ULYSSES S. GRANT
l-rom the collection of Frederick Hill .'/• - rw
GRANT AS LIEUTENANT-GENERAL
Photogi apfa by Brady
ULYSSES S. GRANT
BY
LOUIS A. COOLIDGE
\\
With Portraits
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1917
■C7f
COPYRIGHT, I917, BY LOUIS A. COOLIDGE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published February jqiy
FEB -7 1917
>C! A 153960
/
AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
In writing this book it has of course been necessary
to consult many others, reference to which could not
be made in the run of narrative without impeding its
flow.
On the military side of Grant's career: The Per-
sonal Memoirs; Battles and Leaders of the Civil War:
Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln ; Richardson's Personal
History of U. S. Grant; Badeau's Military History;
the books of Generals Sherman, Sheridan, Schofield,
McClellan, and James H. Wilson; Dana's Recollec-
tions of the Civil War; Horace Porter's Campaigning
with Grant; John Fiske's The Mississippi Valley
in the Civil War; Recollections of A. H. Stephens;
Grant's letters to his family, to Washburne, and to
Badeau; the letters of the Sherman brothers — Te-
cumseh and John; Gamaliel Bradford's delightful
series of Union and Confederate Portraits; Owen
Wister's brilliantly brief and tantalizing sketch.
On the civil side a multitude of writers have con-
tributed material or incident. No one can hope to
deal with any phase of the period of the Civil War
and Reconstruction without resorting frequently to
vi \\ ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Rhodes's History of the United States, a monument of
research and an exhaustless well of information.
Thai one may be compelled at times to differ with
his eonelusions does not lessen the obligation due.
Among other books which have proved of service
are: Blaine's Twenty Years in Congress; The Autobi-
ography of George F. Hoar; the Reminiscences of
John Sherman and of Carl Schurz; The Diary of
Gideon II Y//r.v; Hugh McCulloch's Men and Measures
of Half a Century; Merriam's Life and Times of
Samuel Bowles; the lives of Stanton, Conkling, Mor-
ton, Chandler, and Trumbull; Badeau's Grant in
Peace; the lives of Sumner, Chase, Stevens, Charles
Francis Adams, Seward, Sherman, and Hay in the
American Statesmen Series; Henry Adams's His-
torical Essays; John Bigelow's Retrospections of an
Active Life; ftfcPherson's History of Reconstruction;
DeWitt's Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson;
John Russell Young's Around the World with General
Grant; Haworth's Disputed Election of 1S76; Joseph
Bucklin Bishop's Presidential Nominations and Elec-
tions; Stanwood's History of the Presidency; James
L. Post's little volume of Reminiscences of Personal
Friends; the I Alters of Charles Eliot Norton; the cor-
respondence of John Lothrop Motley; Oliver Wen-
dell Holmes's sketch of Motley's life: Senator Lodge's
Early Memories; Charles Francis Adams's The Treaty
AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT vii
of Washington. The lives of Grant which have been
prepared by Garland, Edmonds, King, and others
are excellent in their recital of his exploits in the Civil
War, but do not undertake a comprehensive treat-
ment of his public service after Appomattox.
It must be borne in mind that Grant had two
distinct careers, each of its own right meriting a
place in history. Biographers have not been nig-
gardly with one, and what they have written has
enriched his fame; but with the other they have
been less kind. It has not been the literary fashion
to commend him much for his achievements after
the Rebellion; yet his success as President in set-
ting our feet firmly in the paths of peace and in
establishing our credit with the nations of the world
is hardly less significant than his success in war.
CONTENTS
I. The Man 1
I. EARLY INFLUENCES 3
II. BOYHOOD 9
II. The Training of a Soldier
i. west point 15
ii. cadet grant 20
iii. mexico 25
III. Ad Interim
I. WASTED YEARS 31
II. A STRUGGLE FOR A LIVING .... 36
IV. The Awakening 41
V. Called to the Colors 45
VI. In Command 51
VII. Brigadier-General 57
VIII. Paducah, Belmont 61
IX. Donelson 66
X. Under a Cloud 76
XL Shiloh 83
XII. Humiliation 94
XIII. The Mississippi Campaign 104
XIV. McClernand 109
XV. VlCKSBURG 115
XVI. Rawlins and Dana 124
x CONTENTS
XVII Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge. 130
XVIII. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL 141
XIX. The Clinch with Lee .... 152
XX. From Cold Harbor to Petersburg . 1C8
XXI. Sheridan, Sherman, Thomas . . . 177
XXII. Peace 187
XXIII. A General without his Army . . 202
XXIV. Reconstruction 208
XXV. Lessons an Political Intrigue . . 226
XXVI. Johnson's Break with Congress. . 230
XXVII. At Odds with Johnson . . . .242
XXVIII. Acting Secretary of War . . . 254
XXIX. A Question of Veracity — The Im-
peachment Proceedings — Election
3 President 2G1
XXX. President of the United States . 274
XXXI. Personal Equations 284
XXXII. Arbitration with Great Britain . 293
XXXIII. The San Domingo Tragedy . . . 312
XXXIV. The Cuban Problem — Sound Finance
— "Black Friday" 335
XXXV. The Legal Tender Decision . . 350
XXXVI. Bitter Problems — The South — The
Negro Enforcement Acts . . 357
XXXVII. Causes rou Party Disaffection . . 379
XXXVIII. Reforms— The Tariff; The Civil
Servk e; The Indian .... 39-1
CONTENTS xi
XXXIX. The Greeley Episode .... 407
XL. Credit Mobilier — The Back Pay
Grab — The Sanborn Contracts . 427
XLI. Veto of the Inflation Bill — The
Resumption Act 442
XLII. A Solid South in the Making . . 456
XLIII. The Whiskey Ring — The Belknap
Case — Grant's Steadfast Loyalty
— The Chief Justiceship . . . 473
XLIV. The Disputed Election of 1876 . . 496
XLV. The Administration in Review . . 521
XL VI. The Trip around the World — The
Third Term 534
XLVIL The End 549
Index 567
ILLUSTRATIONS
Grant as Lieutenant-General . . . Frontispiece
Photograph by Brady
Grant as a Brigadier-General 64
Photograph taken in November, 1861
Grant as Major-General Commanding in the
West 116
Photograph by J. E. McClees, Philadelphia
Grant at Cold Harbor, Virginia, June 14, 1864 166
Photograph by Brady
Showing also Col. John A. Rawlins, Col. Theodore S.
Bowers, Col. William L. Duff, Gen. John G. Bar-
nard, and others.
Grant as Lieutenant-General (standing) . . 200
Photograph taken about 1865, furnished by Mr. Charles
E. Goodspeed
Grant in his Second Term as President . . 438
Photograph by Brady, taken in Washington
Grant at Sixty 55%
Photograph by Fredricks, New York, 1882
Grant writing his Memoirs at Mount McGregor 564
With the single exception noted, the illustrations are
from photographs in the collection of Mr. Frederick
Hill Meserve, of New York
ULYSSES S. GRANT
CHAPTER I
THE MAN
No man who ever gained enduring fame was more the
sport of chance than Grant. No character in history
has achieved supreme success in war or the supreme
reward of politics who owed less to his own ambition
or design. A still and simple citizen, accustomed
mostly to the ways of unkempt Western towns, un-
gifted with imagination, indifferent to the general
stir of things, and barely equal to the task of fur-
nishing his family such modest comforts as the neigh-
bors had, he was untouched even by evanescent lik-
ing for a military life up to the moment when he
flashed across the vision of the world ■ — the great-
est captain of his time. And when with war in retro-
spect he would have been content to live in quiet
contemplation of his strange career, unskilled in
politics, innocent of the arts of government, he was
compelled by force of circumstance for eight event-
ful years to occupy the highest civil place his coun-
trymen could give. He was the child of splendid
opportunities which came to him unsought, for
2 I LYSSES S. GRANT
which he never seemed to care, and which he met
with calm assurance of his own capacity.
He rode upon the turmoil which had tossed him
to its top serenely confident in his ability to guide
gigantic forces thrust into his hands. He saw his
country reunited, well advanced upon a clearly
marked and broadening road; then willingly went
back to private life, rich only in the opulence of fame,
unspoiled, unfretted by regrets, and undisturbed by
dreams. When he was made Lieutenant-General
and wrote to Sherman, acknowledging that soldier's
aid in his advancement, Sherman with equal mag-
nanimity replied: "I believe you are as brave, patri-
otic, and just as the great prototype Washington, as
unselfish, kind-hearted, and honest as a man should
be; but the chief characteristic is the simple faith
in success you have always manifested which I can
liken to nothing else than the faith a Christian
has in a Saviour." So he seemed to one who saw
him near at hand in war; thus looking back we
all can now perceive his childlike trust in time of
peace.
That this shy, silent man, after a humdrum life
till middle age, should have beheld the span of his
remaining years studded with triumphs and with
tragedies presents a riddle to the student of his time.
His mind was not attuned to notions of retreat, of
EARLY INFLUENCES 3
indirection, or diplomacy. He thought straightfor-
ward and was free from artifice — rare qualities which
served him well in war and in most great execu-
tive emergencies, but were not fitted to the sinuous
ways of peace, the strategy of politics, the mysteries
of finance, the subtle schemes of courtiers and dis-
honest satellites; and so it came about that both as
President and as private citizen the record of his truly
great accomplishments is soiled with pages which we
would tear out if we could. Yet we should hate to
lose the last heroic chapter, even though its sordid
prelude is indispensable to the complete disclosure
of unstained nobility of soul.
I. EARLY INFLUENCES
Straggling along the northern bank of the Ohio,
a hundred years ago, there was a broken line of settle-
ments which served as landings for the lazy river
craft. One of them, twenty-five miles southeast of
Cincinnati, perched on a river bend, was called Point
Pleasant. Most of its dozen families had drifted in
there from the South. A few other settlers were
scattered within a radius of twenty miles. Here in
a two-room cottage, near the river front, Grant was
born on April 27, 1822.
His father was Jesse Root Grant, a recent comer
from the northeast corner of the State, who was
4 ULYSSES S. GRANT
running a small tannery for another settler. His
mother, Hannah Simpson Grant, was the daughter
of a thrifty farmer lately arrived in the county from
Pennsylvania, a few miles out of Philadelphia. His
name was chosen by lot at a family gathering on the
Simpson farm six weeks after he was born. It is said
a maiden aunt drew from a hat a slip bearing the
name "Ulysses," the choice of Grandmother Simp-
son who had been reading Fenelon's "Telemachus"
and liked the character of whom it was written: "His
wisdom is, as it were, a seal upon his lips, which is
never broken but for an important purpose." "Hi-
ram" was added to please someone else, and he was
"Hiram Ulysses" till he went to West Point, when
the Congressman who sent him there rechristened
him "Ulysses Simpson Grant" through a mistake
in making out the papers. That is his name in his-
tory. The neighbors called him "Useless" as a boy;
his nickname at AYest Point was "Uncle Sam" or
"Sam." His soldiers spoke of him as "Unconditional
Surrender."
When Ulysses was a little over a year old, his
father, having laid aside eleven hundred dollars,
determined to set up in business for himself, and
moved to Georgetown in the neighboring county, a
backwoods settlement, twenty miles east and ten
miles inland from the river. Though smaller even
EARLY INFLUENCES 5
than Point Pleasant, it had advantages from a young
tanner's viewpoint: it was a county seat, likely to
grow; it was in the midst of an oak forest accessible
to bark. Its dozen houses — some of frame, a few
of brick — were cheerless, primitive, and crude — a
downstairs room in which the family lived and ate,
a garret where they slept, a lean-to kitchen in the
rear. Jesse Grant built him one of brick, to which
he added now and then as family and fortune grew,
till it was bigger and somewhat better than the rest,
though it would be black-listed by the health author-
ities in any self-respecting town to-day. Here the
boy lived until he went to school.
Life had few comforts and no graces for the Grants.
The furniture was rough and scanty, the walls were
bare, the reading limited to a few sermons, hymn-
books, and Weems's "Washington," unless they bor-
rowed from the neighbors; the mother did her own
housework like the other women in the village, cook-
ing at an open fireplace with pots and crane; the
children did the chores. The only thing resembling
music was the wail of hymns in the tiny Methodist
meeting-house, or the squeak of a fiddle in the primi-
tive tavern where travelers dropped in off and on
and the men of the village took their toddy, almost
their only indoor sport. Throughout his life Ulysses
Grant could never tell one note from another. " Old
6 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Hundred" .and the "Fisher's Hornpipe" were all the
same to him.
And yet this ragged little place had its distinctions
aside from having been the boyhood home of Grant.
When the Civil War broke out it had a population of
a thousand, largely of Southern tendencies. In some
of the churches Grant himself has said that member-
ship depended more upon hostility to the war and
liberation of the slaves than upon belief in the au-
thenticity of the Bible. There was no time during the
Civil War when the majority would not have voted
for Jefferson Davis for President instead of Lincoln,
if they had had the chance. "Yet this far-off West-
ern village," he writes, "with a population, including
old and young, male and female, of about one thou-
sand, — about enough for the organization of a single
regiment, if all had been men capable of bearing arms,
— furnished the Union army four general officers and
one colonel, West Point graduates, and nine generals
and field officers of volunteers."
Jesse Grant stood well, but had his idiosyncrasies
and was not over-popular. lie was thrifty, indus-
trious, and independent, held emphatic opinions on
politics and other questions, not altogether palatable
to his neighbors, and was not tactful in the time and
manner of expounding them. A Northern radical
among Southern sympathizers he did not bother to
EARLY INFLUENCES 7
adjust himself to his surroundings. He was a good
debater, according to his son; read every book that
he could borrow and remembered everything he
read — almost his only education. He was muscular,
six feet in height, and morally courageous, but cred-
ulous, ingenuous, garrulous, and disputatious. He
was a rhymester, and some of his verses printed in
the local weekly have been preserved, but he could
write and speak tersely and forcefully. The tavern
loafers with whom he did not fraternize laughed at
his carriage and his gold-bowed spectacles, the first
in the settlement, and were amused because of his
transparent pride in young Ulysses, whom they called
dull because he was not "smart" and "talky" like
the other village boys.
Jesse had pride of ancestry and was at pains to
trace his family to its New England source. He
found that Matthew Grant in 1630 came from Eng-
land to Dorchester in Massachusetts, and shortly
moved to Windsor in Connecticut, where his descend-
ants lived till his own father's day; that his grand-
father had a commission in the English army and
was killed in the French-and-Indian War. His
father, Captain Noah Grant, was at the battle of
Bunker Hill and served in the Continental Army
through the Revolutionary War; after which he
migrated first to Westmoreland County, Pennsyl-
8 ULYSSES S. GRANT
vania, and then to Decrfield, Ohio. Jesse had a half-
brother, Peter, who went to Maysville, Kentucky,
and grew rich. Noah, who was not forehanded, sub-
sequently went to live with Peter, placing some of his
other children in homes near Deerfield. Jesse worked
for his "keep" with Judge Tod, the father of Gov-
ernor Tod, and by a curious chance after learning
his trade he worked for the father of John Brown
of Ossawatomie, and lived in the house where John
Brown himself was also living as a boy. Soon after
he set up in business as a tanner chills and fever drove
him to Point Pleasant, not far from Maysville, a
seeming misfortune which he turned to good account;
for with all his oddities he was resourceful in emer-
gencies — a trait which he transmitted to his son.
From his mother Ulysses inherited the gift of ret-
icence and self-restraint. Some said he got his sense
from her. He never saw her shed a tear; she seldom
laughed; she never tried to guide him save by her
own sweet, silent influence. Deeply religious herself,
she did not undertake to make him so against his will.
Even in his hour of fame she rarely spoke about her
son or talked of his achievements except to say that
she \\;ts thankful he had done so well. When the boy
left home for his tirst long absence at ^Yest Point, she
made him ready and said good-bye without a quiver
of the lip. Thenceforth she saw him only at rare
BOYHOOD 9
intervals. When he was President she never came to
Washington, which swarmed with less considerate
relatives, but stayed at home working as usual about
the house. It is written that she prayed for him con-
stantly up to the day she died. " I have no recollection
of ever having been punished at home either by scold-
ing or by the rod," writes Grant; he never heard a
harsh word from either father or mother, or knew
either to do an unjust act; from West Point and from
Mexico he wrote them letters full of gossip and af-
fection. He was a natural, human sort of boy.
II. BOYHOOD
A knack with horses was Grant's most noticeable
boyish asset — a trick of use to him in later years.
He had a way of sticking to a job till it was done,
though he might have to figure out odd means by
which to do it — a trait which stood him in good stead
through life. The numerous anecdotes about his boy-
hood, current after he had won his fame, mostly il-
lustrate one of these qualities, or both. Every one in
the village who was at all well off worked with his
hands; the better off, the harder. "It was only the
very poor," Grant says, "who were exempt." He was
a mere child when he began. His father had a farm
as well as a tannery, with fifty acres of woods, a mile
from the village, and before he was eight years old
10 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Ulysses was hauling all the wood used in the house
and the shops. He could not load it on the wagon, or
unload it, hut he could drive.
At eleven he was strong enough to hold a plough.
"From this age till I was seventeen," he says, "I did
all the work done with horses, such as breaking up
the land, furrowing, ploughing corn and potatoes,
bringing in the crops when harvested, hauling all the
wood, besides tending two or three horses, a cow or
two, and sawing wood for the stoves." For recrea-
tion there were fishing and swimming in the summer,
— he was an expert swimmer and diver, — skating
and sleighing in the winter. Nothing extraordinary
about all this. The other boys in the village were
fond of hunting. Grant never hunted in his life, or
used firearms for amusement. The thought of killing
was abhorrent to him. He loved horses — earned
money by driving out into the country passengers
arriving in Georgetown by stage; at nine had a horse
of his own. At ten he used to drive a span of horses
alone to Cincinnati, forty miles, and bring home a
load of passengers. He could do stunts at riding,
coidd teach horses to pace, could break them to
harness. "If I can mount a horse I can ride him," he
used to say. He could handle horses easily because
lie loved them. All his life he kept away from races.
He thought them cruel.
BOYHOOD 11
When he was eleven his father, handy at making
money in all sorts of ways, took a contract for build-
ing the county jail, a job which called for hauling a
great many logs; he bought a horse called Dave for
Ulysses, and set him to hauling. The woods were two
miles from the site of the jail, the logs a foot square
and fourteen feet long. Eleven men did the hewing
and loaded the logs; the boy drove. One cloudy day
the hewers were not in the woods, and Ulysses was
left alone, but by his own ingenuity the boy did the
job of several strong men. A fallen maple lay slant-
ing with its top caught in another tree. Using this as
an inclined plane the boy hitched Dave to the logs,
hauled them up on the trunk till they nearly bal-
anced, and then backing the wagon up to it hitched
Dave to them again and snaked them forward upon
the axles one at a time.
He was the best traveled boy in the village. At
Flat Rock, Kentucky, on one of his trips he traded
one of his horses for a saddle horse which caught his
fancy. Here is his own illuminating story: "I was
seventy miles from home with a carriage to take
back and Mr. Payne said he did not know that his
horse had ever had a collar on. I asked to have him
hitched to a farm wagon, and we would soon see
whether he would work. It was soon evident that the
horse had never worn harness before ; but he showed
12 ULYSSES S. GRANT
no viciousness and I expressed a confidence that I
could manage him. A trade was al once struck, I
receiving ten dollars difference." The next day with
a Georgetown neighbor whose brother had swapped
the horse he started home. The horses were fright-
ened and ran away twice. "The road we were on
struck the turnpike within half a mile of the point
where the second runaway commenced, and there
was an embankment twenty or more feet deep on the
opposite side of the pike. I got the horses stopped
on the very brink of the precipice. My new horse
was terribly frightened and trembled like an aspen;
but he was not half so badly frightened as my com-
panion, Mr. Payne, who deserted me after this last
experience and took passage on a freight wagon for
Maysville. Every time I attempted to start my new
horse would commence to kick. I was in quite a
dilemma for a time. Once in Maysville, I could
borrow a horse from an uncle who lived there; but
I was more than a day's travel from that point.
Finally I took out my bandanna . . . and with this
blindfolded my horse. In this way I reached Mays-
ville safely the next day."
He earned bis first money by taking a load of rags
to Cincinnati, and selling it for fifteen dollars. He
was less than twelve years old and the business ven-
ture was his own device. " My best training," he con-
BOYHOOD 13
fided to Thomas Kilby Smith, at Vicksburg, "was
before I went to West Point."
There is another story made much of by biogra-
phers given to drawing lessons, as showing the boy's
guilelessness. It is about a colt which he was sent to
buy. His father had offered twenty dollars, but the
owner, Ralston, wanted twenty-five. "My father
. . . said twenty dollars was all the horse was worth,
and told me to offer that price. If it was not accepted,
I was to offer twenty-two and a half, and if that would
not bring him to give the twenty-five. I at once
mounted a horse and went for the colt. When I got
to Mr. Ralston's house I said to him: 'Papa says I
may offer you twenty dollars for the colt, but if you
won't take that I am to offer twenty-two and a half,
and if you won't take that to give you twenty-five ! '
It would not take a Connecticut man to guess the
price finally agreed upon."
The story got out among the other boys, and it was
a long time before he heard the last of it; but Grant
was only eight years old. If we must have an in-
cident disclosing Grant's guileless trust in others'
honesty, we can find one more pertinent of a later
date. There is a letter bearing date of October 24,
1859, when, writing to his younger brother Simpson
from St. Louis, he says: —
"I have been postponing writing to you hoping to
14 ULYSSES S. GRANT
make a return for your horse — but as yet I have re-
ceived nothing for him. About two weeks ago a man
spoke to me for him and said that he would try him
the next day, and if he suited give me $100 for him. I
have not seen the man since; but one week ago last
Saturday he went to the stable and got the horse,
saddle, and bridle, since which I have seen neither
man nor horse. From this I presume he must like
him. The man I understand lives in Florisant, about
twelve miles from the city. . . .
"P.S. The man that has your horse is the owner of
a row of six three-story brick houses in this city and
the probabilities are that he intends to give me an
order on his agent for the money on the first of the
month when the rents are paid. At all events, I
imagine the horse is perfectly safe."
CHAPTER II
THE TRAINING OF A SOLDIER
I. WEST POINT
Grant's early schooling, the best the village gave,
and then two terms in private schools, at Maysville
and at Ripley, was limited to the "three R's." He
never saw an algebra till after his appointment to
West Point, and as he studied no more than he could
help, his scholarship left much to be desired. The love
of learning which lured him from the tannery was
probably as much his father's passion as his own. The
knowledge which he found of greatest use in after
years he garnered in the University of Common
Sense. The ingenuity he showed in solving boyish
problems was classified as genius when later put to
harder tests.
He says that as a boy he did not like to work, " but
I did as much of it while young as grown men can be
hired to do in these days and attended school at the
same time"; yet, when he was not stirred to swift de-
cision in emergencies, he was of sluggish habit all his
days. "As I grow older I become more indolent,
my besetting sin through life," he wrote, in 1873,
when he was President, to Adam Badeau. But in
16 ULYSSES S. GRANT
necessity he was a thunderbolt. This mingling of tor-
pidity and force throws light upon the seeming incon-
sistencies of his career. Other men with contradic-
tory traits have been conspicuous in history, but the
career of none of them exhibits greater contrasts.
Most of the villagers thought him backward when
they thought of him at all, but they were rather fond
of him in spite of his slow ways. He was pure-minded
and clean of speech. He never swore; "a good steady
boy with no bad habits"; "awkward and countri-
fied"; "quiet and slow "; "a great hand to ask ques-
tions"; "said little himself, but he could answer
questions if you gave him time"; "always carried a
stick; whittled most of the time, but never made any-
thing"; "stumpy, freckle-faced, big-headed"; "stead-
fast, manly"; "quiet gray-blue eyes, strong straight
nose, straight brown hair and bulky build"; "not
pugnacious"; "a lover of the woods"; "modest, un-
assuming, determined, self-reliant, decisive." These
are some of the phrases those who knew him as a boy
have given us. And then this suggestive line from one
of them: "A Favorite with the smaller boys of the
village who had learned to look up to him as a sort
of protector."
He loathed the tannery, shrank from the thought
of taking up his father's trade, and on a fateful day,
when home from Ripley for the holidays, he was con-
THE TRAINING OF A SOLDIER 17
demned to help out in the beam room with its reeking
hides, he told his father as he trudged along toward
the repulsive task that he would work at it if neces-
sary till he was twenty-one, but not a minute longer
— that he had rather be a farmer or a down-the-river
trader or get an education. Then Jesse Grant be-
thought him of West Point.
Five boys had already gone there from the county
to get a start in life at government expense. The last
of them, his nearest neighbor's son, had just been
dropped for failure in examination, but was too
proud to come back to the village, so that no one
knew of his discomfiture except the Grants. Why not
Ulysses for the vacancy? The Congressman, Thomas
L. Hamer, belonged in Georgetown, and had once
been Jesse's closest friend, but they had quarreled
months before and were not then on speaking terms.
He was a Democrat and Jesse was a Whig. So Jesse
wrote to Thomas Morris, Senator from Ohio, but
Morris turned the letter over to the Congressman,
who, welcoming the chance to make up with his for-
mer friend, agreed to the appointment out of hand.
This was the winter of 1838-39. When Jesse read the
letter from Morris telling him that his request had been
handed on to Hamer, writes Grant in his " Mem-
oirs," "he said to me, 'Ulysses, I believe you are
going to receive the appointment.' 'What appoint-
18 ULYSSES S. GRANT
merit?' I inquired. 'To West Point; I have applied
for it.' 'But I won't go,' I said. He said he thought
I would, and I thought 80 too if he did. I really had no
objection to going to West Point, except that I had
a very exalted idea of the requirements necessary to
get through. I did not believe I possessed them and
could not bear the idea of failing."
Thus with reluctance Grant entered on the train-
ing for his great career. He says himself that he was
led to fall in with his father's plan chiefly by his de-
sire to travel. " I had been east to Wheeling, Virginia,
and north to the WTestern Reserve in Ohio, west to
Louisville and south to Bourbon County, Kentucky,
besides having driven or ridden pretty much over the
whole country within fifty miles of home. Going to
West Point would give me the opportunity of visiting
the two great cities of the continent, Philadelphia
and New York. This was enough. When these
places were visited I would have been glad to have
had a steamboat or railroad collision or any other
accident happen, by which I might have received a
temporary injury sufficient to make me ineligible for
a time to enter Hi-' Academy. Nothing of the kind
occurred and I had to face the music. . . . A military
life had n<> charms for me, and I had not the faintest
idea of staying in the army even if I should be gradu-
ated, which I did not expect."
THE TRAINING OF A SOLDIER 19
There was no thrill for him in the call of bugles or
the roll of drums. A bill had been introduced in Con-
gress abolishing the Academy. He watched its prog-
ress impatiently, hoping it would pass, and when in
time he became reconciled to the curriculum his idea
was to get through the course, secure a detail for a few
years as assistant professor of mathematics at the
Academy, and afterward obtain a permanent posi-
tion as professor in some respectable college, — " but
circumstances always did shape my course different
from my plans." At the same time there are occa-
sional flashes of another mood, as when he writes
his cousin : " I do love the place. It seems as though I
could live here always if my friends would only come
too." From his undemonstrative mother the boy had
drawn a vein of sentiment.
He took little interest in his studies; rarely went
over a lesson a second time during his cadetship; for
lack of something better got books from the library;
read Bulwer, Cooper, Marryat, Scott, Irving, and
Lever. Mathematics came "almost by intuition,"
he used to say, but other branches, especially French,
were hard and his standing was low. "In fact if the
class had been turned the other end foremost, I
should have been near head. I never succeeded in
getting squarely at either end of my class in any
one study during the four years. I came near it in
20 ULYSSES S. GRANT
French, artillery, infantry and cavalry tactics, and
conduct." He was good at draughtsmanship and did
a few crude paintings which still survive.
A ten weeks' furlough at the end of two years he
enjoyed beyond any other period of his life. "My
father had sold out his business in Georgetown —
where my youth had been spent, and to which my
day-dreams carried me back as my future home if I
should ever be able to retire on a competency. He
had moved to Bethel, only twelve miles away, in the
adjoining county of Clermont, and had bought a
young horse that had never been in harness for my
special use under the saddle during my furlough.
Most of my time was spent among my old school-
mates — these ten weeks were shorter than one week
at West Point." A wholesome picture.
II., CADET GRANT
Among the highly pedigreed young Southerners
trained in the graces of society and looking on a sol-
dier's calling as fit for scions of a landed aristocracy,
the slouchy little Grant must have seemed out of
picture — hopelessly middle-class and common. But
unobtrusively — perhaps without quite knowing it
himself — he was absorbing knowledge of the traits
of many whom in after years he met in active service
either as friends or foes.
THE TRAINING OF A SOLDIER 21
In the Academy while he was a cadet were several
who won distinction on one side or the other in the
Civil War: among them Sherman, Thomas, Long-
street, Hardee, McClellan, Ewell, Buell, Rosecrans,
and Buckner. In his own class were Franklin,
Quinby, Gardner, Hamilton, and Rufus Ingalls, who
was his room-mate for a time; that splendid soldier,
Charles F. Smith, was commandant of cadets. From
some of these we get a few swift pencilings. Sherman,
three years his senior, tells of seeing " ' U. S. Grant '
on the bulletin board where the names of all new-
comers were posted. One said, ' United States Grant ' ;
another, 'Uncle Sam Grant'; a third shouted, 'Sam
Grant.' The name stuck to him and by it he was
henceforth known by the cadets at the Academy."
"A lad without guile," says Viele; "I never heard
him utter a profane or vulgar word." "A perfect
sense of honor," says Longstreet. "The most scrupu-
lous regard for truth," says Hardee. "Had a way of
solving problems out of rule by the application of
good hard sense," says Ingalls. Others say, "A clear
thinker and a steady worker"; "Little enthusiasm in
anything"; "Not a prominent man in the corps, but
respected by all " ; " A very much liked sort of youth " ;
"No bad habits whatever"; "No facility in conver-
sation with the ladies, a total absence of elegance";
" Could n't dance, never attended parties or entered
22 ULYSSES S. GRANT
a private house"; "He never held his word light, he
never said an untruthful word even in jest."
A single splash of color to relieve the gray monotony.
He was the most daring horseman in the Academy.
" Grant's jump on York " is still conspicuous in the
annals of West Point, when, in the presence of Win-
field Scott and the official board of visitors, his horse
leaped a bar held high above the head of a soldier who
rested it against the wall. There is a tinge of the
dramatic in the story of another exploit told by
General James B. Fry, at the time a candidate
for admission to the Academy: "When the regular
service was completed, the class, still mounted, was
formed in a line through the center of the hall. The
riding-master placed the leaping-bar higher than a
man's head and called out, 'Cadet Grant!' A clean-
faced, slender, blue-eyed young fellow, weighing one
hundred and twenty pounds, dashed from the ranks
on a powerfully built chestnut sorrel horse and gal-
loped down the opposite side of the hall. As he
turned at the farther end and came into the stretch
across which the bar was placed, the horse increased
his pace, and measuring his strides for the great leap
before him, bounded into the air and cleared the bar,
carrying his rider as if man and beast had been
welded together. The spectators were speechless.
'Very well done, sir!' growled old Ilirshberger, the
THE TRAINING OF A SOLDIER 23
riding-master, and the class was dismissed and disap-
peared; but Cadet Grant remained a living image in
my memory."
And there is the tale of his beating at the hands of
a larger cadet, his going into training, and his final
victory in a fourth encounter after a second and third
defeat.
As for predictions of his future greatness, we need
not give them special weight. Such casual prophecies
are remembered only after one has made them good.
But it may well be true that Hardee said, while both
were still in the Academy , that "if a great emergency
arises in this country during our lifetime Sam Grant
will be the man to meet it"; that one of his teachers
said, "the smartest man in the class is little Grant!"
and that in the first days of the Civil War, Ewell,
then a Southern officer, remarked : " There is one West
Pointer whom I hope the Northern people will not
find out. I mean Sam Grant. ... I should fear him
more than any of their officers I have yet heard of.
He is not a man of genius, but he is clear-headed,
quick and daring."
Grant has told how he was dazzled by Winfield
Scott, who in his first year's encampment came to
review the cadets. "With his commanding figure,
his quite colossal size and showy uniform, I thought
him the finest specimen of manhood my eyes had ever
24 ULYSSES S. GRANT
beheld. I believe I did have a presentiment for a
moment that some day I should occupy his place on
review — although I had no intention then of re-
maining in the army. My experience in the horse
trade ten years before and the ridicule it caused me
were too fresh in mind to communicate this presenti-
ment even to my most intimate chum." He regarded
General Scott and Captain C. F. Smith as "the two
men most to be envied in the nation."
Grant graduated from West Point in 1843, number
21 in a roll of 89. He would have gone into the
Dragoons, as the Cavalry was called then, but there
was no room for him in the single regiment, and he
was given his second choice, the Fourth Infantry.
Before entering service he was furloughed at Bethel
for three months, and while there the officers of the
militia asked him to drill the troops at general muster.
He was sickly at the time, a victim of the malady
known as "Tyler's Grip." One who saw his exhibi-
tion says that " he looked very young, very slender,
and very pale"; that his voice "was clear and calm,
cutting across the parade ground with great precision
— rather high in pitch but trained."
Grant has told of two trifling incidents during this
furlough which gave him a distaste for military uni-
forms from which he never recovered. Setting out
bravely for Cincinnati in his regimentals he was
THE TRAINING OF A SOLDIER 25
followed by a boy who called out, " Soldier, will you
work? No, sirree! I'll sell my shirt first"; and back
in Bethel again he was mortified to find the drunken
stable-man at the tavern parading the streets and
doing the stable chores in bare feet with a pair of sky-
blue nankeen pantaloons, "just the color of my uni-
form trousers, with a strip of white cotton sheeting
sewed down the outside seams in imitation of mine."
III. MEXICO
Grant wore his uniform eleven years. When he
left West Point the regular army had 7500 men —
not enough troops to go around among the officers
who were graduated at the Academy. He was assigned
to his regiment as a "supernumerary" with the rank
and pay of a second lieutenant, and was ordered to Jef-
ferson Barracks, near St. Louis, then "Far West."
He was anxious to quit the service, and as a step
toward getting a professorship in some little college
he wrote to West Point asking for a detail to the Acad-
emy as an assistant in mathematics. But before that
could be brought about, Mexico began to boil, and
in May, 1844, after nine months of garrison life, he
was ordered south with his regiment. He had lost his
heart meantime to Julia, the sister of his classmate
Fred Dent, whose father, "Colonel" Dent, had a
large plantation, "White Haven," about five miles
26 ULYSSES S. GRANT
from the Barracks, with negroes enough for comfort.
There was his usual persistence in the manner
of his wooing. He was on leave of absence when his
regiment was ordered south, and when he got back to
St. Louis the rest were gone. Before following them,
he saddled a horse and set out for White Haven. On
the road he had to cross a creek which ordinarily ran
nearly dry, but on account of recent heavy rains was
now overflowing with a rapid current. " I looked at it
for a moment to consider what to do. One of my
superstitions had always been, when I started to go
anywhere or to do anything, not to turn back or stop
until the thing intended was accomplished. I have
frequently started to go to places where I had never
been, and to which I did not know the way, depend-
ing upon making inquiries on the road; and if I got
past the place without knowing it, instead of turning
back I would go on until a road was found turning
in the right direction, take that, and come in by the
other side. So I struck into the stream, and in an
instant the horse was swimming, and I being carried
down by the current. I headed the horse toward
the other bank and soon reached it, wet through, and
without other clothes on that side of the stream." He
kept on, borrowed a dry suit from his future brother-
in-law, and thus caparisoned declared his love.
A year later he went back to St. Louis, and al-
THE TRAINING OF A SOLDIER 27
though the Colonel thought his daughter ought to
look higher than "the small lieutenant with the large
epaulets," he won a reluctant consent to an engage-
ment. They did not marry till August 22, 1848, six
months after the war with Mexico had come to an
end.
Before war was actually declared, Grant's regiment
lay in camp for over a year at Fort Salubrity, in the
pine woods near Natchitoches, between the Red
River and the Sabine, then for two months in bar-
racks at New Orleans, then by boat to Corpus
Christi, at the mouth of the Nueces River in Texas,
where the "army of occupation," three thousand
men, was assembling under the command of Zachary
Taylor.
All this time the movement ostensibly had been to
prevent filibustering, though there was no question
among the troops that its real purpose was the menac-
ing of Mexico and the annexation of Texas. "For
myself," says Grant, "I was bitterly opposed to the
measure, and to this day regard the war which re-
sulted as one of the most unjust ever waged by a
stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance
of a republic following the bad example of European
monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire
to acquire additional territory. . . . The occupation,
separation, and annexation were, from the inception
28 ULYSSES S. GRANT
of the movement to its final consummation, a con-
spiracy to acquire territory out of which slave States
might be formed for the American Union. Even if
annexation itself could be justified, the manner in
which the subsequent war was forced upon Mexico
cannot. . . . The Southern rebellion was largely the
outgrowth of the Mexican War. Nations like individ-
uals are punished for their transgressions."
But Grant was a soldier and took his orders. His
Mexican service did him credit, though it did not
give him fame. He went into the battle of Palo Alto
a second lieutenant in May, 1846, and entered the
City of Mexico, sixteen months later, with the same
rank, — "after having been in all the battles possible
for one man, and in a regiment that lost more officers
during the war than it ever had present at any one
engagement." But he was mentioned in reports and
was brevetted first lieutenant and then captain for
gallant conduct. General Worth made his "acknowl-
edgments to Lieutenant Grant for distinguished
services"; at Chapultepec, Major Francis Lee re-
ported that "Lieutenant Grant behaved with dis-
tinguished gallantry on the 13th and 1-ith"; Colonel
Garland says: "I must not omit to call attention to
Lieutenant Grant, who acquitted himself most nobly
upon several occasions under my observation."
He was early made regimental quartermaster, but
THE TRAINING OF A SOLDIER 29
this could not keep him out of action. At Monterey,
he mounted a horse, left camp, rode to the front, and
joined the charge — the only mounted man and thus
a special target. When ammunition was low and
there was a call for a volunteer to take out a message
asking for new supplies, he swung himself over a
saddle, and, with one foot holding to the cantle and
one hand clutching the horse's mane, dashed down the
empty street, within the range of fire from every side,
leaped a four-foot wall and delivered his appeal.
At Chapultepec he found a belfry which com-
manded an important position, dragged a mountain
howitzer to the top of it with the help of a few men,
and dropped shots upon the enemy to their great
confusion.
At Molino del Rey, says Longstreet, "You could
not keep Grant out of battle. The duties of quarter-
master could not shut him out of his command. . . .
Grant was everywhere on the field. He was always
cool, swift, and unhurried in battle . . . unconscious
apparently, as though it were a hail storm instead of a
storm of bullets. ... I heard his colonel say: 'There
goes a man of fire.' "
" You want to know what my feelings were on the
field of battle," he wrote home; "I don't know that
I felt any peculiar sensation. War seems much less
terrible to persons engaged in it than to people who
30 ULYSSES S. GRANT
read of battles." To an officer who asked him years
later whether he ever felt fear on the battlefield he
replied, "I never had time."
Yet he was an eminently practical and efficient
quartermaster. At Tacubaya and at Monterey he
rented bakeries and ran them for the benefit of the
regiment. "In two months I made more money for
the regimental fund than my pay amounted to during
the entire war." From his experience, then, as quar-
termaster, with freedom to range in time of battle, he
got ideas about feeding and clothing an army which
stood him in good stead throughout the Civil War;
and he learned other lessons in Mexico. He saw Scott
cut loose from his supplies and live on the country;
he saw Taylor cool and unhurried under fire, com-
manding his troops, without a uniform save for a
private's blouse, and learned from him simplicity in
army regulation; he learned that he could keep his
head while under fire; and he became familiar with
the points of strength and weakness of officers against
whom he was to be pitted in the Civil War. Lee,
Longstreet, Buckner, Jackson, Pemberton, and the
two Johnstons, Southerners, most of them of higher
rank, never thought that in plain little Grant they
were disclosing their true military quality to a com-
ing conqueror.
CHAPTER III
AD INTERIM
I. WASTED YEARS
Peace with Mexico brought lethargy to Grant.
After his mild experience with the world as a cadet
and then in garrison and camp, he had had his fling
with war and had come through with merit, though
no great prestige. But he was now condemned to the
monotony of a subaltern's life in frontier posts, with
nothing to look forward to but years of drudgery, un-
less he had the luck to strike a tour of duty which
would open up the way to resignation and agreeable
employment in civil life — like the professorship in
mathematics to which he had aspired. But there was
nothing of the kind in sight. As quartermaster he was
stationed first at Sackett's Harbor, on Lake Ontario,
for a cheerless winter, because another officer with
greater pull at Washington had grabbed Detroit, the
regimental headquarters which was supposed to
have attractions in a social way, although a frontier
post. Then for two years, Scott having righted this
injustice, Grant had Detroit, to which he was en-
titled by position, but as he had no social instincts,
being dumb with women, awkward and shy with men,
32 ULYSSES S. GRANT
he got no pleasure from its tinsel gayeties. Few people
knew that he was there. Another gloomy winter at
Sackett's Harbor, and then in 1852 orders to gold-
crazed California with his regiment. There was a
baby boy, born two years earlier at White Haven, and
a second on the way. He left his little family at
Bethel and started on the tiresome journey to the'
coast.
On this trip he had a chance to show resourceful-
ness in an emergency, his only worthy opportunity
between Chapultepec and '61. Transportation across
the Isthmus had broken down by reason of the rush,
and it was unexpectedly put up to Grant as quarter-
master, by such ingenious methods as he could devise,
to get his expedition of eight hundred people to the
other side. There he found cholera and a far heavier
burden — all the details of caring for the sick, the
burial of a hundred dead, the countless grewsome and
mournful offices of such a plague. "Grant seemed to
be a man of iron . . . seldom sleeping and then only
two or three hours at a time ... he was like a min-
istering angel to us all," writes one who knew him
there. It is a striking thing that Grant in later years
spoke oftener of his experience at Panama than of his
battles in the Civil War.
