died soon after finishing the writing, passing into history on July 23, 1885 at Mount McGregor, New York.
SOURCES
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford University – c) 1961 D.C. Heath
If I couldn't write like me, and I had to write like someone else, I would write like Professor Thomas A, Bailey. This is how it's done.
A Diplomatic History of the American People, by Thomas A. Bailey the readable. Bailey’s authored the line about the Little Big Horn being in reality the last stand for the Sioux. I reworded it a tiny bit but it’s his work.
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis Farnam Professor of Diplomatic History in Yale University – c) 1934 Henry Holt
The Grant era is rich in foreign policy matters and Bemis is genius. It's a slow read, but rich. Even the slow parts aren't totally boring.
The Growth of the American Republic, Vol. II 1865-1937, by Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager – c) 1940 Oxford Press NY
These guys don't like President Grant very much. But that's ok, I don't like them either. And I read all 1449 pages of these two volumes.
History of a Free People by Henry W. Bragdon (Phillips Exeter Academy NH) and Samuel P. McCutchen – c) 1954 MacMillan
This hardcover textbook makes learning a terrifying chore with its martinet questions that would be more than a match for a Harvard graduate student to complete perfectly, and this is for high school. Have mercy on these pupils will you guys? It's books like these that inspire students to write on the cover jackets, “In case of fire, throw this in.”
I've read 499 pages and if not for the four pages of quizzes at the end of every nine pages, it would have been a good read. Not only are these old school tasks burdensome per se, they also break up the flow of reading. Just as your mind is beginning to ignite and have fun it is wrenched back to reality by these jerky tests.
A History of the United States, Since 1865, by T. Harry Williams of Louisiana State University, Frank Freidel of Harvard, and Richard Current of the University of Wisconsin – c) 1965 Knopf
This is the revised second edition of the 1959 original. These are big names in the historian field. The work is hard to take on Reconstruction era. They fail the test. They are too illiberal on the race question. I give them a D plus.
History of the United States of America, by Henry Elson – This is one of the best books ever. The work is suitable for a 14 year old or a 40 year old. Great writing! Henry gets a solid B on the race and morality questions, in era when the historians flunk out as the default position.
The March of Democracy: Vol II, From Civil War to World Power, by James Truslow Adams - c) 1933 Scribner
After 200 pages of virulent racism, from Buchanan through Andrew Johnson times, the lizard tries to catch his breath and start writing normally again about the rest of the America story. As if he didn't just spit out immature bile for an entire era and reveal himself as an abject bigot. If I found out he was a member of the Klan I would not be surprised. In fact I would be more surprised to find out he was not in the Klan. And he was a prominent historian.
It's very disturbing. What kind of a racist country was the USA in 1933 that these pages found the best-seller list?
Meet General Grant, by W. E. Woodward. c) 1928
What a hatchet job. W.E. murders the poor guy. It should be titled Beat General Grant ... With a Rusty Lead Pipe. The more Woodward debases his subject, the more he debases himself, and the more this reader gains sympathy for Grant.
This book is cited as a source in virtually every other book about Grant, but I haven’t found much criticism of it. The historians give him an undeserved break.
It is enlightening to read infuriating books like this. We get to see the other side’s point of view, even if it is a racist one. After all, no one gets up in the morning and decides to be a racist. Every racist has a point of view which he or she honestly believes puts them in the righteous seat. Very few racists think they are, that is the foundation of its propagation. Justified anger towards a race is their take on it. We can learn from them, read them to learn the what, how and why of the way they think.
In fairness, the redneck historians include facts that the new liberal textbooks deliberately fail to put in. It doesn’t change their overall negative aura, but they do get a few truths in here and there. I always come away from authors I hate with a few tidbits where I say, “Okay, that's a legitimate point and I'll give you that one, and no PC liberal book is going to tell me that.” But I still hate you and you're still wrong on most things and cruel in intent.
Also the best of them, the most maddening ones, are good swordsmen. Guys like Truslow Adams, Woodward and Bowers put up a heck of a fight at the typewriter. It’s part of how their point of view maintained currency in US history books until the 1970’s. They are the scholastic version of those screaming Rebs charging up the hill at Gettysburg.