His service on the coast was at Vancouver, on the
Columbia, and at Humboldt, two hundred miles
AD INTERIM 33
from San Francisco, where in due time he gained his
captaincy. It was a dismal life. He abhorred hunt-
ing, fishing bored him — the only recreations of his
fellow officers; there were few books to read; he pined
for wife and babies, one of whom he had not seen. He
showed a letter once to an old sergeant on which his
wife had traced the outline of his baby's hand, and
as he put the letter back without a word his eyes
were wet — a likely incident ; for all his life his deep-
est sentiment was for his home.
Like many another officer thus circumstanced, he
drank more than he should and in his case a little was
too much. It did not cloud his judgment or impede
his speech, but it impaired his power of locomotion
and he was physically helpless while his mind was
clear. Those who knew him testify to this so uni-
formly that it must be true; and while not of supreme
importance it cannot be ignored. It helps explain the
obstacles he had to overcome at the beginning of the
war and the peculiar influence which Rawlins had so
long as Rawlins lived. Without it we should miss an
angle of his character which throws a dart of color for
our better understanding of the man. We should not
have had Lincoln's pat comment after Shiloh: "I
can't spare this man. He fights." Or his whimsical
remark that if he knew Grant's brand of whiskey
he would send a barrel to his other generals.
34 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Just why Grant quit the array has been a question
in dispute. The reason which he gives in his own story,
that he saw no chance of supporting wife and children
on his pay and so concluded to resign, is no doubt
strictly true. It is in harmony with what we know
was his intention when he left West Point. There was
nothing in the service, especially in time of peace,
for which he cared, and when he left it no one could
foresee the conflict close at hand. But there were
circumstances not entirely pleasant which conspired
to fix the date of his decision upon a step which had
been long in mind. He would, of course, have liked to
turn his military training to account in some profes-
sion better suited to his taste, but in his exile to the
coast that prospect disappeared, and two or three un-
lucky business ventures taught him that he could not
supplement his meager earnings in that way. His
monthly pay as a lieutenant was thirty dollars, and
besides he had for rations eighty cents a day and for
a servant, sixty-five, with wood for fuel, a single
room and kitchen — an income all told of seventy-
three dollars and fifty cents a month. His monthly
pay and allowance as captain during his last month of
service was ninety-two dollars and fifty cents, and
with the slowness of promotion that was all he could
have expected for years — a dismal prospect for a
man whose wife and babies were by the speediest
AD INTERIM 3.5
route eight thousand miles away. As he was near his
captaincy he, of course, had pride in taking on the
higher rank, but after that the sooner civil life for
him the better. Thus it stood with him in April, 1854,
when, having been intoxicated while paying off his
men, he was reproved by his commanding officer,
Major R. C. Buchanan, noted throughout the service
as a martinet, who told him that if he did not resign
charges would be preferred. Grant resigned. He did
not have to, and officers who served with him have
said that he would not have been sentenced to dis-
missal if he had stood trial. But he was tired of
barracks life; he had just become a captain. He was
anxious to get East where he could be with those who
loved him and were dependent upon him, and without
reflecting that the incident might later prove em-
barrassing, he wrote a letter resigning his new com-
mission the same day he accepted it, to take effect
July 31, 1854. By doing this he left his record clear of
a court martial, but he could not guess that he would
ever wear a uniform again or be of consequence
enough to stir to life old service scandal and stimulate
its sting. To Jefferson Davis, as Secretary of War,
it fell to accept Grant's resignation. Jesse Grant was
thriftily disturbed when he got word of it from the
War Department. There is on file there his letter to
Davis of June 1, protesting: "I never wished him to
36 ULYSSES S. GRANT
leave the servis. I think after spending so much time
to qualify himself for the army, and spending so
many years in the servis he will be poorly qualified
for the pursuits of private life. . . . Would it then be
asking too much for him to have such leave that he
may come home and make arrangements for taking
his family with him to his post? ... I will remark
that he has not seen his family for over two years,
and has a son nearly two years old he has never seen.
I suppose in his great anxiety to see his family he has
been ordered to quit the servis."
In spite of his dislike for garrison routine there was
nothing in his California life to cause especially un-
pleasant recollections. Otherwise he never could have
written : " I left the Pacific coast very much attached
to it, and with full expectation of making it my future
home. That expectation and that hope remained
uppermost in mind until the Lieutenant-Generalcy
bill was introduced into Congress in the winter of
1803-64. The passage of that bill and my promotion
blasted my last hope of ever becoming a citizen of the
farther west."
II. A STRUGGLE FOR A LIVING
"When you hear from me next," he told his com-
rades as he said good-bye, " I '11 be a farmer in Mis-
si >iiri." That was his hope. But he was in worse
AD INTERIM 37
straits than he had thought. Money owing him in
San Francisco did not materialize. A good-natured
quartermaster clerk cashed a draft and found him
transportation to New York. He landed strapped.
A creditor at Sackett's Harbor failed him. If his
classmate Buckner, who was recruiting officer, had
not guaranteed his board at a New York hotel, he
would have slept outdoors until his father sent him
money to get home. There was no great joy in
Bethel over his return. His younger brothers were
doing fairly well in leather, but with all his West
Point training he had not made good. Jesse, who had
been so proud of him, could hardly think of him with-
out a shade of shame. He went on to his wife and
babies at White Haven and settled on an unbroken
tract of eighty acres which Colonel Dent had turned
over to his wife for a wedding present six years be-
fore. He cleared it, built him a log cabin out of trees
he felled and hewed himself, and with grim humor
called the new estate " Hard Scrabble." He worked
hard for a living, peddled grain and cordwood in St.
Louis for ready money, grubbed stumps, bought
hogs at sales, and did the things a farmer must. He
was more thrifty than his neighbors and showed more
ingenuity. While they were burning wood for fuel
he sold his at good prices to the coal mines near by
for use as timber props, and used for fuel the less ex-
38 ULYSSES S. GRANT
pensive coal. Chills and fever hit him. He gave up
farming, swapped his place for a little frame house in
St. Louis, and tried his hand at real estate, combin-
ing with a cousin of his wife named Boggs who had
desk-room in a lawyer's office. Money was slow after
the panic of 1857. lie was too soft-hearted to col-
lect rents from hard-pressed tenants. There was not
business enough for two. He applied to the County
Commissioners for appointment as County Engineer,
the salary of which was nineteen hundred dollars ; but
they gave it to another applicant. There were five
commissioners, two of whom were Democrats and
three Free-Soilers, and the selection was made on
party lines. His father-in-law was a slaveholder,
strongly Southern in his sympathies, and Grant had
no particular political affiliations. "You may judge
from the result of the action of the County Com-
missioners," he wrote his father on September 23,
1859, "that I am strongly identified with the Dem-
ocratic party. Such is not the case. I never voted
an out-and-out Democratic ticket in my life. I
voted for Buchanan for President to defeat Fremont,
but not because he was my first choice. In all other
elections I have universally selected the candidates
that, in my estimation, were the best fitted for the
different offices, and it never happens that such men
arc all arrayed on one side."
1 Letters of Ulysses S. Grant, p. 20.
AD INTERIM 39
He had a place as clerk in the Custom-House for a
month, but the collector died and he was hard put to
it. "I do not want to fly from one thing to another,
nor would I," he wrote his father; "but I am com-
pelled to make a living from the start, for which I am
willing to give all my time and all my energy." His
father had prospered. He was worth $100,000, it is
said, a sizable fortune for that day. He had estab-
lished his tannery in Covington, Kentucky, where
he now lived and he had also bought a wholesale
leather business in Galena, Illinois, which was in
charge of Simpson and Orvil, his two younger sons.
Ulysses, much against his will, acknowledging at last
his failure in farming and real estate, turned to Jesse
for advice and help. Jesse referred him to Simpson,
and Simpson sent him to the Galena store, "to stay
until something better should turn up." The house
bought leather and sold shoe findings, saddlery,
fancy linings, and morocco. Ulysses served as clerk
because he was good at figures; the other brothers did
the bargaining for which he was not fit. He was al-
lowed eight hundred dollars salary, and drew seven
hundred more to settle obligations in St. Louis, a
sum which he paid back afterwards. He had a com-
fortable little house, attended the Methodist church,
wore an old blue army coat which he had bought on
the Pacific Coast, traveled to Iowa and Wisconsin
40 ULYSSES S. GRANT
once to buy hides, and was becoming gradually set-
tled to his environment, although few people knew
him even by sight. " In my new employment I have
become pretty conversant," he wrote a friend in
December, 1860, "and am much pleased with it. I
hope to be a partner pretty soon, and am sanguine
that a competency at least can be made out of the
business."
And then came Sumter and the call for troops.
CHAPTER IV
THE AWAKENING
How, when the North sprang to Lincoln's call, the
men of Galena found among themselves the un-
assuming captain with his shabby army coat, singled
him out because he had seen service, putting him in
the chair at their war meeting, offering him the cap-
taincy of their company which he declined, asking
him to form and drill them and see that they were
suitably equipped, and how when they marched to
the station through flags and cheers, he stood in the
crowd and watched them pass, trailing along with his
old carpetbag, following them to Springfield, to be of
service if he might, has been recited many times. But
this is not all the story. For months Grant's mind
had been in process of slow fermentation. All through
the pregnant winter filled with secession talk, he was
observing the approach to war. " It is hard to realize,"
he wrote in December, "that a State or States should
commit so suicidal an act as to secede from the Union,
though from all reports I have no doubt but five of
them will do it. And then, with the present granny of
an executive, some foolish policy will doubtless be
pursued which will give the seceding States the sup-
42 ULYSSES S. GRANT
port and sympathy of the Southern States that don't
go out."
To Rowley, who said in February, "There's a
great deal of bluster about these Southerners, but I
don't think there's much fight in them," ho replied
earnestly, " You are mistaken, ... if they ever get at
it they will make a strong fight. . . . Each side under-
estimates the other and overestimates itself." Seven
days after Sumter he was writing to his Democratic,
slaveholding father-in-law: "Now is the time, par-
ticularly in the border slave States, for men to prove
their love of country. I know it is hard for men to
apparently work with the Republican party, but now
all party distinctions should be lost sight of and every
true patriot be for maintaining the integrity of the
glorious old Stars and Stripes, the Constitution and
the Union. No impartial man can conceal from him-
self the fact that in all these troubles the South have
been the aggressors and the Administration has stood
purely on the defensive, more on the defensive than
she would have dared to have done but for her con-
sciousness of strength and the certainty of right pre-
vailing in the end. ... In all this I can but see the
doom of slavery. The North do not want, nor will
they want, to interfere with the institution. But
they will refuse for all time to give it protection un-
less the South shall return soon to their allegiance."
THE AWAKENING 43
To his abolition father, two days later, his words
were dutiful, as befitting filial and financial depend-
ence, but clear: " We are now in the midst of trying
times when every one must be for or against his
country, and show his colors too by his every act.
Having been educated for such an emergency, at the
expense of the Government, I feel that it has upon me
superior claims, such claims as no ordinary motives
of self-interest can surmount. I do not wish to act
hastily or inadvisably in the matter, and as there are
more than enough to respond to the first call of the
President, I have not yet offered myself. I have
promised, and am giving all the assistance I can in
organizing the company whose services have been
accepted from this place. I have promised further to
go with them to the State Capital, and if I can be of
service to the Governor in organizing his state troops
to do so. What I ask now is your approval of the
course I am taking or your advice in the matter. . . .
There are but two parties now, traitors and patriots,
and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter, and,
I trust, the stronger party."
To his sister: "The conduct of eastern Virginia has
been so abominable through the whole contest that
there would be a great deal of disappointment here if
matters should be settled before she is thoroughly
punished. This is my feeling and I believe it uni-
44 ULYSSES S. GRANT
versal. Great allowance should be made for South
Carolinians; for the last generation have been edu-
cated from their infancy to look upon their govern-
ment as oppressive and tyrannical and only to be
endured till such time as they might have sufficient
strength to strike it down. Virginia and other border
States have no such excuse, and are therefore
traitors at heart as well as in act."
CHAPTER V
CALLED TO THE COLORS
Grant understood the sober side of war, and so at
Springfield in the brood of patriots chirping for recog-
nition he did not push his way. He was not eager for
spectacular distinction after the way of politicians
hunting for a rostrum to address the pyramids, con-
fusing oratory with a genius for command. He was
indifferent to gold lace and epaulettes — just a plain
soldier who had not done well in civil life and thought
he saw a chance to work again at the one trade he
knew. The city was a scene of cheap confusion.
Richard Yates, the governor, eager and keen of wit in
politics, was struggling blindly in a flood of strange
emergencies. Every man of consequence in Illinois
was pressing for commissions for himself or for his
friends. Companies of volunteers were pouring in,
undrilled, unskilled, ununiformed, unarmed, hardly a
musket to a dozen men; regiments of raw-boned boys
and awkward squads, officered by village Cromwells
and country-store Turennes, — among them soldiers
to the core like Logan, — soon to comprise the
nucleus of the hardiest veteran army the world had
ever seen.
Of all of the companies one of the best came from
46 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Galena, hastily drilled and uniformed by Quarter-
master-Captain Grant, who now, neglected in the
crowd and having done his duty by his local volun-
teers, was on the point of leaving Springfield, when
Yates, perceiving that his military training might be
utilized, found him a corner in a dingy closet, which
served the adjutant-general as an office, and let him
spend his time in filling blanks for orders — the
sort of thing a boy might do after once having caught
the trick.
"My old army experience I found indeed of great
service," Grant wrote after twenty years. "I was no
clerk, nor had I any capacity to become one. . . . But
I had been quartermaster, commissary, and adjutant
in the field. The army forms were familiar to me and
I could direct how they should be made out!" So he
stuck to his simple task, — looked up old muskets in
the arsenal, made reports, answered questions about
regulations, showed such familiarity with military
things that he was made drill-master at outlying
camps, and was so quietly effective that Yates made
him "mustering officer and aide," calling him
"colonel" and paying him three dollars a day. It is a
.singularity of Grant's career that he never asked for
an appointment or promotion which he obtained and
that he never shirked a job no matter whether mean
or great which came his way.
CALLED TO THE COLORS 47
So numerous and eager were volunteers that the
Legislature provided for additional regiments. It was
some of these that Grant was set to muster in, and
when that should be done, he wrote his father three
weeks after Lincoln's call, "I presume my services
may end. I might have obtained the colonelcy of a
regiment possibly, but I was perfectly sickened at the
political wire-pulling for all these commissions, and
would not engage in it. I shall be in no ways back-
ward in offering my services when and where they are
required, but I feel that I have done more now than I
could do serving as a captain under a green colonel,
and if this thing continues they will want more men
at a later day. I can go back to Galena and drill the
three or four companies there and render them
efficient for any future call. My own opinion is that
this war will be but of short duration."
A few days in St. Louis, while mustering in a
slowly gathering regiment, just as Francis P. Blair
and Nathaniel Lyon were cleaning up Camp Jackson
which the secession Governor Claiborne Jackson had
established on the outskirts with a view to seizing the
city and the Federal arsenal. He saw the rebel flag
hauled down from the secession headquarters, and he
recites how, when a spruce young fellow in a street
car turned to him to say, "Things have come to a
pretty pass when a free people can't choose their own
48 ULYSSES S. GRANT
flag; where I came from, if a man dares to say a word
in favor of the Union we hang him to the first tree
we come to," he replied, "After all, we are not as
intolerant in St. Louis as we might be; I have not seen
a single rebel hung yet nor heard of one; there are
plenty of them who ought to be, however."
His work at mustering in was quickly over.
Brigadier-General John Pope, a native of the State
stationed at Springfield as Federal mustering officer,
whom he had known at West Point and in Mexico,
offered to get him recommended for appointment to
the Federal service; but Grant, who was a carpet-
bagger and had no influential friends to push him,
would have none of it. " I declined to receive endorse-
ment for permission to fight for my country."
So back to Galena for a week, where he was filled
with restlessness. "During the six days I have been
at home," he writes, "I have felt all the time as if a
duty were being neglected that was paramount to any
other duty I ever owed. I have every reason to be
well satisfied with myself for the services already
rendered, but to stop now would not do."
During this visit he wrote the Adjutant-General of
the Army tendering his services and offering the only
suggestion he ever made about his rank: "Having
served for fifteen years in the regular army, including
four years at West Point, and feeling it the duty of
CALLED TO THE COLORS 49
every one who has been educated at the government
expense to offer their services for the support of the
Government, I have the honor, very respectfully, to
tender my services until the close of the war in such
capacity as may be offered. I would say, in view of
my present age and length of service, I feel myself
competent to command a regiment if the President,
in his judgment, should see fit to entrust one to me.
Since the first call of the President, I have been serv-
ing on the staff of the Governor of this State, render-
ing such aid as I could in the organization of our
state militia, and am still engaged in that capacity.
A letter addressed to me at Springfield, Illinois, will
reach me." No letter ever came. The application
was buried among department papers and the Adju-
tant-General never saw it till long after the war was
over.
But other avenues of service opened to the diffident
soldier, who later wrote: "I had felt some hesitation
in suggesting rank as high as the colonelcy of a regi-
ment, feeling somewhat doubtful whether I would be
equal to the position. But I had seen nearly every
colonel who had been mustered in from the State of
Illinois, and some from Indiana, and felt that if they
could command a regiment properly and with credit,
I could also."
Yates would have recommended his appointment
50 ULYSSES S. GRANT
as a brigadier, but he declined; said he did n't want
rank till he had earned it. " What kind of a man is
this Captain Grant?" Yates asked a bookkeeper
from the Galena store; "though anxious to serve he
seems reluctant to take any high position. . . . What
does he want?" "The way to deal with him," was
the reply, "is to ask him no questions, but simply
order him to duty. He will obey promptly." Where-
upon Yates wired Grant, then visiting his father at
Covington: "You are this day appointed Colonel of
the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers and requested to
take command at once." His commission was dated
June 16, 1861.
CHAPTER VI
IN COMMAND
Grant had been set, a month before, to muster in the
regiment now put under his command, a raw and
ragged lot of country boys, camped near Mattoon,
their former colonel, chosen by themselves by reason
of his warlike aspect, a former Costa Rican filibuster
with a propensity for bowie knives and whiskey, and
a way of making daily harangues to his helpless
men, dragging his sentries sometimes from their
posts for nightly orgies. When it came to serving
under him in war, the officers objected, and remem-
bering the quietly effective soldier who had taught
them how to drill they asked the Governor to give
them Grant. That was how Grant came by his first
regiment.
The new commander had no uniform, although he
bought one later with three hundred dollars which he
borrowed from a friend. His rusty clothes and stoop-
ing shoulders contrasted queerly with the military
strut of some of the militia colonels. He tells how,
when he went to take command, Logan and Mc-
Clernand, two Democratic Congressmen, both later
to be generals of volunteers, went with him to inspire
52 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the backward regiment with military fervor; and he
relates how Logan's speech aroused his men to such
a pitch that " they would have volunteered to remain
in the army as long as an enemy of the country con-
tinued to bear arms against it." But he neglects to
say that after the first burst of oratory, when Mc-
Clernand presented him as the new colonel, and the
men, looking for another thrill, called out, "Grant!
Grant!" he simply said, "Go to your quarters," in
the clear, carrying, inevitable voice which years be-
fore had caught the ears of loiterers on the Bethel
Green and which would soon have its incisive way on
more tumultuous fields. Nor does he tell how his new
regiment, for the first time catching the inflection
of control, went to their quarters silently, under the
unaccustomed spell.
He drilled and disciplined them for a month. Or-
dered to the Missouri line, where secession was still
struggling for the border State, he marched his men
across the country, so as to teach them how, instead
of waiting for a train.
His six weeks in Missouri gave him no chance for
much of anything, but to his father he confides
that his services with the regiment have been
"highly satisfactory to me. I took it in a very
disorganized, demoralized, and insubordinate condi-
tion and have worked it up to a reputation equal to
IN COMMAND 53
the best, and, I believe, with the good-will of all the
officers and all the men. Hearing that I was likely to
be promoted, the officers with great unanimity have
requested to be attached to my command. This I
don't want you to read to others, for I very much dis-
like speaking of myself," — a disagreeable restraint
for Jesse, whose paternal pride was just beginning
to revive.
An incident illuminating in the naivete with which
he tells it : At Mexico, Missouri, where he encamped
for several weeks, he had his earliest opportunity to
exercise his regiment in battalion drill. "I had never
looked at a copy of tactics from the time of my grad-
uation . . . had not been at a battalion drill since 1846.
The arms had been changed and Hardee's tactics had
been adopted. I got a copy of tactics and studied one
lesson, intending to confine the exercise of the first
day to the commands I thus learned. I do not be-
lieve that the officers of the regiment ever discovered
that I had never studied the tactics that I used," —
an instance, slight it may be, of the saving common
sense which served him all his life for genius. "I
never maneuver," he said to Meade before the battle
of the Wilderness. "My only points of doubt were
as to your knowledge of sound strategy and of books
of science and history," Sherman wrote him in a
memorable letter, "but I confess your common sense
54 ULYSSES S. GRANT
seems to have supplied all this." And after he had
gained his fame he said to a young officer, who would
have talked to him of Jomini, that he had never paid
much attention to that authority on military strat-
egy. "The art of war is simple enough. Find out
where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can.
Strike at him as hard as you can, and keep moving
on."
In his meager library there were no books on war,
and he never seemed to care about the strategy of the
great generals of history. To him the Civil ^Yar with
every campaign in it was a problem by itself. His
only purpose was to wrest success out of conditions
placed before him, with such weapons as were nearest
to his hand. The game of war had no attraction for
him. "You ask if I should not like to go in the regu-
lar army," he writes his father, just after being made
a colonel. "I should not. I want to bring my chil-
dren up to useful employment and in the army the
chance is poor."
Another story helps to explain a trait which was
of service to him through his life. The first serious
task to which his regiment was put was to dis-
perse a band of troops under a guerrilla officer who
had become a terror in that part of the State. "As
we approached the brow of the hill from which it was
expected we could see Harris's camp and possibly
IN COMMAND 55
find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept
getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though
it was in my throat. I would have given anything
then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the
moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept
right on. When we reached a point from which the
valley was in full view I halted. The place where
Harris had been encamped a few days before was
still there, and the marks of a recent encampment
were plainly visible, but the troops were gone. My
heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once
that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had
been of him. This was a view of the question I had
never taken before, but it was one I never forgot
afterwards. From that event until the close of the
war I never experienced trepidation upon confront-
ing an enemy, though I always felt more or less
anxiety. I never forgot that he had as much rea-
son to fear my forces as I had his. The lesson was val-
uable."
It was his first experience in independent and re-
sponsible command — and so, according to his own
interpretation, he was dubious of the result. Like
Grant's other lessons, this was one which he had to
learn only once. He never was concerned about the
opposition; considered only what he had to do him-
self. "When I go into battle," Sherman said years
56 ULYSSES S. GRANT
later, "I am always worrying about what the enemy
is going to do. Grant never gives a damn ! " 1
1 General James II. Wilson says that just before the march to
the sea, Sherman said to him: "Wilson, I am a damned sight
smarter man than Grant; I know a great deal more about war,
military history, strategy, and grand tactics than he does; I know
more about organization, supply, and administration, and about
everything else than he does; but I '11 tell you where he beats me,
and where he beats the world. He don't care a damn for what
the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares me like hell!"
(Under the Old Flag, vol. n, p. 17.)
CHAPTER VII
BRIGADIER-GENERAL
John C. Fremont, the "Pathfinder," major-general
by reason of a reputation picturesquely gained, a
dashing figure, futile in command, yet idolized be-
yond all other Northern men at the beginning of the
war, was at the head of the Department of the West
including Illinois, Kentucky, Kansas, and Missouri,
with quarters at St. Louis, — which held the key to
the strategical control of the Confederacy, — the wa-
ters joining there within a radius of a hundred miles
to form the great flow of the Mississippi, the sole effec-
tive channels for transportation of supplies and troops.
McClellan was at Cincinnati. Scott was general-in-
chief at Washington and under him the regulars,
McDowell, Meigs, and Rosecrans. Grant under Fre-
mont, who had a scant conception of the strategical
importance of his own command, was ordered from
one place to another in Missouri, knocking his regi-
ment into shape, doing police duty at Ironton, Jef-
ferson City, and Mexico, establishing order here and
there; for Claiborne Jackson's State was desultory
fighting ground by reason of the close division of the
population between the sympathizers with the North
58 ULYSSES S. GRANT
and South. Without formality and by consent, be-
cause he was the only educated soldier in the lot of
recently created colonels, he found himself com-
mander of an improvised brigade, and then one day
in early August, 1861, his chaplain showed him a
news paragraph that Lincoln had appointed him a
brigadier. "It must be some of Washburne's work,"
he said.
Elihu B. Washburne, a "down East" Yankee,
transplanted early to the West, had been the Con-
gressman from the Galena District since 1852, one of
the very earliest Free-Soilers or Republicans to get
office, so that when his party gained control, with
Lincoln at the head, he was a factor to be reckoned
with. Shrewd, forceful, rangy, a fair type of the un-
cultured politician of his time, serving the public
many years in Congress and as Minister to France,
he is known chiefly now because Grant was his un-
known neighbor at Galena when Lincoln called for
troops. He saw Grant handle the Galena company,
talked with him about the war and found him full of
sense, gave him a note to Yates and kept an eye on
him when he became a colonel. His unsought friend-
ship was the nearest thing to "influence" Grant ever
had, and Grant was right in guessing that the ap-
pointment was "some of Washburne's work."
When Congress met in August and Lincoln had to
BRIGADIER-GENERAL 59
send in names of officers for the new army, he gave
his own State four brigadiers and asked the delega-
tion in Washington to meet and designate the men.
Grant named by Washburne topped the list, receiv-
ing every vote. The others named were Hurlbut,
Prentiss, and McClernand in the order given; none
of whom had a West Point training. Lincoln sent in
these names on August 7, together with thirty-three
other brigadiers, among whom Grant was number
seventeen. Ranking him were Hunter, Heintzelman,
Keyes, Fitz-John Porter, Franklin, Sherman, Stone,
Buell, Lyon, Pope, Kearny, and Hooker. The major-
generals were Scott, McClellan, Fremont, McDowell,
and Halleck, regulars, with Dix, Banks, and Butler,
volunteers.
Thus at the outset of the war Grant was brigadier,
unsponsored it is true, and guiltless of prestige, but
placed without his own design with a detached com-
mand at the one key by touching which the forces
could be set in motion to surround and crush the
armies of the South.
Others saw the military value of commanding
rivers near the junction of the Ohio and the Missis-
sippi as a first step toward controlling the Mississippi
to its mouth. Grant was the only one to see the ab-
solute necessity of doing it at once with just the im-
plements in hand. To him must go the credit of
60 ULYSSES S. GRANT
achieving what the rest only dreamed. He trans-
lated into terms of conquest the cry which sounded
through the armies of the West: "The Rebels have
closed the Mississippi; we must cut our way to the
Gulf with our swords!"
CHAPTER VIII
PADUCAH, BELMONT
General Leonidas Polk, the fighting Bishop, com-
manded the Confederate forces thereabout. Work-
ing in harmony with a comprehensive military plan
evolved by the trained soldiers of the South, some-
thing then lacking in the North, he had set out to
gain Kentucky, a border State still split in sympathy
between secession and the Union. His eye was fixed
on Cairo, at the southern tip of Illinois, where the
Ohio joins the Mississippi, a vantage-point of contact
with three border States, and with that end in view
he seized Columbus, twenty miles below, on the east
bank of the Mississippi just above the boundary line
between Kentucky and Tennessee. On that very day,
September 4, as soon as he could do a task at which
Fremont had set him in Missouri, Grant pitched his
tent at Cairo.
When he learned that Polk was sending troops to
seize Paducah, forty-five miles up the Ohio at the
mouth of the Tennessee, — to hold which meant the
locking of those rivers as the Mississippi was already
locked, • — Grant wired Fremont that he would start
that night for Paducah if he received no orders to
62 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the contrary, manned his boats, and hearing nothing
from headquarters was on his way, seizing the town at
daybreak of September 6, anticipating by a few hours
Polk's troops which Paducah had hoped to welcome.
To reassure the frightened citizens he issued a short
proclamation: —
I have come among you, not as an enemy, but as your
friend and fellow citizen, not to injure or annoy you, but to
respect the rights and to defend and enforce the rights of all
loyal citizens. An enemy, in rebellion against a common
government, has taken possession of and planted its guns
upon the soil of Kentucky and fired upon your flag.
Hickman and Columbus are in his hands. He is moving
upon your city. I am here to defend you against this enemy
and to assert and maintain the authority and sovereignty
of your government and mine. I have nothing to do with
opinions. I shall deal only with armed rebellion and its
aiders and abettors. You can pursue your usual avocations
without fear or hindrance. The strong arm of the govern-
ment is here to protect its friends, and to punish only its
enemies. Whenever it is manifest that you are able to
defend yourselves, to maintain the authority of your gov-
ernment, and protect the rights of all its loyal citizens, I
shall withdraw the forces under my command from your
city.
He left troops at Paducah under General Charles
F. Smith, his old commander at West Point and noti-
fied the Kentucky Legislature, then playing with
"neutrality" at the state capital. The Legislature
promptly adopted resolutions favorable to the Union
and the State was saved; on his return to Cairo he
PADUCAH, BELMONT 63
found Fremont's authority to take Paducah "if he
felt strong enough," a reprimand for corresponding
with the Legislature, and a warning against doing
it again.
He could have seized Columbus then and wanted
to, but Fremont kept him for two months at Cairo,
and by November Polk was so intrenched that he was
strong enough to hold his own against a siege and to
assist the rebel forces in Missouri stirring trouble un-
der Generals Earl Van Dorn and Sterling Price. Be-
sides, by Fremont's order Grant had sent three thou-
sand men under Dick Oglesby to chase guerrillas
in Missouri and Oglesby must be protected in the
rear.
It was to keep Polk engaged at home that Grant
sailed down the river, on November 7, with three
thousand men to reconnoiter at a little camp of shan-
ties just opposite Columbus bearing the pretentious
name of Belmont, where Polk had put twenty-five
hundred men who, resting under the protection of his
batteries, were ready for quick expeditions. Instead
of simply reconnoitering, Grant, sensing what Polk
had in mind, landed with his troops, dispersed the
enemy, and seized the camp — his first real fighting
for the war. He would have demanded the surrender
of the beaten forces and withdrawn, his task com-
pleted, had not his green troops, their heads turned by
64 ULYSSES S. GRANT
what seemed a striking victory, become a jubilant
mob, ransacking the camp for souvenirs, reddening
the day with speeches, cheers, and songs, and uncon-
trollable till Grant, with genius born of common
sense, set matches to the tents, the flames from which
invited fire from the Columbus batteries and rein-
forcements from the fort, giving the enemy a chance
to rally. His men, surrounded and attacked, were
ready now for orders, but they would have sur-
rendered had not Grant, saying grimly that they had
cut their way in and could cut their way out, forced
them fighting to the boats, he with a private's blouse,
his horse shot under him, embarking last of all and
nearly left behind.
McClernand, soldier politician, who was there with
Grant, issued a vainglorious address to his command
on his return to Cairo. But Grant said nothing save
to his father, to whom he wrote next day: "Tak-
ing into account the object of the expedition the
victory was most complete. It has given me a confi-
dence in the officers and men of this command that
will enable me to lead them in any future engagement
without fear of the result." The newspapers of
Illinois were filled with tales of how McClernand
saved the day. Grant let him have his little glory with
the folks at home and would not enter on a contro-
versy. It was a local rivalry at best, for neither gen-
GRANT. AS A BRIGADIER-GENERAL
November, 1861
From the colli ction «' h'l • rf< i ick lltll Meservi
PADUCAH, BELMONT 65
eral was known outside the State, and news of Bel-
mont did not excite the East.
The country's gloomy face was turned toward the
Potomac and the James, waiting for victories to wipe
out Bull Run, while McClellan at the head of his
great army was wearing out its patience marching up
and down. Belmont with its loss of life was criticized
for years as an unnecessary fight. It was not intended
for a battle, but a demonstration. If Belmont had not
been fought, said Grant years later, "Colonel Oglesby
would probably have been captured or destroyed
with his three thousand men. Then I should have
been culpable indeed."
Besides, we should have missed an episode unique
and picturesque, illustrating the peculiar temper of
the time.
CHAPTER IX
DOXELSON
Thirteen more weeks of waiting, not altogether
wasted because the time was used in drilling troops at
Cairo and teaching officers the ways of war.
There were few regulars in Grant's command.
The South had scattered its West Point graduates
throughout its service, so that the volunteers had
the advantage of instruction by trained officers. The
educated soldiers of the North had kept their old
commands and rank until the war had lasted many
months, and while there was one whole "regular
brigade" in the Army of the Potomac, in which every
officer, from general to second lieutenant, had been
educated in his profession, there were elsewhere
entire divisions serving under commanders who had
had no military training. Grant, face to face with
such conditions, suggested while at Cairo that,
except for the staff corps, the regular army should be
disbanded and the officers detailed to lead and drill
the volunteers, a condition brought about through
natural process as the war progressed.
Grant was not alone in trouble with Fremont.
Lincoln was having difficulty too. The more Fre-
DONELSON 67
mont displayed his pompous incapacity, the harder
for his chief to handle him, and he was bright enough
to play spectacularly upon the anti-slavery senti-
ment, which looked upon him as the champion of the
negro's cause, while those above him would subordi-
nate it if thereby the Union might be saved. On
August 30 came the final test of patience. In that
morning's paper Lincoln was amazed to read a procla-
mation issued by Fremont confiscating the property
of all persons in Missouri who had taken active part
with the enemies of the United States, and declaring
free their slaves, — a proclamation hailed with joy
throughout the North, but with dismay by the Ad-
ministration, which knew that Kentucky and the
other border States would not hold to the Union if
they thought their slaves were to be free.
To Lincoln Fremont's proclamation meant defi-
ance and a usurpation of legislative power, but
patiently he asked Fremont to modify it; at Fre-
mont's request issued himself the modifying order,
and brought down on his head the North's denuncia-
tion with threatenings of impeachment. Some would
have made Fremont dictator. "How many times,"
wrote James Russell Lowell, "are we to save Ken-
tucky and lose our self-respect? " Such was the spirit
Lincoln faced in the first months of war. In view of
the part politics so largely played in the conduct
68 ULYSSES S. GRANT
of the war, only incorrigible ineptitude could have
elicited the order issued two days after Belmont,
putting Halleck in Fremont's place.
To Grant the substitution was of little benefit.
Halleck, an educated West Point soldier, of great
learning, a master of the technique of war, — "Old
Brains" they called him, — had been for years a
San Francisco lawyer, having seen service in Mexico.
He had just been made a major-general of volunteers,
and great things were expected of him. He was a
pundit, not a fighter; his big head stuffed with
strategy, but not alive with wit. He had no aptitude
for such emergencies as now confronted him in an
unusual kind of war. He never learned what Gibbon
had in mind when he declared a century before that
"the great battles won by the lessons of tactics may
be enumerated by the epic poems composed from the
inspirations of rhetoric." To Halleck, Grant, with
his plain, practical ideas, was a specimen unclassified,
and besides, there was a lurking memory of the way
Grant quit the service on the coast.
Grant, left to vegetate at Cairo, weary of inaction,
at last sought Halleck out. He had a scheme for
opening a roadway through the South and pushing
back the first line of defense, which Smith, his old
West Point preceptor, had approved, to his great
satisfaction, and he thought it merited consideration
DONELSON 69
higher up. But having grudgingly been granted leave
to visit Halleck, he met scant courtesy. "I was
received with so little cordiality that I perhaps stated
the object of my visit with less clearness than I might
have done, and I had not uttered many sentences
before I was cut short as if my plan was preposterous.
I returned to Cairo very much crestfallen."
The "preposterous" plan was this: Albert Sidney
Johnston, in chief command west of the Alleghanies,
had established the outward defensive line of the
Confederacy in southern Kentucky stretching from
Columbus on the Mississippi to the Cumberland Gap
in eastern Tennessee. Along this line strongholds had
been set up at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson com-
manding respectively the Tennessee and Cumber-
land just where those rivers, coming toward each
other in the State of Tennessee, begin running par-
allel through Kentucky to the Ohio. The two forts
were only twelve miles apart. Other outposts were
at Bowling Green, ninety miles northeast of Donel-
son, and at Mill Springs, a hundred miles still farther
east, guarding the approach to the Cumberland
Mountains. Buckner was Confederate commander at
Bowling Green, Zollicoffer at Mill Springs. Thomas
watching Mill Springs commanded the Union left,
Buell at Louisville watching Bowling Green, the
Union center; Grant was in command at Cairo on
70 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the Union right; while Polk was at Columbus and
Gideon J. Pillow at Donelson — Pillow, whom Grant
had known in Mexico, of whom, while still a han-
ger-on at Springfield, he had written with contempt
that, as "he would find it necessary to receive a
wound on the first discharge of firearms, he would
not be a formidable enemy."
The weak point of the Confederate line was the dis-
trict including Donelson and Henry, where those two
forts alone held back the Federal navy from running
up the Cumberland and Tennessee as far as Nash-
ville and Savannah and beyond. General Charles
F. Smith, at Paducah, under Grant, commanded the
little district at the mouth of these two rivers, and
Grant's plan after conference with him and Foote,
commander of our queer little fleet, was to sail up the
river, seize Fort Henry, and so indent the South's line
of defense — forcing the Union front southward to
Alabama. Sherman and Buell had thought of this,
and spoke of it to Halleck: McClellan, in command at
Washington, believed in it on paper, but with his
passion for delay thought eastern Tennessee should
first be occupied.
"There has been much discussion as to who origi-
nated the movement up the Tennessee River," writes
Colonel William Preston Johnston, in his biography
of his father. "Grant made it, and it made Grant."
DONELSON 71
And Grant himself wrote Washburne, within a month
of the event : " I see the credit of attacking the enemy
by the way of the Tennessee and Cumberland is vari-
ously attributed. It is little to talk about it being the
great wisdom of any general that first brought forth
this line of attack. Our gunboats were running up the
Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers all fall and winter
watching the progress of the rebels on these waters.
General Halleck no doubt thought of this route long
ago, and I am sure I did." But Halleck thought he
needed sixty thousand men to carry out whatever
dilatory scheme he had in mind, three times as many
as there were with Grant, and if an army big enough
for Halleck had been handy, he would rather not have
picked Grant for the job.
Thomas, in middle January, 1862, took Mill
Springs, a rare little victory which gave the North
new heart, quite out of keeping with its real signifi-
cance, and Grant grew more impatient to try out his
plan. He wired to Halleck, Foote cooperating, that
"if permitted" he could take and hold Fort Henry;
and on the 1st of February he was given leave to move.
He started the next day, and on the morning of the
6th the fort surrendered, guns abandoned, garrison in
full retreat to Donelson. "Fort Henry is ours," he
wired to Halleck; " the gunboats silenced the batteries
before the investment was completed." Then, with-
72 ULYSSES S. GRANT
out orders or permission, for Halleck, thinking Grant
would stay at Henry and intrench it, had never men-
tioned Donelson to him, he set out for the Cumber-
land at once, wiring Halleck, "I shall take and destroy
Fort Donelson on the 8th and return to Fort Henry."
His fifteen thousand men that day, he felt, could do
more service than three times the number a month
hence against a strengthened garrison.
John B. Floyd, Buchanan's traitorous War Secre-
tary, who the preceding winter had depleted Northern
arsenals to strengthen Southern forts, had just been
sent by Johnston to command at Donelson; Pillow
was under him; Grant knew both, and he was not
afraid. It was a cruel week in February, warm by
day, then overnight quick snow and sleet, with
mercury not far from zero; the Union forces without
shelter and inadequately clothed. But Grant with
his inferior force invested Donelson, the garrison ap-
parently asleep till on the 15th Floyd and Pillow led
out their men. There was a desperate battle, the
Union forces beaten back till Grant, who on a gun-
boat had been counseling with Foote, rode on the
field. His men, discouraged, told him the enemy had
come out with haversacks and knapsacks as evidence
that they were prepared to fight for several days.
But he was imperturbable. Examining a haversack
he found it filled with three days' rations; supplies
DONELSON 73
for flight. He realized at once that the despairing
garrison, in order to avoid surrender, were cutting
their way out. "They have no idea of staying here
to fight us," he said; "whichever side attacks first
now will win." Convinced of this, he turned his
troops against the fort, Smith, Wallace, and Mc-
Clernand fighting splendidly.
Smith with his men swept up the ridge and seized
the rifle-pits; the Southerners were driven back into
the fort where that night was enacted a curious, dis-
creditable scene. Pillow and Floyd, with Buckner,
who was there with reinforcements, decided at a
council that their force must be surrendered. Floyd,
under indictment at Washington for embezzling
public funds, was obsessed with the belief that if the
Yankees captured him, he would be hanged for trea-
son, and the vain Pillow likewise thought the Yankees
eager for his head. They begged Buckner, one of the
bravest soldiers of the South, to take command, and
under cover of the night fled down the Cumberland
to Nashville, leaving Buckner to receive the enemy
as best he could.
So Buckner sent his flag of truce asking for terms
and for an armistice, and Grant sent back the mes-
sage which electrified the North, " No terms except an
unconditional and immediate surrender can be ac-
cepted. I propose to move immediately upon your
7-i ULYSSES S. GRANT
works"; bringing the prompt response, "The dis-
tribution of the forces under my command, incident
to an unexpected change of commanders, compel me,
notwithstanding the brilliant success of the Confed-
erate arms yesterday, to accept the ungenerous and
unchivalrous terms which you propose."