Woody writes contemptuously of how only once did anyone ever see Ulysses Simpson Grant lose his temper.
Grant was a truly great horseman. These beautiful animals took to him and he to them at a level that gave him great renown locally, long before he became famous nationally. One day General Grant saw an officer beating a horse about the face. Ulysses became enraged and shouted at the man. Grant orderer the man put in stocks for a day as a public humiliation. Woodward tells this story to imply that Grant wasn’t exactly a tough guy. It is the running theme of this book, that Sam Grant wasn’t much of a military man and that in reality he was a very un-macho fellow with a lot of faults.
Is this supposed to make me like Grant less? Woodward is hung up on the superiority of Southern war heroes and writes the debunking Grant bio to help his cause. You can feel it through his steady work. He is really steamed that Grant is considered a great Civil War General and hero, when in Woodward’s Stars and Bars mind, Grant can’t shine the shoes of Lee and Stonewall. Well too bad, Woodward. USG is a war hero and always will be.
He may have killed thousand of Southerners by his orders to attack, and may have cost the Union 9,000 casualties through his foolish order for a frontal assault at Cold Harbor, but US Grant never struck a person in anger himself in his life to the best of anyone’s research. So he must be one of those rare military men who says that “no one hates war like a military man” and actually means it.
Out of five reviews of this book on-line, two of them hated the author as a vile racist and gave it one out of five stars, and said run as far away as you can from ever reading this book. I disagree. I think its important to know how the sociopathic people feel about things, and why (which is why I buy and read all the I Hate Bush books.)
At least it was a relief to read some others who condemn this work. I am appalled at the lack of admonition on the part of other historians. The infamous 'Tweed Wall' is to blame. No writer can get me to condemn other comedians on the phone, and a few have tried, so I understand, but I still object. The Bowers business is an important matter of justice and decency.
The National Experience, Part Two, A History of the United States Since 1865, by John M. Blum (Yale), Edmund S. Morgan (Yale), Willie Lee Rose (Johns Hopkins), Arthur M. Schlesinger (City University NY), Kenneth M. Stampp, and C. Vann Woodward – c) 1981 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich NY
This popular introductory US History schoolbook has been republished many times. The two hardcovers c) 1993 sell for $180.
“Nat Ex” is for high school seniors, but could pass for a college textbook in my opinion. These are some of the star historians of their era. They are for the most part easy to read but some chapters bore.
A New American History, by W. E. Woodward – c) 1939
I hate this guy.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – This is a modern liberal general history for high school seniors (I presume.) It is a very very liberal history.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
A great book, but Sammy is not always great guy. On page 730 SEM rips Salmon Chase, “whose lust for the presidency increased year by year.” Come on, Sam. Did you not 'lust' to become a successful historian? How can you use that word on one guy? Everyone who ran for Congress in the fall of 2010 can be said to have “lusted” for the office. Barney Frank evidently satisfied his insatiable lust with another win in my district.
Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, by U.S. Grant – There is very little in personal biography nor on his years as president. It is primarily a military account of his time at the head of the Union Armies in the Civil War. Mark Twain helped to finance the publication of these two volumes and they were highly successful and popular. I sold my originals to a bookstore within 300 feet of the building where The Brinks Job took place, then bough a cheap reprint.
Reconstruction, America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, by Eric Foner – c) 1988
This book is sort of the last word on the subject as of now. That will probably change in a few years. He is a great guy if I can judge from clips I see on him speaking on documentaries. He certainly takes the correct view on the subject, although I was very surprised that he gave only passing mention of the Colfax massacre of 1873. I would think that merits a few pages, but the book is so thick, it might have been chopped by an editor to make space.
Reconstruction: The Great Experiment, by Allen W. Trelease – c) 1971 Harper
204 easy to read pages by a guy with a moral compass. I get the feeling that this started out as an academic essay and then it got fattened up just enough to turn into a book.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty – c) 1966 – 1974 – 1977 Harper & Row
I can't think of this guy without a cross-reference to “Judge Garrity.”