Grant saw Buckner now for the first time since
Buckner had helped him in New York when penni-
less, eight years before. " He said to me that if he had
been in command I would not have got up to Donel-
son as easily as I did. I told him that if he had been
in command I should not have tried in the way I
did." Grant does not relate an incident, which comes
with better grace from Buckner's lips: "He left the
officers of his own army and followed me with that
modest manner peculiar to himself into the shadow,
and there tendered me his purse. ... In the modesty
of his nature he was afraid the light would witness
that act of generosity, and sought to hide it from
the world."
There is a passage in the "Memoirs" which from
every aspect does human nature credit: "General
Sherman had been sent to Smithland, at the mouth
of the Cumberland River, to forward reinforcements
and supplies to me. At that time he was my senior
in rank, and there was no authority of law to assign
a junior to command a senior of the same grade. But
DONELSON 75
every boat that came up with supplies or reinforce-
ments brought a note of encouragement from Sher-
man, asking me to call upon him for any assistance
he could render and saying that if he could be of serv-
ice at the front I might send for him and he would
waive rank."
More men fought at Donelson than ever before on
American soil. It was the first substantial victory
for the Union forces after nine months of procrastina-
tion and defeat. Grant, who had been unknown the
week before outside the jurisdiction of his own de-
partment, was by a flash on February 17, 1862, the
military idol of the day. In "Unconditional Sur-
render" his countrymen at last had found a rallying
cry. Yet they had faint conception of what had really
been achieved by Grant in opening the Cumberland
and the Tennessee.
CHAPTER X
UNDER A CLOUD
With Donelson and Henry under Grant's control,
the whole line from the Appalachians to the Missis-
sippi crumbled like a shell. The indentation carried
the Union forces into Nashville, which Johnston,
having already abandoned Bowling Green, could no
longer hold. Polk had to quit Columbus, and re-
tired to Island No. 10, a hundred miles below. Mill
Springs was gone. The Confederacy was pressed back
to its second line, reaching easterly from Memphis
through Corinth and Chattanooga, and northeasterly
through Knoxville along the Cumberland Mountains
to Virginia. The Northern people saw one outpost fall
and then another, till it seemed to them like wizardry,
and in the quick reaction they looked for speedy and
complete success. But they took poor account of
Vicksburg and the military problems it involved,
and they knew little about service jealousies.
All the world was praising Grant but Halleck, who
was for praising everybody else. Three days after
Donelson he wired to Stanton: "Smith, by his cool-
ness and bravery at Fort Donelson, when the battle
was against us, turned the tide and carried the
UNDER A CLOUD 77
enemy's outworks. Make him a major-general. You
can't get a better one. Honor him for this victory,
and the whole country will applaud." Nothing was
said of Grant. He wired congratulations to Foote
for his work with the fleet and to Hunter, who had
simply sent from Kansas prompt reinforcements —
but not a word to Grant. Later, when he caught the
temper of the North, he wired : " Make Buell, Grant,
and Pope major-generals of volunteers." He wired
McClellan on the 26th: "I must have command of
the armies in the West. Hesitation and delay are
losing us the golden opportunity. . . . Answer quick."
Neither Buell nor Pope, good soldiers, had seen fight-
ing then, and Halleck never did.
It was a plain discrimination, and Lincoln, appre-
ciating the proprieties, sent in Grant's name alone, as
major-general of volunteers dating from February 16.
There should be no mistake about the cause of his pro-
motion. Five weeks later came McClernand, Smith,
and Wallace, with Buell and Pope ; and still later,
Thomas, who would have had the earlier recognition
he deserved had it not been for Stanton's unac-
countable distrust. Grant had now fought his way
unfriended to a rank well toward the top.
Now comes a painful episode in Grant's career ;
Halleck seemed incapable of letting him alone. While
still in front of Donelson he had been assigned to the
78 ULYSSES S. GRANT
command of the new military district of West Ten-
nessee, with "Limits not defined." It was uncertain
where his jurisdiction overlapped with Buell's; and
on the 28th of February, after wiring Halleck that,
without orders to the contrary, he should go at once
to Nashville, Grant went there to consult with Buell
at the place which was to be a center of activity. The
next day he returned to Donelson, and on March 3
got orders to move his whole command back to Fort
Henry with a view to an expedition up the Tennes-
see to capture Corinth, the most important outpost
in the South's new defensive line, protecting Memphis
and Vicksburg upon which Grant for weeks had had
his eye.
The next day to his amazement Halleck wired:
"You will place Major-General C. F. Smith in com-
mand of the expedition and remain yourself at Fort
Henry. AYhy do you not obey my orders to report
strength and position of your command?" He had
not disobeyed any order, had reported daily the con-
dition of his command, had reported every position
occupied, and so wired Halleck; but on the 6th came
this reply: "Your neglect of repeated orders to report
the strength of your command has created great
dissatisfaction and seriously interfered with military
plans. Your going to Nashville without authority,
and when your presence with your troops was of the
UNDER A CLOUD 79
utmost importance, was a matter of very serious com-
plaint at Washington, so much so that I was advised
to arrest you on your return."
"I did all I could to get you returns of the strength
of my command," Grant, mystified, wired back.
" Every move I made was reported daily to your chief
of staff, who must have failed to keep you properly
posted. I have done my very best to obey orders and
to carry out the interests of the service. If my course
is not satisfactory remove me at once. I do not wish
in any way to impede the success of our arms. . . .
My going to Nashville was strictly intended for the
good of the service, and not to gratify any desire of
my own. Believing sincerely that I must have ene-
mies between you and myself who are trying to im-
pair my usefulness, I respectfully ask to be relieved
from further duty in the department."
Then followed daily messages between the two;
Grant urging that he be relieved, Halleck retreating
slowly from his stand; and finally, when ordered by
the President summarily to send a full report to
Washington, retracting grudgingly, restoring Grant
to his command. "As he acted from a praiseworthy
although mistaken zeal for the public service in going
to Nashville and leaving his command," he wired the
Adjutant-General on March 13, " I respectfully rec-
ommend that no further notice be taken of it."
80 ULYSSES S. GRANT
In his dispatches to Grant, Halleck had let the re-
sponsibility for the misadventure rest with McClel-
lan, and Grant accordingly was duly grateful to
Halleck for having set him right. After the war the
truth came out through McClellan's revelation of
Halleck's original complaint.1
" I have had no communication with General Grant
for more than a week," he had wired McClellan on
March 2. "He left his command without my au-
thority and went to Nashville. His army seems to be
as much demoralized by the victory of Fort Donel-
son as was that of the Potomac by the defeat of
Bull Run. It is hard to censure a successful general
immediately after a victory, but I think he richly
deserves it. I can get no returns, no reports, no in-
formation of any kind from him. Satisfied with his
victory he sits down and enjoys it without regard to
the future. I am worn out and tired with this neg-
lect and inefficiency. C. F. Smith is almost the only
officer equal to the emergency."
To this McClellan replied: "The success of our
cause demands that proceedings such as Grant's
should be at once checked. Generals must observe
discipline as well as private soldiers. Do not hesitate
to arrest him at once if the good of the service re-
quires it, and place C. F. Smith in command. You
1 McClellan s Own Story, p. 216.
UNDER A CLOUD 81
are at liberty to regard this as a positive order if it
will smooth your way." In replying to which Halleck
intimated, perhaps, the real secret of his dislike: "A
rumor has just reached me that since the taking of
Fort Donelson Grant has resumed his former bad
habits. If so it will account for his repeated neglect
of my oft-repeated orders. I do not deem it advisable
to arrest him at present, but have placed General
Smith in command of the expedition up the Tennes-
see. I think Smith will restore order and discipline."
Grant subsequently learned that some of his re-
ports to Halleck had been held up at Cairo, but
this mishap would not excuse his summary execu-
tion without a chance to enter a defense.
There is a nice adjustment of justice with delicacy
of feeling in this comment in his "Memoirs": "Gen-
eral Halleck unquestionably deemed General C. F.
Smith a much fitter officer for the command of all
the forces in the military district than I was, and, to
render him available for such command, desired his
promotion to antedate mine and those of the other
division commanders. It is probable that the general
opinion was that Smith's long services in the army
and distinguished deeds rendered him the most
proper person for such command. Indeed, I was
rather inclined to this opinion myself at that time,
and would have served as faithfully under Smith as
82 ULYSSES S. GRANT
he had done under me. But this did not justify the
dispatches which General Halleck sent to Washing-
ton or his subsequent concealment of them from me
when pretending to explain the action of my supe-
riors."
In disgrace at Fort Henry, Grant had congratu-
lated Smith on turning over the command and wrote
him, "Anything you may require, send back trans-
ports for and if within my power you shall have it."
There could be no jealousy between Grant and Smith.
Grant's feeling for his old commander was almost
one of awe, and when Smith first had come under his
command he found it hard to give him orders. It
was for the elder in service, now lower in rank, to
relieve Grant's embarrassment. "I am now a subor-
dinate," he delicately said; "I know a soldier's duty.
I hope you will feel no awkwardness about our new
relations." Smith died in a few weeks from hardships
at Fort Donelson. He was too ill to serve at Shiloh.
Sherman said once that if "Smith had been spared
us Grant would never have been heard of"; he sub-
sequently took it back, but with this early estimate
Grant would then have agreed.
CHAPTER XI
SHILOH
"My opinion was and still is that immediately after
the fall of Fort Donelson the way was opened to the
National forces all over the Southwest without much
resistance. If one general who would have taken the
responsibility had been in command of all the troops
west of the Alleghanies, he could have marched
to Chattanooga, Corinth, Memphis, and Vicksburg
with the troops we then had; and as volunteering
was going on rapidly over the North there would
soon have been force enough at all those centers to
operate offensively against any body of the enemy
that might be found near them. . . . Providence
ruled differently. Time was given the enemy to col-
lect armies and fortify his new positions." Thus
Grant has placed himself on record, and thus it
might have happened with Grant himself or Charles
F. Smith in sole command, but not with Halleck.
Having smashed the South 's defensive line at Don-
elson, the armies of the West turned next to Corinth,
a little town in northern Mississippi of strategical
importance because two railroads came together
there which, thus connecting, brought Memphis on
84 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the Mississippi and Mobile on the Gulf in touch
with Charleston and the South Atlantic States.
So long as the Confederates had Corinth, they had
the base for a campaign to keep the lower Missis-
sippi under their control and hold the Northern
forces back. Beauregard, summoned from Virginia
with the prestige of success, was there already and
other generals were on the way — all to be under the
command of Albert Sidney Johnston, still in good
favor with the Cabinet at Richmond in spite of the
catastrophe at Donelson and his enforced retreat.
When men from Tennessee asked for another general,
Davis had replied: "If Sidney Johnston is not a gen-
eral, the Confederacy has none to give you." Center-
ing at Corinth were nearly fifty thousand men.
Halleck had formed ambitious plans. Command-
ing all the armies in the West he was to lead in
person the armies of the Tennessee and the Ohio, with
Grant and Buell serving under him. He would have
chosen Charles F. Smith instead of Grant if Wash-
ington had let him, but Smith was laid up at Sa-
vannah on the Tennessee, sick with the injury re-
ceived at Donelson of which he shortly died.
The move on Corinth was to be assault by Hal-
leck's armies; but events precipitated battle on a
field where Grant and Halleck had not planned to
fight. Smith, while Grant was undergoing punish-
SHILOH 85
ment at Halleck's hands, had chosen as a rendezvous
for the Union armies a bluff at Pittsburg Landing,
twenty miles northeast of Corinth on the west bank
of the Tennessee, preferring that place to Savannah,
on the eastern bank and nine miles farther north, as
Halleck had designed. Grant picked the Landing also
on the theory that, as the plan was to attack and
crush the enemy, the west side of the river was the
place from which to strike. It would never do to let
the Southern troops possess the bluff. He would wait
there for Buell, when their united forces could ad-
vance on Corinth. His troops were at the Land-
ing, but he continued temporary quarters for him-
self at Savannah where Buell was expected hourly to
arrive.
But Beauregard and Johnston, instead of waiting
for attack at Corinth where they were intrenched,
moved down the river to the western bank in order
to catch Grant before Buell could arrive; and on
a muddy, foggy Sunday morning, April 6, 1862,
Johnston's army of forty thousand, under cover of the
forest and the night having come up to the Union
lines, brought on one of the deadliest battles of the
war. McClernand, Sherman, Hurlbut, Prentiss, and
William Wallace, who was temporarily commanding
Smith's division, were encamped around Pittsburg
Landing. Others were close at hand, — Lew Wal-
86 ULYSSES S. GRANT
lace at Crump's Landing, five miles below; Nelson,
one of Buell's generals, who had arrived the day be-
fore, camped near Savannah on the eastern bank;
thirty thousand men in all potentially at Grant's
disposal, while Buell with as many more was on the
way. McClernand and Lew Wallace were major-
generals, the rest brigadiers.
Grant, for two days on crutches from a fall, was at
Savannah looking for Buell whom he expected there
that day; at breakfast he heard the firing at the front
and started on a boat at once for Pittsburg Landing
where he found the battle on. The Union camp was
not intrenched. The Western armies had not learned
the habit then; while Grant, convinced like all the
rest, that Johnston would make his stand at Corinth,
thought his raw troops would be less advantageously
employed in digging than in drill and discipline. The
Southern troops poured in over an exposed line about
three miles from Pittsburg near a log-cabin meeting-
house called Shiloh, where Sherman was encamped;
and here the battle raged ferociously, giving a name
to the day's engagement.
Sherman's men, experiencing their first battle,
thrown into confusion and losing their identity as
a division, mixed themselves with McClernand's
troops; and two divisions, scrambled into one, took
orders indiscriminately from the two command-
SHILOH 87
ers, so desperate was the fight defying all the rules
of war. Thus the battle went in all parts of the
field, and thus Grant found it when he reached the
scene.
In the wild combat he was imperturbable as he had
been at Donelson. "I can recall only two persons,"
writes Horace Porter, "who throughout a rattling
fire of musketry always sat in their saddles without
moving a muscle or winking an eye : one was a bugler
and the other was General Grant." He rode from
place to place wherever bullets flew and gave com-
mands, as was his way, in a low, vibrant, penetrating
voice, alert but undemonstrative; there was no mad
rushing back and forth, no stirring calls to action; he
might be beaten, but he could not be perturbed. The
odds throughout were with the South. Lew Wallace,
with seven thousand men, mistook his road and did
not reach the field until late afternoon when the ex-
hausted armies were welcoming the night. Prentiss
was captured with his improvised brigade after a day
of desperate fighting at the "Hornet's Nest." Nelson
did not cross the river. Just who was blameworthy
for these mishaps has been the theme of controversy
ever since.
As night approached, the Confederates had the
best of it. They held the ground where Sherman's
troops had slept the night before. The Union army,
88 ULYSSES S. GRANT
mercilessly battered, had been forced toward the
river, beneath the bank of which thousands of panic-
stricken stragglers chased to the rear were swarming.
There have been few great battles with so little
planning. Grant in command could not coordinate
his forces or direct them from a given vantage-point.
He must be where he could best be of service, now
with Sherman, now with McClernand, now with
Prentiss in the "Hornet's Nest," reorganizing, re-
adjusting, realigning, ceaselessly encouraging first
one brigade and then another, inspiring them with
his indomitable will.
The enemy were superior in numbers and not in-
ferior in ability to fight. If in the middle of the after-
noon the knightly Johnston had not fallen while
rallying his men, no one can guess what might have
happened. The South has said that his death turned
the tide of battle; Jefferson Davis wrote years later
that "the fortunes of a country hung by the single
thread of the life that was yielded on the field of
Shiloh." The world will never know.
When Beauregard at sunset issued his order to sus-
pend the fight till morning, Braxton Bragg, who was
for risking everything upon a grand attack that night,
declared to the staff officer who brought the message,
that if it had not already reached the other generals
he would not obey it, and added dismally, "The
SHILOH 89
battle is lost." But Beauregard always held that he
was right, which is to-day the general view.
Bragg would have fought ahead upon the theory
that when opposing forces seemingly have spent
their strength, the one which gathers first its lagging
energies for a renewed assault is almost sure to win.
That was the theory of which Grant gave a striking
demonstration the next morning, and on which he
turned the day at Donelson, which was a fundamen-
tal feature of his strategy; but it must presuppose
that in power of endurance the enemy does not excel,
and that was not the case at Shiloh.
With fewer men the Federal brigades had ob-
stinately disputed every foot of ground since morn-
ing, though taken where they had not thought to meet
the enemy in formidable force, and that too without
adequate formation. Lew Wallace had just reached
the battered right with his seven thousand un-
scathed veterans. Nelson was on the opposite bank
and Buell's army was already landing from the trans-
ports, while Beauregard had no reserves in sight. He
had been held back two hours at the "Hornet's
Nest" by Prentiss and William Wallace, and after
Wallace had been killed and Prentiss captured, with
two thousand men, he had been impeded by having to
send captives to the rear. When night fell the time
had passed when he could hope to seize the Union
90 ULYSSES S. GRANT
line by assault and cut off Grant's communication
with approaching reinforcements. Bragg was right
when he declared the battle lost, but he was doubt-
less wrong in thinking a final charge could save it.
Grant, so constituted that he could not know when
he was beaten, had never doubted ultimate success,
and when the armies bivouacked for the night, sleep-
ing on their arms because the rebels had their tents,
he had already planned to knit his line of battle and
with fresh troops drive back the enemy.
To Buell, who had reached Pittsburg Landing
hours in advance of his men that Sunday afternoon,
and saw the stragglers huddled by the thousand on
the bank, defeat seemed imminent. "What prepara-
tions have you made for retreat?" he asked Grant.
"I haven't despaired of whipping them yet," said
Grant. "Of course! But if you should be whipped,
how will you get your men across the river? These
transports will not take more than ten thousand
troops." "If I have to retreat, ten thousand will be
as many as I shall need transports for."
Brutal indifference to human life it seemed; and
when the news of Union losses came, — twelve
thousand men, wounded or killed, — the Northern
press began to call him "Butcher Grant." But that
night with his aching leg he could not bear the sights
and sounds in the shelter of the shanty where he tried
SHILOH 91
to sleep and where they had brought the wounded,
but went out in the mud and driving rain to get what
sleep he could, propped up against a tree. He has
said of the one bull-fight he ever witnessed, "the
sight to me was sickening." He could not bear the
sight of blood or that of other men in pain, and he has
written that one reason why, after the second day at
Shiloh, he did not pursue the beaten enemy, was that
he had not the heart to demand more work of his own
jaded men; which may be set with Sherman's whim-
sical reply when John Fiske asked him why the rebels
were not chased: "I assure you, my dear fellow, we
had had quite enough of their society for two whole
days, and were only too glad to be rid of them on any
terms"; l and Buell's bitter comment: "I make no
attempt to excuse myself or blame others when I say
that General Grant's troops, the lowest individual
among them not more than the commander himself,
appear to have thought the object of the battle was
sufficiently accomplished when they were reinstated
in their camps; and that in some way that idea
obstructed the organization of my line until a further
advance that day became impracticable."
Certain it is the Southern forces were badly
thrashed that second day. Beauregard must have
realized that they would lose before the battle was
1 The Mississippi Valley in the Civil War, p. 99.
92 ULYSSES S. GRANT
renewed because he must have known that his de-
pleted lines could not contend on equal terms against
Grant's army reinforced by Wallace, with Buell's
fresh divisions hourly pouring in. By four o'clock the
remnant of his shattered force was in retreat toward
Corinth. He had lost in missing, dead, and wounded
over twelve thousand troops. The Union loss was
equal, besides the capture of Prentiss and his force,
but Grant and Buell had more men to spare.
" I saw an open field in our possession on the second
day," writes Grant, "over which the Confederates
had made repeated charges the day before, so covered
with dead that it would have been possible to walk
across the clearing, in any direction, stepping on dead
bodies, without a foot touching the ground. . . . On
one part . . . bushes had grown up, some to the
height of eight or ten feet. There was not one of
these left standing unpierced by bullets."
In the grewsome light of evidence like this of
gallant and grim encounter, there is a Gascon touch
in what Beauregard wrote to Grant from Corinth,
when asking leave to bury his dead: "At the close of
the conflict yesterday, my forces being exhausted by
the extraordinary length of time during which they
were engaged with yours ... I felt it my duty to
withdraw my troops from the immediate scene of
conflict."
SH1L0H 93
And now came Halleck ponderously from his
arm-chair in St. Louis, to assume direct command
four days after the battle had been won. He found
awaiting him an army of one hundred thousand men,
Pope, by the capture of Island No. 10, having opened
the Mississippi down to Memphis and joined his
army to those of Grant and Buell. With this great
army, after prodigiously elaborate preparation, Hal-
leck crept stealthily toward Corinth, where Beaure-
gard was lingering with fifty thousand, covered the
distance in a month, intrenching daily, keeping his
army busy with axes, picks, and shovels, holding
back his generals eager for a fight, and finally closed
in triumphantly, only to find an empty town, which
Beauregard had never meant to hold and had quit
long before, leaving wooden guns frowning over
useless earthworks to deceive the Federal com-
mander. Beauregard knew, like almost everybody
else, that Corinth had been captured when his as-
sault at Shiloh failed.
"After all," Halleck admitted finally to Grant,
"you fought at Pittsburg Landing the battle of
Corinth!"
CHAPTER XII
HUMILIATION
While his superior was crawling through his evolu-
tions, Grant underwent a cruel test of loyalty and
patience. After Shiloh a storm of hot denunciation
broke upon him. He could have been in hardly worse
repute had he betrayed his country. If he were really
guilty of a lapse he paid a bitter price.
The first reports of Shiloh to reach the North were
those of hostile critics, inspired in part by envious
rivals. Buell's men were quick to say that only their
arrival saved Grant's army and that the triumph of
the second day belonged to them. McClernand,
ready with his pen, wrote home, as after Donelson
and Belmont, claiming the glory of the day. The
Sunday skulkers on the river-bank thought every-
body else had also run away, and told this tale where-
ever they could hold a listener among the gullible and
sympathetic visitors to camp. The Northern press
defiled itself with slander: Grant was drunk before the
battle and while it was on, loafing behind and letting
others fight; Prentiss and his men had been caught
sleeping in their tents and bayoneted in their beds;
thousands of Northern volunteers had been slaugh-
tered wantonly.
HUMILIATION 95
Fed by such tales the Western States, whose troops
had suffered most, were glad when Halleck came,
remodeling the army, now reinforced to more than
one hundred thousand men, into three great divi-
sions, one under Buell, one under Thomas, one un-
der Pope — Grant looking on as "second in com-
mand" with no one subject to his order except his
personal staff. Thus it was while Halleck crept to-
ward Corinth, and then, " Why not press on to Vicks-
burg before it can be strengthened?" he suggested,
bringing from Halleck the rebuke, "When your ad-
vice is needed it will be asked." For Halleck thought
the aim of war was to get places, and Corinth was a
place; while Grant was taught at Shiloh that the
South could not be conquered until its armies were
destroyed and its resources gone, and to seize Vicks-
burg promptly would give the Union army the Mis-
sissippi, cut off the Southern sources of supply from
the Southwest and Mexico, and hasten the contrac-
tion and compression of the rebel forces to receive
the final crushing blow. Vicksburg once captured,
Corinth would again become a railroad junction —
nothing more.
And so with each strategic point; to Grant its only
value was as a resting-place from which to spring
upon the next. To hold it longer wasted men who
could be put to stouter service somewhere else. But
96 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Halleck clung to Corinth, letting Vicksburg wait
until the Southern armies gathered strength for its
defense; so that what might have been accomplished
in a month by swift advances called after Shiloh for
a year's campaign with grueling encounters over a
broad field, while Corinth itself, which fell to Hal-
leck unresisted in early May, was held by Rosecrans
the next October only after one of the historic battles
of the war. "I think the enemy will continue his re-
treat, which is all I desire," was Halleck's message
while Beauregard was trekking south. Hence no
precautions against the prospect of the enemy's re-
covery and return.
So Grant lay rusting in his tent while Halleck
dawdled and the critics bawled; not sulky or resent-
ful, but chafing inwardly and sick at heart that a great
opportunity should pass which he thought he knew
how to seize. Orders were sent his troops without his
knowledge. Reports of his subordinates at Shiloh
were forwarded to Washington without passing
through his hands. On the strength of his unselfish
praise Halleck asked higher rank for Sherman, but
did not mention Grant by name.
"The President desires to know," wired Stanton,
"whether any neglect or misconduct of General
Grant or any other officer contributed to the sad cas-
ualties that befell our forces on Sunday "; to which
HUMILIATION 97
Halleck significantly replied: "The casualties were
due in part to the bad conduct of officers utterly un-
fit for their places. ... I prefer to express no opinion
in regard to the conduct of individuals till I receive
reports of commanders of divisions" — evasive save
by insinuation.
Grant asked to be relieved from duty altogether
and have his command defined. " You have precisely
the position to which your rank entitles you ..."
replied Halleck. "For the last three months I have
done everything in my power to ward off the attacks
which were made upon you." Sherman heard from
Halleck that Grant had leave to go away — Sherman
who had no fame till Shiloh, except the tale that he
was crazy because at the beginning of the war the
press had quoted him as saying that to occupy Ken-
tucky would take two hundred thousand men, and
who had just begun to love and prize the silent soldier
whose traits were in such contrast to his own. He
rode straightway to Grant's headquarters and asked
why he was going. "Sherman, you know," said Grant,
"You know that I am in the way here. I have stood
it as long as I can." Where was he going? "To
St. Louis." Had he any business there? "Not a
bit." Then Sherman argued, his own case in mind,
that if he went, the war would go right on and he
would be left out; while if he stayed, some acci-
98 ULYSSES S. GRANT
dent might bring him back to favor and his true
place. l
Grant stayed, but found it irksome. The flunkeys
at headquarters still ignored him; the attacks at home
persisted; Congress debated him. John Sherman in
the Senate almost alone dared come to his defense,
drawing upon himself the angry protest of Harlan, of
Iowa, against this "attempt to bolster up Grant's
reputation." "The Iowa troops," said Harlan, "have
no confidence in his capacity and fitness for the high
position he now holds. They regard him as the au-
thor of the useless slaughter of many hundreds of
their brave comrades. . . . There is nothing in his an-
tecedents to justify a further trial of his military skill.
... At Belmont he committed an egregious and un-
pardonable military blunder. ... At Fort Donelson
the right wing . . . under his immediate command was
defeated and driven back. . . . The battle was re-
stored by General Smith. . . . On the battlefield of
Shiloh his army was completely surprised . . . and
nothing but the stubborn bravery of the men fight-
ing by regiments and brigades saved the army from
utter destruction. The battle was afterwards re-
stored and conducted by General Buell and other
generals. . . . With such a record, those who con-
tinue General Grant in an active command will in
1 Memoirs of W. T. Sherman, vol. i, p. 283.
HUMILIATION 99
my opinion carry on their skirts the blood of thou-
sands of their slaughtered countrymen."
The riot of detraction stirred the War Department
and the White House. It was then that Lincoln met
the plea of powerful delegations that Grant should be
relieved from duty, with the not-to-be-forgotten an-
swer, "I can't spare this man — he fights!"
After two months Halleck restored Grant to a
separate command, and Grant betook himself to
Memphis, lately fallen into Union hands with the
capitulation of Island No. 10 and Corinth. There,
having fixed his headquarters, he remained, still
rusticated, but no longer stung by daily slights in
front of Halleck's armies, till there came one of the
fantastic shifts which were so frequent in the first
months of the war.
Things were in sad odor in Virginia — McClellan
forced back to the James by Lee had shattered Lin-
coln's faith, and Lincoln, casting around in his per-
plexity for military competence, called Halleck from
the West to Washington, ordering on July 11 that he
"be assigned to command the whole land forces of
the United States as General-in-Chief," for Halleck
was in nominal command of all the armies of the
West, by whom the only Union victories had been
won.
"In leaving this department," he wired to Stanton,
100 ULYSSES S. GRANT
"shall I relinquish the command to next in rank, or
will the President designate who is to be the com-
mander?" Stanton wired to turn the army over to
the next in rank — and Halleck ordered Grant to
come to Corinth.
"Shall I bring my staff?" Grant asked. "You can
do as you please," was the response. "Corinth will
be your headquarters."
There he set up his camp with fifty thousand men
to hold the district between Corinth and Cairo, Hal-
leck's big army having been broken up; and, through
the summer, under orders, he lay still. He would
have been forgotten, so fickle is fame gained in war,
had it not been for the dispute concerning Shiloh
which had spasmodic life with politicians and the
press of the Middle Western States. He suffered
keenly, but in silence, except with Sherman, who had
won his confidence and who was in command at
Memphis; with Washburne, to whom as his one friend
in Washington he felt some explanation due; and
with his father, sputtering with parental indignation,
writing and talking in his defense among his old
friends near his boyhood home.
"I would scorn being my own defender against
such attacks," he wrote to Washburne in early May,
"except through the record which has been kept of
all my official acts. ... To say that I have not been
HUMILIATION 101
distressed at these attacks would be false; for I have
a father, mother, wife, and children who read them
and are distressed by them, and I necessarily share
with them in it. Then, too, all subject to my orders
read these charges, and it is calculated to weaken
their confidence in me, and weaken my ability to
render efficient service in our present cause. ... I
cannot be driven from rendering the best service
within my ability to suppress the present rebellion.
. . . Notoriety has no charms for me. . . . Looking
back at the past I cannot see for the life of me any
important point that could be corrected."
To his father he writes in August: "I do not expect
nor want the support of the Cincinnati press on my
side. Their course has been so remarkable from the
beginning that should I be endorsed by them I should
fear that the public would mistrust my patriotism. I
am sure that I have but one desire in this war and
that is to put down the rebellion. I have no hobby of
my own with regard to the negro either to effect his
freedom or to continue his bondage. ... I do not
believe even in the discussion of the propriety of laws
and official orders by the army. One enemy at a time
is enough and when he is subdued, it will be time
enough to settle personal differences."
Just before Corinth, in September, he writes his
father one of the few letters in which there is a sign
102 ULYSSES S. GRANT
of petulance. " I . . . have never had any other feeling
either here or elsewhere but that of success. I would
write you many particulars, but you are so impru-
dent that I dare not trust you with them; and while
on this subject let me say a word. I have not an
enemy in the world who has done me so much injury
as you in your efforts in my defense. I require no
defenders and for my sake let me alone. I have heard
this from various sources, and persons who have re-
turned to this army and did not know that I had
parents living near Cincinnati have said that they
found the best feeling existing toward me in every
place except there. You are constantly denouncing
other general officers, and the inference with' people
naturally is that you get your impressions from
me. Do nothing to correct what you have already
done, but for the future keep quiet on this sub-
ject."
Almost brutal in the directness of the rebuke, such
words could have been forced from Grant only by
deep feeling long suppressed. And yet how tame com-
pared with Sherman's fire, who wrote home with his
wounded hand: "It is outrageous for the cowardly
newspapers thus to defame men whose lives are ex-
posed." For Sherman's anger burned and blazed
against the "little whip-snappers who represent the
press, but are in fact spies in our camps," warning
HUMILIATION 103
that "death awaits them whenever I have the
power" — Sherman of whom Charles Eliot Norton
said to Curtis, "How his wrath swells and grows . . .
he writes as well as he fights."
CHAPTER XIII
THE MISSISSIPPI CAMPAIGN
Headed toward Vicksburg in command, at last Grant
had the chance he had been looking for, though handi-
capped by the dispersion of a splendid army and by
the dilatory tactics which gave the enemy an oppor-
tunity to fortify and man the place. His strategy in
following a line of conquest which paralleled the
Mississippi, compelling the evacuation of the hostile
river strongholds one by one, had cleared the water
highway for the fleet of Union gunboats all the way
down from Cairo. Paducah, Henry, Donelson, and
Shiloh, in giving the Union armies the Tennessee as
far south as Nashville and beyond to Corinth, had
also transferred to their control Columbus, Memphis,
Fort Pillow, and Island No. 10; for though Island
No. 10 was seized by Pope while Shiloh was in fight,
it would have dropped into his hands without resist-
ance if he had waited a few days.
Farragut had seized New Orleans three weeks af-
ter Shiloh and Butler was earning his sobriquet of
"Beast" as military governor of the town. Farra-
gut's boats could ply the river as far north as forti-
fied Port Hudson, while those of Davis could convey
supplies to feed the Federal armies as far south as
THE MISSISSIPPI CAMPAIGN 105
Vicksburg. Thus these two strongholds still in rebel
hands were of the utmost value to the Southern
cause. Not only did they cut in two the Union navy,
but they controlled the gateway to the granary of the
South, in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana, rich enough
in soil to feed the Southern armies and rich enough in
men to reinforce them with one hundred thousand
fresh recruits. The Red River, running through
Texas and Louisiana, emptied into the Mississippi
below Vicksburg and above Port Hudson. To close
its mouth against the contributions of the territory
which it drained and to open up the Mississippi from
Cairo to the Gulf was a high stake to play for, and
Grant was not the only general who had it in his eye,
although no other set such store upon the need of
speed in forcing the assault.
Now that he was on the road to the achievement,
he chafed with waiting. The enemy had been greatly
reinforced while Halleck loitered and were now trying
to regain part of the ground which they had lost.
Iuka and Corinth were saved by Ord and Rosecrans
only after fierce attack by Sterling Price and Earl
Van Dorn. Vicksburg, which had been lightly manned
and thinly fortified in April, had been growing
stouter every day till it was now well-nigh impreg-
nable. Nature had guarded it on the north by
swamps, bayous, and shallow lakes through which
106 ULYSSES S. GRANT
invading armies could not hope to force their way;
on the west by a steep bluff two hundred feet in
height, from which its batteries could rain a plunging
fire upon the rash fleet which should undertake
assault and up to which no ship could hope to train its
guns; on the south by the promontories of Port Hud-
son and Grand Gulf, by this time manned and forti-
fied till they were strongholds in themselves. The sole
approach was from the west and there the strength-
ened Southern armies intervened, Van Dorn for his
defeat at Corinth, for which he was not really culpa-
ble, having given place to Pemberton, a Pennsylva-
nian by birth, trained at West Point, a rebel out of
friendship for the Confederate President, who gave
him rank above his seniors and responsible command
unjustified by service or by the event.
Grant's first plan was to parallel the river with-
out approaching it, just as from Paducah to Pittsburg
Landing, compelling Vicksburg's fall, as he had
forced the fall of all the other strongholds between
Vicksburg and Cairo by seizing points of vantage
along the Tennessee. He would abandon Corinth as
no longer necessary, now that its railroad connections
were in his hands and press hard on the rebel forces
which protected Vicksburg.
Having in mind the moss-grown axiom of war that
a great army in a hostile country should have a base
THE MISSISSIPPI CAMPAIGN 107
to which it could fall back in case of need, he fixed
Columbus as his base and deserting Corinth marched
his force along the Mississippi Central Railroad from
Grand Junction to Grenada, while Sherman with
Memphis for a base moved down the Mississippi on
transports to effect a landing at the bluffs just north
of Vicksburg and thus cooperate with Grant, who
hoped to keep the enemy engaged while Sherman
captured Vicksburg by assault. When he set out,
both he and Sherman, with whom he talked it out at
Oxford, would have chosen rather to move in full
force on Jackson, the Mississippi capital, using
Memphis as a base, but the Mississippi Central
Railroad, which ran from Memphis to Jackson, had
been torn up between Memphis and Grenada, and to
wait for its repair would eat up time, already grown
too dear. Even as it was the time was wasted.
Grant kept getting mystic messages from Washington
whose meaning did not dawn on him till after the
event. Forrest with his cavalry left Bragg in front of
Rosecrans at Murfreesboro, and darting through .the
State of Tennessee cut Grant's communication with
Columbus by spoiling sixty miles of railroad and
leveling the telegraph, so that Grant, completely
isolated and unable even to tell Sherman of his
plight, had to work slowly back living off the coun-
try during the eighty miles' retreat, since Holly
108 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Springs, where stores had been accumulated for an
emergency, was at that moment surrendered to Van
Dorn, who in a quick dash from the rear had found
a coward in command. Grant, after three weeks' iso-
lation, again in touch with Memphis on January 8,
learned that Sherman ten days before had been beaten
back in his assault upon the bluffs near Vicksburg,
and that McClernand was in command of the
Mississippi River expedition, supplanting Sherman
on the strength of Lincoln's order.
It was now midwinter and nothing had been
gained since spring except experience, though Grant's
offensive had at least diverted Forrest's cavalry from
Bragg, likewise ten thousand men whom Bragg sent to
help Pemberton, thus weakening his own force and
doubtless giving Rosecrans the victory in the close-
fought battle of Stone River, January 1, which opened
up the way for Missionary Ridge and Chattanooga,
the possession of Knoxville and Atlanta, and Sher-
man's march through Georgia.
CHAPTER XIV
McCLERNAND
McClernand's plottings and ambitions, his rivalry
and jealousy of Grant, comprise a curious chapter of
the time — one of the episodes of Grant's career
which seem to indicate a hovering Providence.
Nothing but unfaltering faith and an unswerving
loyalty could have enabled him to meet unquestion-
ing the obstacles he faced, especially those set before
him early in the war before his fame was fixed. The
brigadiers from Illinois whom Lincoln named with
him at the beginning had been tangled in his fortunes
ever since. Though he outranked them by coming
earliest on the list, they held themselves as his
superiors. Why not? Newly arrived, he had been
selling leather in Galena only four months ago,
while they had long been men of much repute. At
that stage of the war a regiment was like a militant
town meeting. To stand high in politics marked one
as fitted for command. When Prentiss in Missouri
found himself subordinate to Grant, he quit in anger,
flashing hotly, "I will not serve under a drunkard!"
— but came back later, fought under Grant at
Donelson and Shiloh, and gallantly on many other
fields. Hurlbut marred a creditable record with
110 ULYSSES S. GRANT
wearisome complaints. McClernand represented
Lincoln's town in Congress — a Douglas Democrat.
It was important at the outbreak of the war that he
and Logan should stand by the Union cause, and
Lincoln, always politic, courted their favor. Had it
not been for his self-seeking vanity McClernand
might have left a record to compare with Logan's,
but his ambition overleaped itself. Scheming for
praise at home, he claimed such glory as there was at
Belmont, Donelson, and Shiloh, filling the local press
with tributes to his valor, poisoning the mails with
scandal about Grant, presuming on a neighbor's
privilege to make reports direct to Lincoln, intriguing
for a separate command, and now, when Vicksburg
was in sight, running to Washington with a pre-
sumptuous plan for self-aggrandizement. He was to
organize an independent expedition to clear the
Mississippi to New Orleans, picking up Vicksburg on
the way, and for this purpose Lincoln ordered him to
raise the necessary troops in Indiana, Iowa, and
Illinois. In patriotic fervor of appeal McClernand
could not be excelled. He swiftly garnered forty
thousand volunteers, and by the time Grant started
south with Sherman was prepared to enter on a con-
quering career. "I have a greater general now than
either Grant or Sherman," Lincoln said to Admiral
Porter; but in issuing his order to McClernand he
McCLERNAND 111
cautiously refrained from giving him the free hand
which McClernand sought, providing that "when a
sufficient force not required by the operations of
General Grant's command shall be raised, an expedi-
tion may be organized under General McClernand's
command against Vicksburg and to clear the Missis-
sippi River and open navigation to New Orleans."
It was this order which lay behind the disconcerting
messages Grant had from Halleck. McClernand
thought it gave him equal place with Grant. His
error did not dawn upon him till, after superseding
Sherman, having gained a foothold in Arkansas, and
encouraged thus to undertake the wanton task of
leading thirty thousand men to clear the State of
rebel troops, he was called back summarily by Grant,
aghast at the proposal to divert so great a segment of
his army from the immediate work in hand. Grant
wired to Halleck that McClernand had "gone on a
wild-goose chase"; McClernand, sullenly obedient,
wrote confidentially to Lincoln, " My success here is
gall and wormwood to the clique of West Pointers
who have been persecuting me for months"; Sher-
man, who six months before had steadied Grant, now,
wounded to the quick, wrote to his brother John:
" Mr. Lincoln intended to insult me and the military
profession by putting McClernand over me, and I
would have quietly folded up my things and gone to
112 ULYSSES S. GRANT
St. Louis only I know in times like these all must
submit to insult and infamy if necessary." Of the
three generals, Grant was the one to hold his poise.
Embarrassing as was the controversy with Mc-
Clernand, its ultimate result was to make Grant in
person assume the task of taking Vicksburg instead
of leaving it to Sherman, who otherwise would have
been chosen for the work and who would not have
followed without specific orders the plans Grant had
in mind; but unless he changed his nature it was in-
evitable that McClernand should be relieved from a
command which brought him into conflict with his
superior. So long as he remained with Grant he was
profanely insubordinate, lingered behind when or-
dered to advance; arranged spectacular reviews when
fighting was at hand, cumbered himself with wagons
when told to leave them in the rear, continued firing
when instructed to harbor ammunition, swore at
Wilson, who brought him directions from Grant, " I '11
be God damned if I will do it — I am tired of being
dictated to."
Finally he issued a vainglorious order to his corps
congratulating them for gallantry in an assault on
Vicksburg which did not succeed and taking other
corps to task for failure to cooperate. He sent this on
to Illinois for publication without submitting it to
Grant, and for this gross breach of discipline, resented
McCLERNAND 113
angrily by Sherman and McPherson and their men,
Grant sent him home to Springfield, relieving him
summarily from his command. From Springfield
three months later he sent to Washington a viru-
lent letter requesting a court of inquiry. " How far
General Grant is indebted to the forbearance of
officers under his command for his retention in the
public service so long," he wrote, " I will not under-
take to state unless he should challenge it. None
know better than himself how much he is indebted
to their forbearance. Neither will I undertake to
show that he is indebted to the good conduct of
officers and men of his command at different times
for the series of successes that have gained him ap-
plause, rather than to his merit as a commander,
unless he should challenge it too." When this attack
reached Washington, it was too late to do Grant any
harm. The President would not consent to an in-
quiry, taking the ground that it "would necessarily
withdraw from the field many officers whose presence
with their commander is absolutely indispensable to
the service and whose absence might cause irrepar-
able injury to the success of active operations now
in active progress."