In 1974-1976 my home town of South Boston was consistently in the national news for resistance to forced busing to achieve federally mandated integration.
The order to integrate (or lose federal funds for the school) was from 1954 to 1974 simply ignored by my Southie High (I sort of graduated in the lower middle class of 72.)
But in 1973 judge Arthur Garrity made the old 54 SC ruling stick. The new Boston school year in 1974 was anticipated by news media all over the world. Sure enough, all hell broke loose and racist people (some that I knew personally) were surrounding yellow school busses with threats and taunts and throwing rocks at black students getting off the bus to go to my old school.
The name of Garrity is as famous in Southie as Ted Kennedy or John the Baptist. It's ironic that this John A. Garraty of Columbia is something of a racist historian.
Since the Civil War, by Lingley, c) 1923 – Ivy League excellent general history of America in short form. Gorgeous compact physical book also. This little hardcover is a treasure. I'm glad to learn that many historians cite Since as a source, in spite of its smallness.
The Tragic Era, The Revolution After Lincoln, by Claude Bowers – c) 1929 The Literary Guild of America
This is one of the worst books ever written. Bowers is a racist scum, and he is a lousy writer too. I read ten pages and I barely can recap what he said. Streaming tidbits of racist hatreds sprinkle the work and make it interesting in a bad way.
This was a big selling book in its day, which is very scary.
The United States, The History of a Republic, by Hofstadter, Miller and Aaron – c) 1957 Prentice-Hall - This general history is always one step ahead of the rest on economics. I've only got 141 pages to go!
The United States of America, A History, by Henry Bamford Parkes, c) 1967
Professor Parkes of New York University is pretty rough on Grant,
“as President he showed none of the energy, determination, and clear-headedness that had made him such a formidable military leader.” - Pg 448.
Easy to say from 1967, but Parkes never met him. Today we can make some real good guesses about our politicians based on seeing them speak in on TV. Before audio recording and radio, how can anyone know the personality? Five minutes watching a person speak and act is worth a hundred pages of descriptions of paper from people who knew them. Without a real and searing referent to a person's demeanor, how can anyone make definite character judgements?
The United States of America, A History, Vol II 1865 to the Present, by Dexter Perkins, University Professor Emeritus, Cornell University, Professor Emeritus, The University of Rochester – and Glyndon G. Van Deusen, Watson Professor of History and Chairman of the Department of History, The University of Rochester – c) 1961 MacMillan
This book was my close friend besides for about six weeks in 2011. That's how long it takes me to read a great history textbook. “Choose and author as you would choose a friend.” I read this while thousands of other great books in my room screamed for attention. I was in the middle of a great experience and couldn't get off the ride. Brand new books about exiting and important subjects riding up to each elbow, yet I still read the 'Rochester Twins.' The beautiful textured cover, the glossy pages that open flat, the limited but well chosen illustrations, plus the classy, elevated delivery of the material, makes me believe that paper books will never die and Kindle will not destroy the art form. There are too many exquisite pleasures to reading a great book to ever see the medium swarmed under by electronics. I can circle words I don't know and tell the author “good work” or “go to hell” in the margins. I can underline what counts and write in block letter referents on the top and bottom for more productive review later. This book is a total turn on.
The Rochesters are caught in the middle of the revisionism then in full swing on Reconstruction, throwing a few bones to the South but clearly in line with the revisionism that would culminate in the Foner school of Reconstruction history a few years later.
U.S.A The History of a Nation, c) 1969 by Morris and Greenleaf
This hippie era history ten pound hardcover textbook wastes 60 pages on modern art reprints. Why? It’s a history book, not a snobby art gallery. I think it was some sort of art payola contract deal linked in with the publication of the work. Over time is hurts the value of the book.
VIDEO
Grant and the Golden Spike – This 1972 film starring Roddy McDowell as General Grant and James Brolin as Orville Babcock is hard to find but definitely worth a look.
The Wild Wild West - Grant makes a cameo in this awful movie remake of a 1960’s TV show.
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