"McClernand played himself out," Sherman
wrote home the day after Vicksburg fell, "and there is
not an officer or soldier here but rejoices he is gone
114 ULYSSES S. GRANT
away. With an intense selfishness and love of noto-
riety he could not let his mind get beyond the limits
of his vision, and therefore all was brilliant about him
and dark and suspicious beyond. My style is the
reverse. I am somewhat blind to what occurs near me,
but have a clear perception of things and events re-
mote. Grant possesses the happy medium, and it is
for this reason I admire him. I have a much quicker
perception of things than he, but he balances the
present and remote so evenly that results follow in
natural course."
CHAPTER XV
VICKSBURG
Sherman's rebuff near Vicksburg revived the storm
of criticism and stirred the Northern press to new
attacks on Grant, as well as on other Union generals
East and West. The story in Virginia had been one
of procrastination and defeat and now the gleam of
hope in Mississippi seemed to have vanished too.
McClernand's advocates were vocal. But there was
nothing in it now for Grant except to feel his way.
He could not force his troops through the net of
creeks and bayous swollen with winter's freshets, but
transferring his army to the west bank of the river he
encamped at Milliken's Bend and utilized the time
till spring in testing schemes to get boats and
supplies around the Vicksburg batteries to help the
army later operate below; cutting canals to change
the river's winding course; breaking levees, uniting
lakes, hunting for channels; and all the time attending
to the disagreeable details of army management. Dis-
honest and disloyal traders from the North infested
his department, drawn by the lure of cotton specula-
tion, and at last in desperation he ordered the expul-
sion of "Jews as a class" — a drastic step which
raised a storm of protest in Congress and the press
116 ULYSSES S. GRANT
till Lincoln countermanded it — Lincoln, who knew
Grant's feeling toward the traders in necessities of
war, his old friend Leonard Swett, of Springfield,
having once been ordered out of Cairo on pain of
being shot because he tried to force on Grant a ques-
tionable deal in hay. When Swett sought Lincoln at
the White House with his protest, Lincoln said,
" Well, Swett, if I were in your place, I should keep
out of Ulysses Simpson's bailiwick, for to the best of
my knowledge and belief Grant will keep his promise
if he catches you in Cairo."
Amid distractions such as these Grant worked out
his daring plans for seizing Vicksburg. He was on
trial at Washington. Discontent was spreading
through the North, discouraged by the months of
dreary waiting. It was a dark hour for the Union
cause. Stanton, hard pressed on every side, was
moved in his impatience to do a foolish thing. He
thought to bribe his generals into action and sent a
letter to Grant, Rosecrans, and Hooker promising to
make the victor of the first important battle a major-
general in the regular army. Rosecrans, commanding
the Army of the Cumberland in Tennessee, wrote a
petulant reply. Hooker promptly led the Army of
the Potomac to humiliating defeat at Chancellors-
ville. Grant ignored the letter; he did not let it
hasten him or influence his course.
GRANT AS MAJOR-GENERAL COMMANDING
IN THE WEST
Photograph by J. E. McClees
From tin collection of Frederick Hill Mes< rve
VICKSBURG 117
When all was ready on the night of April 16, 1863,
Porter bravely ran the blazing Vicksburg batteries
with a portion of his fleet, following with others later,
safely performing almost without a scar a feat which
Sherman and most of Grant's other generals thought
too perilous to undertake. The army, having marched
down the western bank by a circuitous route, was
camped at Carthage in Louisiana ready to be ferried
across the Mississippi, and on the 30th of April it
landed on the eastern side at Bruinsburg, south of
Vicksburg.
There began the wonderful campaign which ended
two months later in Pemberton's capitulation of the
rebel stronghold. "When this landing was effected,"
Grant says, "I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever
equaled since. Vicksburg was not yet taken it is true,
nor were its defenders demoralized by any of our
previous moves. I was now in the enemy's country
with a vast river and the stronghold of Vicksburg
between me and my base of supplies. But I was on
dry ground on the same side of the river with the
enemy. All the campaigns, labor, hardships, and
exposures from the month of December previous to
this time that had been made and endured, were for
the accomplishment of this one object."
How in a flash he seized Port Gibson and then,
without a word to Halleck, and in the face of Sher-
118 ULYSSES S. GRANT
man's doubts, with only three days' rations, cutting
loose from base, struck out for Vicksburg, feeding his
army off the country as he rushed them on from
fight to fight; how Halleck, too late learning what
was on, ordered him back to help Banks at Port
Hudson; how he caught Joe Johnston at Jackson,
separating Johnston's Army from Pemberton's,
and seized the Mississippi capital and railroad center,
cutting off Vicksburg from this depot of supplies;
how in eighteen days he marched two hundred miles,
won five pitched battles, took eight thousand pris-
oners and eighty cannon, scattered a hostile army
larger than his own fighting on its chosen ground, and
had the rebel army penned in Vicksburg, is a story
whose mere recital emblazons the chronicles of war.
"This is a campaign," cried Sherman as he rode out
with Grant on May 18, and looked down on the
bluffs where he had been repulsed so signally five
months before. " Until this moment I never thought
your movement a success. But this is a success, even
if we never take the town."
There came one set-back. On May 22, hearing that
Johnston was gathering an army to raise the siege, he
ventured an assault, and after a reverse, misled by
an appeal for aid from McClernand, who fancied
he alone was carrying the forts, ordered a second
assault, resulting in a bad repulse. He then renewed
VICKSBURG 119
the siege, his army strengthened by recruits to sev-
enty thousand men, and on the morning of July
4, swift on the heels of Gettysburg, he entered
Vicksburg, Pemberton surlily surrendering thirty-
one thousand men and one hundred and seventy-
two pieces of artillery. "Grant . . ." Dana wired
to Stanton, "was received by Pemberton with . . .
marked impertinence. . . . He bore it like a phi-
losopher."
After all was over Grant handed back to Sherman
the letter Sherman wrote advising him against his
daring plan. He says the subject was not mentioned
subsequently by either till the end of the war, and
that "Sherman gave the same energy to make the
campaign a success that he would or could have done
if it had been ordered by himself."
"The campaign of Vicksburg," Sherman later
wrote, "in its conception and execution, belonged ex-
clusively to General Grant, not only in the great
whole, but in the thousands of its details. I still
retain many of his letters and notes, all in his own
handwriting, prescribing the routes of march for
divisions and detachments, specifying even the
amount of food and tools to be carried along. Many
persons gave his adjutant-general, Rawlins, the
credit for these things, but they were in error; for no
commanding general of any army ever gave more of
120 ULYSSES S. GRAXT
his personal attention to details, or wrote so many
of his own orders, reports, and letters, as General
Grant." * ' ♦ *
Even if Grant's career had ended then, his fame
was safe, for subsequent defeat could not have
spoiled the perfect record of his high achievement.
No matter what had gone before or what might
happen after Vicksburg, he now had confidence in his
own destiny. He felt that he would be the one to
bring the war to a successful end. Vicksburg had been
before his eye ever since Paducah, and it had come at
last to him among a great array of Union generals
who had at the beginning more prestige, without
intrigue for self-advancement on his part, and in the
face of personal rebuffs which would have dismayed
a man of ordinary mould.
"Every one has his superstitions," he wrote years
later, referring to his silence under criticism. "One of
mine is that in positions of great responsibility every
one should do his duty to the best of his ability when
assigned by competent authority, without applica-
tion or the use of'influence to change his position.
"While at Cairo I had watched with very great
interest the operations of the Army of the Potomac,
looking upon that as the main field.-of Jthe war. I had
no idea myself of ever having any large command,
1 Memoirs of W. T. Sherman, vol. i, p. 362.
VICKSBURG 121
nor did I suppose that I was equal to one; but I said
I would give anything if I were commanding a
brigade of cavalry in the Army of the Potomac and
believed that I could do some good. Captain Hillyer
suggested that I make application to be transferred
there to command the cavalry. I then told him that
I would cut my right arm off first."
He had now conquered Halleck's prejudice as he
had justified the trust of Lincoln. "In boldness of
plan, rapidity of execution, and brilliancy of results,"
wrote Halleck handsomely, "these operations will
compare most favorably with those of Napoleon
about Ulm." Sherman wrote years later that the
campaign would rank with the best of the young
Napoleon in Italy in 1796, and that the "position at
Vicksburg was more difficult than that at Sebasto-
pol," which he had seen.
" I would not have risked the passing of the batter-
ies at Vicksburg and trusting to the long route by
Grand Gulf and Jackson to reach what we both knew
were the key -points to Vicksburg," Sherman ac-
knowledged when the siege was over. "But I would
have aimed to reach the same points from Grenada.
But both aimed at the same points, and though both
of us knew little of the actual ground, it is wonderful
how well they have realized our military calculations.
As we sat at Oxford last November we saw in the
122 ULYSSES S. GRANT
future what we now realize, and like the architect
who sees developed the beautiful vision of his brain,
we feel an intense satisfaction at the realization of our
military plans. I thank God no President was near to
thwart our plans and that the short-sighted public
could not drive us from our object till the plan was
fully realized."
Yet Sherman always thought that if Grant had
kept on from Oxford after the capture of his supplies
at Holly Springs, he would have saved the six months
used in reaching Bruinsburg and have achieved the
same result. Grant might have done this had his
troops then had the seasoning he gave them later.
The chapter cannot properly be closed save with
the letter Lincoln wrote to Grant at Vicksburg within
a week after it had fallen : —
"I do not remember that you and I ever met per-
sonally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledg-
ment for the almost inestimable service you have done
the country. I wish to say a word further. When you
first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you
should do what you finally did — march the troops
across the neck, run the batteries with the transports,
and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except
a general hope that you knew better than I, that the
Yazoo Pass expedition and the like could succeed.
When you got below and took Port Gibson, Grand
VICKSBURG 123
Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the
river and join General Banks, and when you turned
northward, east of the Big Black, I feared it was a
mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowl-
edgment that you were right and I was wrong."
Lincoln at once named Grant a major-general in
the regular army. He had not needed Stanton's
bribe.
CHAPTER XVI
RAWLINS AND DANA
" The simple fact is that the great character which
has passed into history under the name of Grant was
compounded of both Grant and Rawlins in nearly
equal parts. While one has become a national hero
whose fame will never die, the other unnecessarily
effaced himself and is now scarcely known beyond the
acquaintance of his surviving comrades or the limits
of the community from which both took up arms for
the cause of the Union." Thus a distinguished soldier,
who was on Grant's staff and intimate with both men,
has written.1 It has even been asserted that Rawlins
spoke with Grant's lips and looked out of Grant's eyes
so closely did they intertwine. Hyperbole like this
will not be credited by those who read the record, yet
it is no great stretch to say that Rawlins was Grant's
conscience, though he did not compare with him in
the peculiar qualities which were responsible for
Grant's success.
It was Grant's great good fortune that, in the
casual thought he gave his staff when he became a
brigadier, he should have hit on Rawlins, a crude,
young lawyer who had worked his way up from the
1 General James II. Wilson, Life of Charles A. Dana, p. 241.
RAWLINS AND DANA 125
charcoal pit, whom Grant had hardly seen until the
first war meeting in Galena, and who had caught his
fancy there in an impassioned plea for volunteers.
With one or two exceptions the early members of his
staff, chosen for old times' sake or to please his family,
were found to be incumbrances and were perforce
discarded as he shouldered heavier burdens, to be
replaced by men like Wilson, Porter, Comstock,
Badeau, Leet, and Babcock, each of whom had some
peculiar merit. Rawlins and Bowers were with him
till they died. But indispensable as Rawlins came to
be, there is no evidence that he contributed to
Grant's supreme achievement except by giving him
unselfishly the service of an unfailing adjutant and
devoted friend. He had scant learning and no mili-
tary training but what he gained in camp with Grant.
He was robustly honest, grim of face and crudely
mannered, outspoken and explosive with profanity,
at heart a Puritan. He protected Grant in countless
ways from those who would impose on his simplicity,
made others show Grant deference which Grant
would not exact himself, and watched him con-
stantly to save him from mistakes. Perhaps his
greatest service was in keeping him from drink, for
he appreciated more than Grant the handle envious
rivals made of any lapse, and that while Grant might
drink no more than others, he could not afford to
126 ULYSSES S. GRANT
drink as much, by very reason of the stories which
were widely spread and of the damage they might do
the Union cause. Of course there is no question of
Grant's habit, and that at times he favored it too
much, but envious tongues gave it far greater em-
phasis than it deserved. If Grant had not been as
successful as he was, his habits would have cut no
figure. Who cares if other Union generals abstained
or not? Yet those who did were in a small minority.
With some it is about their only claim to fame.
Lincoln, responding about this time to an appeal
from Sons of Temperance, quizzically remarked that
"in a hard struggle I do not know but what it is
some consolation to be aware that there is some in-
temperance on the other side too."
Charles A. Dana, who had been sent by Stanton
to spy out the Western armies and learn the truth
of the conflicting tales about their generals, Grant
in particular, and give him independent informa-
tion, wrote him of Rawlins after Vicksburg: "Lieu-
tenant-Colonel Rawlins never loses a moment and
never gives himself any indulgence except swear-
ing and scolding. ... A townsman of Grant's, and
has a great influence over him, especially because he
watches him day and night, and whenever he com-
mits the folly of tasting liquor hastens to remind
him that at the beginning of the war he gave him
RAWLINS AND DANA 127
(Rawlins) his word of honor not to touch a drop as
long as it lasted. Grant thinks Rawlins a first-rate
adjutant, but I think this is a mistake. He is too
slow, and can't write the English language cor-
rectly without a great deal of careful consideration.
Indeed illiterateness is a general characteristic of
Grant's staff and in fact of Grant's generals and
regimental officers of all ranks."
Over thirty years later, with the full history of the
war in retrospect, he gave his judgment that Rawlins
was one of the most valuable men in the army. "He
had a very able mind, clear, strong, and not subject to
hysterics. He bossed everything at Grant's head-
quarters. He had very little respect for persons,
and a rough style of conversation. I have heard him
curse at Grant, when, according to his judgment, the
general was doing something that he thought he had
better not do. But he was entirely devoted to his
duty, with the clearest judgment, and perfectly fear-
less. Without him Grant would not have been the
same man. Rawlins was essentially a good man,
though he was one of the most profane men I ever
knew; there was no guile in him — he was as upright
and as genuine a character as I ever came across."1
Dana himself, though a civilian, was a factor in the
fixing of Grant's reputation. Stanton and Lincoln
1 Recollections of the Civil War, p. 62.
128 ULYSSES S. GRANT
owed to him their knowledge of the Vicksburg ven-
ture as the campaign progressed, for Grant was
chary of his correspondence, sent only brief dis-
patches, neglected expositions of his plans, moved
silently and swiftly to his ends, ignoring the mali-
cious work of slanderous tongues. It needed Dana's
quick intelligence, keen eye, and vivid pen to dissi-
pate the fogs which clouded Washington. It was due
in large degree to his reports that Lincoln clung to
Grant while, pending Vicksburg, politicians pressed
him to make a change, demanding Grant's removal
almost up to the very day the town capitulated. "I
rather like the man," said Lincoln; "I think we will
try him a little longer."
It was Dana who set Stanton right about McCler-
nand, and kept him straight; told him the manner of
man he had in Grant, described the obstacles which
must be overcome, and gave him thumb-nail sketches
of the generals in the West.
Grant trusted Dana, who lived at headquarters
throughout the siege of Vicksburg, to keep Stanton
posted, and turned his own attention to more pressing
things. Dana, with Rawlins and Wilson of the staff,
were with Grant constantly, and in his confidence,
so far as that was true of any one, for Grant, who
never held a council of war, harbored his thoughts
and husbanded his intimacies: "I heard what men
RAWLINS AND DANA 129
had to say — the stream of talk at headquarters —
but I made up my own mind and from my written
orders my staff got their first knowledge of what was
to be done. No living man knew of plans until they
were matured and decided." l " Grant was an uncom-
mon fellow," Dana writes; "the most modest, the
most disinterested, and the most honest man I ever
knew, with a temper that nothing could disturb, and
a judgment that was judicial in its comprehensive-
ness and wisdom. Not a great man, except morally;
not an original or brilliant man; but sincere, thought-
ful, deep, and gifted with courage that never fal-
tered; when the time came to risk all, he went in
like a simple-hearted, unaffected, unpretending hero,
whom no ill omens could deject, and no triumph un-
duly exalt. A social, friendly man, too, fond of a
pleasant joke and also ready with one; but liking
above all a long chat of an evening, and ready to sit
up with you all night talking in the cold breeze in
front of his tent. Not a man of sentimentality, not
demonstrative in friendship, but always holding to
his friends, and just even to the enemies he hated." 2
Dana after Vicksburg suggested Grant as the
commander of the Armies of the West.
1 Young, vol. ii, p. 306.
2 Recollections of the Civil War, p. 61.
CHAPTER XVII
CHATTANOOGA AND MISSIONARY RIDGE
Grant would have lost no time in clearing up the
Mississippi problem if Washington had given him his
head. He could have captured Mobile easily with his
exultant army, and operating from that base, have
thrown troops against Bragg's rear, diverting him
from southern Tennessee where he confronted Rose-
crans. But Washington had other plans, and again,
as after Corinth, dispersed Grant's army, sending
troops to Schofield in Missouri, to Banks in Louis-
iana, and to Burnside in East Tennessee. Lincoln
would have invaded Texas to threaten Maximilian
in Mexico, and he was set upon relieving the loyal
mountaineers of East Tennessee. The scattering of
Grant's army and his forced idleness gave Joe John-
ston an opportunity to recruit his forces and to
gather up the men whom Grant, with a mistaken
generosity, had let march out of Vicksburg on parole,
thus strengthening the army which, on the 19th and
20th of September, came near crushing Rosecrans
at Chickamauga Creek, compelling his retreat to
Chattanooga with McCook and Crittenden, while
Thomas with his corps stood alone unshakable for
hours against great odds, thus saving a complete
CHATTANOOGA AND MISSIONARY RIDGE 131
catastrophe and gaining for himself the name he
carried ever after — "the Rock of Chickamauga."
The Army of the Cumberland might have been
spared this blow had its commander, obedient to
Grant's suggestion and Halleck's order, moved
against Bragg while Vicksburg was in siege and John-
ston occupied in trying to aid Pemberton, but Rose-
crans objected then because he said it was a military
maxim "not to fight two decisive battles at the same
time." If true, Grant thought this maxim was not
applicable: "It would be bad to be defeated in two
decisive battles fought the same day, but it would not
be bad to win them" — a flash which throws light
on the difference between the two. Rosecrans was a
trained and scholarly commander, ingratiating, vacil-
lating, fearful to give offense, loved by his men,
grieving incessantly that his hazy aims were balked
by those above him. Grant thought him insincere
and Jesuitical, while he thought Grant a fool for
luck.
During this time there was much talk about Grant's
coming East to take command, as other Western
generals had been brought East before. McClellan,
Pope, Burnside, and Hooker had been found wanting
one by one; and now Meade, victorious at Gettys-
burg, had lost the confidence of Lincoln by letting
Lee cross the Potomac without another fight. But
132 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Grant discouraged these suggestions. "They have
there able officers who have been brought up with
that army and to import a commander to place over
them certainly could produce no good. While I
would not positively disobey an order, I would have
objected most vehemently to taking that command
or any other except the one I have — I can do more
with this army than it would be possible for me to
do with any other, without time to make the same
acquaintance with others that I have with this. . . .
I believe I know the exact capacity of every general
in my command."
But a far greater opportunity was at hand. In the
rout at Chickamauga, before he knew that Thomas
had stood firm, Dana, watching the day for Stanton,
had wired him, " My dispatch to-day is of deplorable
importance; Chickamauga is as fatal a name in our
history as Bull Run." There was dismay in Washing-
ton, which was not relieved by later tidings of the
plight in which defeat and indecision had left the
Army of the Cumberland — Rosecrans was cooped
up in Chattanooga strongly intrenched, but cut off
from supplies by Bragg, whose eager army held the
hills above the town. He might hold out till rein-
forced by Sherman and Hooker, who were on the
way, but food and fuel were getting scarce, his
horses starving, and winter coming on. His idle
CHATTANOOGA AND MISSIONARY RIDGE 133
army was demoralized and he seemed dazed. In
spite of the respect his men had for him, he must
be relieved of his command in order to escape a
worse catastrophe.
Stanton would have supplanted him with Thomas,
but Thomas, who six months before stood loyally by
Buell when offered Buell's place, now stood as loyally
by Buell's successor. He said he would not take that
command, though he would welcome any other. He
would do nothing to countenance suspicion of in-
trigue against his commander's interest.
Then Stanton, acting quickly, created a brand-
new division comprising everything between the Al-
leghanies and the Mississippi except Banks at New
Orleans; chose Grant for command, ordered Grant
to Louisville, hurried West himself, and on the train
to Louisville told Grant, whom he had never seen
before, the plan he had in mind. Word came to
Louisville from Dana that Rosecrans was thinking
of retreat — a disastrous thing which would have
left the rebels in complete control of one of the three
great strongholds of the war, whereupon Grant, re-
sponding instantly to Stanton's frantic urging, as-
sumed immediate command of the Divison of the
Mississippi, and simultaneously wired Thomas as-
signing him to head the Army of the Cumberland
and telling him he must "hold Chattanooga at all
134 ULYSSES S. GRANT
hazards." Thomas replied by telegraph, "We will
hold the town till we starve."
That night Grant went to the theater, to the great
distress of Rawlins, who looked upon it as a time
for penitence and prayer. At daybreak he was on
his way by rail and swollen roads to Chattanooga,
where he arrived October 23, "wet, dirty, and well,"
as Dana wired to Stanton, but still on crutches and
suffering agony with his crushed leg.
Those present at Grant's meeting with Thomas
at headquarters, soon after his arrival, agree that
Thomas treated him with curious lack of courtesy,
forgetful that he was his guest as well as his com-
manding general. Just why has never been ex-
plained, but it is certain that throughout the war
there was reserve between the two; for neither ever
learned truly to comprehend the other, and with
Thomas there was a marked absence of the cordial
feeling which was so strikingly in evidence with
Sheridan and Sherman. While no one ever saw in
Thomas a trace of envious rivalry with Grant, his
coolness was transmuted into hot controversy by
his partisans in the great Army of the Cumberland.
A swift change came with Grant's arrival. That
night, says Horace Porter, who saw him then for the
first time, after sitting absolutely silent for a while
listening attentively to what the others said and fol-
CHATTANOOGA AND MISSIONARY RIDGE 135
lowing on the map the disposition of the troops, he
straightened in his chair and began firing questions
at his new subordinates, pertinent, incisive, compre-
hensive, showing that he had in mind not only the
prompt lifting of the embargo on supplies, — "open-
ing up the cracker line," he called it, — but a speedy
move against the enemy. He was as always eager to
push on. Then turning to a table he wrote dispatches
for an hour — the first to Halleck: "Have just ar-
rived; I will write to-morrow. Please approve order
placing Sherman in command of Department of the
Tennessee, with headquarters in the field." The next
day, with Thomas and "Baldy" Smith, he viewed
the Union lines, and ordered Smith to set at once
upon the work of opening communication with sup-
plies.
That night again he wrote dispatches with his own
hand, as was his way. "His work was performed
swiftly and uninterruptedly, but without any marked
display of nervous energy," writes Porter. "His
thoughts flowed as freely from his mind as the ink
from his pen; he was never at a loss for an expres-
sion, and seldom interlined a word or made a material
correction. He sat with his head bent low over the
table, and when he had occasion ... he would glide
rapidly across the room without straightening himself
and return to his seat with his body still bent over at
136 ULYSSES S. GRANT
about the same angle at which he had been sitting.
. . . Looking over the dispatches I found that he was
ordering up Sherman's entire force from Corinth to
within supporting distance, and was informing Hal-
leck of the dispositions decided upon for the opening
of a line of supplies and assuring him that everything
possible would be done for the relief of Burnside in
East Tennessee . . . the taking of vigorous and com-
prehensive steps in every direction throughout his
new and extensive command. ... I cannot dwell too
forcibly on the deep impression made ... by the
exhibition ... of his singular mental powers and
his rare military qualities. . . . Hardly any one was
prepared to find one who had the grasp, the prompt-
ness of decision, and the general administrative
capacity which he displayed at the very start as
commander of an extensive military division in which
many complicated problems were presented for im-
mediate solution."1
When Grant appeared in Chattanooga the town
was in almost as desperate a case as Vicksburg just
before its fall. Bragg, with superior forces encamped
on Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge only
three miles away, could calmly contemplate the
starving enemy below. Burnside, with twenty-five
thousand men in siege at Knoxville one hundred miles
1 Campaigning ipith Grant, p. 7.
CHATTANOOGA AND MISSIONARY RIDGE 137
to the northeast, was also in sore straits and calling
vainly for relief. Within five days, as the result of
swift and daring moves by " Baldy " Smith and others
which Grant hastened, the "cracker line" was open;
there was no further danger of starvation, surrender,
or retreat, and Grant and Thomas were in position
to hold the town all winter or till reinforcements
should arrive. Shortly Sherman was there from Mis-
sissippi and Hooker from the East.
And now there broke for Grant the most resplend-
ent day of his career. He had no thought of holding
Chattanooga with hostile guns surveying him com-
placently from neighboring heights. He would wait
only till the forces he had summoned should arrive.
Then he would leap out at the enemy. As early as
October 28 he wired to Halleck: "The question of
supplies may now be regarded as settled. If the
rebels give us one week more I think all danger of
losing territory now held by us will have passed away,
and preparations may commence for offensive opera-
tions." Sherman, having led his army three hundred
miles through a rough, hostile country, rode into
Chattanooga on November 15, and one week later,
on November 23, Grant began the three days' fight
of Chattanooga, the most completely planned of all
his battles, a feat unmarred in its perfection and as
a spectacle unequaled in the history of war.
13* ULYSSES S. GRANT
The secrecy and skill of the preliminary strategy,
the military panorama, with its sublime scenic set-
ting unrolled before the eyes of Grant and Thomas,
posted on Orchard Knob, watching their armies in
glittering pageant march to undimmed success, the
glimpse of Hooker and his men fighting "above the
clouds" on Lookout Mountain, the marvelous charge
of Sheridan and Wood with nearly twenty thousand
bayonets up to the very top of Missionary Ridge,
mowing the enemy like wheat, the panic-stricken
flight of Bragg's astonished troops, the frantic joy
and tumult of the victorious Union army as Grant
rode down the lines, blend in a battle picture with no
parallel.
The three days' engagement is known as "Chat-
tanooga," the third day's fight as "Missionary
Ridge," in memory of the culminating glory of a
deed which has been called "one of the greatest
miracles in military history." Dana, who stood with
Grant and Thomas witnessing the charge, wrote the
next day : " No man who climbs the ascent by any of
the roads that wind above its front can believe that
eighteen thousand men were moved up its broken
and crumbling base unless it was his fortune to wit-
ness the deed; it seems as awful as a visible interposi-
tion of God. Neither Grant nor Thomas intended it.
Their orders were to carry the rifle-pits along the
CHATTANOOGA AND MISSIONARY RIDGE 139
base of the ridge and capture their occupants; but
when this was accomplished, the unaccountable
spirit of the troops bore them bodily up those im-
placable steeps, over the bristling rifle-pits on the
crest and the thirty cannon enfilading every gully.
The order to storm appears to have been given
simultaneously by Generals Sheridan and Wood,
because the men were not to be held back."
It was the only battle of the war in which its four
great figures, Grant, Thomas, Sherman, and Sheridan,
were engaged together. Knoxville was saved at
Chattanooga as Corinth was fought at Shiloh, Burn-
side was liberated from his pen, and East Tennessee
was cleared. On December 8 Lincoln sent Grant this
telegram: "Understanding that your lodgment at
Chattanooga and Knoxville is now secure, I wish to
tender you, and all under your command, my more
than thanks, my profoundest gratitude, for the skill,
courage, and perseverance with which you and they,
over so great difficulties, have effected that impor-
tant object. God bless you all ! "
Grant, starting with Paducah, had moved re-
sistlessly, slowly at first, but gathering momentum
as he advanced, pressing the rebel forces steadily
toward Richmond. A sense of the inevitable was be-
ginning to pervade the North, and to be felt abroad.
" Thank Heaven ! the 'coming man,' for whom we have
140 ULYSSES S. GRANT
so long been waiting, seems really to have come,"
wrote Motley from Vienna. "... Ulysses Grant is
at least equal to any general now living in any part
of the world, and by far the first that our war has
produced on either side."1 A German writer spoke of
Chattanooga as "an action which both for scientific
combination and bravery of execution is equal to any
battle of modern times from the days of Frederick
the Great downwards."
It happened that the country heard of Missionary
Ridge on the last Thursday in November — Thanks-
giving Day — just as it heard of Vicksburg on July 4.
It was the week after the Address at Gettysburg.
Within a fortnight a bill was introduced in Congress
reviving the grade of Lieutenant-General, a title
which Washington had borne. Before the winter
ended, the bill had passed by great majorities and
Lincoln had given Grant the rank — making him
General-in-Chief of all the armies of the United
States.
1 The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, vol. ir, p. 146.
CHAPTER XVIII
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL
It was Washburne, his earliest influential friend, and
at times almost his sole defender, who first proposed
that Grant be made Lieutenant-General, hardly wait-
ing for Congress to assemble before he introduced the
bill. When Grant learned what was doing he wrote
at once from Chattanooga : —
"I feel under many obligations to you for the in-
terest you have taken in my welfare. But recollect
that I have been highly honored already by the Gov-
ernment, and do not ask or feel that I deserve any-
thing more in the shape of honors or promotions.
A success over the enemy is what I crave above every-
thing else, and desire to hold such an influence over
those under my command as to enable me to use
them to the best advantage to secure this end." l
Lincoln was worried, lest at last "the man on
horseback " might have come, who with an army at
his call would seize the reins of power; for at that
time Grant was the people's hero while Lincoln was
in rather poor repute by reason of the scanty harvest
of his other generals, and an election was at hand
momentous in its possibilities. But Lincoln was not
1 Letters to a Friend, p. 32.
142 ULYSSES S. GRANT
kept long in suspense. " I am not a candidate for any
office," Grant wrote his father. " All I want is to be
left alone to fight this war out." To a friend who
wrote him that he had it in his power to be the next
President he replied: "This is the last thing in the
world I desire. I would regard such a consummation
as highly unfortunate for myself if not for the coun-
try. Through Providence I have attained to more
than I ever hoped, and, with the position I now hold
in the regular army, if allowed to retain it, will be
more than satisfied."1 When he went to St. Louis
from Nashville, where he made his headquarters that
winter, he stayed with his old humble friends, Mr.
and Mrs. Boggs, and took them in a street-car to the
theater.
Lincoln, who longed for reelection, not only on his
own account, but because he felt that any change just
then would mean disaster to the Union cause, heard
these things gladly. They dissipated his unrest.
Grant would have followed Missionary Ridge by
throwing his army from Chattanooga to Mobile,
thus clearing Georgia of the rebel troops, cutting the
South again as he had cut it at the Mississippi, seiz-
ing a port through which supplies reached the Con-
federacy, and tightening the pressure upon Lee. But
Washington did not approve, and consequently he
1 Richardson, Personal History, p. 374.
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL 143
remained at Nashville through the winter getting his
army ready for a spring campaign, just where he did
not know until after he was named Lieutenant-Gen-
eral and went to Washington for his commission. It
was then that he determined to take command in
person of the armies in Virginia and dispose his other
armies so as best to conquer Lee. But before he left
for Washington he did a gracious and great-hearted
thing. He wrote to Sherman a letter which will live
as long as he and Sherman are remembered : —
"Whilst I have been eminently successful in this
war, in at least gaining the confidence of the public,
no one feels more than I how much of this suc-
cess is due to the energy, skill, and the harmonious
putting forth of that energy and skill, of those whom
it has been my good fortune to have occupying subor-
dinate positions under me. There are many officers
to whom these remarks are applicable to a greater or
less degree, proportionate to their ability as soldiers;
but what I want is to express my thanks to you and
McPherson as the men to whom, above all others,
I feel indebted for whatever I have had of success.
How far your advice and assistance have been of help
to me, you know; how far your execution of whatever
has been given to you to do entitles you to the re-
ward I am receiving, you can not know as well as I."
Nor will men forget Sherman's fine reply : —
Ill ULYSSES S. GRANT
" You do McPherson and myself too much honor.
At Belmont you manifested your traits, neither of us
being near. At Donelson, also, you illustrated your
whole character. I was not near, and McPherson in
too subordinate a capacity to influence you. ... I
believe you are as brave, patriotic, and just as the
great prototype, Washington; as unselfish, kind-
hearted, and honest as a man should be; but the chief
characteristic is the simple faith in success you have
always manifested, which I can liken to nothing else
than the faith the Christian has in the Saviour. This
faith gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Also,
when you have completed your best preparations,
you go into battle without hesitation, as at Chat-
tanooga, — no doubts, no reserve, — and I tell you,
it was this that made us act with confidence. I knew
wherever I was, that you thought of me; and if I got
in a tight place you would come — if alive. My only
points of doubt were in your knowledge of grand
strategy, and of books of science and history; but I
confess your common sense seems to have supplied
all these."
"Don't stay in Washington," cried Sherman.
"Come West; take to yourself the whole Mississippi
Valley. Let us make it dead sure. . . . Here lies the
seat of coming empire; and from the West, when our
task is done, we will make short work of Charleston
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL 145
and Richmond, and the impoverished coast of the
Atlantic."
But Sherman could not have his way. Grant would
have stayed with his old army which he had organ-
ized and knew; but he was quick to see in Washing-
ton that he must take himself the task of facing Lee,
with self-taught strategists near by ready to trip his
*eet in their entangling schemes.
His coming to the Capital, which he had never
len, was commonplace — almost too typical of his
lain habit — unostentatious and unknown. Wait-
g his turn to register at the hotel, the clerk, who
red him up for what he seemed, assigned him to a
p-floor room and gasped with incredulity when he
w him write, " U. S. Grant and son — Galena,
linois." He went with Cameron to the White
liouse unannounced, found Lincoln holding a recep-
tion and would have run away if Seward had not
taken him in tow. When he was handed his com-
mission the next day by Lincoln and read the few
words he had written in response to Lincoln's little
speech, he was hardly audible and fumbled with his
paper like a boy, but it was noticed that he had not
taken Lincoln's diplomatic hint to mollify the feel-
ings of the Eastern troops by saying something to
ingratiate himself with the new armies placed in his
command.
UG ULYSSES S. GRANT
Pictures have come down to us of his appearance at
this time which have peculiar interest in the glimpse
they give of his impress upon contemporaries of
quite different typeji. Richard Henry Dana, a Bos-
ton scholar of the Brahmin class, happened upon him
in the Willard lobby, and thus wrote: "A short,
round-shouldered man, in a very tarnished major-
general's uniform came up. . . . He had no gait, no
station, no manner, rough, light-brown whiskers, a
blue eye, and rather a scrubby look withal. A crowd
formed around him; men looked, stared at him, as if
they were taking his likeness, and two generals were
introduced. Still, I could not get his name. It was
not Hooker. AYho could it be? ... I inquired of the
bookkeeper. 'That is General Grant.' I joined the
starers. I saw that the ordinary, scrubby-looking
man, with a slightly seedy look, as if he wras out of
office and on half-pay and nothing to do but hang
around the entry of AVillard's, cigar in mouth, had a
clear blue eye, and a look of resolution, as if he could
not be trifled with, and an entire indifference to the
crowd about him. Straight nose, too. Still, to see
him talking and smoking in the lower entry of Wil-
lard's, in that crowd, in such times, — the generalis-
simo of our armies, on whom the destiny of the em-
pire seemed to hang ! ... He gets over the ground
queerly. He does not march, nor quite walk, but
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL 147
pitches along as if the next step would bring him on
his nose. But his face looks firm and hard, and his
eye is clear and resolute, and he is certainly natural,
and clear of all appearance of self-consciousness."1
Beside this we can set the portraiture of Horace
Porter and Adam Badeau, who had lately joined
Grant's staff: Porter describes him as slightly stooped,
five feet, eight inches in height, weighing only a hun-
dred and thirty-five pounds, modest and gentle in his
manner; face not perfectly symmetrical, the left eye
a little lower than the right; his brow, high, broad,
and rather square creased with horizontal wrinkles
which helped to emphasize the somewhat careworn
look, though not an index to his nature which was al-
ways buoyant. "His voice was exceedingly musical
and one of the clearest in sound and most distinct in
utterance that I have ever heard. It had a singular
power of penetration, and sentences spoken by him
in an ordinary tone in camp could be heard at a dis-
tance which was surprising." His gait in walking was
decidedly unmilitary ; he never carried his body erect;
never kept step to the airs played by the bands; was
often slow in his movements, "but when roused to
activity quick in every motion and worked with
marvelous rapidity." 2
Badeau tells of his clear but not penetrating eye, his
1 Rhodes, vol. iv, p. 438. 2 Campaigning with Grant, p. 13.
148 ULYSSES S. GRANT
heavy jaw, his sharply cut mouth, "which had a
singular power of expressing sweetness and strength
combined, and which at times became set with a
rigidity like that of fate itself." The habitual ex-
pression of his face was so quiet as to be almost
incomprehensible; his manner plain, placid, almost
meek; "in great moments disclosed to those who
knew him well immense but still suppressed inten-
sity." In utterance he was slow and sometimes
embarrassed, but the well-chosen words never left the
slightest doubt of what he meant to say. " The whole
man was a marvel of simplicity, a powerful nature,
veiled in the plainest possible exterior. He discussed
the most ordinary themes with apparent interest,
and turned from them in the same quiet tones, and
without a shade of difference in his manner, to deci-
sions that involved the fate of armies, his own fame or
the life of the republic. . . ." But unexpectedly and
in the most casual way he would utter the clearest
ideas in the tersest form; "announcing judgments
made apparently at the moment, which he never re-
versed — enunciating opinions or declaring plans of
the most important character in the plainest words
and commonest manner, as if great things and small
were to him of equal moment, or as if it cost him no
more to command armies than to direct a farm, to
capture cities than to drive a horse. In battle, how
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL 149
ever, the sphinx awoke . . . the utterance was prompt,
the ideas were rapid, the judgment was decisive, the
words were those of command. The whole man be-
came intense as it were with a white heat."1
Here we catch a composite portrait of the new chief
of the Union forces in command of more than half a
million men, who, setting out upon the campaign
which he meant should crush the rebel armies and
bring an end to war, bore with him to the front these
parting words from Lincoln : —
"I wish to express in this way my entire satisfac-
tion with what you have done up to this time, so far
as I understand it. The particulars of your plans I
neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and
self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to ob-
trude any constraints or restraints upon you. While
I am very anxious that any great disaster or capture
of our men in great numbers shall be avoided, I know
these points are less likely to escape your attention
than they would be mine. If there is anything wanting
which is within my power to give, do not fail to let
me know. And now, with a brave army and a just
cause, may God sustain you."
"It shall be my earnest endeavor that you and the
country shall not be disappointed," was Grant's
reply. "... Should my success be less than I desire
1 Military History of Ulysses S. Grant, vol. n, p. 20.
150 ULYSSES S. GRANT
or expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not with
you."
Lincoln had already told Grant in their first inter-
view that all he wanted or had ever wanted was "one
who would take the responsibility and act, and call
on him for all the assistance needed"; and Grant had
said that he would do the best he could with what
he had at hand and would not annoy him or the War
Department more than could be helped.
It was like Grant that through the war he did not
once complain to Lincoln or appeal to Washington,
even when Halleck hazed him after Donelson and
Shiloh; and Lincoln, who wrote often quaintly to his
other generals, regarded with complacency one whom
he could let alone. McClellan, Buell, Hooker had
notes of admonition in which reproof was deftly
clothed in homely phrase; but Grant had none. Lin-
coln told Buell he did not understand "why we can-
not march as the enemy marches, live as he lives,
and fight as he fights, unless we admit the inferiority
of our troops and of our generals."1 He tarnished
Hooker's joy in being placed at the head of the Army
of the Potomac with a memorable letter chiding him
for thwarting Burnside and telling him he thought it
best "for you to know there are some things in re-
gard to which I am not quite satisfied with you."2
1 Lincoln's Comptcte Works, vol. n, p. 248. 2 Ibid., p. 306.
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL 151
When McClellan wired that his horses were sore-
tongued and fatigued, Lincoln wired back, " Will you
pardon me for asking what the horses of your army
have done since Antietam that fatigues anything? " l
These are mild samples of rebukes which Lincoln
penned. One cannot see him writing thus to Grant.
1 Lincoln's Complete Works, vol. n, p. 250.
CHAPTER XIX
THE CLINCH WITH LEE
Rebellion was in flower when Grant was put in
chief command. In spite of his successes in the West
and those gained by the gallant little navy, ten South-
ern States were in revolt — nine million people in-
habiting eight hundred thousand miles — an empire
in extent and population, rich in resources and the
world's respect. Europe still looked to see the South
prevail; the South still thought itself impregnable.
After three years of war she seemed no nearer con-
quest than at first except to those who saw in true per-
spective just what had been done west of the Alle-
ghanies and along the coast.
The Northern forces held the Mississippi strongly
garrisoned from St. Louis to its mouth. The territory
west of this below the Arkansas was still in rebel
hands except New Orleans, a few other points in
southern Louisiana, and a small post in Texas near
the mouth of the Rio Grande. The Western armies
having cleared the border States of Tennessee,
Kentucky, and Missouri, except for irresponsible
guerrilla bands, held all the railroad lines from Mem-
phis as far east as Chattanooga and then the Tennes-
see and Holsten Rivers to the Alleghanies. Western
THE CLINCH WITH LEE 153
Virginia had been transformed into a loyal State.
The Northern forces occupied a narrow segment of
eastern Virginia, fringing its northern border to the
Rapidan. With garrisons at Norfolk and at Fort
Monroe, they held the entrance to the James; and
there were federal footholds at other points along
the coast. The motley wooden navy had maintained
a fairly good blockade — good enough to throttle
cotton exports from the South and starve the mills
and laborers of Lancashire.
The South, though worn by war, was full of spunk.
Her people, trusting to their press, looked upon
Grant's achievements in the West as, at the worst,
sporadic Northern victories; while in the East, which
to their thinking was the real seat of the war, they
could see nothing but unmarred success. They had
Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville to brag
about, — unquestioned triumphs, — while in their
eyes Gettysburg and Antietam were merely incidental
to protecting Richmond and preventing the invasion
of the South; Gettysburg was a rebuff, not a signifi-
cant defeat; Antietam (Sharpsburg, as they termed
it) was a draw; because Meade and McClellan were
content to let the Army of the Potomac rest upon its
victories, without annihilating Lee or chasing him
back home, the South called both engagements in-
decisive; it still thought Lee invincible.
154 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Against this unity of spirit in the South were set a
Northern public honeycombed with rebel sympathy,
a commerce cankered with disloyalty, a party organ-
ized against the conduct of the government and
Lincoln's handling of the war, a propaganda of dis-
trust spread by disgruntled politicians and censorious
writers disclosing ugly phases of an irresponsible
press-fed democracy. Grant had no holiday in sight
when he came East.
He at once put Sherman at the head of the Division
of the Mississippi, and on the 17th of March an-
nounced that his own headquarters would be in the
field and for the present with the Army of the
Potomac, then under Meade's command. Meade
nobly offered to give up the place which he had held
since Gettysburg, nine months before, thinking that
Grant might want a friend like Sherman near at hand,
and said that for himself wherever ordered he would
do his best, that in the work before them the feeling
or wishes of no one person should interfere with pick-
ing the right men. Grant did not demand the sacri-
fice. "This incident," he says, "gave me even a more
favorable opinion of Meade than did his great victory
at Gettysburg the July before. It is men who wait to
be selected, and not those who seek, from whom we
may always expect the most efficient service."
So Meade stayed where he was; but it was not a
THE CLINCH WITH LEE 155
happy case no matter how hard each might try to
have it so. Meade, who for months had held an inde-
pendent and responsible command, looking ahead to
crown the work begun at Gettysburg by crushing
Lee, was now thrown into the shade of one he scarcely
knew and in such close proximity that, however
tactfully the thing was handled, nothing could hide
from his subordinates the ever-present fact that he
was a subordinate himself. As for Grant, he found
himself in daily contact with a proud army to which
he was a stranger, whose officers and men through
years of trial in camp and field were grown attached
to their own generals. Grant's orders couched in
general terms, trickling through Meade, must lose
significance, and sometimes, acting of necessity in
haste, he had to issue them direct, greatly to Meade's
chagrin. Except that both were single-minded, there
were few points of likeness between these two.
"Sedgwick and Meade," said Grant, "were men so
finely formed that if ordered to resign their generals'
commissions and take service as corporals, they would
have fallen into the ranks without a murmur." So,
too, would Grant, and so would Thomas, but it is
hard to think of many more; Sherman would have
fallen in, but with profanity. Meade was of deli-
cate grain and sensitive, high-spirited, confiding dis-
appointments only to his wife. "You may look now
156 ULYSSES S. GRANT
for the Army of the Potomac putting laurels on the
brow of another," he writes her; and at the end, when
Sheridan, not he, was made Lieutenant-General by
Grant, "we must find consolation in the consciousness
. . . that it is the crudest and meanest act of injus-
tice." ! But from the public Meade, while in service,
hid his hurt, and Grant has testified that Meade
would take another's plan, even when he did not ap-
prove it, and carry it out as zealously as if it were
his own. Yet Meade shrank from the responsibility
of supreme command; in full authority he would
hesitate. After Gettysburg, when Lincoln wrote that
if Meade would attack Lee "on a field no more than
equal for us, the honor will be his if he succeeds and
the blame may be mine if he fails," Meade replied as
it is unthinkable that Grant would have responded in
like case: "It has been my intention to attack the
enemy, if I can find him on a field no more than
equal for us, and I have only delayed doing so from
the difficulty of ascertaining his exact position, and
the fear that in endeavoring to do so my communi-
cations might be jeopardized."2
And Meade had other traits which throw needed
light upon the history of the last year of war. His
violent temper stirred the dislike of his subordinates
1 Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, vol. II, p. 300.
2 Union Portraits, p. 76.
THE CLINCH WITH LEE 157
and in a measure their distrust. Dana writes that no
man, no matter what his business or his service,
approached him without insult, in one way or an-
other, and his own staff officers did not dare speak to
him unless first spoken to. In action on the field and
under nervous strain, especially when things went
wrong, he was irascible up to the very edge of
madness.
It has been said that for the North the war began
with Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Till then the time
had been spent in training generals and armies and
picking the right man to lead. Campaigns had been
haphazard, a summer's fighting and a winter's rest, a
victory or defeat and then withdrawal to recuperate.
There had been no comprehensive military plan, no
fixed and certain aim. Grant said the Army of the
Potomac had never been fought through to a finish,
and with the constant meddling from Washington,
induced sometimes by politics, he might have said
the same of other armies, even of his own except near
Vicksburg and at Chattanooga; but he steadily had
this in mind: that there could be no stable peace
until the military power of the rebellion was entirely
broken. In his report of the last year's operations he
presents the military problem which he faced when he
assumed command : —
"From an early period in the rebellion," he says.
158 ULYSSES S. GRANT
"I had been impressed with the idea that active and
continuous operations of all the troops that could be
brought into the field, regardless of season and
weather, were necessary to a speedy termination of
the war. The resources of the enemy, and his numeri-
cal strength, were far inferior to ours; but, as an offset
to this, we had a vast territory, with a population
hostile to the Government, to garrison, and long lines
of river and railroad communications to protect, to
enable us to supply the operating armies.
"The armies in the East and West acted inde-
pendently, and without concert, like a balky team, —
no two ever pulling together, — enabling the enemy
to use to great advantage his interior lines of com-
munication for transporting troops from East to
West, reinforcing the army most vigorously pressed,
and to furlough large numbers, during seasons of in-
activity on our part, to go to their homes and do the
work of providing for the support of their armies. It
was a question whether our numerical strength and
resources were not more than balanced by these dis-
advantages and the enemy's superior position."
He determined, "first, to use the greatest number
of troops practicable against the armed force of the
enemy, preventing him from using the same force at
different seasons against first one and then another of
our armies, and the possibility of repose for refitting
THE CLINCH WITH LEE 159
and producing necessary supplies for carrying on re-
sistance; second, to hammer continuously against the
armed force of the enemy and his resources, until, by
mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be
nothing left to him but an equal submission with the
loyal sections of our common country to the Consti-
tution and laws of the land."
The task Grant set himself was to destroy Lee's
army. That done rebellion must disintegrate. With
Lee eliminated the Confederacy would crumble of
itself; there could be no formidable fighting elsewhere
— only guerrilla raids. To capture Richmond was
important because it was Lee's base. To occupy the
Southern Capital had sentimental value, but in
Grant's plan it was subordinate — not the main
purpose of his strategy. "On to Richmond!" had
been the Northern cry till Grant's arrival. After he
came the aim was to get Lee. "Lee's army will be
your objective point," he ordered Meade. "Where-
ever Lee goes, you will go also." When once Lee
should capitulate, Richmond must also fall. With
Lee at large his tent was the real heart of the Con-
federacy.
Butler at Fort Monroe commanded, with the Army
of the James, Richmond's main artery from the sea.
Grant gave him a spectacular detail — to seize the
Southern Capital and cut off Lee's supplies. Opposed
160 ULYSSES S. GRANT
to him was Beauregard. A small force of 12,000 men
were strung along the banks of the Potomac protect-
ing Washington, guarding against a possible invasion
of the North. Sigel was in command; opposed to him
was Breckinridge. Sherman in command of Grant's
old armies, with Thomas, Schofield, Hooker, Howard,
and Slocum under him, was at Chattanooga ready to
lead them against Johnston, who at Dalton, just
across the Georgia line, had an army of 100,000
guarding the railway center at Atlanta one hundred
miles below. Banks held New Orleans, commanding
the Department of the Gulf. The remaining Union
forces were scattered among many garrisons.
Grant's purpose, in a word, was to crush Lee and
Johnston and smother the Confederacy, which in-
volved the capture of Richmond and Atlanta and
shutting off the few remaining breathing-places on the
coast through which the South could touch the sea —
Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington, pro-
tected by Fort Fisher. To Sherman he gave orders
"to move against Johnston's army, to break it up
and to get into the interior of the enemy's country as
far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can
against their war resources." Banks was to seize
Mobile; but Banks was busy on expeditions in
Arkansas and Louisiana inspired from Washington,
and missed his opportunity. Grant's first idea for
THE CLINCH WITH LEE 161
Sherman was to slice Georgia from Atlanta after
whipping Johnston's army, and join Banks at
Mobile, but this was subsequently changed by force
of circumstance and Sherman's genius, and Sherman
mowed his swath through to Savannah and then
north through both Carolinas, whence he could press
Lee upwards from the south while Grant pressed
down upon the other side. " I do not propose," Grant
wrote him, "to lay down for you a plan of campaign,
but simply lay down the work it is desirable to have
done and leave you free to execute it in your own
way."
For the first time since Sumter the keys controlling
all the Northern armies were in a single hand, and
when everything was ready for the word, Grant
touched them all at once. From Culpeper, where he
had pitched his tent, the signal flashed for every
general to move on the 4th of May; Meade against
Lee, Sherman against Johnston, Butler toward
Richmond, Sigel along the Shenandoah. From that
time till the end, Grant kept his finger on the pulse of
all his armies. While he was hammering away at Lee
and Richmond, he was sending daily orders also to
every captain under his command. No other general
since war was known had, while himself in action on
the field, handled the maneuvers of so many armies
scattered over so broad a territory and centered
162 ULYSSES S. GRANT
toward a common aim. Lee was responsible only for
his own command. Davis in Richmond, a West
Point graduate who had seen service in the war
with Mexico, disposed the other Southern armies
in the field.
Now came a cruel test of fiber, such as few other
men were ever called upon to face. With seasoned
armies at his call, ample in size and skillfully dis-
posed, Grant had prepared for every physical con-
tingency — supplies, equipment, all the necessities
for active service, a commonplace of war in which he
was himself adept and for which he now had at his
side his own superior in Quartermaster-General
Rufus Ingalls; he had unusual knowledge of the field
of operations gained from a study of the late cam-
paigns, together with his Indian instinct for topog-
raphy, a sixth sense of his which some called genius;
for all agree that at a glance he used to master a
strange map or catch the guiding military features of
a chartless and bewildering country. But with all his
foresight he had not quite foreseen the quality of Lee.
It was Lee's vigilance which upset his first attempt to
hammer down the Southern forces by assault.
Moving his army quickly across the Rapidan on
the morning of the 4th of May, Grant had thought to
clear the tragic tangle of the Wilderness with its sad
memories of Chancellorsville, before he fell upon the
THE CLINCH WITH LEE 163
enemy, but Lee, who had once fought with Hooker on
that very ground successfully against great odds,
took the chance of meeting Grant's superior forces on
a field where he had already demonstrated that
victory did not necessarily attend the heaviest
battalions.
The two days' battle of the Wilderness with its
ghastly toll which Lee precipitated on the 5th of May
brought home to Grant the horror of the path in
which his feet were set. There were hours in which
defeat was hovering close; disaster had never pressed
him quite so hard; and with it comes a human touch
which we would not forego.
Rawlins and Bowers both say that when the first
news reached him from the right indicating complete
repulse and officer after officer rode up with new
details, Grant, realizing that he faced the crisis of his
life, still gave his orders calmly and coherently with-
out a sign of undue tension; but when all proper
measures had been taken and there was nothing else
to do but wait, he "went into his tent and throwing
himself face downward on his cot gave way to the
greatest emotion," without uttering a word. He was
stirred to the very depths of his soul. Not till it was
plain that the enemy was not pressing his advantage
did he entirely recover his composure.1
1 Under the Old Flag, vol. i, p. 390.
164 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Now we come to a revealing and dramatic episode
in Grant's career. Lee with his hard-fought forces
for the third time lay near the Rapidan facing a hos-
tile army on its Southern side. He had twice seen the
Army of the Potomac, once under Pope, once under
Hooker, pushed back across the stream, when they
had thought to march toward Richmond, but now he
saw an enemy which had failed to break his lines
crouched for another spring. Grant in the opening
encounter of his Virginia campaign, disastrous though
it may have seemed, had forced his army forward
and had held his advance. His loss was nearly 18,000
men, but Lee, considering his inferior strength, had
suffered more. The next night Grant was headed
south toward Richmond. It is told that, as he rode in
silence in the dusk along his shattered ranks, his worn
and wounded soldiers saw which way his face was
turned and rose up from the ground with cheers. His
mute assurance of immediate advance, after their
long acquaintance with procrastination and retreat,
inspired them with a trust in their new chief which
could not afterwards be shaken. As for Grant it was
a disclosure of his soul. This reticent, shy, tender-
hearted citizen, who shrank from giving others pain
and sickened at the sight of blood, had without falter-
ing kept his feet upon the road which led through
slaughter. He felt that in no other way could the
THE CLINCH WITH LEE 165
Confederacy be quickly overthrown; it was the way
of mercy in the end.
"I shall take no backward steps," Grant wrote to
Halleck. For thirty days he hammered at the enemy,
rained heavy blows upon Lee's head; hurled his men
frequently against Lee's weakening lines, engaged in
daily skirmishes, defied the rules and precedents of
war by frontal charges on the enemy intrenched,
costing both armies dearly in the toll of wounds and
death. There had been nothing like it in the world
before. Lee was forced backwards step by step on
Richmond, returning blow for blow, the two contend-
ing armies leaving a trail of carnage from the Wilder-
ness through Spotsylvania Court-House, with its five
days' fighting and its "bloody angle" at the salient,
the crossing of the North Anna River to Cold Harbor,
where, with the spires of Richmond almost in sight,
the final stand was made, and where Grant was re-
pulsed with heavy loss after a frontal charge which
he admitted later that he ought never to have
ordered, but which blazes like a beacon disclosing the
unflinching courage of the Northern volunteer, just
as Pickett's hopeless charge ordered by Lee at
Gettysburg still enshrines Southern gallantry. Porter
has told how, on the night before the charge, while
walking among the troops he saw the soldiers pinning
slips upon their blouses, on which each had written
1C6 ULYSSES S. GRANT
his name and home so that his body the next night
might not lie unidentified.
"I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all
summer," Grant had written Halleck from Spot-
sylvania, but at Cold Harbor his gallant army had
their fill. After the Wilderness, Lee had not once
accepted battle in the open, but had sought in-
trenched positions to withstand attack. It was a
new and strange experience for him. This master
in the artistry of war now found his match in one
less skilled in tactics but stronger in offense and in
tenacity. No matter how he played his tempered
sword, no matter how he turned and stepped with
faultless strategy, there stood Grant facing him like
a decree of Fate.
At last both Lee and Grant viewing their haggard
armies were content to change the character of the
campaign. After Cold Harbor they never fought each
other face to face. Grant had not been able, as he had
hoped, to crush Lee north of Richmond, but that
was only one link of his plan. The second was to
throw his army to the south side of the James, seize
Petersburg, which controlled the approach to the
Confederate Capital twenty miles below, besiege Lee
in Richmond or follow him south if he should retreat.
Therefore, on the 5th of June, while the dead and
wounded at Cold Harbor still lay on the ground, he
From tin , <>ll, ,-i,,,ii ,,r Frederick Hill Meserve
GRANT AT TOLD HARBOR, VIRGINIA, JUNE 14, 1864
Sitting at Aeft of -picture is Col. John A. Rawlins, Chief of Staff; standing be-
linrt Grant is Col. Theodore S. Bowers; sitting at Grant's left (head showing near
•ree) is Col. William I,. Duff; sitting at right of picture is Gen. John G. Barnard.
THE CLINCH WITH LEE 167
wrote Halleck that he should throw his army across
the James as soon as possible, cut off all sources of
supply, and press the enemy from the other side.
Swiftly and silently he marched around Lee's flank
for fifty miles, to the southeast, eluding him com-
pletely, and on the 15th of June, while Lee was
guessing where the enemy might be, Grant wired to
Washington that the Army of the Potomac would
cross the James on pontoon bridges the next day,
and that he would have Petersburg secured if possi-
ble before Lee got there in much force. Lincoln wired
back: "I begin to see it; you will succeed. God bless
you all."
CHAPTER XX
FROM COLD HARBOR TO PETERSBURG
From the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, Grant had
hammered Lee for seventy miles and had lost over
40,000 men, of whom 10,000 had been killed. In each
engagement his losses had been fairly matched by
Lee's, except at Cold Harbor; and the net benefit had
been with Grant. The Army of the Potomac had been
sadly shattered, but Lee's army had been shattered
too, and Lee had fewer men to spare. Yet it had cost
Grant some repute in Washington. While Spotsyl-
vania was in fight, Lincoln told a crowd of serena-
des, "I know that General Grant has not been
jostled in his purposes, that he has made all his
points, and to-day he is on the line as he purposed
when he moved his armies." "He has the grip of a
bull-dog," he told Frank Carpenter the painter;
"when he once gets his teeth in nothing can shake
him off"; and two weeks later he endorsed Grant's
declaration that "everything looks exceedingly fa-
vorable for us." It was after Cold Harbor that he
wrote: "I begin to see it; you will succeed." But
others had less confidence than Lincoln. "All un-
FROM COLD HARBOR TO PETERSBURG 169
der God depends on Grant," wrote Chase. "So far
he has achieved very little and that little has cost be-
yond computation." Grimes, of Iowa, wrote: "He has
lost a vast number of men and is compelled to aban-
don his attempt to capture Richmond on the north
side, and cross the James River. The question is asked
significantly, why did he not take his army south
of the James River at once and thus save seventy-
five thousand men?"
Grimes had not fully fathomed the significance
of Grant's campaign; and those who criticized him,
because McClellan had maneuvered nearer Rich-
mond without much fighting and without much loss,
failed to remember that McClellan's aim was to
invest the rebel Capital, while Grant primarily was
after Lee, not Richmond; that McClellan had aban-
doned all he gained, while Grant held his advance,
and that McClellan, having neared his goal with little
damage to the enemy, fell back, while Grant, con-
testing every hard-fought step, had chopped deep
into Lee's defense. If Grant had gone toward Rich-
mond first by sailing up the James, he would have
found Lee fixed in the Confederate Capital in the
best possible position to withstand a siege against
far greater numbers, while rebel troops would have
been free to roam the State and threaten Washington.
There would have been many months of siege and
170 ULYSSES S. GRANT
fighting. The easier-seeming way would have been
harder in the end. 1
Had it not been for blunders by the Army of the
James, Grant, when he crossed the river, would have
found Butler's troops in Petersburg to welcome him,
thus sparing him ten months of siege, and Lee with
Richmond might have fallen speedily, for Petersburg,
twenty miles to the southeast, a railroad center on the
Appomattox, was the real key to Richmond. When
in the first week of May, Butler had been sent up the
James, the plan was that he should take Petersburg
and batter at the gates of the Confederate Capital,
while Grant kept Lee engaged, or else by threatening
it divert Lee from Grant's front; but Butler, ignoring
1 I remember asking the General why he had not invested
Richmond, as he had invested Vicksburg and starved out Lee.
"Such a movement," said the General, "would have involved
moving my army from the Rapidan to Lynchburg. I considered
the plan with great care before I made the Wilderness move. I
thought of massing the Army of the Potomac in movable columns,
giving the men twelve days' rations, and throwing myself be-
tween Lee and his communications. If I had made this movement
successfully — if I had been as fortunate as I was when I threw my
army between Pemberton and Joe Johnston — ■ the war would
have been over a year sooner. I am not sure that it was not the
best thing to have done; it certainly was the plan I should have pre-
ferred. If I had failed, however, it would have been very serious
for the country and I did not dare take the risk. ... If it had
been six months later, when I had the army in hand, and knew
what a splendid army it was, and what officers and men were
capable of doing, and I could have had Sherman and Sheridan
to assist in the movement, I would not have hesitated for a mo-
ment." (Young, vol. ii, p. 307.)
FROM COLD HARBOR TO PETERSBURG 171
Petersburg, tried to seize Drewry's Bluff, under the
very eyes of Richmond, and beaten back with heavy
loss, withdrew into the curious pocket of the James
known as Bermuda Hundred, where he was "bottled
up" safe from attack, but worthless as a part of
Grant's command.
He could now have taken Petersburg with ease
and held it pending Grant's arrival, for the place
was guarded by a feeble garrison; but he assigned
the task to "Baldy" Smith, lately transferred to his
command, who after an assault on June 15, carry-
ing the outside works, withdrew without pursuing
his advantage for reasons never adequately ex-
plained, and when the next day he was ready for
a second trial, Beauregard had filled the town with
rebel troops.
When Grant approached the town he found it
strongly garrisoned. The place, which should have
welcomed him had Butler's army done their part,
repulsed three days' assault; he lost 10,000 men. His
army were disheartened because they did not enter on
the 15th as they had hoped. After Cold Harbor and
the crossing of the James, they had thought to have a
respite from fighting against odds; but here they
found themselves at once in the old desperate game.
Lee, having learned at last where Grant had re-
appeared, had brought his army up to Petersburg,
172 ULYSSES S. GRANT
and on June 18 Grant gave directions that there
should be no more assaults.
From that day till the spring of 1865, Meade's
army lay in front of Petersburg holding the town in
siege, sending out expeditions, recuperating broken
regiments, hardening raw recruits, many of them
bounty-lured, keeping Lee occupied. Grant set up
his tent at City Point, the junction of the Appo-
mattox and the James.
The next two months were gloomy in the North.
They have been called the darkest of the war. Elec-
tion was near at hand. Lincoln had been renominated
on June 6, with Andrew Johnson for his mate; Fre-
mont had been named by a little group of radical
Republicans who thought that Lincoln was too slow;
it was known that McClellan would be nominated
by the Democrats. It seemed as if the Union armies
everywhere were held in check, while early in July
Lee had sent Early flying through Maryland raid-
ing the country up to the very edge of Washington
and throwing the Capital into a panic, Grant un-
suspicious of the move till he began to get inquiries
from Stanton, followed by frantic calls for help.
While Grant was fighting through to Petersburg,
Sherman in the West was forcing Johnston back
upon Atlanta, dislodging him from one intrenched
position and another, while he conducted a retreat as
FROM COLD HARBOR TO PETERSBURG 173
masterly as Lee's before Grant, and Davis having
foolishly put Hood in Johnston's place because of fail-
ure to arrest the enemy's advance, Sherman, after
pounding Hood and crippling him in the last week of
July, remained in check before Atlanta for a month.
Lincoln, at the request of Congress, fixed a day of
humiliation and prayer, but pending that he justi-
fied his faith by works in issuing on July 18 a call for
500,000 volunteers, 200,000 more than Grant him-
self at the same time was asking for, and on the 17th
of August, as if in response to Northern clamor that
Grant be superseded by McClellan, he was wiring
Grant, who had expressed unwillingness to break his
hold: "Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog
grip and chew and choke as much as possible."
It was on August 23 that Lincoln penned and
signed the memorandum which he had each member
of his Cabinet endorse unread and which remained
unopened till November 11 : —
" This morning, as for some days past, it seems ex-
ceedingly probable that this Administration will not
be reelected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate
with the President-elect as to save the Union between
the election and the inauguration; as he will have
secured his election on such ground that he cannot
possibly save it afterwards."
During these gloomy days Grant had his own an-
174 ULYSSES S. GRANT
noyances. His major-generals were at loggerheads.
Meade was unpopular; had scolded Warren; had
rebuked Wilson because a Richmond newspaper
charged his men with stealing negroes, horses, silver
plate, and clothing on a raid. There was talk of super-
seding Meade. But the most vexatious quarrel was
in the Army of the James. Smith was forever quarrel-
ing with Gillmore and Butler fussed with both. Gill-
more was soon eliminated, but Smith and Butler
squabbled all their lives. Smith, a West Point soldier
with a brilliant record, an engineer of proved ability,
perhaps too much addicted to maneuvers, irascible,
fault-finding, and opinionated, had made a fatal slip
at Petersburg. Butler, a blustering, contentious
politician in a uniform, bitterly hostile to the WTest
Point regulars, teeming with ingenious schemes, and
reveling in Gargantuan blunders, unbridled in am-
bition and audacity, a stench in controversy, the
Thersites of the war, when in command of troops was
a grotesque and tragical mistake. Since neither Smith
nor Butler had been broken to the harness, they
could not pull together. One of them had to go, and
Grant chose Butler for the sacrifice. Then overnight,
after a call by Butler at Grant's quarters, the order
was reversed. Butler was retained and Smith relieved
from duty: just why has been in controversy ever
since.
FROM COLD HARBOR TO PETERSBURG 175
Smith wrote for Lincoln's eye a letter charging
that Butler, having seen Grant in his cups, had black-
mailed him, and this interpretation has found a place
in history; but Grant had weathered charges of that
kind before without a whimper when he had fewer
friends; he had no need to fear them now. We cannot
credit the result to such a threat by Butler, unless we
shall assume, as some have thought, so slimy is the
trail of this old quarrel, that there could be no infamy
which he would not embrace, and even then we can-
not think that Grant, as happened later, should be-
come his friend and write about him kindly in his
book; for Grant was not mean-spirited. Smith's
punishment can be accounted for on other grounds.
His temper sentenced him to exile if Butler was to
stay; and besides, he had whipped Grant over
Meade's shoulders by tactlessly abusing Meade to
Grant for the disaster at Cold Harbor, for which he
must have known that Grant was himself to blame.
It is far more likely that Butler's neck was saved by
Lincoln, who, with his reelection in the balance, feared
to let loose upon the voters of the north a Douglas
Democrat with a war record, a grievance, and a
poisoned tongue. Later Butler was ordered to New
York to guard against election riots, and subse-
quently, after his fiasco at Fort Fisher, he was sent
home to Lowell "for the good of the service," Grant
176 ULYSSES S. GRANT
writing Stanton on January 4, 1865, "In my ab-
sence General Butler necessarily commands, and
there is a lack of confidence felt in his military ability,
making him an unsafe commander for a large army.
His administration of the affairs of his department
is also objectionable."
CHAPTER XXI
SHERIDAN, SHERMAN, THOMAS
Even as Lincoln penned his gloomy memorandum of
August 23, the skies were clearing. Farragut's opera-
tions at Mobile, which had been going on for weeks,
were already crowned with victory, though the news
had not come North. On September 2, while the
Democrats in their convention at Chicago were re-
solving that the war had been a failure, Sherman was
entering Atlanta, whence he had driven Hood the
day before, leading into the rebel stronghold with
hardly any loss the army he led out of Chattanooga
four months before, thus tearing out of the Con-
federacy its chief manufacturing center and depot
of supplies. On September 3, Lincoln, by proclama-
tion, summoned the people of the North to offer
thanks to God for Union triumphs at Atlanta and
Mobile.
Up to the time that Grant came East, the cavalry
had been held in some contempt by the commanders
of the Army of the Potomac, available for picket
duty and for little else. " Who ever saw a dead cav-
alryman?" was a Service jest. But Grant drafted
Sheridan to transform Meade's cavalry into a fight-
178 ULYSSES S. GRANT
ing force, and Sheridan, unknown east of the Alle-
ghanies except for the assault on Missionary Ridge,
had startled Meade by telling him that the mounted
men should be concentrated to fight the rebel horse
instead of doing routine guard and picket duty for
the infantry. When Meade asked who would protect
the transportation trains, cover the front of moving
infantry columns, and secure their flanks from in-
trusion, he had another shock from the pugnacious
little Irishman, — he was only thirty-three, stood five
feet five, and weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds,
— who said that with 10,000 mounted men he could
make it so lively for the rebel cavalry that the flanks
and rear of the Army of the Potomac would require
little or no defense, and that moving columns of in-
fantry should take care of themselves. He hoped to
defeat the enemy in a general engagement and move
where he pleased, breaking Lee's communications and
destroying his resources.
Meade later had a peppery interview with Sheri-
dan, in which the young man told him he could whi •
J. E. B. Stuart, the Confederate cavalry leader, if
Meade would only let him try. When Meade reported
it to Grant, Grant's only comment was, "Did he
say so? Then let him go out and do it!" Where-
upon Sheridan went out, and on the 11th of May,
at Yellow Tavern, within six miles of Richmond,
SHERIDAN, SHERMAN, THOMAS 179
whipped Stuart's forces and killed Stuart himself,
inflicting on the Confederate mounted troops the
worst defeat that had befallen them. Then Sheridan
made an independent raid, broke up the railroads
that connected Lee with Richmond, and frightened
the Confederate Capital, penetrating its outer forti-
fications, though that was not his aim.
Early, returning from his raid on Maryland, con-
trolled at Winchester the fertile Valley of the
Shenandoah, to which the rebel army looked for food
that fall, and Grant picked Sheridan to operate
against him, though Stanton had objected to putting
Sheridan in command of the department because he
was too young. "I see you played around the diffi-
culty," Lincoln said to Grant, "by picking Sheridan
to command the boys in the field." " I want Sheridan
put in command of all the troops in the field with in-
structions to put himself south of the enemy and
follow him to the death," Grant wired to Stanton.
"Wherever the enemy goes, let our troops go, also ";
and Lincoln, seeing the dispatch, wrote back: "This,
I think, is exactly right as to how our forces should
move; but please look over the dispatches you may
have received from here ever since you made that
order, and discover if you can that there is any idea in
the head of any one here of 'putting our army south
of the enemy' or of 'following him to the death' in
180 ULYSSES S. GRANT
any direction. I repeat to you, it will neither be done
nor attempted, unless you watch it every day and
hour and force it."
Grant knew Sheridan better than Washington.
He instructed him, on August 5, that in pushing up
the Shenandoah Valley it was desirable that nothing
should be left to invite the enemy to return. "Take
all provisions, forage, and stock wanted for the use
of your command. Such as cannot be consumed,
destroy." Then in September, having put Sheridan
in charge of a new division, and having visited him
to find out how he lay, he gave the order to "Go
in," and Sheridan "went in" at once at Winches-
ter, flashing Grant that he had "sent Early's army
whirling up the Valley." Just a month later came
Cedar Creek and Sheridan's ride, transforming panic-
stricken flight into resplendent victory. The little cav-
alry leader in one summer had dashed into history as
one of the great figures of the war and had revolution-
ized the theory of cavalry service for all wars to come.
"As a soldier, as a commander of troops, as a man
capable of doing all that is possible with any number
of men," Grant said years later, "there is no man
living greater than Sheridan. He belongs to the very
first rank of soldiers, not only of our country, but of
the world. I rank Sheridan with Napoleon and
Frederick and the great commanders of history. No
SHERIDAN, SHERMAN, THOMAS 181
man ever had such a faculty of finding out things as
Sheridan, of knowing all about the enemy. He was
always the best informed man of his command as to
the enemy. Then he had the magnificent quality of
swaying men which I wish I had — a rare quality in
a general."
Sherman had no sooner lighted in Atlanta than he
began to think of longer flights. Grant had suggested
slicing Georgia to the Gulf, but Sherman had a vision
of marching to the sea. "If you can whip Lee," he
wrote Grant, "and I can march to the Atlantic, I
think Uncle Abe will give us a twenty days' leave of
absence to see the young folks." Hood was getting
active; Sherman had sent Thomas to Nashville to
protect Tennessee. He would leave Tennessee to
Thomas, destroy Atlanta, and move to Charleston
or Savannah. "I can make the march and make
Georgia howl," he wrote. He thought Hood would be
forced to follow him, but at any rate, " I would be on
the offensive; instead of guessing at what he means to
do, he would have to guess at my plans." Lincoln
and Stanton were solicitous; "a misstep by General
Sherman might be fatal to his army." But Grant,
though dubious at first, approved the plan. Thomas
objected, and Sherman argued with him. He knew
he must succeed, for if he failed, "this march would
be adjudged the wild adventure of a crazy fool." He
182 ULYSSES S. GRANT
would demonstrate the vulnerability of the South
and make its people feel that war and individual
ruin were synonymous. Hood crossed the river
into Tennessee, and Grant thought Hood should be
destroyed before the march began, but Sherman
thought it was a scheme to lure him out of Georgia,
and Grant said, "Go as you propose." Sherman had
perfect faith that Thomas could handle Hood, and
having sent him Schofield's corps for an emergency,
destroyed Atlanta with its factories and supplies, cut
loose November 12 from all communication with the
North, and for a month was swallowed up in Georgia
with 60,000 men.
Hood, forced to choose between following Sherman
or invading Tennessee, began to move toward Nash-
ville with over 40,000 men. At Franklin, on his way
toward Nashville, he found Schofield with his corps
of 30,000; made a desperate assault, and was re-
pulsed with frightful loss. He followed Schofield on
to Nashville and sat down before the city, his army
now reduced to 26,000, while Thomas held the town
with nearly twice Hood's force. Thomas had told
Sherman to have no fear about Hood. "If he does
not follow you I will then thoroughly organize my
troops, and I believe I shall have men enough to ruin
him unless he gets out of the way very rapidly." He
now took time to organize, waiting for Wilson and his
SHERIDAN, SHERMAN, THOMAS 183
cavalry to get equipments; and thus put Grant and
Lincoln to a hard test of patience. With his numerical
supremacy they could not understand why he de-
layed attacking Hood. "This looks like McClellan
and Rosecrans strategy, to do nothing and let the
rebels raid the country," wired Stanton to Grant.
"The President wishes you to consider the matter."
Grant had never valued Thomas at his real worth,
and he knew that in Hood's place he would himself
set out at once on an invasion of the North, eluding
Thomas and crossing the Ohio. Were Hood to do
this, it would be a heavy blow. All would be criti-
cized for letting Sherman disappear; it might be
necessary to divert troops from Virginia, which per-
haps would mean a loss of months in getting Lee.
And Grant was later justified in his belief, when
Hood himself wrote that he then had dreams of
conquest, defeating Thomas, seizing Nashville for a
base, raiding Kentucky, threatening Cincinnati, and
marching a victorious army through the gaps of the
Cumberland Mountains to join Lee, whip Grant and
Sherman in succession, and sweep down on Wash-
ington with the combined armed forces of the Con-
federacy.1 Fate had now delivered Hood into the
hands of Thomas and Thomas seemed to toy with
Fate. Grant sent dispatches on December 2 urging
1 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. iv, p. 427.
184 ULYSSES S. GRANT
him to take the offensive. Thomas replied that in
two or three days he would probably be ready. Four
days passed and Grant dispatched a peremptory
order: "Attack Hood at once and wait no longer for
a remount of your cavalry. ' There is great danger of
delay resulting in a campaign back to the Ohio
River." Thomas answered that he would obey,
though " I believe it will be hazardous with the small
force now at my service."
Nothing happened. Then Grant lost his patience;
for once seemingly cast aside his usual restraint and
poise. "If Thomas has not struck yet," he wired to
Halleck on December 8, "he ought to be ordered to
hand over his command to Schofield. There is no
better man to repel an attack than Thomas; but I
fear he is too cautious to ever take the initiative."
The next day he directed Halleck to relieve Thomas
and put Schofield in command. Thomas, hiding his
grief, replied with dignity: "I regret that General
Grant should feel dissatisfaction at my delay in at-
tacking the enemy. I feel conscious that I have done
everything in my power to prepare and that the
troops could not have been gotten ready before this,
and that if he should order me to be relieved I shall
submit without a murmur. A terrible storm of freez-
ing rain has come on since daylight which will render
an attack impossible until it breaks." Grant sus-
SHERIDAN, SHERMAN, THOMAS 185
pended the order, but after two days' further
waiting, with eager interchange of telegrams, he
ordered Logan to Nashville to replace Thomas in
command of the Army of the Cumberland. In his
anxiety he started West himself, but on his way
at Washington, on December 15, got word that
Thomas had attacked, and then that Hood was
routed with Thomas in pursuit. The battle of Nash-
ville, on December 15 and 16, was the most complete
victory won by the Union forces during the rebellion,
a perfect battle in the eyes of experts in the science of
war. Hood's army was so badly beaten that when
after the pursuit he left its wreckage on the south
side of the Tennessee, it hardly numbered 15,000
men, and was soon disintegrated save for a few who
turned up afterwards with Johnston's little force in
North Carolina. Grant did not quarrel with success.
He asked that Thomas be made a Major-General
in the regular army, overwhelmed him with con-
gratulations, wrote in his report that the defeat of
Hood was so complete that it would be accepted
as a vindication of the successful general's judgment.
On the 10th of December, thirty days after he cut
loose from his communications at Atlanta, Sherman
could see Savannah. His march of three hundred
and sixty miles through hostile territory had been a
holiday, and on the 21st he occupied the town and
180 ULYSSES S. GRANT
offered it to Lincoln as a Christmas present for the
North. Half of the task Grant set himself when he
came East was now accomplished. Organized rebel-
lion west of the Alleghanies had been crushed. The
whole Southwest was open to the Union troops when-
ever they saw fit to occupy it.
Sherman for the moment far outdazzled Grant in
popular esteem. The fine audacity of his accom-
plishment had caught the fancy of the world. Lincoln
congratulated him: "The undertaking being a success
the honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went
further than to acquiesce." Some would have made
him a Lieutenant-General and put him over Grant,
who to appearances had loafed at City Point, while
his subordinates were winning victories. "I would
rather have you in command than anybody else,"
Sherman wrote Grant, "for you are fair, honest, and
have at heart the same purpose that should actuate
all. I should emphatically decline any commission
calculated to bring us into rivalry"; and Grant
replied: "No one would be more pleased at your
advancement than I, and if you should be placed in
my position and I put subordinate, it would not
change our relations in the least. I would make the
same exertions to support you that you have ever
done to support me, and I would do all in my power
to make our cause win."
CHAPTER XXII
PEACE
Grant, for the moment partly in eclipse, bided his
time. Events were shaping the success of his grand
strategy, which he now knew the end would jus-
tify. His lines were tightening on the Confederacy.
Sherman was on his way north from Savannah, cut-
ting a path of devastation across the Carolinas;
marching four hundred miles through winter sleet
and icy floods, quagmires and swamps and rutty
roads, a bitter contrast to the Georgia frolic. Fort
Fisher, after many trials, was seized at last by Terry
brilliantly in early January, and Wilmington, which
it protected, the sole remaining port of the Confed-
eracy, fell into Union hands as had already happened
with every other rebel stronghold south or west of
Richmond. Lee's army could no longer live upon the
crops of the Southwest or tap its former granary in
the Valley of the Shenandoah. The time was near at
hand when the compressed Confederacy, upon which
Grant was closing in, must either choke or starve
unless Lee's ragged and emaciated troops slipped
through the Union lines to the Southwest. No re-
cruits were coming, and there could be no hope for a
188 ULYSSES S. GRANT
successful fight against the Union army, which now,
almost encircling Petersburg and Richmond after
months of siege, was hardening the latest levies into
veterans. While Lee had lost his sources of supply,
Grant had at call the teeming farms and factories of
the North. Davis had reached the limit of his credit,
while Lincoln still had full financial reservoirs to
drain.
Yet Davis could not bring himself to think his
cause was lost; he was for goading his exhausted
armies to fight on, and if compelled to flee, he would
transfer the Richmond archives to a roving capital,
and keep rebellion bristling in the Alleghany wilds.
His patriotic selfishness would not have stopped at
any sacrifice by his devoted men.
City Point, with Grant's log-cabin headquarters,
was a secondary Union Capital. Lincoln came there
with Seward and other members of the Cabinet;
members of Congress drifted in to look things over;
there was an unbroken line of Northern visitors. At
the end of January the "Peace Commission,"
Stephens, Campbell, and Hunter, came from Rich-
mond on their futile errand, and Grant, who was a
soldier not vested with authority in such affairs,
asked Lincoln to come down with Seward to hear
their tale.
Stephens, who then for the first time saw Grant,
PEACE 189
has said that he was never more surprised in any man.
"He was plainly attired, sitting in a log cabin busily
writing on a small table by a kerosene lamp. There
was nothing in his appearance or surroundings which
indicated his official rank. There were neither guards
nor aides about him. Upon Colonel Babcock rapping
at his door the response, 'Come in,' was given by him-
self"; and he soliloquizes: "In manners he is simple,
natural, and unaffected; in utterance frank and ex-
plicit; in thought, perception and action, quick; in
purpose fixed, decided, and resolute." l
The commissioners met Lincoln and Seward on
Lincoln's boat in Hampton Roads. The peace they
had in mind did not contemplate the dissolution of
the Confederacy, which was of course the one condi-
tion Lincoln could consider; but they learned from
him that the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing
slavery had just been passed by Congress, that the
restoration of the Union was the first requirement in
any peace, and that the way for this to be assured by
them was "by disbanding their armies, and permit-
ting the National authorities to resume their func-
tions."
The conference had its value in revealing Lincoln's
mind. "Stephens," he said, "if I were in Georgia
and entertained the sentiments I do, ... I would go
1 Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens, pp. 79, 80; 401-02.
190 ULYSSES S. GRANT
home and get the Governor of the State to call the
Legislature together and get them to recall all the
state troops from the war; elect senators and mem-
bers to Congress, and ratify the constitutional amend-
ment prospectively so as to take effect — say in five
years. Such a ratification would be valid in my opin-
ion. . . . Slavery is doomed. It cannot last long in any
event, and the best course, it seems to me, for you
public men to pursue would be to adopt such a policy
as will avoid as far as possible the evils of immediate
emancipation." He said he should be in favor indi-
vidually of the Government paying a fair indemnity
to the owners. He knew some who were in favor of an
appropriation as high as four hundred million dollars
for this purpose. This was on February 3, and two
days later, at Washington, Lincoln laid before his
Cabinet a message which he proposed to send to
Congress, recommending a joint resolution empower-
ing the President to pay to sixteen Southern and
border States four hundred million dollars in six per
cent government bonds as compensation for their
slaves, the distribution to be dependent "on the
ceasing of all resistance to the National authority
by the first of April next." The members of the Cabi-
net were all opposed, and Lincoln seemed surprised.
"How long will the war last?" he asked; and when
no one answered, he said : " A hundred days. We are
PEACE 191
spending now in carrying on the war three millions
a day which will amount to all this money besides all
the lives"; and with a deep sigh he added, "but you
are all opposed to me and I will not send the mes-
sage."
In the last week of March, Sherman reached Golds-
boro, in North Carolina, and found Schofield waiting
for him there, while Johnston with a remnant of his
old army hung about Raleigh, fifty miles away.
Grant, waiting for the spring campaign which he
had planned to end the business, indulged his troops
in desultory fighting mostly by Sheridan and Wilson,
who with their mounted horse were cutting Lee's
communications, raiding his outposts, smiting stray
regiments now and then, ruffling the rebel Capital's
defense. At last the time approached for operations
all along the line, and Lee, foreseeing this, thought to
anticipate it by breaking through the Union lines at
Petersburg, and by forced marches, eluding Grant,
join Johnston in the Carolinas for a final stand. It
was a desperate chance, dramatically taken, result-
ing in repulse.
On the 29th of March, Grant bade farewell to City
Point, Lincoln's "God bless you" lingering in his
ears. It is written that as his wife stood in his cabin
door saying good-bye, he held her tight and kissed
her many times with tenderness unusual, even for
192 ULYSSES S. GRANT
him. From that time to the end he mingled with his
army at the front, taking the same exposure as his
men.
It fell to Sheridan to strike the last swift blow,
when on the 1st of April at Five Forks his forces
stormed the intrenched enemy, slashing their way
through raking fire, charging with drawn sabers and
fixed bayonets, the little General himself leading his
men, waving his battle-flag, praying, swearing, flash-
ing from one point to another, till Merritt in a final
dash carried the earthworks with a wild hurrah. Few
battles like it ever have been waged, and none has
since been fought on this side of the Atlantic with
which we can compare its brilliant daring strategy.
"It seems to me," said Porter, "that you have ex-
posed yourself to-day in a manner hardly justifiable
on the part of a commander of such an important
movement"; and Sheridan replied, "I have never
in my life taken a command into battle and had
the slightest desire to come out alive unless I
won."
As soon as he was told what Sheridan had done,
Grant ordered an assault on Petersburg, and on the
morning of the 2d it was made, without great loss to
Lee, who knew, of course, that after Five Forks he
could not hope to hold the place. That night, in
cover of the darkness, Lee's men filed out of Peters-
PEACE 193
burg, and shortly after daybreak Grant rode in. Then
Lincoln came and seized Grant's hand and thanked
him. "I had a sort of sneaking idea all along that
you intended to do something like this," Lincoln
said ; " but I thought some time ago that you would
so maneuver as to have Sherman come up and be near
enough to cooperate with you." And Grant, reveal-
ing a fine tactf ulness, replied : " I had a feeling that it
would be better to let Lee's old antagonists give his
army the final blow and finish up the job. The West-
ern armies have been very successful in their cam-
paigns, and it is due to the Eastern armies to let them
vanquish their old enemy single-handed."
That same day Davis fled from Richmond and
Ewell's troops absconded, letting the Union forces in.
To Richmond Lincoln went from Petersburg; but
not Grant, who was too busy keeping an eye on Lee,
with Ord and Meade and Sheridan dogging Lee's
trail. Lee, with his poor, starved army, was trying to
reach Johnston, and at last, near Jetersville, Sheridan
found him still militant, though in a sorry way. But
Meade, who had the old idea of occupying Richmond,
forgetful of Grant's first instructions, had disposed
his troops with that in view, leaving a space between
the Union lines through which Lee might escape.
Sheridan alarmed, and having no authority to
change Meade's plan, sent Grant a secret message
194. ULYSSES S. GRANT
telling him the tale and adding, " I wish you were
here yourself."
Grant was immediately on his way to Sheridan and
learned at Farmsville of fighting still going on with
some of Lee's divisions. Word came in that Ewell had
said the rebel cause was lost, and on April 7, at
5 p.m., Grant, thinking further bloodshed wicked,
now that fighting was in vain, wrote to Lee asking the
surrender of his army. There was need of diplomacy.
Lee, not admitting that his case was hopeless, asked
the terms which would be offered on condition of
surrender, and Grant replied with delicacy: "Peace
being my great desire, there is but one condition I
would insist upon, namely, that the men and officers
surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms
against the Government of the United States until
properly exchanged. I will meet you or will designate
officers to meet any officers you may name for the
same purpose, at any point agreeable to you, for the
purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which
the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia will
be received." Lee held back. He tried to think the
time had not yet come for abdication of his cause.
"I cannot, therefore, meet you with a view to sur-
render the Army of Northern Virginia, but as far
as your proposal may affect the Confederate States
forces under my command and tend to the restora-
PEACE 195
tion of peace, I shall be pleased to meet you at 10
a.m. to-morrow on the old stage-road to Richmond,
between the picket lines of the two armies."
Grant, who was suffering excruciating pain, sleep-
less, pacing up and down his room, his splitting head
held in his hands, was at first cast down by this reply,
but wrote the next day in response: "As I have no
authority to treat on the subject of peace, the meet-
ing proposed for 10 a.m. to-day could lead to no good.
I will state, however, General, that I am equally anx-
ious for peace with yourself and the whole North
entertains the same feeling. The terms upon which
peace can be had are well understood. By the South
laying down their arms they will hasten that most
desirable event, save thousands of human lives, and
hundreds of millions of property not yet destroyed."
Before Lee got this letter, Lee had held a council of
his officers, who were insistent on a new assault in
hope of breaking through the Union lines, and Gor-
don, leading the assault by Lee's direction, suffered
a repulse. This misadventure, and the temper of
Grant's note, magnanimous, yet placing upon Lee
the sole responsibility for any further loss of life,
resulted in a quick compliance. "I now request an
interview, in accordance with the offer contained in
your letter of yesterday," he wrote; and when Grant
read the note, the pain from which he had been suf-
196 ULYSSES S. GRANT
fering disappeared. " I will push forward to the front
for the purpose of meeting you," he replied; then
riding on with members of his staff, joined on the road
by Sheridan and Ord, he came at noon to Appomat-
tox Court-House, near which the Union and Con-
federate forces lay on their arms, and entered the
brick dwelling with its tawdry furnishings where Lee
and his great hour awaited him.
The story has been written many times, but no
American can weary of its telling. Lee, dressed im-
maculately in a uniform of gray which emphasized
his faultless bearing and his noble form; Grant, as he
has been pictured heretofore, clad in a private's
blouse, soiled with much riding, on which were sewn
the shoulder straps to let his soldiers know his rank;
Lee carrying a handsome sword, but Grant with none.
" What General Lee's feelings were, I do not know,"
writes Grant. "They were entirely concealed from
my observation ; but my own feelings, which had been
quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad
and depressed. I felt like anything rather than re-
joicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long
and valiantly and had suffered so much for a cause,
though that cause was I believe one of the worst for
which a people ever fought and one for which there
was the least excuse."
Grant talked awhile of ordinary things, ignoring
PEACE 197
the momentous theme that brought them there, and
gently leaving that for Lee to introduce, — about old
army times, service in Mexico, where he was a subal-
tern and Lee Scott's chief of staff, — till Lee, remind-
ing him that they had business in hand, said he had
asked the interview to learn the terms that it was
proposed to give his army. Grant told him, and they
fell again in talk till Lee suggested that the terms be
written out. Then, turning to a table, Grant wrote
as he was wont to write, swiftly and clearly without
erasure, not knowing when he took his pen what the
first word would be, but knowing what was in his
mind and wishing to express it unmistakably. "As
I wrote on," he says, "the thought occurred to me
that the officers had their own private horses and
effects which were important to them, but of no
value to us; also that it would be an unnecessary
humiliation to call upon them to deliver their side
arms." When Lee read over that part of the terms,
"he remarked with some feeling, I thought, that this
would have a happy effect upon his army." 1
1 General R. E. Lee,
Commanding Confederate States Armies.
General:
In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th
inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of Northern
Virginia on the following terms, to wit:
Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate, one
copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be
198 ULYSSES S. GRANT
- Then Lee spoke about his mounted men, most of
whom owned their horses, and asked if he should
understand that these should be retained. This had
not been in the terms as written out, but Grant said
that he hoped and thought that there would be no
further battles in the war. "I took it that most of
the men in the ranks were small farmers. The whole
country had been so raided by the two armies that it
was doubtful whether they would be able to put in a
crop to carry themselves and their families through
the next winter without the aid of the horses they
were then riding." So he said that any man who
claimed to own a horse or a mule might take it home.
Lee remarked again that this would have a happy
effect, and straightway wrote out his acceptance of
Grant's terms. Then there was a final touch. As Lee
was going, he spoke again about his men, told Grant
retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The offi-
cers to give their individual paroles not to take up arras against the
Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and
each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the
men of their commands.
The arms, artillery and public property to be packed and stocked
and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them.
This will not embrace the side arms of the officers nor their private
horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed
to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States
authorities so long as they observe their parole and the laws in
force where they may reside.
Very respectfully,
U. S. Grant.
Licutcnmit-Gcneral.
PEACE 199
that they were badly off for food; that for some days
they had been living only on parched corn; he would
have to ask for rations; and Grant told him to send
his commissary and quartermaster to Appomattox
Station, where his men could get all the food they
needed from the trains which Sheridan had stopped.
Then Lee went out, and as he passed, the aides,
who had been waiting on the steps, arose respect-
fully. He did not seem to notice them, but looking
over the green valley toward his surrendered army
he smote his hands abstractedly until his orderly led
up his horse. He took the bridle. Grant walked by
and touched his hat, and Lee, returning the salute in
silence, rode back to his own lines.
That afternoon Grant telegraphed to Stanton in
three lines informing him of Lee's surrender.1 When
his men learned what had been done, they began a
salute in honor of the victory; but Grant, hearing the
first volley, ordered them to stop. He would not add
to the distress of a defeated foe. Thus he had stopped
the cheers at Donelson and Vicksburg.
1 Headquarters, Appomattox Court-House Virginia,
April 9, 1865, 4.30 p.m.
Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War,
Washington.
General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia this
afternoon on terms proposed by myself. The accompanying addi-
tional correspondence will show the conditions fully.
U. S. Grant,
Lieutenant-General.
200, ULYSSES S. GRANT
The next morning he rode out beyond the Union
lines toward Lee's headquarters, and Lee, perceiving
who it was, rode out to meet him. They talked again,
this time about the need for peace. Lee hoped that
there would be no further sacrifice of life, but could
not say; the South was a big country and time might
pass before the war could be entirely ended; he could
not foretell. Then Grant told him that his influ-
ence was greater than that of any other man in the
Confederacy and said that if he should now advise
surrendering all the armies, no doubt his counsel
would be followed with alacrity. But Lee said that
he could not do that without consulting Davis, and
Grant knew that there would be no use in urging him
to do what he did not think was right. So Lee went
back again among his men, and shortly home to lay
aside his uniform. Davis was even then in flight
toward Texas, hoping to keep rebellion there alive;
but he was caught in Georgia on the way.
Grant went to Washington at once. They would
make much of him, but he would not be lionized. He
talked with Lincoln, but declined an invitation to
Ford's Theater, hurrying on to Burlington, New
Jersey, where his children were at school. At Phila-
delphia he heard of Lincoln's murder and came back
to be a tower of strength in the grief-stricken city.
In Washington, a few days later, he received from
GRANT AS LIEUTENANT-* GENERAL
PEACE 201
Sherman the news of Johnston's surrender, and learned
the impossible terms which Sherman had innocently
given, terms which invaded the province of politics
and reconstruction, and which inflamed the North
when Stanton made them public. Stanton's an-
nouncement conveying the information that Sher-
man had been disciplined, and carrying a sinister
suggestion that the hero of the march through
Georgia was implicated in a scheme to let Confeder-
ate officials get away with plunder from the Rich-
mond banks, for a time made Sherman a target for
the people's wrath. Grant was sent to Raleigh to
cancel Sherman's terms and order the resumption
of hostilities. Instead of superseding Sherman and
humiliating him before a beaten enemy, he tactfully
allowed him on his own initiative to reverse his
course and to exact surrender on the terms Grant
gave to Lee according to instructions from the pow-
ers in Washington, then stole away from Raleigh
without letting any one but Sherman know that he
was there.
Thus the war ended, a gentle spirit pervading the
spent armies North and South, due in chief measure
to the generosity of Grant, who shortly after re-
ceived his army's salutations in the solemn pageant
of the Grand Review crowned with the glory of his
country's gratitude.
CHAPTER XXIII
A GENERAL WITHOUT HIS ARMY
At the crest of his renown Grant found himself in
Washington encumbered with high military rank,
but shorn of power. The day he came from Appo-
mattox he put himself to work curtailing the ex-
pense of war by canceling the orders for superfluous
munitions and supplies. He set out also to disband
the armies, so that in a little while he, who yesterday
had headed half a million men, commanded a small
force of regulars, in numbers hardly more imposing
than Scott had handled just before the war. Con-
gress in 1866 revived for him the grade of General,
but did not couple with it new battalions or brigades.
There was not much for him to do except to trim the
ragged edges of rebellion by clearing up the strag-
glers in the South who were reluctant about laying
down their arms. He was a stranger to the Capital,
and had a limited acquaintance with public men.
He had brought with him several members of his
staff; but there were hardly half a dozen men in
Congress whom he knew except by name, and in the
Cabinet, Stanton and Seward were the only two
with whom he had been closely brought in touch.
A GENERAL WITHOUT HIS ARMY 203
Seward, he distrusted because of his diplomacy and
indirection.
Stanton he disliked instinctively, and his dislike
was aggravated by the Sherman episode. Stanton, a
zealot, deeply versed in Bible lore, was an unamal-
gamated mixture of strangely contradictory traits,
domineering, superstitious, cowardly, intolerant,
sympathetic, devoid of loyalty to his co-workers,
though passionately loyal to the Union cause, con-
sistent only in his fervid love of country and of power
and in undeviating lack of tact. With Stanton, for-
mally, Grant had to keep on friendly terms, and so
with Johnson, who was really weak and vacillating,
though outwardly pugnacious, and who, when enter-
ing on his new and onerous responsibilities, could
think of nothing more appropriate to say than to
extol his own past record, concluding with the words :
"The duties have been mine, the consequences
God's."
Grant had now to deal in strange surroundings
with politicians whom he did not know, coping with
questions altogether new. The kindly feeling of
the South, stirred by his chivalry toward Lee, was
strengthened by his stand against the threat of John-
son to try Lee for treason in defiance of the promise
of his parole. A super-serviceable judge at Norfolk
had the grand jury find indictments against some of
204 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the paroled Confederates, and when Lee heard that
he, too, would be indicted, he wrote to Grant remind-
ing him of the protection he understood was granted
him and applying for amnesty and pardon. Grant
needed no reminder. He promptly forwarded to
Johnson, through the Secretary of War, the request
for amnesty, earnestly recommending that it be
granted, and sent Lee's letter to the Secretary with
this endorsement: —
" In my opinion the officers and men paroled at
Appomattox Court-House and since, upon the same
terms given Lee, cannot be tried for treason, so long
as they observe the terms of their parole. This is
my understanding. Good faith as well as true policy
dictates that we should observe the conditions of
that convention. . . . The action of Judge Under-
wood in Norfolk has already had an injurious effect,
and I would ask that he be ordered to quash all
indictments found against paroled prisoners of war
and to desist from the further prosecution of them."
Grant was not content with written words. He
hurried to the White House, where for once he found
his tongue in controversy. " A general commanding
troops," he said, "has certain responsibilities and
duties and power which are supreme. ... I have
made certain terms with Lee, the best and only
terms. If I had told him and his army that their
i
A GENERAL WITHOUT HIS ARMY 205
liberty would be invaded, that they would be open
to arrest, trial, and execution for treason, Lee would
have never surrendered, and we should have lost
many lives in destroying them. ... I will resign the
command of the army rather than execute any order
directing me to arrest Lee or any of his commanders
so long as they obey the laws."
That was a contingency which Johnson dared not
face. He could not hope to put his influence to the
test against the all-pervading popularity of Grant.
The indictments were withdrawn, though Johnson
still denied to Lee his amnesty.1
In Texas Kirby Smith was slow in his surrender,
and Grant rushed Sheridan to force his hand, much
to the discontent of Sheridan, who greatly longed to
lead his troopers in the Grand Review. But Grant
had more in mind than Kirby Smith's chastisement.
Grant had always looked on Maximilian's venture as
1 In November, 1865, Grant gave to Longstreet, who from West
Point days had been his friend, a letter to the President recom-
mending Longstreet's pardon. Armed with this letter, Longstreet
sought Johnson. " The President was nervous, ill at ease, and
somewhat resentful . . . and at length closed the interview by
saying, ' There are three men this Union will never forgive — they
have given it too much trouble. They are Jefferson Davis, Robert
E. Lee, and James Longstreet.' General Longstreet said, ' Those
who are forgiven much, love much, Mr. President.' Johnson
answered, ' You have high authority for that statement, General,
but you cannot have amnesty. ' " (Lee and Longstreet at High Tide,
p. 106.)
206
ULYSSES S. GRANT
closely intertwined with the rebellion, since it had
been encouraged by the heads of the Confederacy anc
instigated by the European powers when Lincoln's
hands were tied and Washington could not effectively
protest. He held the French invasion to be an act of
war on the United States, and thought that we shoulc
treat it so whenever we were free to strike. He often
spoke of it to Lincoln while at City Point, and urged
that when the war was over troops should be thrown
across the border to drive the French invaders out.
He thought then that it would have a noble in-
fluence at home if soldiers of the North and South,
recently fighting one another, could unite in war
against a common foe, and while he had no definite
response from Lincoln, he inferred that Lincoln sym-
pathized with him in this. Grant always held Na-
poleon III in detestation and would have taken keei
delight in his discomfiture. He looked upon him as
the special foe of the United States and liberty.
Though Lincoln's hands were tied, Johnson's were
now free; and Sheridan was an ideal instrument,
impatient to be used. In middle June Grant wrote t<
Johnson proposing " open resistance to the establish-
ment of Maximilian's government in Mexico."
such a government should be established, he couk
"see nothing before us but a long, expensive, anc
bloody war. . . . Every act of the empire of Maxi-
A GENERAL WITHOUT HIS ARMY 207
milian has been hostile to the United States. . . .
What I would propose would be a solemn protest
against the establishment of a monarchical govern-
ment in Mexico by the aid of foreign bayonets. . . .
How all this could be done without bringing on an
armed conflict, others who have studied such matters
could tell better than I."
But Johnson was not greatly interested. He had
fish of his own to fry at home and found it easy to let
Mexico alone, especially as Seward, who was always
at his ear, was altogether hostile to the use of force,
hoping to get everything we needed through the
means of diplomatic notes.
To Sheridan's disgust his cavalry could only chafe
on this side of the Rio Grande, while Grant recorded
an experience in rank without authority — not his
last, for the unlovely days of Reconstruction were
at hand.
CHAPTER XXIV
RECONSTRUCTION
There is no period of our history more mortifying
to our national pride than that just following the
Civil War, no time when in the hour of need exalted
statesmanship was more nearly in eclipse. We can
now only guess what would have been the course of
Reconstruction if Lincoln had not died; though we
know broadly what he had in view to heal the wounds
of war. The charity which permeates the scriptural
phrases of the second inaugural is a precious heritage,
and is in keeping with constructive plans which he
proposed for the regeneration of the South, as well
as with his words at Hampton Roads. What he did
in Louisiana while the war was on gives us an inkling
of what he would have tried to do in other States
after the war was over; but the strong opposition to
his Louisiana policy in Congress must be accepted as
foreshadowing the hostile attitude of radical Repub-
licans if he had sought to carry through a policy like
that in time of peace.
He would, no doubt, have found the people with
him, for a time, and would have had an influence
commensurate with his fame upon Republicans who
RECONSTRUCTION 209
against Johnson went almost to the limit of fanati-
cism. The ultimate result would surely have been
better, but at a cost to Lincoln's name. If he had
tilted with an intolerant Congress in a time of peace,
no matter what the outcome, we almost certainly
should have a different Lincoln in our legends than
we have to-day.
Lincoln outlined a Reconstruction policy in his
message of December, 1863, in accordance with
which State Governments were set up in Louisiana
and Arkansas by order of the military commander
of the department acting under the President's direc-
tion. This did not meet the views of Congress. In
1864 a bill was passed providing for appointment
of provisional governors in the Confederate States
for purposes of civil administration until State Gov-
ernments should be recognized. No State Govern-
ments were to be formed until after the suppres-
sion of military resistance to the United States and
until the people had "sufficiently returned to their
obedience to the Constitution and laws." The bill
provided that the President should not proclaim a
State Government as reestablished without the as-
sent of Congress. It emancipated all slaves.
The President did not sign the bill, and after ad-
journment he gave his reasons in a special procla-
mation; he was not ready to set aside the free State
210 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Constitutions and Governments recently adopted in
Louisiana and Arkansas and to declare a constitu-
tional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in
States.
Lincoln would have treated each case by itself.
He would have let the loyal citizens of a State under
the protection of the military governor organize a
State Government and adopt a constitution. This
was done in Louisiana early in 1864. The constitu-
tion adopted there abolished slavery forever, and
while restricting suffrage to white males, empowered
the Legislature to confer the suffrage on colored men
according to the principles laid down by Lincoln,
that in the reconstructed States the right of suffrage
should be given to "very intelligent" colored peo-
ple and to those who had " fought gallantly in the
ranks."
The question came up in the Senate in February,
1865, on a joint resolution recognizing this Govern-
ment as the legitimate Government of Louisiana.
The resolution had the support of all the Republicans
in the Senate except five radicals led by Sumner, and
it would have been adopted had it not been for Sum-
ner, who, declaring, "I shall regard its passage as a
national calamity," prevented a vote before the close
of Congress on the 4th of March by dilatory motions.
Thaddeus Stevens would have none of Lincoln's
RECONSTRUCTION 211
plan; after the war the South must be treated like
any other conquered territory.
Sumner held that the President should not do the
work of Reconstruction by military order, but that
Congress should do it by law. He wanted Congress
to impose indiscriminate negro suffrage on the States
which had seceded as a condition precedent to their
restoration. Lincoln believed that the State through
moral pressure should be induced to give the suf-
frage to those "colored people who were qualified
for it."
It is a striking fact that Lincoln's very last
public utterance was on this subject. Speaking on
Tuesday evening, April 11, three days before his
assassination, to a crowd gathered at the White
House, he commented on the constitutional question
as to whether the seceded States were still in the
Union or out of it, a question which during the next
three years occupied a share of executive and legis-
lative attention far out of proportion to its real im-
portance.
" As it appears to me, that question has not been
nor yet is a practically material one and that any
discussion of it while it thus remains practically im-
material could have no effect other than the mis-
chievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, what-
ever it may hereafter become, that question is bad
212 ULYSSES S. GRANT
as a basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at
all — a mere pernicious abstraction. We all agree
that the seceded States, so-called, are out of their
proper practical relation with the Union and that the
sole object of the Government, civil and military, in
regard to those States is to again get them into that
proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only
possible, but in fact easier, to do this without decid-
ing or even considering whether these States have
ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding
themselves safely at home, it would be utterly im-
material whether they had ever been abroad."
In the light of history, these words seem rea-
sonable; yet Sumner, writing of them to his friend,
Dr. Lieber, said: "The President's speech and other
things augur confusion and uncertainty in the future,
with hot controversy. Alas! Alas!" And strange as
it may seem to us to-day, Sumner was not alone even
in that hour of triumph and good-will.
A few hours later and Lincoln was dead. Andrew
Johnson in a tragic flash was President of the United
States. It was the sport of Fate that to one so totally
unlike the gentle, wise, and patient Lincoln should
have been assigned the task which he laid down, yet
while the nation was still plunged in grief there were
not lacking honest-minded men who thought they
saw the guiding hand of Providence in what was done.
RECONSTRUCTION 213
George W. Julian, of Indiana, a leading member of
the House, tells how on the very day of Lincoln's
death he spent most of the afternoon in a political
caucus held for the purpose of considering the neces-
sity for a new Cabinet and a line of policy less con-
ciliatory than that of Mr. Lincoln, " and while every-
body was shocked at his murder, the feeling was
nearly universal that the accession of Johnson to the
Presidency would prove a Godsend to the country.
As for Mr. Lincoln's known policy of tenderness to
the rebels which now so jarred upon the feelings of the
hour, his well-known views on the subject of Recon-
struction were as distasteful as possible to radical
Republicans."
The next day, Wade, Chandler, Julian, and other
radical Republicans called on the new President.
Wade exclaimed: "Johnson, we have faith in you.
By the gods, there will be no trouble now in run-
ning the Government." Johnson thanked him and
replied in words which came often to his lips: "I
hold that robbery is a crime; rape is a crime; treason
is a crime; and crime must be punished. Treason
must be made infamous and must be punished, and
traitors must be impoverished."
Yet, shortly, Johnson was vehemently agitating
policies which went much farther toward the re-
habilitation of the old leaders in the seceded States
214 ULYSSES S. GRANT
than those which Lincoln had gently urged, and
the very radicals who had hailed him as a savior
were damning him for treason to the cause. A few
months later, John Hay, revisiting Washington after
a brief tour of duty abroad, recalls that the first
words of his old friend, Harry Wise, were, " Every-
thing is changed; you'll find us all Copperheads."
While U. H. Painter, war correspondent, Lincoln's
and Stanton's confidant and friend, declared, " You
will find the home of virtue has become the haunt of
vice.
" i
In an atmosphere like this, stifling with intrigue
and passion, with an ignorant, stubborn, and loqua-
cious President, a Cabinet jealous and divided among
themselves, a Congress groping in the dark, the
honest-minded, trustful, straight-thinking Grant,
after forty years of obscurity and four years of life
in camp, received his first lesson in politics.
Johnson believed with Lincoln in the indestructi-
bility of the States, but his methods were radically
different. On May 29, 1865, hardly a month from
the time he assumed office, he issued his proclama-
tion of amnesty and pardon to all who would take
an oath to observe all laws and proclamations made
during the war with reference to the emancipation
of slaves, excluding from its provisions, however,
1 Life of John Hay, vol. i, p. 251.
RECONSTRUCTION 215
fourteen specified classes. Among the classes speci-
fied were not only most of the men who had held
civil or military offices of any distinction, but also
all whose taxable property was estimated at over
twenty thousand dollars. Thus, with or without in-
tention, he would eliminate from the new order of the
South most members of that intellectual, landed, and
pedigreed aristocracy against which he had set his
face throughout his political career. He would help
create a new governing class, to be chosen chiefly
from the poor-white population, who hated the
negro with a peculiar hatred arising from condi-
tions prior to the war, when of these two classes so-
cially submerged, the slaves, by very virtue of their
slavery, came in more sympathetic contact with the
aristocracy and held the freemen in contempt.
Johnson, obstinate, narrow, suspicious, and dispu-
tatious, a poor white with a poor white's prejudices,
a Southerner with a Southerner's illogical adherence
to a strictly logical interpretation of the Constitu-
tion, a Democrat and partisan by instinct and train-
ing, was temperamentally incapable of cooperation
with Northern Republicans like Sumner, Chandler,
Stevens, and Butler, radical to the last degree and
indisposed themselves to cooperation except on lines
which they themselves laid down. Prior to his ac-
cession to the Presidency he had hardly been north of
216 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Mason and Dixon's line. His contact with Northern
men and Northern sentiment was confined to his
experience in Washington and with such Federal
officers as he had dealings with while military gov-
ernor of Tennessee. He was unfamiliar with large
cities, had no first-hand knowledge of industrial com-
munities, and was profoundly ignorant of the mani-
fold activities upon which the prosperity of the North
has always rested. The North in turn knew almost
nothing good of him, except that he had been stoutly
for the Union, while others in the South, of wider
culture and under great moral obligations to the
Union, had been either willfully or weakly disloyal.
Fresh with all was the humiliating spectacle of his
installation into office as Vice-President with his piti-
ful, rambling, maudlin speech, just a few days before
he was called so unexpectedly to succeed to greater
power than had been entrusted to any other Ameri-
can except Lincoln.
A wiser man would have been humble and prayer-
ful under such a load, striving with all his might so to
conduct himself as to win support from the strong
men in Congress upon whom he must depend; but
Johnson, driven by a perverse fate, set out to force
them to his own way of thinking without even trying
to discover whether there might not be a common
ground upon which all could stand while struggling
RECONSTRUCTION 217
with a gigantic problem. True, he might not have
got along with Sumner and Stevens in any circum-
stances. Neither might Lincoln if he had lived. But
Lincoln would at least have tried.
The one man whom Johnson went out of the way
to make his friend was Grant. With Lincoln dead,
he recognized in Grant, not only the strongest per-
sonal force in the North, but the man in the North
for whom since Appomattox the conquered South-
erners had the highest esteem, and Johnson was
shrewd enough to see the advantage of having Grant
on his side. Lacking real knowledge of Northern sen-
timent, he looked to Grant as its embodiment. He
sought Grant out. He sent him almost daily notes.
He formed a habit of dropping in casually at Grant's
house or office; he made it a point to attend Mrs.
Grant's receptions. He sought every opportunity to
have Grant by his side in public.
There was a degree of shrewdness in this course,
which was in marked contrast with Stanton's tact-
lessness. Ever since Grant's arrival in Washington,
Stanton had taken obvious delight in asserting his
authority, sending for Grant to come to his own
office on all sorts of occasions and in all sorts of
weather, though Grant was thus frequently com-
pelled to cross the broad and muddy expanse of Penn-
sylvania Avenue and climb painfully up the War
218 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Department stairs; for those were the days before
asphalt pavements, telephones, and electric elevators,
and the headquarters of the Army was in a building
widely separated from the office of the Secretary of
War.
Grant, throughout the early months of the Adminis-
tration, conducted himself with great good sense, ac-
cepting the President's attentions without comment
and without committing himself to any line of policy.
In fact, the general course of the Administration,
from the time of the proclamation of amnesty of
May 29, up to the time when Congress met on De-
cember 5, had much to commend it.
While holding that the question of suffrage was a
matter for the States themselves to determine, John-
son was favorable to a qualified suffrage for the negro,
although at that time the negro had the right to vote
in only six Northern States — Maine, New Hampshire,
Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New
York; and New York required a property qualifica-
tion for the negro voter which was not necessary for
the white. In light of all conditions Johnson showed
breadth of view as well as cunning when he wrote in
a telegram to Governor Sharkey, of Mississippi, on
August 15, 1865, with reference to the work of the
Constitutional Convention : —
" If you could extend the elective franchise to all
RECONSTRUCTION 219
persons of color who own real estate valued at not
less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes
thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary
and set an example the other States will follow. This
you can do with perfect safety, and you thus place
the Southern States in reference to free persons of
color upon the same basis with the free States. I hope
and trust your convention will do this."
If Johnson had been blessed with Lincoln's tact or
could have used the prestige of his name, who can
say that he might not have brought Congress into
line with some such programme, thus obviating the
tragedy of immediate universal negro suffrage? But
it was inevitable that Congress should have a hand
In the work of Reconstruction, especially with Sum-
ner the leader of the Senate and Stevens the leader of
the House, two strong, persistent idealists and radi-
cals, determined upon universal suffrage for the re-
cently emancipated slaves. "Refer the whole ques-
tion of Reconstruction to Congress where it belongs,"
Sumner cried in August. " What right has the Pres-
ident to reorganize States?" — a perfectly logical
and defensible position, but significant in contrast to
Sumner's earlier willingness in April to have Recon-
struction by executive decree so long as he supposed
the franchise would be conferred upon the negro
through this means. Sumner was less concerned about
220 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the encroachment of the Executive than about giving
the negroes in the South the indiscriminate right to
vote.
It was during this period of executive supremacy,
with eight States reconstructed by executive decree
and awaiting the action of Congress on the admission
of their Senators and Representatives, that Grant
was sent by Johnson on a mission to the Southern
States in order that he might report to Congress the
feeling among those lately in rebellion. Grant left
Washington on November 29, 18G5, and visited Ra-
leigh, Charleston, Savannah, Augusta, and Atlanta.
His trip was short, but everywhere he " said much
and conversed freely with the citizens of those States,
as well as with officers of the army who have been
stationed among them."
" I am satisfied," he wrote in his official report
under date of December 18, " that the mass of think-
ing men of the South accept the present situation of
affairs in good faith.
" My observations lead me to the conclusion that
the citizens of the Southern States are anxious to re-
turn to self-government within the Union as soon as
possible; that while reconstructing they want and re-
quire protection from the Government; and that they
are in earnest in wishing to do what is required by the
Government, not humiliating to them as citizens,
• RECONSTRUCTION 221
and that if such a course was pointed out they would
pursue it in good faith. It is to be regretted that there
cannot be a greater commingling at this time between
the citizens of the two sections and particularly of
those entrusted with the lawmaking power."
He did not meet any one, "either those holding
places under the Government or citizens of the South-
ern States," who thought it practicable to withdraw
the military from the South at present. " The white
and black mutually require the protection of the
General Government," and the reason he gives is that
"four years of war, during which law was executed
only at the point of the bayonet throughout the
States in rebellion, have left the people possibly in a
condition not to yield that ready obedience to civil
authority the American people have generally been
in the habit of yielding."
General James H. Wilson, then in command at
Macon, Georgia, and once a member of Grant's
staff, relates how on this trip Grant summoned him
to Atlanta and how they sat up all night discussing
the war and the problem of Reconstruction. In the
conversation, while Grant " did not hesitate to dis-
credit the judgment of Andrew Johnson nor to con-
ceal his dislike of Stanton's arbitrary ways, he dis-
trusted the senatorial group with which Stanton
was associated, and declared that his own views
222 ULYSSES S. GRANT
were not only thoroughly conservative, but thor-
oughly kind as to the generals and politicians of the
South."
The Southern people at this time looked for harsh
treatment, especially in view of Johnson's repeated
threats to make treason odious and to impoverish the
traitors. They would not have been surprised if there
had been an attempt to confiscate their property and
distribute it among the emancipated slaves. Such a
punishment they would have submitted to sullenly,
and almost anything short of that they would have
accepted as a disagreeable price for resuming their
place in the Union.
If at this period men like Sumner, Stevens, and
Wade had been willing to confer with Johnson,
and had not been radically insistent upon securing
for the negro rights and privileges which the negro
was not qualified to exercise, Reconstruction might
have resulted far differently, and we might have been
spared the sorry spectacle of a bitter fight between
Congress and the President with the unseemly im-
peachment proceedings. Fessenden and Henry Wil-
son, more generous and farseeing than Sumner, were
inclined to think the President right in all questions
except suffrage; and Wilson wrote: "We have a
President who does not go as far as we do in the
right direction; but we have him and cannot change
RECONSTRUCTION 223
him, and we had better stand by the Administration
and bring it right."
Of the military commanders in the South, one of
the most sagacious was General John M. Schofield,
who years later became Lieutenant-General of the
Army on the death of Sheridan. He had attributes of
statesmanship, and might with great advantage have
been consulted by the civilians who had to solve in
Washington the grave problems of Reconstruction.
With regard to the proposal of Chase, Sumner, and
other radicals, that the negro should be given the
immediate right to vote, a step which he contended
rightly was unconstitutional — he wrote on May 10,
1865: —
"... My second reason for objecting to the propo-
sition is the absolute unfitness of the negroes as a
class for any such responsibility. They can neither
read nor write. They have no knowledge whatever of
law or government. They do not even know the
meaning of the freedom that has been given them,
and are much astonished when they are informed
that it does not mean that they are to live in idle-
ness and be fed by the government. ... I have yet
to see a single one among the many Union men in
North Carolina who would willingly submit for a
moment to the immediate elevation of the negro to
political equality with the white man. They are all,
224 ULYSSES S. GRANT
or nearly all, content with the abolition of slavery.
Many of them are rejoiced that it is done. But to
raise the negro in his present ignorant and degraded
condition to be their political equals would be in
their opinion to enslave them (the white citizens).
If they did not rebel against it, it would only be
because rebellion would be hopeless. A government
so organized would in no sense be a popular gov-
ernment."
If Reconstruction could have been left to soldiers
like Grant and Schofield, who had fought the South,
knew its leaders, and held their respect, the result
would have been infinitely better than that which
came from the unseemly quarrels of civilian politi-
cians.
If there was ever a time when a military govern-
ment might have proved beneficent in the United
States, this was that time. No soldier could have
made a sorrier mess of Reconstruction than the po-
litical leaders who wrangled it into shape, and almost
any one of the great Union generals could have been
trusted to do a better job. Under a military govern-
ment the country would have been spared the miser-
able squabbles in Washington, the bungling attempts
of Johnson to force upon the country policies the
good features of which he inadequately compre-
hended and the bad features of which were bound to
RECONSTRUCTION 225
raise impossible expectations among the Southern
people, the persistence of the radicals in Congress in
imposing indiscriminate negro suffrage upon resentful
communities, the appointment of provisional civilian
governors, the letting loose of a devastating swarm
of carpet-baggers upon a proud and helpless people,
the imposition of proscriptive qualifications which
debarred the best men in the South from holding
office, thus limiting those who exercised the suffrage
to a choice of carpet-baggers and negroes for places
of political and judicial responsibility.
But it is idle to conjecture what might have hap-
pened if Grant or Sherman or Thomas or Schofield
had been in supreme control. With all their fame the
military leaders of the Civil War were in positions of
hopeless subordination, taking orders from civilians
far less familiar than they with Southern necessities,
in most cases wholly ignorant of the Southern tem-
per, many of them actuated by vindictiveness or
personal ambition, the best of them obsessed with the
delusion that for the negro there could be no middle
ground between the suffrage and slavery, that there
could be no charm in liberty without a vote.
CHAPTER XXV
LESSONS IN POLITICAL INTRIGUE
Grant would have been far better off if he had
kept away from Washington, but it was ordered
otherwise, and he who had commanded all the Union
armies in the field was at the beck and call of men
who could not lead a regiment. True, he was learning
something of the devious ways of politics in prepara-
tion for the baffling tasks before him; but what he
learned was at a heavy cost. " Do not stay in Wash-
ington," Sherman had written him in affectionate
warning when he was made Lieutenant-General.
" Halleck is better qualified than you to stand the
buffets of intrigue and policy. . . . For God's sake
and for your country's sake, come out of Washing-
ton!"
And four years later, in his letter to the President,
after Grant's wretched fray with Johnson, Sherman
returned to the same theme, this time not as a seer
of evil but as its chronicler: —
" I have been with General Grant in the midst of
death and slaughter, — when the howls of people
reached him after Shiloh; when messengers were
speeding to and from his army bearing slanders to
LESSONS IN POLITICAL INTRIGUE 227
induce his removal before he took Vicksburg; in Chat-
tanooga when the soldiers were stealing the corn of
the starving mules to satisfy their own hunger; at
Nashville when he was ordered to the ' forlorn hope '
to command the Army of the Potomac so often de-
feated — and yet I never saw him more troubled
than since he has been in Washington, and been com-
pelled to read himself a ' sneak and deceiver ' based
on reports of four of the Cabinet, and apparently
your knowledge."
The period between these letters had been packed
with incident. Grant had come out of war trium-
phantly, and with the death of Lincoln found himself
a giant plagued by pygmies, a figure looming higher
in the estimation of the people than he himself quite
realized, yet led about by an ill-bred, accidental
President, and subject to humiliating treatment by
a domineering Secretary, only to be entangled at the
end in a dispute between these two which raised with
partisans of each a question of his own veracity.
If at the close of war, when conditions were nearly
ripe for a real welding of spirit North and South,
Grant had been in supreme control, that work might
have gone on to a complete fruition, for even John-
son, in spite of all his truculence and the instinctive
prejudice against him, commanded for a time a
measure of support. Johnson perversely managed
228 ULYSSES S. GRANT
first to alienate the South by vehement denuncia-
tion of its leaders and then the North by equally
violent urging of his policies when sane persuasion
might have brought North and South together in
lasting unity of sentiment; Grant would have had
no animosities and would have had no policy except
the cultivation of good-will. But as General of the
Armies, subject always to authority and military dis-
cipline, he could not influence events and had to
watch them drift. His ideas on the negro problem
had been of slow growth. Before the war he had
not been an abolitionist nor even an anti-slavery
man, but he came to see that slavery must go.
Twenty years later in his book he wrote: " I do not
believe that the majority of the Northern people at
that time were in favor of negro suffrage. They sup-
posed that it would naturally follow the freedom of
the negro, but that there would be a time of proba-
tion in which the ex-slaves could prepare themselves
for the privileges of citizenship before the full right
would be conferred; but Mr. Johnson, after a com-
plete revolution of sentiment, seemed to regard the
South, not only as an oppressed people, but as the
people best entitled to consideration of any of our
citizens. This was more than the people who had
secured to us the perpetuation of the Union were
prepared for, and they became more radical in their
views."
LESSONS LN POLITICAL INTRIGUE 229
And again: " But for the assassination of Mr. Lin-
coln, I believe the great majority of the Northern
people, and the soldiers unanimously, would have
been in favor of a speedy reconstruction on terms that
would be the least humiliating to the people who had
rebelled against their Government. They believed, I
have no doubt, as I did, that besides being the mildest,
it was also the wisest policy. The people who had
been in rebellion must necessarily come back into the
Union and be incorporated as an integral part of the
nation. . . . They surely would not make good citi-
zens if they felt they had a yoke around their necks."
Yet with feelings at the outset of consideration
toward the South, with his instinctive chivalry, with-
out natural sympathy for radical men or measures, he
was driven by events, by the tactlessness of the Presi-
dent, by the perverseness of the time, into a position
where he could align himself no otherwise than with
the advocates of wholesale suffrage for the negro in
the South, protected if need be by military force.
CHAPTER XXVI
JOHNSONS BREAK WITH CONGRESS
Johnson's programme met with no organized resist-
ance up to December, 1865, when the new Congress
gathered after a nine months' vacation from the 4th
of March. Indeed, the people of the North left to
themselves seemed to approve it. Beginning in Au-
gust, State after State in the South, acting in accord-
ance with the Executive's decree, had held conven-
tions which repealed or nullified the ordinance of
secession, abolished slavery, and in most cases repu-
diated the debts incurred in war. Mississippi, South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, fell into
line, balking only at the President's proposal in some
cases that the negro should be given qualified suf-
frage. The men who sat in constitutional conventions
and in legislatures chosen under the new order were
of high character, willing to accept conditions. The
"erring sisters," chastened in spirit, were ready to
come home. It looked as though a reunited coun-
try would stand behind the President. Republican
and Democratic conventions in Northern States
vied with one another in endorsing his policy and
pledging their support. Pennsylvania, under the lead
I
JOHNSON'S BREAK WITH CONGRESS 231
of Stevens, and Massachusetts, under that of Sum-
ner, alone refused assent. Andrew and Morton, the
best of the War Governors, urged cooperation with
the President, expressing sympathy for the South and
opposing unconditional suffrage for the blacks. Even
Stanton, as late as May, 1866, expressed approval of
Johnson's acts up to the time that Congress met.
His quarrel was of gradual development. It was not
until after Congress adjourned in July, 1866, that the
open rupture came.
With the gathering of Congress, Stevens in the
House and Sumner in the Senate set out to organize
the opposition. Up to that time there were no dif-
ferences which could not have been reconciled, and
for nearly three months thereafter nothing happened
which might not have been adjusted with fair con-
cession on each side. Sumner and Stevens with their
radical proposals could not have carried Congress
with them if Johnson had been inclined to counsel
with the majority, yielding here and there for har-
mony; for Sumner and Stevens wanted to go much
farther and faster than the great body of Northern
men were ready then to follow. And while these two
detested Johnson, they wrangled with each other and
in reality had slender bonds of sympathy. Stevens,
though a partisan fanatic, was intensely practical.
Sumner was a turgid visionary, a devotee, who in
232 ULYSSES S. GRANT
spite of his nobility of purpose could never quite ad
just himself to facts.
If Johnson had been wise enough to play on indi
vidual traits, as Lincoln doubtless would have done,
if he had not persisted in having things exactly his
own way, he might have gained all his essentials and
the story of his stormy term need never have been
told. Reconstruction might have come about in such
a manner as to leave lasting friendliness between the
sections, with the Southern States restored to their
old places in the Union and gradual enfranchisement
of the negro as he became qualified to vote.
Few Northern people really thought the negroes
should have suffrage right away. They looked for it
in time, but with a hazy expectation. On the whole
they were amenable to Johnson's plan of admitting
the Senators from Southern States and leaving to
the States themselves the suffrage question so long
as former slaves received protection in their natural
rights. In the election held that fall, Connecticut,
Wisconsin, and Minnesota had declared specifically
against giving the vote to colored persons and in a
general way the elections were regarded as an en
dorsement of the Administration. The people were
not concerned about the prerogatives of the Exeeu
tive and Congress. They were interested in results and
Johnson seemed to be doing fairly well. There had
JOHNSON'S BREAK WITH CONGRESS 233
been no impressive number of abolitionists at the
beginning of the war, and there was no overwhelm-
ing love for the negro at its close. The mass of the
people understood that problem of the South better
than Sumner or Garrison or Phillips. There were
not many who would have been so ingenuous as Gar-
rison on his visit to Charleston in April, 1865, when,
overcome by the apparent gratitude of a crowd of
twelve hundred emancipated plantation hands, he
cried out: " Well, my friends, you are free at last. Let
us give three cheers for Freedom"; and was aston-
ished that there was no response. The freedmen did
not know how to cheer. Like children they looked on
emancipation as a Christmas present. Yet Sumner
would have given them the vote at once. Early in
December, after informing Gideon Welles in one of
his delicious talks, that he had read everything on
republican government from Plato to the last French
pamphlet, he denounced the President's policy as the
greatest and most criminal error ever committed by
any government and solemnly asserted that a general
officer from Georgia had informed him within a week
that the negroes of that State were better qualified
to establish and maintain a republican government
than the whites.1 So far credulity could go with a
high-minded man.
1 Diary of Gideon Welles, vol. in, pp. 176-81.
ZU ULYSSES S. GRANT
The Congress elected a year before, at the same
time with Lincoln, had not been chosen with any-
thing like this in view; but the majority were greatly
interested in maintaining their prerogatives against
executive encroachment and here they were on com-
mon ground with Stevens. At the beginning they
refused seats to Senators and Representatives from
States reorganized under Johnson's plan, thus giving
Johnson his contention that Congress was not con
stituted properly since eleven States remained un-
represented.
The President's first message, written by George
Bancroft, was temperate and admirable in tone, met
with general approval among the people, and irri-
tated only a few implacables in Congress. Three days
before the Senate met, Sumner had talked for two
hours and a half with Johnson at the White House,
recording his opinion that the President "does not
understand the case. Much that he said was painful
from its prejudice, ignorance, and perversity," and
discontinued all personal relations then and there. On
the other hand, John Sherman was writing to his
brother, "he seems kind and patient with all his
terrible responsibilities." So much depends upon the
angle of approach.
Lyman Trumbull, once a Democrat and never a
radical Republican, chairman of the Senate Judi-
1
JOHNSONS BREAK WITH CONGRESS 235
ciary Committee, reported after the holidays a bill to
enlarge the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau so as to
secure for the freedmen, among other things, civil
rights and "equal and exact justice before the law."
The bill passed House and Senate by a two-thirds
vote in each, but on February 19 the President vetoed
it. Congress had never yet in all its history passed
a really important bill over a veto, and did not do
so now; but on the next day, February 20, the House
adopted a concurrent resolution, reported by Stev-
ens from the Committee on Reconstruction, that no
Senator or Representative from any Southern State
should be admitted to either body until Congress had
declared such State entitled to representation.
Up to this hour Johnson seemed to have the coun-
try with him. All the members of his Cabinet, includ-
ing Stanton, acquiesced. And then his fatal failing,
intemperance in speech, worked his undoing. On
February 22 a crowd of his supporters who had been
meeting in a theater marched to the White House
and he went out to see them. Members of the Cabinet
urged him not to talk and he said he would follow their
advice; but his pet passion overcame him; there were
no bounds to his vituperative tongue. Goaded on by
the crowd he cried : —
" I look upon as being opposed to the fundamental
principles of this government and as now laboring to
236 ULYSSES S. GRANT
destroy them: Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania,
Charles Sumner and Wendell Phillips, of Massachu-
setts. . . . Are those who want to destroy our institu-
tions and change the character of the government
not satisfied with the blood that has been shed? Are
they not satisfied with one martyr? . . . Have they
not honor and courage enough to effect the removal of
the presidential obstacle otherwise than through the
hands of the assassin? I am not afraid of assassins!"
In ten minutes he had lowered himself beyond re-
habilitation in the country's eyes and had given
Congress an advantage that they could not have
gained without his aid. From that moment his was
a losing cause. Later, Congress passed a Civil Rights
Bill. He vetoed it and Congress now established a
precedent; it overrode his veto. In June the resolu-
tion upon which the Fourteenth Amendment is based
was adopted, and in July a new Freedmen's Bureau
Bill was passed, in spite of the President's objection.
Congress had acquired the habit of defiance. Vetoes
had become too cheap and frequent to challenge their
respect.
Thus Congress carried through its plan for Re-
construction, moderate and sensible, as a whole, and
Johnson saw himself discredited. It was not till June,
18GG, that Stanton let the public know that he had
opposed the veto of the Civil Rights Bill.
JOHNSON'S BREAK WITH CONGRESS 237
It is not easy now to put one's finger on a serious
objection to Johnson's plan divorced from personal
dislike of the Executive; but the fact that he had
undertaken to reconstruct the Southern States with-
out waiting for Congress to assemble, and had failed
to insist upon the franchise for negroes as well as
whites, had given his opponents needed ammunition;
his own intemperate denunciation had done the rest.
By the same token, in the congressional plan, as
crystallized in legislation during that session, one can
distinguish little to which Johnson might not with
self-respect have given his endorsement. On the
whole it was as good a piece of work as could have
been expected, opening a path through which the
Southern States might have resumed their places in
the Union without self-abasement. The Fourteenth
Amendment did not impose negro suffrage upon any
State, but left that question to the States concerned,
subject only to curtailment of representation in pro-
portion to the number of citizens to whom the fran-
chise might be denied. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill
and the Civil Rights Bill in the form then passed
contained no onerous conditions. The States lately
in rebellion were left to the control of their own local
affairs.
If Johnson had then only shown a spirit of con-
cession, the Southern question might have been set-
238 ULYSSES S. GRANT
tied with the adjournment of that first session in
July, 1866. To his appeal the South would doubtless
have listened with respect; but so long as he kept up
the controversy and continued his assaults upon the
motives of all who took exception to his plan, they
would have been superhuman not to wait for terms
more satisfying to their pride. Their tardiness, en-
couraged by Johnson's folly, led to the deplorable
enactments later which held the seeds of years of
sectional strife.
Elections to a new Congress were to be held in the
autumn following adjournment of the first session,
and there was nothing to it for Johnson, with his pas-
sion for dispute, except to utilize the opportunity to
force the North to his own way of thinking. Late in
August he set out on the " swing around the circle,"
taking Grant, Farragut, and several members of the
Cabinet on his train.
Grant did not want to go. He had for months been
drifting farther and farther away from Johnson. But
he was indispensable to Johnson's purpose. In the
controversy between the President and Congress it
had been assumed both North and South that his
sympathies were with Johnson and when he now
left Washington in Johnson's company and appeared
day after day on the same platform with him, the
suspicion was strengthened: but this was all a part
JOHNSON'S BREAK WITH CONGRESS 239
of Johnson's cunning scheme, conceived by Seward,
it is said.
Johnson left a vituperative trail in every city of
importance between Washington and Chicago. At
Cleveland he was manifestly in his cups. And he was
hardly started on his trip before the country knew
that he was lost. The most praiseworthy cause could
not have weathered such a champion. The people
were humiliated and ashamed. Grant seized the
earliest opportunity to plead sickness, quit the party,
and return to Washington. He had seen Johnson at
his worst; and he could never hold him in respect
again.
Already the relations between Johnson and Stan-
ton were badly strained Stanton was loath to carry
out Johnson's orders interfering with the work of the
district commanders in the South, and the Presi-
dent was soon hunting for some one who would be
amenable.
Uprisings in the South seemed imminent. There
had been riots in New Orleans two days after the ad-
journment of Congress, July 28, and Grant began to
look for trouble. On October 12 he wrote confiden-
tially to Sheridan, who had quit Texas and was in
command at New Orleans : " I regret to say that since
the unfortunate difference between the President and
Congress, the former becomes more violent with the
UO ULYSSES S. GRANT
opposition he meets with, until now but few people
who were loyal to the Government during the rebel-
lion seem to have any influence with him. None have
unless they join in a crusade against Congress and
declare their acts, the principal ones, illegal; and in-
deed I much fear that we are fast approaching the
time when he will want to declare the body itself
unconstitutional and revolutionary. Commanders in
Southern States will have to take care and see if a
crisis does come that no armed headway can be made
against the Union."
The result of the elections was cumulative in its
irritating effect upon the discredited Johnson. Maine
and Vermont in September, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Indiana, and Iowa in October, and all the other
Northern States in November gave great majorities
against the Administration. Only Maryland, Dela-
ware, and Kentucky were Democratic. The Repub-
licans had a larger majority in House and Senate than
ever, amply more than the two thirds needed to
override a veto of any Reconstruction measure they
might see fit to pass.
Another man in Johnson's place would have ac-
cepted the result of the elections as determining the
question of Reconstruction so far as his administra-
tion was concerned, for the Congress just chosen
would not expire until his own term ended. Only
JOHNSON'S BREAK WITH CONGRESS 241
colossal egotism or abounding ignorance could have
prompted opposition to so overwhelming a majority,
and only devotion to an all-absorbing moral issue
could have excused it. But Johnson fatuously under-
took to thwart the will of Congress, with sorry results
both to himself and to the section he set out to serve.
The Southern leaders as a rule would reluctantly
have taken the Fourteenth Amendment had it not
been for Johnson's influence, but owing to his encour-
agement, every one of the eleven seceding States in
the period between August, 1866, and February,
1867, refused to ratify. As a practical necessity,
therefore, Congress was forced to adopt more drastic
measures to bring the recalcitrants into line. It was
intolerable that the Southern States, who before the
war had enjoyed representation in Congress for only
three fifths of the number of their slaves, should, as
a result of insurrection and defeat, come back into
the Union with representation based on the entire
number of citizens, both white and black, while only
the whites had the privilege of the vote, thus giving
the whites of the South, in spite of the terrible loss
in Northern lives and treasure during the rebellion
a greater proportionate representation than ever in
the House and the Electoral College. The Southern
leaders would have seen this had they been let alone.
But Johnson blocked the way.
CHAPTER XXVII
AT ODDS WITH JOHNSON
Grant was entirely out of sympathy with Johnson
by this time, though as a soldier under orders he did
not publicly take issue with his official chief. His im-
mediate superior, Stanton, by the fall of 1866, had
gone over boldly to the radicals in Congress, with
whom for months he had already been in secret cor-
respondence, so that Grant was in a trying place. We
have seen how he wrote to Sheridan, but outwardly he
maintained a reticence so complete that only John-
son and some members of the Cabinet suspected how
he really felt. In his testimony before the House
Judiciary Committee on July 18, 1867, after the
quarrel had progressed much farther, he thus ex-
plained himself : —
" I have always been attentive to my own duties,
and tried not to interfere with other people's. I was
always ready to originate matters pertaining to the
Army, but I was never ready to originate matters
pertaining to the civil government of the United
States. When I was asked my opinion about what
had been done I was willing to give it. I originated no
plan and suggested no plan for civil government. I
AT ODDS WITH JOHNSON 243
only gave my views on measures after they had been
originated. I simply expressed an anxiety that some-
thing should be done to give some sort of control
down there. There were no governments there when
the war was over and I wanted to see some govern-
ments established and wanted to see it done quickly.
I did not pretend to say how it should be done or in
what form."
Riots were threatened in Baltimore at election
time in November, 1866. It was a controversy be-
tween rival boards of police commissioners, one
appointed by the Democratic Governor, Swann,
the other claiming independent authority. Johnson
wanted to send troops to help the Governor to up-
hold his own commissioners. He had with him all the
Cabinet but Stanton. Grant protested earnestly, and
when he found the President persisting, he wrote an
official letter to the Secretary of War calling attention
to the law which specified the only circumstances in
which the military forces of the United States could
be called out to interfere in state affairs. The troops
were not sent and Grant, by his personal influence in
two visits to Baltimore, persuaded the contending
parties to leave their quarrel to the courts. If John-
son had prevailed, the Federal troops would have
been used against the party which had been loyal
to the Union and in behalf of former Confederates.
244 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Grant thought he saw here a disloyal intent. What-
ever its purpose, he saved an ugly situation.
Maximilian was still in Mexico. Napoleon, yield-
ing to persistent pressure and convinced at last of the
futility of his designs, had ordered the French troops
withdrawn. He had good reason for this change of
policy. Grant two years before had sent Schofield to
Texas with secret orders to organize if necessary an
army of American volunteers, for enrollment under
the Liberal Government in Mexico, to drive out the
invaders. He thought that Seward had befogged the
issue and that if he had a partiality, it leaned toward
imperial success. Grant was insistent on enforcing
the Monroe Doctrine, and kept the Minister from
France in Washington informed of how he felt. Na-
poleon knew that Grant would almost certainly in a
few months be President, clothed with authority
which now he lacked. At last Seward sent Schofield
to Paris with instructions to " get your legs under
Napoleon's mahogany and tell him he must get out
of Mexico." So the French army quit, but Maxi-
milian with quixotic chivalry remained. His fragile
empire was already crumbling, and the republicai
government which we had recognized was coming tc
its own. There was no special reason why Grant 01
any other army officer should go to Mexico; yet in
the middle of October, just as he had become annoy-
AT ODDS WITH JOHNSON 245
ingly unsympathetic with Johnson's policies, a pre-
text was found to send him there.
Campbell, who had been appointed Minister a long
while before and had dawdled the intervening time
away, was due at last to enter on his service, and John-
son ordered Grant to accompany him "to give the
Minister the benefit of his advice in carrying out the
instructions of the Secretary of State." At the same
time Sherman, who had been outspoken in favor of
Administration policies, was ordered to Washington,
the intention being to detail him to Grant's military
duties.
To the amazement of Johnson and Seward, Grant
refused to go. He had divined the purpose of the
mission. Johnson renewed the order in a day or two.
Grant again declined, this time in writing. A little
later he was summoned to a Cabinet meeting. The
Secretary of State read him detailed instructions for
his mission as if nothing unusual had occurred. Grant
was not disturbed. He told the President and the
Cabinet that he did not intend to go. Turning to the
Attorney-General, Johnson exclaimed: "Mr. Attor-
I ney-General, is there any reason why General Grant
should not obey my orders? Is he in any way in-
eligible to this position? " " I can answer that ques-
tion, Mr. President," said Grant, " without referring
to the Attorney-General. I am an American citizen
246 ULYSSES S. GRANT
and eligible to any office to which any American is
eligible. I am an officer of the Army and bound to
obey your military orders. But this is a civil office,
a purely diplomatic duty that you offer me, and I
cannot be compelled to undertake it." No one re-
plied and Grant left the room.
Even after this the President persisted. Stanton
was told to ask Grant to proceed to Mexico; and
Grant had to write another letter declining to go.
When Sherman arrived in Washington, he reported
first to Grant, who told him what the President had
in mind. The rest of the story, as Sherman tells it
his " Memoirs," sheds an interesting light upon the
characters of Grant and Johnson. The President's
plain misconstruction of Grant's attitude helps to
illuminate the controversy between the two over a
year later, when the issue of veracity became acute.
" General Grant," says Sherman, " denied the right
of the President to order him on a diplomatic mission
unattended by troops; said that he had thought the
matter over, would disobey the order and stand the
consequences. He manifested much feeling and said
it was a plot to get rid of him. I then went to Presi-
dent Johnson, . . . who said that General Grant was
about to go to Mexico on business of importance and
he wanted me at Washington to command the Army
in General Grant's absence. I then informed him that
AT ODDS WITH JOHNSON 247
General Grant would not go and he seemed amazed;
said . . . that Mr. Campbell had been accredited to
Juarez . . . and the fact that he was accompanied by
so distinguished a soldier would emphasize the act of
the United States. I simply reiterated that General
Grant would not go and that he, Mr. Johnson, could
not afford to quarrel with him at that time." Sher-
man suggested that if the real object were to put
Campbell in official communication with Juarez, the
bill could be filled better by Hancock or Sheridan,
and that he himself could be sooner spared than
Grant, who was engaged in the most delicate and
difficult task of reorganizing the Army under the
Act of July 28, 1866. " Certainly," answered the
President ; " if you will go, that will answer perfectly."
So Sherman went to Mexico with Campbell. As
he sailed from New York Harbor on the Susque-
hanna, he turned to the captain and said: "My mis-
sion is already ended. By substituting myself I have
prevented a serious quarrel between the Adminis-
tration and Grant." As might have been expected,
his journey, from which he returned three months
later, was a waste of time.
When the Thirty-ninth Congress met for its second
session on December 5, 1866, the Fourteenth Amend-
ment had not yet been ratified. Congress had voted
that no Senator or Representative should be ad-
248 ULYSSES S. GRAXT
raitted from either of the eleven States which had
been in insurrection until the right of such State to
representation had been agreed to by both Houses
of Congress. A bill proposed by Stevens, and re-
ported from the Committee on Reconstruction in
the closing days of the session, providing for the re-
admission of the seceding States upon the accept-
ance by them of the Fourteenth amendment, had
not become a law.
Congress turned at once to Reconstruction meas-
ures. Stevens promptly introduced a bill providing for
valid governments in the States still unreconstructed,
on the basis of negro suffrage and white disfranchise-
ment. He was goaded to vindictiveness by the con-
tumacy of Southern Legislatures and Johnson's
stubbornness, while many who had been inclined to
moderation six months before were now ready to
take the verdict of the elections as justifying meas-
ures as radical as might be urged. The bill, which be-
came known as the Reconstruction Act, brushed
aside the State Governments created through execu-
tive decree which had been in feeble operation for
many months, divided their territory into five mili-
tary districts, each to be commanded by an army
officer of the rank at least of Brigadier-General, who
was to be designated by the General of the Army.
This bill, unpalatable to a numerous minority of his
AT ODDS WITH JOHNSON 249
own party, because it provided for indeterminate
military rule, was whipped through the House by
Stevens with a scourge of taunts which brought the
tardy into line. While the bill was pending in the
Senate, Grant quietly let it leak out that he would
rather leave the designation of district commanders
to the President than to the General of the Army —
and in this form the bill became law over the Presi-
dent's veto on the 2d of March.
As finally enacted, the law provided that Senators
and Representatives from a seceded State should be
admitted to seats in Congress on the adoption of a
constitution providing among other things for uni-
versal suffrage without discrimination as to color and
the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was
left to the military commander in each district to
take the initiative in summoning a convention to pave
the way for Reconstruction.
While the struggle between the President and Con-
gress had been going on, Johnson had arbitrarily re-
moved several thousand Republican office-holders
and filled their places with his own sympathizers. To
meet this, Congress, on March 2, passed over his veto
the Tenure of Office Act, which took away from him
the power, without the Senate's consent, to remove
office-holders originally confirmed by the Senate. His
disregard of this act in Stanton's case brought on the
250 ULYSSES S. GRANT
series of events leading up to his impeachment; yet
it is a striking fact that Stanton himself, though not
then on cordial terms with Johnson, joined with
Seward in helping to frame the veto measure which
Johnson signed.
Thus the Thirty-ninth Congress, chosen six months
before the close of the war and meeting for the first
time nine months after Lincoln's death, placed on the
statutes over his successor's veto radical measures
for the reconstruction of the South which Lincoln
would not have stood for and which only a small
minority of its own membership would have favored
when it first assembled — measures which ushered
in a period of racial and sectional hate, of violence and
blood-letting, of extravagance, corruption, and na-
tional degeneracy for which our history presents no
parallel, not even in the stress of civil war. Grant,
though the first citizen of the Republic, already set
apart for the chief magistracy, had the habit of mili-
tary subordination so firmly fixed and was so lacking
in political experience that he had little influence on
legislation. He had to watch the current drift, un-
conscious, for all that the records show, that he was
fated at his entrance upon the Presidency to find a
problem confronting him which the wisest and most
masterful of statesmen could hardly hope to solve.
He had no sympathy with Johnson, Stevens, or
AT ODDS WITH JOHNSON 251
Sumner in their quarrels. He owed them no grati-
tude for the hateful legacy bequeathed to him by their
mistaken zeal.
The new Congress, which met on March 4 in
accordance with a law enacted to curb Johnson's
control, stirred Johnson's wrath still further by leg-
islation stripping him of authority under the Recon-
struction acts. Stanton approved this new legisla-
tion. There is evidence that he drafted its principal
features. He was outspoken in Cabinet meetings
against the President and his associates in the Ad-
ministration. His breach with Johnson was complete.
Congress adjourned, on July 20, to November 3. It
was hardly out of the way before Johnson set out to
get rid of Stanton and to displace Sheridan. Sheri-
dan had really started the row by removing state and
city officers concerned in the New Orleans riots a
year earlier and Governor J. Madison Welles, "who,"
he wrote, was " a political trickster and a dishonest
man ... his conduct has been as sinuous as the mark
left in the dust by the movement of a snake."
Before taking definite action Johnson told Grant
what he had in mind. This was on August 1. Grant
entered a strong protest which he embodied in a
letter later in the same day : —
'I take the liberty of addressing you privately on
the subject of the conversation we had this morning,
252 ULYSSES S. GRANT
feeling as I do the great danger to the welfare of the
country should you carry out the designs then ex-
pressed.
"First, on the subject of the displacement of the
Secretary of War. His removal cannot be effected
against his will without the consent of the Senate. It
is but a short time since the United States Senate was
in session, and why not then have asked for his re-
moval if it was desired? It certainly was the intention
of the legislative branch of the Government to place
Cabinet officers beyond the power of Executive re-
moval, and it is pretty well understood that so far
as Cabinet ministers are affected by the ' Tenure of
Office Bill,' it was intended specially to protect the
Secretary of War, whom the country felt great con-
fidence in. The meaning of the law may be explained
away by an astute lawyer, but common sense and the
views of loyal people will give to it the effect intended
by its framers.
"On the subject of the removal of the very able
commander of the Fifth Military District, let me ask
you to consider the effect it would have upon the
public. He is universally and deservedly beloved by
the people who sustained this Government through
its trials, and feared by those who would still be
enemies of the Government. . . .
" In conclusion allow me to say, as a friend, desiring
AT ODDS WITH JOHNSON 253
peace and quiet, the welfare of the whole country
North and South, that it is in my opinion more than
the loyal people of this country (I mean those who
supported the Government during the great rebel-
lion) will quietly submit to, to see the very men of all
others whom they have expressed confidence in re-
moved."
Whereupon the President, on August 5, sent Stan-
ton this note : —
"Sir: — Public considerations of a high character
constrain me to say that your resignation as Secre-
tary of War will be accepted."
To which Stanton immediately replied : —
" I have the honor to say that public considerations
of a high character, which alone have induced me to
continue at the head of the Department, constrain
me not to resign the office of Secretary of War before
the next meeting of Congress."
CHAPTER XXVIII
ACTING SECRETARY OF WAR
Thwarted in his demand for Stanton's resignation,.
Johnson decided to suspend him and put Grant in his
place. No one could say with certainty even then
just where Grant stood on the disputed questions of
the hour. It was a hard part to play, with passion
raging everywhere, but he had thus far saved him-
self from taking sides. Ben Wade, one of the most
bitter radicals in Congress, said he had often tried
to find out whether Grant was for Congress or for
Johnson or what he was for, but never could get any-
thing out of him; "for as quick as he'd talk poli-
tics Grant would talk horse." Actually, however, we
have seen that Grant was now convinced that the
congressional policy, however regrettable in certain
features, had become inevitable through Johnson's
mistaken course. He believed primarily in strict
obedience to the law.
On August 12, 1867, therefore, Johnson sent word
to Stanton suspending him from the office of Secre-
tary of War and directing him to turn the records of
the office over to General Grant. Grant notified Stan-
ton of his assignment, concluding a courteous note : —
" In notifying you of my acceptance, I cannot let
ACTING SECRETARY OF WAR 255
the opportunity pass without expressing to you my
appreciation of the zeal, patriotism, firmness, and
ability with which you have ever discharged the du-
ties of Secretary of War."
Stanton responded with equal courtesy; but he en-
closed with this communication the copy of a vivid
letter which he had sent that same day to Johnson,
denying the legality of his suspension and con-
cluding: —
"But inasmuch as the General commanding the
armies of the United States has been appointed ad
interim, and has notified me that he has accepted the
appointment, I have no alternative but to submit,
under protest, to superior force."
Gideon Welles, the sturdy and vivacious chronicler
of individual dislikes, gives in his "Diary" the mem-
orandum of a conversation he had with Grant a few
days later at the War Department, in which Grant
clearly showed his sympathy with Congress, though
not, it must be said, with cogent reasoning, as Welles
transcribes his views. "On the whole," comments
the controversial diarist, " I did not think so highly of
General Grant after as before this conversation. He
is a political ignoramus. . . . Obviously he has been
tampered with and flattered by the Radicals, who
are using him and his name for their selfish and par-
tisan purposes."
256 ULYSSES S. GRANT
It was a mistake for Grant to take Stanton's place.
He served as Secretary from August, 1867, to Janu-
ary, 1868; and nothing was so eventful in his service
as the manner of his leaving it, although he remedied
abuses in administration, and rid the Government
of unnecessary waste, in rotten contracts, growing
out of war. The people did not understand his at-
titude. There was no reason why they should. His
letter to the President protesting against the removal
of Sheridan and Stanton was not published at the
time. The North did not appreciate that he had
kept the place from falling into the hands of one who
might be more subservient to Johnson's whims. They
were resentful and indignant at the sacrifice of Stan-
ton and blamed Grant for what looked like acquies-
cence.
As Grant maintained his taciturnity, no one, out-
side the Cabinet and his personal staff, suspected the
continual friction between the War Department and
the White House. He attended Cabinet meetings as
seldom as possible and avoided the discussion of
political questions, leaving usually as soon as the
routine business was ended. He tried to keep his civil
and military characters distinct. It was an incon-
gruous combination with a touch of Gilbert and Sul-
livan. As Acting Secretary at the War Department in
the morning he would sign orders to himself as Gen-
ACTING SECRETARY OF WAR 257
eral of the Army and then trudge across the street to
Army headquarters, where he would acknowledge
their receipt and execute them.
The open break with Johnson came on Sheridan's
removal. In that encounter Grant got the worst of it.
In giving his order removing Sheridan and putting
Thomas in his place, Johnson invited suggestions and
Grant replied : —
" I am pleased to avail myself of your invitation to
urge — earnestly urge, urge in the name of patriotic
people — that this order should not be insisted upon.
It is the will of the country that General Sheridan
should not be removed from his present command.
This is a republic where the will of the people is
the law of the land. I beg that their voice may be
heard."
This and more like it, so lacking in Grant's usual
simplicity and restraint, Johnson punctured with the
retort: —
" I am not aware that the question of retaining
General Sheridan in command of the Fifth Military
District has ever been submitted to the people them-
selves for determination. . . . General Sheridan has
rendered himself exceedingly obnoxious by the man-
ner in which he has exercised the powers conferred
by Congress and still more so by the resort to au-
thority not granted by law. . . . His removal, there-
258 ULYSSES S. GRANT
fore, cannot be regarded as an effort to defeat the
laws of Congress."
These letters were made public after Sheridan's
removal. Johnson was praised in the South for his
discomfiture of Grant and Grant was criticized in the
North for the feebleness of his stand against Johnson.
He might have drawn a lesson from the incident
that he was less fit for controversy than command.
Johnson, on December 12, 1867, just three weeks
after Congress met again after a long recess, sent a
message telling all about Stanton's suspension, forti-
fied with documents and containing interesting rev-
elations in regard to Stanton's own attitude toward
the Tenure of Office Act. For an example : —
" Every member of my Cabinet advised me that
the proposed law was unconstitutional. All spoke
without doubt or reservation, but Mr. Stanton's con-
demnation of the law was the most elaborate and
emphatic. ... I was so much- struck with the full
mastery of the question manifested by Mr. Stanton
. . . that I requested him to prepare the veto upon
this Tenure of Office Bill. This he declined on the
ground of physical disability, . . . but stated his readi-
ness to furnish what aid might be required in the
preparation of materials for the paper."
Talk about impeachment rumbled in the air. Dur-
ing the preceding winter several resolutions had been
ACTING SECRETARY OF WAR 259
presented in the House, had been considered by com-
mittees, and as late as February 15 had been disap-
proved.
Then in a week, committee and House reversed
themselves. On February 22, 1868, just two years
from the day Johnson made his ill-fated speech from
the White House steps, the Reconstruction Com-
mittee unanimously reported a resolution of im-
peachment, and two days later the resolution was
adopted by the House, 128 to 47, the negative votes
all Democrats. What had happened to bring about
so swift a change?
The Senate had duly considered Johnson's reasons
for suspending Stanton and resolved that they were
insufficient. This was late in the afternoon of Janu-
ary 13, the Senate having had the question under con-
sideration since January 11. On the morning of the
14th, Grant went to the office of the Secretary of War,
locked and bolted the door on the outside, turned the
key over to the Adjutant-General, and at once sent
a formal letter to the President, by the hand of Gen-
eral Comstock, saying that he had been notified of
the action of the Senate and that by the terms of the
law his own functions as Secretary of War ceased with
the reception of the notice. Stanton was once more
in possession.
With customary incivility almost his first act was
260 ULYSSES S. GRANT
to send a messenger to Grant's office with word that
he "wanted to see him." Had it not been before the
days of electricity, he would no doubt have pressed a
buzzer, as happened afterwards with other secretaries
and other generals. Both Grant and Sherman four
months before his removal had found Stanton's ar-
rogance insufferable, and Grant at one time had con-
cluded that either he or Stanton must resign.1
1 "In 18G6, 1867, and 1868, General Grant talked to me freely
several times of his differences with Secretary Stanton. His most
emphatic declaration on that subject, and of his own intended
action in consequence, appears from the records to have been
made after Stanton's return to the war office in January, 1868,
when his conduct was even more offensive to Grant than it had
been before Stanton's suspension in August, 1867, and when Grant
and Sherman were trying to get Stanton out of the war office. At
the time of General Grant's visit to Richmond, Virginia, as one of
the Peabody Trustees, he said to me that the conduct of Mr. Stan-
ton had become intolerable to him, and, after asking my opinion,
declared in emphatic terms his intention to demand either the
removal of Stanton or the acceptance of his own resignation. But
the bitter personal controversy which immediately followed be-
tween Grant and Johnson, the second attempt to remove Stanton
in February, 1868, and the consequent impeachment of the Presi-
dent, totally eclipsed the more distant and lesser controversy be-
tween Grant and Stanton, and doubtless prevented Grant from
taking the action in respect to Stanton's removal which he in-
formed me at Richmond he intended to take." (Schofield, Forty-
six Years in the Army, pp. 412-13.)
CHAPTER XXIX
A QUESTION OF VERACITY — THE IMPEACHMENT
PROCEEDINGS — ELECTION AS PRESIDENT
Johnson was furious. That day a bitter, far-reaching
dispute began, involving the good faith and truth-
fulness of Grant and the veracity of Johnson. It
severed all relations between the two. Johnson con-
tended that the Tenure of Office Act was unconsti-
tutional, and that in any event, by the manner of
its phrasing, it did not apply to Stanton or any other
of Lincoln's appointees. He wanted to test it in the
courts, and he declared that Grant agreed to " return
the office to my possession in time to enable me to
appoint a successor before final action by the Senate
upon Mr. Stanton's suspension, or would remain as
its head awaiting a decision of the question by judi-
cial proceedings."
Grant denied that he had made such an agreement.
He admitted that some time after assuming the duties
of Secretary, when the President asked his views as
to the course which Stanton must pursue to gain
possession of the office in case the Senate should not
concur in his suspension, he had replied in substance
that Stanton would have to appeal to the courts to
reinstate him. " Finding that the President was de-
262 ULYSSES S. GRANT
sirous of keeping Mr. Stanton out of office, whether
sustained in the suspension or not, I stated that I had
not looked particularly into the Tenure of Office Bill,
but that what I had stated was a general principle
and if I should change my mind in this particular case
I would inform him of the fact. Subsequently, on
reading the Tenure of Office Bill closely, I found that
I could not without violation of the law refuse to
vacate the office of Secretary of War the moment Mr.
Stanton was reinstated by the Senate,1 even though
the President should order me to retain it, which he
never did. Taking this view of the subject and learn-
ing on Saturday, the 11th instant, that the Senate
had taken up the subject of Mr. Stanton's suspen-
sion, after some conversation with Lieutenant-Gen-
eral Sherman and some members of my staff, in which
I stated that the law left me no discretion as to my
action should Mr. Stanton be reinstated, and that I
intended to inform the President, I went to the Presi-
dent for the sole purpose of making this decision
known and did so make it known. In doing this I
1 Sec. 5 — That if any person shall, contrary to the provision
of this Act, accept any appointment to or employment in any of-
fice, or shall hold or exercise any such office or employment, he
shall be deemed, and is hereby declared to be, guilty of a high mis-
demeanor, and, upon trial and conviction thereof, he shall be pun-
ished therefor by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or by
imprisonment not exceeding five years, or both said punishments,
in the discretion of the court.
A QUESTION OF VERACITY 263
fulfilled the promise made in our last preceding con-
versation on the subject."
The trouble was that Johnson did not know Grant.
He could not comprehend finality of purpose in one
who did not storm and bluster. Like many other
stubborn men of narrow opportunities he overesti-
mated his own power of persuasion. As Grant was
leaving after announcing his decision, Johnson said
he would expect to see him again. To Johnson this
meant further argument with the probability of
Grant's acceding to his views. To Grant it meant
nothing of the sort. He had made up his mind.
Johnson had misjudged Grant once before when he
told Sherman Grant was going to Mexico after Grant
had said he did not intend to go. He might have
profited by that experience.
The 14th was Cabinet day. Johnson, in whose own
hand Comstock had placed Grant's written notifica-
tion and who had read it in Comstock's presence, ig-
noring the letter, sent word back by Comstock that
he wanted to see Grant at the meeting. In his con-
troversial letter to Johnson, dated January 28, 1868,
Grant says : —
"At this meeting, after opening it as though I were
a member of the Cabinet, when reminded of the
notification already given him that I was no longer
Secretary of War ad interim, the President gave a
201 ULYSSES S. GRANT
version of the conversations alluded to already. In
this statement it was asserted that in both conver-
sations I had agreed to hold on to the office of Secre-
tary of War until displaced by the courts, or resign, so
as to place the President where he would have been
had I never accepted the office. After hearing the
President through, I stated our conversations sub-
stantially as given in this letter. ... I in no wise ad-
mitted the correctness of the President's statement,
though, to soften the evident contradiction my state-
ment gave, I said (alluding to our first conversation
on the subject) the President might have understood
me the way he said, namely, that I had promised to
resign if I did not resist the reinstatement. I made no
such promise."
Here the question of veracity arises. The next
morning the "National Intelligencer," the Adminis-
tration organ, had an editorial purporting to give an
account of the meeting, leaving Grant in the position
of having then admitted equivocation and a breach
of faith. Grant called with Sherman at the White
House to protest against it. At a meeting next day
Johnson read the editorial to the members of the
Cabinet and secured from each of them a con-
firmation of the "Intelligencer" report. Still later
each gave the President a written statement con-
firming Johnson's recollection of the affair.
A QUESTION OF VERACITY 265
Gideon Welles, who had long included Grant in
his accumulating collection of malevolents, thus de-
scribes the scene in his "Diary": —
"The President was calm and dignified, though
manifestly disappointed and displeased. General
Grant was humble, hesitating, and he evidently felt
that his position was equivocal and not to his credit.
There was, I think, an impression on the minds of
all present (there certainly was on mine) that a con-
sciousness that he had acted with duplicity — not
been faithful and true to the man who had confided
in and trusted him — oppressed General Grant. His
manner, never very commanding, was almost abject,
and he left the room with less respect, I apprehend,
from those present than ever before. The President,
though disturbed and not wholly able to conceal his
chagrin from those familiar with him, used no hard
expressions nor committed anything approaching
incivility, yet Grant felt the few words put to him
and the cold and surprised disdain of the President
in all their force."
The correspondence between Grant and Johnson
growing out of this dispute began with a request from
Grant, on January 24, that the President give him in
writing an order, given verbally five days earlier, to
disregard Stanton's orders as Secretary of War. "I
am compelled to ask these instructions in writing,"
2GG ULYSSES S. GRANT
he says in the letter of January 28 already quoted,
" in consequence of the many and gross misrepre-
sentations affecting my personal honor, circulated
through the press for the past fortnight, purporting
to come from the President, of conversations which
occurred either with the President privately in his
office or in Cabinet meeting. What is written admits
of no misunderstanding."
So far as Grant was concerned the correspondence
ended with his letter of February 3 in response to
Johnson's letter of January 31. There is nothing in
American history before or since to compare with
this challenge of the President's veracity by the
General of the Army.
Badeau says that Grant first wrote a reply much
milder in tone, admitting the possibility that John-
son might have honestly misconstrued his position.
But Rawlins, who unlike Grant saw the political
bearing of the controversy, said: "This will not do;
it is not enough"; and drafted a paragraph directly
contradicting and defying the President. This may
well be true; at any rate, the letter unequivocal and
personal destroyed all possibility of further relations
and made Grant at once the head of the Republican
Party.
Grant in his letter said of Johnson's statement: —
" I find it but a reiteration, only somewhat more
A QUESTION OF VERACITY 267
in detail, of the 'many and gross misrepresenta-
tions' . . . which my statement of the facts set forth
in my letter of the 28th ultimo was intended to cor-
rect ; and I here reassert the correctness of my state-
ments in that letter; anything in yours in reply to it
to the contrary notwithstanding. I confess my sur-
prise that the Cabinet officers referred to should so
greatly misapprehend the facts in the matter of ad-
missions alleged to have been made by me. . . .
"From our conversations, and my written protest
of August 1, 1867, against the removal of Mr. Stan-
ton, you must have known that my greatest objec-
tion to his removal or suspension was the fear that
some one would be appointed in his stead, who would,
by opposition to the laws relating to the restoration
of the Southern States to their proper relations to
the Government, embarrass the Army in the per-
formance of duties especially imposed upon it by
these laws; and it was to prevent such an appoint-
ment that I accepted the office of Secretary of War
ad interim, and not for the purpose of enabling you
to get rid of Mr. Stanton by my withholding it from
him in opposition to law, or, not doing so myself,
surrendering it to one who would, as the statement
and assumptions in your communication plainly indi-
cate was sought. . . . The course you would have it
understood I had agreed to pursue was in violation of
208 ULYSSES S. GRANT
law, and without orders from you; while the course
I did pursue and which I never doubted you fully
understood, was in accordance with law, and not
in disobedience to any orders of my superior.
"And now, Mr. President, when my honor as a
soldier and integrity as a man have been so violently
assailed, pardon me for saying that I can but regard
this whole matter, from the beginning to the end, as
an attempt to involve me in the resistance of law, for
which you hesitated to assume the responsibility in
orders, and thus to destroy my character before the
country. I am in a measure confirmed in this con-
clusion by your recent orders directing me to disobey
orders from the Secretary of War, — my superior and
your subordinate, — without having countermanded
his authority to issue the orders I am to disobey.
He concluded with the assurance "that nothing
less than a vindication of my personal honor and
character" could have induced this correspondence
on his part.
From that day Grant refused to have any dealings
whatever either with Johnson or with members of
the Cabinet wTho, in confirming Johnson's version of
their interview, gave the sanction of their names to
his assault on Grant's veracity.
While Congress and the country were intent on j
his dispute with Grant, Johnson was nursing his
THE IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS 269
determination to get rid of Stanton. He refused to
recognize him as Secretary. He directed Grant to
ignore Stanton's orders. He tried to get Sherman to
take Stanton's place; but Sherman sturdily refused.
Johnson's personal objection to Stanton was only one
of the factors in his determination. He was obsessed
with the idea of testing the Tenure of Office Act in
the courts and thus gaining a tactical advantage
over his enemies in Congress. On February 21 he
ordered Lorenzo Thomas, the Adjutant-General, to
take possession of the office of the Secretary of
War, and gave him a letter which Thomas handed
to Stanton removing Stanton. Stanton held on to
the office and barred Thomas out. The defiance
was on.
Then it was that Stevens presented his report,
signed by all the Republican members of the Recon-
struction Committee, impeaching Andrew Johnson
of high crimes and misdemeanors in office. Two days
later the House adopted the resolution, 126 to 47,
every Republican present voting "aye." The trial
in the Senate began almost immediately. Johnson
escaped conviction by a single vote, and, strange to
say, one of the earliest concessions on both sides was
that, so far as Stanton's removal was concerned, he
had acted entirely within the law. The charges on
which the case against him was finally made were
270 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Stevens's charges of general contumacy which the
House had a few weeks earlier refused to regard as
justifying impeachment.
The first vote of the Senate on the articles of im-
peachment was on May 16. Then a recess of Con-
gress was taken to May 26, when the final vote was
taken. During the recess the National Union Re-
publican Convention assembled in Chicago, and on
May 20 Grant was nominated for President by a
unanimous vote, with Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of
the House, for Vice-President. Grant had never
voted but once in his life and then for Buchanan,
"because I knew Fremont." If he had qualified in
Illinois in 1860, he would have voted for Douglas.
But his antecedents were Republican. That was the
political faith of his father, and through his experi-
ence with Johnson he had developed a partisan bias
which led him even to the point of hoping for John-
son's conviction on the articles of impeachment.
There was no incongruity, therefore, in his becom-
ing the Republican candidate, and it was lucky for
the party that they could command the service of the
outstanding figure of the time. The elections of the
fall of 1867 had shown an alarming Democratic tend-
ency. With any other candidate than Grant in
1868 the Republicans might have been hard pressed
for success, assuming that the Democrats showed!
ELECTION AS PRESIDENT 271
ordinary political sense in their selection of a can-
didate.
Grant received the notice of his nomination at
Galena. His letter of acceptance was commendable
for brevity and good taste. He undertook to discuss
no issues, but gave assurances that he would try to
carry out the purpose of the party which had named
him, and, as an afterthought it is said, he appended
to the letter the sentence, "Let us have peace," an
appeal which went to the people's heart and proved
to be the rallying cry of the campaign. But in spite
of everything the result was by no means a fore-
gone conclusion. Seymour and Blair, the Democra-
tic candidates, carried New York, New Jersey, and
Oregon among the Northern States. Pennsylvania,
Ohio, and Indiana went Republican by unexpectedly
close margins. Grant carried twenty-six States, it is
true, with 214 electoral votes, and Seymour only
eight States with 80 electoral votes, but the popular
majority was much smaller than these figures would
indicate. If it had not been for the negro vote in the
South, which was still unsuppressed and which pre-
vented that section from being solidly Democratic,
as it afterwards became, Seymour would have been
elected.
From the day of his election till he went back to
Washington for his inauguration, Grant remained in
272 ULYSSES S. GRANT
intellectual seclusion. Although he spent much time
in Washington, few men of standing in his party saw
him, and with these few he was strangely reticent.
As in the Army he had never held a council of war, so
now he asked no one's advice about his Cabinet or his
inaugural address. He made no suggestions to Re-
publican leaders in Congress as to measures which
he might like to see them enact pending his induction
into office.
Stevens had died in the summer of 1868, and his
mantle of leadership had been grabbed by the brag-
gart Butler, who kept the House torn with dissen-
sion and noisy with turmoil in his determination to
force through laws still further to harass the stricken
South. In order to insure to Republican "carpet-
baggers" and "scalawags" possession of the local
offices in the unreconstructed States, a resolution
was framed ordering the district commander to re-
move all civil officers who could not take the iron-
clad oath and appoint in their places men who could
subscribe to it, with a proviso that those whose
disabilities had been removed by Congress might
also be eligible to office. The resolution was passed
unanimously in both houses without debate. At the
time of its adoption it benefited only carpet-baggers
and ex-Confederate "scalawags" who had become
Republicans. To put beyond the reach of legislative
ELECTION AS PRESIDENT 273
recall the negro's right to vote, the Fifteenth Amend-
ment of the Constitution was framed, providing that
" The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any State on account of race, color, or previ-
ous condition of servitude."
Thus Grant, in entering upon the Presidency, —
the first strictly civil office he had ever held, — found
himself confronted by political conditions in the
South which might have staggered a statesman of
lifelong experience and for which he was in no way
responsible, while domestic questions affecting the na-
tion's financial credit and foreign problems affecting
its standing among the nations of the world pressed
for consideration. Those who criticize the course of
his Administration and condemn him for his choice
of advisers might first point out what statesman of
the day would have done better in his place and what
advisers would have aided him to more beneficent
results.
,
CHAPTER XXX
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
When Grant became President, it seemed for the
moment as though a second "era of good feeling"
were at hand. Democrats as well as Republicans
looked on him as their chosen leader. There was only
one unpleasant feature about his assumption of
office. Grant refused to ride in the same carriage
with Johnson from the White House to the Capitol on
inauguration day. He could not forget that Johnson
had called his truthfulness in question.
Grant's first inaugural was written entirely by
himself; no one saw a draft of it until the day of its
delivery. As the 4th of March approached without
an intimation of what Grant had in mind, A. R.
Corbin — a prospective brother-in-law who was gain-
ing a livelihood on the fringe of Wall Street —
handed the President a complete draft of an inau-
gural. But, without glancing at the contents, Grani
handed the document to Badeau, telling him to lock
it up in a desk, keep the key, and let no one look at
it until after the 4th of March.
The inaugural was brief, — only twelve hundrec
words, — yet in spite of its brevity it contained sen
;
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 275
tences which stuck in the mind and some of which
have since become embedded in our common speech :
"The responsibilities of the position I feel, but accept
them without fear. The office has come to me un-
sought; I commence its duties untranimeled." " All
laws will be faithfully executed, whether they meet
my approval or not. I shall on all subjects have a
policy to recommend, but none to enforce against
the will of the people. Laws are to govern all alike —
those opposed as well as those who favor them. I
know no method to repeal bad or obnoxious laws so
effective as their stringent execution."
In spite of some criticism of certain seemingly self-
sufficient passages, the inaugural took well ; but when
the new Cabinet was announced, Republican poli-
ticians gasped with dismay. Only two of the names
had ever been guessed and some were not suspected
• by the nominees themselves until they appeared in
the list. Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois, was named
Secretary of State; it had been assumed that Grant
would recognize in some way the services of his earli-
est influential friend, but this particular distinction
had not been foreseen. When it appeared in a few
days that the appointment was intended as a per-
sonal compliment, and that Washburne was to hold
: the position just long enough to enjoy the title, the
criticism was general. To one who complained that
276 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the occupant of the position of Secretary of State
ought to be able to speak the French language cor-
rectly, the reply was made, " He ought at least to be
able to speak his own." But Washburne's creditable
record as Minister to France, during the Franco-
Prussian War and during the trying days of the Com-
mune, saved his reputation in the end.
A. T. Stewart was named Secretary of the Treas-
ury. The Senate promptly confirmed his nomina-
tion, and until somebody recalled a long-buried law,
enacted early in the century, providing that this
particular office should not be rilled by any man en-
gaged in commerce, no one in Washington realized
that the great merchant and importer was ineligible
to the place. Grant, with sublime indifference to
technicalities, asked the Senate to repeal the law and
John Sherman, himself to be Secretary of the Treas-
ury later, moved the repeal; but owing to Sumner's
opposition the motion was defeated. Grant was no
more to blame for making the nomination than the
Senate for confirming it. They might have been ex-
pected to be familiar with the law. Sumner in his
subsequent attacks on Grant denounced him for try-
ing to upset a statute which " had stood unquestioned
until it had acquired the character of fundamental
law," yet Sumner himself must have been ignorant
of this "fundamental law" when he first aquiesced in
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 277
Stewart's confirmation. George S. Boutwell, a mem-
ber of the House from Massachusetts, once a business
man in a small way, Commissioner of Internal Rev-
enue during the Civil War, was named in place of
Stewart — an unexceptionable appointment.
E. Rockwood Hoar, of Massachusetts, was made
Attorney-General; he was a learned lawyer of distin-
guished antecedents and high character, a member
of the House, a friend of Sumner, a scholar of pungent
wit and exalted ideals of public duty. He gained the
ill-will of certain Republican Senators because of his
austerity in rebuking their demands for the appoint-
ment of judges, district attorneys, and United States
marshals in the South whom he believed to be unfit,
and when Grant subsequently nominated him to fill
a vacancy on the Supreme Bench caused by Stanton's
death, these Senators, urged on by Butler who hated
him, brought about the rejection of the nomination.
Grant stood squarely with Hoar in his effort to pre-
serve the quality of the Federal Bench. The story of
his final withdrawal from the Cabinet is an interesting
chapter in the history of the times.
General Schofield, whom Johnson had made Sec-
retary of War after Stanton's retirement, was re-
quested by Grant to retain his place for a while. A
personal compliment this. Schofield was succeeded in
a few weeks by Rawlins whom Grant needed always
278 ULYSSES S. GRANT
near his side. No one could fairly object to his
selection. Adolph E. Borie was named for Secre-
tary of the Navy. He was a wealthy and philan-
thropic Philadelphia!! whom no one outside Phila-
delphia had ever heard of. He was an invalid and had
no thought of the Cabinet until he saw that he had
been nominated. He resigned as soon as he could
gracefully retire, and was succeeded by George M.
Robeson, of New Jersey, then a young lawyer of
striking ability, who was reputed at the time to have
been recommended by Borie for the succession. The
Secretary of the Interior was Jacob D. Cox, Gov-
ernor of Ohio, who not only had a fine record as brig-
adier-general in the Civil War, especially at Franklin
and Antietam, but who was a man of education and
wide reading, a forceful and interesting writer and a
Republican of conservative tendencies. When run-
ning for Governor of Ohio he had announced himself
boldly as opposed to negro suffrage. The Postmaster-
General was John A. J. Creswell, of Maryland, for a
short time a member of the House and Senate, like
some others in the Cabinet hardly known outside his
own community.
For eight years Grant was President. His two ad-
ministrations were marked by extraordinary achieve-
ment both in the domestic and in the foreign field.
True, he was the target of abuse and criticism; no
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 279
President in the long list, with the possible exception
of Johnson, has been more bitterly assailed, and he
was vulnerable at many points. He was a soldier with
a limited experience in dealing with men of affairs
and only a superficial acquaintance with politics;
with no great knowledge of history, or literature, and
innocent of the science of government; yet William
Tecumseh Sherman, in one of his flashes of political
insight, came very near the mark when he wrote in
the summer of 1868: "My own opinion is that, con-
sidering the state of the country, Grant will make
the best President we can get. What we want in na-
tional politics is quiet, harmony, and stability, and
these are more likely with Grant than any politician
I know of."
Grant made serious mistakes; but almost without
exception they were errors arising from childlike trust
and unfortunate asssociations. They seldom affected
adversely measures of broad public policy. When we
recall the great accomplishments of his administra-
tions, — the establishment of the principle of inter-
national arbitration through the Treaty of Washing-
ton and the adjudication of the Alabama claims by
the Geneva Tribunal; the upholding of American
dignity and the assertion of American rights in the
matter of the Virginius and the handling of the Cu-
ban complications ; the rehabilitation of the national
280 ULYSSES S. GRANT
credit, and the maintenance of the national honor,
the inauguration of a consistent and merciful policy
toward the Indians; the recognition of the principle
of civil service reform ; and the restoration of a sem-
blance of order in the South, — we are tempted to
subordinate, though we cannot honestly ignore, the
personal differences which marred the period of his
service and the public scandal attaching to some of
those who, in the shelter of his friendship and of offices
bestowed upon them through his favor, betrayed his
trust. It was a time of universal prodigality and ex-
travagance, when speculation flourished and the na-
tion's moral fiber had been coarsened by the excesses
of war. It was not strange that the widespread taint
invaded public place. It would have been more
strange if it had not.
Grant's first choice for Secretary of State had been
James F. Wilson, of Iowa. Wilson would have been
a creditable selection, although foreign affairs were
not directly in his line, for he was able, industrious,
and high-minded. He first accepted the appoint-
ment, but at Grant's request consented that Wash-
burne should hold the place a little while, so that
Washburne might go to Paris with enhanced prestige.
The understanding was that WTashburne's tenure
should be nominal, that he should not initiate a
policy or make appointments, but he did both, and
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 281
Wilson, when he found what had been done, refused
to take the place.
As a substitute for Wilson, Grant hit upon Hamil-
ton Fish and a day or two after inauguration sent
General Babcock, his military aide, over to New
York to offer Fish the place. Fish had wealth, social
and family position. He was about sixty years old;
had been governor; had served in the Legislature, in
the National House of Representatives, and for one
term in the United States Senate, where he had gained
Sumner's friendship; but he had not been in public
life since he quit the Senate in 1857; had made no
great mark in any of the offices he had held, and was
not widely known. Grant had met him occasionally
in New York, but was not intimately acquainted with
him.
Fish did not care for the position of Secretary of
State. He was Grant's second choice and not long
under consideration; yet he was to preside over the
State Department for a longer period than any other
Secretary in the history of the Government, except
Seward, and to leave a record of distinguished
achievement commensurate with his length of serv-
ice. Seward is quoted by John Bigelow, who visited
him at Auburn shortly after the appointment, as
saying that Grant had no idea of a foreign policy
except brute force. That he (Seward) had told them
282 ULYSSES S. GRANT
at Washington that there were but three men fit to
be Secretary of State that he knew; they were,
Sumner, Charles Francis Adams, and himself; that
no one but himself could make an analysis of the
Alabama correspondence in less than a year, and that
it would take four months for him to do it. " Fish will
refer everything to the Attorney- General. He will
do nothing himself; he cannot. Sumner wished and
had a right to have been asked into the Cabinet,
though he would not have accepted. It was neither
courteous nor wise in Grant to have neglected this
attention."
"The Cabinet is not strong, but it is respectable,"
wrote Bigelow to Huntington, March 16, 1869.
" Whether it lasts or goes to pieces depends upon
Grant's purpose in selecting it. If he has a policy
and wanted men merely for instruments to put it into
operation, it is admirably chosen. If he wants re-
sponsible ministers he has not got them. Hamilton
Fish is my neighbor in the country — an amiable,
but heavy man, who at the bar ranked as a moderate
attorney, but whose name I suspect does not appear
in the books of reports once. . . . Mr. Washburne is
another illustration of Grant's fidelity to his friends.
In company with many of his predecessors he [Wash- j
burne] will have one advantage over the people he is
to live among — he will learn a great deal more froi
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 283
them than they are likely to learn from him. . . .
Grant has lost prestige enormously in the country."
"He [Grant] seems to have no comprehension of
the nature of political forces," writes Bigelow three
weeks later. "His Cabinet are merely staff officers,
selected apparently out of motives of gratitude or for
pecuniary favors received from them. His relatives
and old friends were among the first provided for. . . .
No President before was ever got in the family way so
soon after inauguration. By his secretiveness in re-
gard to his choice of a Cabinet and by his taking
men unknown to his party or to any party, he
wounded the pride of Congress incurably. ..."
Carl Schurz tells in his "Reminiscences" an an-
ecdote heard in the cloak-room of the Senate at this
time. One of the best lawyers in the Senate heard a
rumor that President Grant was about to remove a
federal judge in one of the Territories, a lawyer of
excellent ability and uncommon fitness for the bench.
The Senator remonstrated and Grant admitted that
as far as he knew there was no allegation of the un-
fitness of the judge; "but," he added, "the Governor
of the Territory writes me that he cannot get along
with that judge at all, and is very anxious to be rid of
him; and I think the Governor is entitled to have
control of his staff." So much for contemporary
criticism!
CHAPTER XXXI
PERSONAL EQUATIONS
"I like Grant," wrote James Russell Lowell after a
visit to Washington in March, 1870, "and was struck
with the pathos of his face; a puzzled pathos, as of a
man with a problem before him of which he does not
understand the terms."1
Grant had then been President a year — a year
crowded with pressing problems, some of which were
complicated, it is true, but all of which might almost
be stated in terms of Grant himself, and Sumner, with
Fish and Motley as ever-present factors. If in the
early weeks of the Administration there had been at
hand a disinterested friend endowed with the ability
to handle men of widely differing tastes and ante-
cedents, the personal misunderstanding between
the President and the leader of the Senate might
never have developed into a feud endangering the
success of the Administration and embittering the
lives of all concerned; for Grant and Sumner had
common aspirations, although their methods of
approach were so unlike. But no such friend appeared
to put his ringer on the point of sympathetic contact
1 Letter to Leslie Stephen, March 2.5, 1870.
PERSONAL EQUATIONS 285
through which harmonious relations could have been
maintained.
It might be thought that Fish, by virtue of his place
and of his earlier relations with Sumner in the Senate,
could at least have been of service as a go-between;
but whatever may have been his inclination, he was
not the man to undertake the task. Sumner, while
glad to have him as a friend, had never looked upon
him as an .intellectual equal, and held him somewhat
lightly as a figure in affairs. While Fish, at first re-
garding Sumner as his mentor, came slowly to resent
the other's condescensions, and true to his Dutch
ancestry, once having set his mind against his old
associate, aligned himself immovably with his official
chief, thus helping to accentuate the feud. Besides,
he early came to formulate a sane, far-seeing diplo-
matic programme of his own.
Sumner had a low opinion of Grant's political
sagacity. He never thought Grant should have been
made President as a reward for military success,
took no part in his nomination, and acquiesced re-
luctantly when he saw that it was bound to come.
There was nothing strange in this. Sumner was not
alone in questioning the wisdom of Grant's selection,
and Grant was not the only President about whose
fitness he had been in doubt. He never quite ap-
proved of Lincoln or understood him. " Mr. Lincoln
286 ULYSSES S. GRANT
was a constant puzzle to him," says Carl Schurz. "He
frequently told me of profound and wise things Mr.
Lincoln had said, and then again of other sayings
which were unintelligible to him, and seemed to him
inconsistent with a serious appreciation of the task
before us. Being entirely devoid of the sense of
humor himself, Mr. Sumner frequently — I might
almost say always — failed to see the point of the
quaint anecdotes or illustrations with which Mr.
Lincoln was fond of elucidating his arguments, as
with a flashlight. . . . Many a time I saw Sumner
restlessly pacing up and down in his room and ex-
claiming with uplifted hands : ' I pray that the Pres-
ident may be right in delaying. But I am afraid, I
am almost sure he is not. I trust his fidelity but I
cannot understand him."' l
As for Grant, he had no skill in handling men of
Sumner's type, differing therein from Lincoln, who
had a way of dropping in at Sumner's house to drink
a cup of the inimitable tea, in brewing which the
Massachusetts statesman took peculiar pride, and
after sipping it like an old gossip purring the real
object of his visit into Sumner's ear. Nor would
Grant have done as Lincoln did after his second in-
auguration, when Sumner's hostility to the Louisiana
policy threatened a fatal break. " Dear Mr. Sum-
1 The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, vol. 11, pp. 312-14.
PERSONAL EQUATIONS 287
ner," Lincoln wrote, " unless you send me word to
the contrary I shall this evening call with my car-
riage at your house to take you to the Inauguration
Ball "; and at the Ball Lincoln walked in with Sum-
ner arm in arm and kept him by his side.
Sumner thought in 1864 that Lincoln should give
way to a more forceful candidate, just as in 1868 he
thought a recognized Republican of ripe political ex-
perience would have been better qualified than Grant
to meet the problems of the time. It may be he was
right. The trouble would have been to find the man.
When Grant took office Sumner was the unchal-
lenged chieftain of the Senate. He had been chair-
man of the Committee on Foreign Relations ever
since Seward entered Lincoln's Cabinet, and, as
Chase had also gone, no one was left to rival him in
seniority or reputation. All things conspired to give
him prominence and swell his own conception of his
place in national affairs. He was well born and highly
educated and had been trained almost from boyhood
for a political career. He had read every serious book
which had been written on the science of government,
knew the best writings of all times and countries, and
had stored in a capacious memory a prodigious mass
of information about many things, with which he tire-
somely embellished his speeches in the Senate and his
daily talk. He was one of the few Americans of his
288 ULYSSES S. GRANT
day who had familiar correspondence with scholars,
writers, and public men abroad. Politically invinci-
ble at home in Massachusetts, he was regarded else-
where as a hero and the champion of liberty, for his
fame as an uncompromising advocate of the rights of
men ran back to the fermenting time of 1848.
Mr. Lodge in his "Early Memories" has given
us a delightful portrait of Sumner. He speaks of his
wide learning, of his power of devouring books with
extraordinary rapidity, and the gift of remembering
everything. " Sumner," he says, " was by nature a
dreamer, a man of meditation, a man of books, and a
lover of learning. By the circumstances of his time
and by the hand of fate he was projected into a ca-
reer of intense action and fierce struggle. There he
played a great part, but his nature was not changed.
He still remained at bottom a dreamer and a man
of books. ... A statesman in the largest sense,
although not a legislator who drafted laws and at-
tended to legislative details ... he cared nothing
for politics in the ordinary acceptation of the word.
. . . He was a most imposing figure. Tall, large, not
regularly handsome in features, but with a noble head
and a fine intellectual face. No one could look upon
him and fail to be struck and attracted by his looks
and presence. To all this was added that rarest of
gifts, a very fine voice, deep and rich with varied
PERSONAL EQUATIONS 289
tones and always a delight to the ear. . . . Coupled
with his deficiency in a sense of humor, and akin to it,
was a curious simplicity of nature. . . . He was any-
thing but conceited, but he had vanity ... in a
marked degree. ... It was not the vanity which
offends, for it was too frank, too obvious, too inno-
cent to give offense, but it made him an easy prey to
those who wished to profit by it. . . . No man had
better manners in daily life, manners at once kindly,
stately, and dignified, and he could do a courteous
action in a most graceful way."
Schurz said that in himself Sumner felt the whole
dignity of the Republic; in sporting language, "he
had a good eye for country, but no scent for a trail."
A marked contrast, this, to Grant, small in stature,
slouchy in dress and bearing, taciturn in public, with-
out ostentation or vanity, meagerly read and hardly
educated beyond West Point necessities, careless of
refinements, unfamiliar with the graces of society,
his clothing reeking always with the stale odor of
tobacco, ill at ease with men of culture, yet simple
and direct in speech and in his manner of approach-
ing other men.
" As different in their mental attributes as in their
physical appearance," says Charles Francis Adams.1
" While Mr. Sumner was, intellectually, morally, and
1 Before and after the Treaty of Washington, p. 75.
290 ULYSSES S. GRANT
physically, much the finer and more imposing human
product, Grant had counterbalancing qualities which
made him, in certain fields, the more formidable op-
ponent. With immense will, he was taciturn; Sum
ner, on the contrary, in no way deficient in will, was
a man of many words, a rhetorician. In action and
among men Grant's self-control was perfect, amount-
ing to complete apparent imperturbability. Unas-
suming, singularly devoid of self-consciousness, in
presence of an emergency his blood never seemed to
quicken, his face became only the more set, tenacity
personified; whereas Sumner, when morally excited,
the rush of his words, his deep, tremulous utterance,
and the light in his eye, did not impart conviction or
inspire respect. Doubts would suggest themselves to
the unsympathetic, or only partially sympathetic,
listener whether the man was of altogether balanced
mind. . . . Quite unconsciously on his part he as-
sumed an attitude of moral superiority and intellec-
tual certainty, in no way compatible with a proper
appreciation of the equality of others. In the min
of a man like Grant, these peculiarities excited o
stinacy, anger, and contempt."
Charles Eliot Norton has preserved one of Grant'
rare gleams of humor, when he replied to somebody
who told him Sumner had no faith in the Bible:
"Well: he did n't write it."
PERSONAL EQUATIONS 291
Motley was Sumner's personal friend; a member of
the same literary and social group in Boston,1 —
a group embracing Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson,
Hawthorne, Agassiz, Andrew, Dana, and Holmes; of
distinguished achievement as the historian of the
Dutch Republic, of ripe culture and great personal
charm, of cosmopolitan experience, familiar with the
universities and libraries of Europe, and of some dip-
lomatic experience by reason of his service as Minister
to Austria under the Lincoln and Johnson Admin-
istrations, which came to a distressing end through
Seward's clumsy handling of an unknown critic's
abusive letter and his own excessive sensitiveness.
Sumner and his other friends pressed Grant to make
him Minister to England partly as a balm for injured
oride. But behind it also was Sumner's unexpressed
issumption that through his position in the Senate
le was to be responsible for the conduct of our for-
eign relations during the incumbency of an ignorant
Executive and an inexperienced Secretary of State.
With our grievances against Great Britain press-
ng for a settlement, he wanted to have at London a
epresentative in whom he could place perfect trust,
,nd from his point of view Motley was the ideal
nan.
But in other ways the choice was not by any means
1 The Saturday Club.
292 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the best which could be made. With all his personal
charm and social distinction, Motley was lacking in
the tact and diplomatic skill which were required in
an effective American representative in London at
that time. In fact, he was not by nature adapted to
diplomacy at all, although no finer type of American
citizenship could have been chosen to stand as the
enbodiment of our best ideals in other lands, and it is
not surprising that shortly Grant and Fish should
have found it necessary to take the negotiations with
the British Government into their own hands, ex-
cluding him entirely from the ultimate adjustment.1
To understand all this and how the Administra-
tion's attitude toward Cuba and San Domingo helped
to emphasize the split, one must first understand a
clash of personalities, which came near to wrecking
Grant's Administration at the beginning, and
effects of which were felt long after Sumner's death.
1 E. L. Godkin. writing from London, on April 15, 1860, said
" Motley's appointment is a good one from the social point o
view, bad, I think, in every other way. I do not think he has th<
necessary mental furniture for the discussion of the questions no\
pending between England and America; and he is a little to
ardent. His lectures here have been very disappointing, common
place rhetorics without any thought. . . ."
1
CHAPTER XXXII
ARBITRATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN
On the very threshold of his Administration Grant
found confronting him the problem of our grievances
against Great Britain which had been accumulating
ever since her recognition of Confederate belligerency
in the first year of the Civil War. Upon the heels
of recognition — a perfectly legitimate proceeding,
although resented bitterly throughout the North — •
had come the devastating cruises of the Alabama,
Florida, and Shenandoah, fitted out in British yards,
under the eyes of British functionaries, and manned
with Confederate naval officers with the express de-
sign of preying on our foreign commerce.
Charles Francis Adams, our Minister at London,
had demanded reparation for damage caused by the
British-built Confederate cruisers, but the British
Government toward the end of 1865 had some-
what curtly declined consideration of our claims and
nothing further was done about it until in August,
1868, Reverdy Johnson arrived in London as Min-
ister by Johnson's appointment and undertook with-
out delay negotiations looking toward a settlement.
\ noticeable change had come upon the spirit of Eng-
294, ULYSSES S. GRANT
lish statesmen confronted with the probability of
an embroilment in continental quarrels. They were
now glad to reach an understanding with the United
States so that the precedent established by the Ala-
bama case might not be used to justify the fitting out
of hostile cruisers in American ports to prey on Eng-
lish commerce in event of war.
Johnson was welcomed with effusiveness, and he
was flattered by the marked attentions he received.
He entered joyfully on a career of after-dinner ora-
tory, gushed over those who had been most ostenta-
tious in their sympathy for the Confederate cause,
shook hands in public with Laird, who bragged about
having built the Alabama, and went so far in his
endeavor to ingratiate himself in his new post as to
arouse distrust at home. When in January he con-
cluded with the British Foreign Secretary the John-
son-Clarendon Convention, both he and Seward were
dazed to find that terms which twelve months earlier
would have been ratified with little opposition were
now resented by the Senate and the people as the re-
sult of truckling to the English Government by a
tuft-hunting diplomat. Besides, feeling against Eng-
land had grown more bitter. The sympathy for Ii
land in her struggle for home rule was gaining
strength, and Fenian border raids against Canad;
had become a factor to be considered.
ARBITRATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN 295
The convention was carried over into the new Ad-
ministration, and when it came up for action in the
Senate, it was almost literally without a friend. Rati-
fication was defeated by a vote of 54 to 1, on April
13, 1869. The debate consisted chiefly in a speech
by Sumner for which there was no need and which
might much better never have been uttered. But
Sumner, never discreet, insisted upon a spoken rec-
ord of his attitude, and his impassioned attack upon
Great Britain, from which the ban of secrecy was
removed by formal vote, went into history to be-
come a mischief -breeding influence on subsequent
events.
It was close upon the heels of the rejection of the
Johnson-Clarendon Convention, while Sumner's extra-
ordinary demands still stirred public imagination,
that Motley was named as Johnson's successor at
the Court of St. James. Charles Francis Adams, the
elder, recently returned from the British mission
and watching at home the progress of affairs, wrote
privately that the practical effect of Sumner's speech
and the rejection of the treaty was " to raise the scale
of our demands for reparation so very high that there
is no chance of negotiation left, unless the English
have lost all their spirit and character." Sumner
with splendid efflorescence of mathematics had fig-
ured that our direct or individual losses "due to the
296 ULYSSES S. GRANT
foraging of the Alabama" were $15,000,000, but this
modest sum left without recognition "the vaster
damage to commerce driven from the ocean," which
he reckoned at $110,000,000, and he added, "Of
course this is only an item in our bill."
He traced the prolongation of the war directly to
England. "The rebellion was originally encouraged
by hope of support from England," he cried; " it was
strengthened at once by the concession of belligerent
rights on the ocean; it was fed to the end by British
supplies . . . ; it was quickened into frantic life with
every report from the British pirates, flaming anew
with every burning ship; nor can it be doubted that
without British intervention the rebellion would have
soon succumbed under the well-directed efforts of the
National Government. Not weeks nor months but
years were added in this way to our war, so full of
costly sacrifice."
Calculating that the rebellion was suppressed at a
cost of more than $4,000,000,000 and that through
British intervention the war was doubled in duration,
he came easily to the conclusion that England was
chargeable with half the total expenditure, or
$2,000,000,000, making our entire bill against her
$2,125,000,000, at a low estimate. This sounded
large and bellicose, but the explanation seems to be
that Sumner had no intention either of collecting
AKBITRATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN 297
such a claim or of risking war with England to en-
force it. What Sumner had in mind was not the
collection of an enormous indemnity in money, but
rather the adjustment of all differences through an-
nexation of British territory and the withdrawal of
the British flag from North America.
The annexation of Canada, especially in view of
the aggressive Irish sentiment at the time and the
recurring Fenian demonstrations, was not a prepos-
terous proposal, but there was a difference of opinion
as to how best to go about it. Chandler in the Sen-
ate had suggested that it was an essential to continue
peace: "We cannot afford to have our enemies' base
so near us. It is a national necessity that we should
have the British possessions. I hope that such a ne-
gotiation will be opened and that it will be a peace-
ful one; but if it should not be, and England insists
on war, then let the war be short, sharp, and deci-
sive." We have Grant's own authority for believing
that he would not have been afraid of such an out-
come. He thought at one time during the year that
Sheridan could have taken Canada in thirty days.
Moreover, British statesmen did not set such store
on their American possessions fifty years ago as later,
and they might have welcomed a separation effected
in a creditable way. The real obstacle to annexation
lay with the Canadians themselves, who have never
298 ULYSSES S. GRANT
seen the time when they did not prefer connection
with the mother country to union with our own.
Grant was an expansionist as much as Sumner, but
he looked upon expansion to the north more as a
military problem than a question of sentiment. His
mind dwelt much more readily on territorial extension
■to the south. Cuba, San Domingo, and Mexico, with
their untold natural resources awaiting the inspira-
tion of American development, appealed to him with
greater force than the barren stretches of the Cana-
dian Northwest, and here is where he differed radi-
cally from Sumner, who, throughout a tempestuous
career in studying his political compass, had been
accustomed to associate the North with human lib-
erty and the South with slaves.
It was in this divergence between Grant and
Sumner that Fish, the conservative, unimaginative
lawyer, elevated against his own inclination to be
Secretary of State, found an opportunity for wise and
courageous service. Sumner assumed that in his ca-
pacity as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Re-
lations and leader of the Senate, the shaping of the
foreign policy would now devolve upon him. Motley,
his lifelong friend, was unconsciously under his in-
fluence, and might also be said in his new mission to
regard himself as representing Sumner rather than
the President or the Secretary of State.
ARBITRATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN 299
Motley's first act after confirmation was to pre-
pare a memorandum which he handed to Fish out-
lining the instructions which should be given him.
The memorandum might as well have been dictated
by Sumner, so accurately did it reflect his views. It
questioned the advisability of trying to renew ne-
gotiations, dilated on the Queen's proclamation of
May, 1861, recognizing Southern belligerency, as a
wrong committed by Great Britain and deeply felt
by the American people, — a sense of wrong declared
gravely, solemnly, without passion, and not to be
expunged by a mere money payment to reimburse
a few captures and conflagrations at sea.
Grant was disposed to let Motley go ahead; but
Fish, already sensible of his new responsibilities, had
other things in view. In the first place, he had deter-
mined if possible to reopen negotiations and bring
them to a successful conclusion. In the second place,
events in Cuba were so shaping themselves as to
affect the manner of our approach to the British prob-
lem. He took his own time in preparing Motley's
instructions, and when completed, they bore little
resemblance to the memorandum submitted. He
declared that in spite of the failure of the Johnson-
Clarendon Convention the Government of the United
States did not abandon hope of "an early, satisfac-
tory, and friendly settlement of the questions depend-
300 ULYSSES S. GRANT
ing between the two Governments " and expressed the
President's hope that the suspension of negotiations
would be regarded by Her Majesty's Government, as
it was by him, "as wholly in the interest of, and solely
with a view to, an early and friendly settlement."
Nothing here about "massive grievance," "indi-
rect claims," " immense and infinite damages," or
"ill-omened" and "fatal" proclamation which had
" opened the flood-gates to infinite woes."
Fish always thought that negotiations could be
conducted more satisfactorily in Washington than
London; and within a week after the rejection of the
Johnson-Clarendon Convention he had written to a
friend: "Whenever negotiations are renewed, the
atmosphere and the surroundings of this side of the
water are more favorable to a proper solution of the
question than the dinner tables and the public ban-
quetings of England." This was before he had op-
portunity to appraise the diplomatic skill of Mot-
ley and before he had been regaled with a perusal
of Motley's memorandum.
Motley reached England with his revised instruc-
tions early in May, 18G9, still imbued with Sumner's
conception of the measureless injury done the LTnion
cause by the proclamation of belligerency. So com-
plete was his misapprehension of the purpose of his
mission that in his first interview with Lord Claren-
ARBITRATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN 301
don he laid special stress upon the proclamation as
" the fountain head of the disasters which had been
caused to the American people, both individually and
collectively." With the submission to his superior
of the report of this interview, Motley's career as a
diplomat may fairly be said to have come to an end.
John Russell Young reports Grant as saying at
Edinburgh in 1877, "Mr. Motley had to be in-
structed. The instructions were prepared very care-
fully, and after Governor Fish and I had gone over
them for the last time, I wrote an addendum charg-
ing him that above all things he should handle the
subject of the Alabama claims with the greatest deli-
cacy. Mr. Motley, instead of obeying his implicit
instructions, deliberately fell in line with Sumner and
thus added insult to the previous injury. As soon
as I heard of it, I went over to the State Department
and told Governor Fish to dismiss Motley at once. I
was very angry indeed, and I have been sorry many
a time since that I did not stick to my first deter-
mination. Mr. Fish advised delay, because of Sum-
ner's position in the Senate and his attitude on the
treaty question. We did not want to stir him up
just then. We dispatched a severe note of censure to
Motley at once and asked him to abstain from any
further connection with these questions."
Motley's subsequent residence in England, how-
302 ULYSSES S. GRANT
ever creditable and brilliant may have been its per-
sonal and social aspects, had little bearing upon
results except as it may have retarded them. The
negotiations leading to the Treaty of Washington
and the settlement of the Alabama claims, through
the Geneva Tribunal, were carried on to a successful
conclusion in Washington without his participation.
The final request for his resignation and his summary
removal, though figuring dramatically in the history
of the time, had no effect upon our diplomatic negoti-
ations with the country to which he was accredited,
though in part incidental to them.
It was through Caleb Cushing that the first steps
were taken toward a renewal of negotiations. As
counsel before the joint tribunal arbitrating the
claims of the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Com-
panies under the Treaty of 1863, he had made the
acquaintance of John Rose, acting as British Com-
missioner, a man of prominence in Canadian public
life described as "a natural diplomat of a high or-
der." By suggestion of Rose, who may have spoken
with authority, dishing arranged an interview in
Washington between Rose and Fish. On July 8, just
four weeks after Motley's unhappy interview with
Clarendon, they came together, and while Motley
was discoursing despondently in London about "a
path surrounded by peril" and "grave and disas-
ARBITRATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN 303
trous misunderstandings and cruel war," Fish and
Rose were already well advanced on the road to a
renewal of negotiations.
These informal exchanges continued through the
summer and autumn. Sumner, not yet alienated
from Fish, was cognizant of them. He was even ad-
vised, although no names were given, of a letter now
historic, in which Rose, writing from London, asked :
" Is your representative here a gentleman of the most
conciliatory spirit? ... I think I understood you to
say that you thought negotiations would be more
likely to be attended with satisfactory results, if they
were transferred to and were concluded at Washing-
ton; because you could from time to time communi-
cate confidentially with leading Senators and know
how far you could carry that body with you. . . . But
again is your representative of that mind? And how
is it to be brought about? By a new or a special
envoy — as you spoke of — or quietly through Mr.
Thornton?" Sumner not only ignored the intended
hint for Motley's benefit, but treated it as an anon-
ymous attack entitled to contempt; while Oliver
Wendell Holmes, the loving and loyally biased bio-
grapher of Motley, writing in 1879, two years after
Motley's death, refers to the then unnamed writer as
a faithless friend, a disguised enemy, a secret emis-
sary, or an injudicious alarmist."
304 ULYSSES S. GRANT
After the earlier steps coincident with sending
Motley to London, Grant gave Fish a free hand with
the British Foreign Office. But Fish could never
have succeeded in his diplomacy if he had not felt
Grant behind him all the time, approving him in
every stand he made, and giving him unfaltering
support. It would be hard to say to which belongs
the greater credit for the final diplomatic triumph,
Grant or Fish; but the responsibility for success or
failure lay with Grant.
In his first annual message of December 6, 1869, .
Grant commented with approval on the rejection of
the Johnson-Clarendon Convention. "The injuries
resulting to the United States by reason of the course
adopted by Great Britain during our late Civil War
. . . could not be adjusted and satisfied as ordinary
commercial claims, which continually arise between
commercial nations, and yet the convention treated
them as such ordinary claims, from which they differ
more widely in the gravity of their character than in
the magnitude of their amount, great even as is that
difference. Not a word was found in the treaty, and
not an inference could be drawn from it, to remove
the sense of unfriendliness of the course of Great
Britain in our struggle for existence which had so
deeply and universally impressed itself upon the peo-
ple of this country." The rejection of the treaty,
ARBITRATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN 305
"thus misconceived in its scope and inadequate in
its provisions," he regarded as in the interest of
peace. " A sensitive people, conscious of their power,
are more at ease under a great wrong, wholly un-
atoned, than under the restraint of a settlement
which satisfies neither their ideas of justice nor
their grave sense of the grievances they have sus-
tained."
He expressed the hope that the time might soon
arrive " when the two Governments may approach
the solution of this momentous question with an ap-
preciation of what is due the rights, dignity, and
honor of each, and with the determination not only
to remove the causes of complaint in the past, but to
lay the foundation of a broad principle of public law
which will prevent future differences and tend to firm
and continued peace and friendship." How fully this
hope was realized will appear in the result.
The Franco-Prussian War came in to help, for
England, in the face of trouble on the Continent, was
getting ready in the fall of 1870 to bring about a suit-
able adjustment of all outstanding quarrels. Grant
seized the opportunity in his second annual message,
December 5, 1870, to stimulate the British Foreign
Office to greater haste. He regretted to say "that no
conclusion has been reached for the adjustment of
the claims against Great Britain growing out of the
300 ULYSSES S. GRANT
course adopted by that Government during the re-
bellion. The Cabinet of London, so far as its views
have been expressed, does not appear to be willing to
concede that Her Majesty's Government was guilty
of any negligence or did or permitted any act during
the war by which the United States has just cause of
complaint. Our firm and unalterable convictions are
directly the reverse." He therefore recommended
the appointment of a commission "to take proof of
the amount and ownership of these several claims,"
and that authority be given for settlement of these
claims by the United States so that the Government
would have ownership of the private claims as well as
the responsible control of all the demands against
Great Britain ; and he added that whenever Her Maj-
esty's Government should desire a " full and friendly
adjustment," the United States would enter upon a
consideration of the claims "with an earnest desire
for a conclusion consistent with the honor and dig-
nity of both nations."
The passage containing this hint appeared in the
London newspapers on December 6, 1870. Exactly
five weeks later, on January 9, 1871, Mr. Rose, hav-
ing hurried from London, dined with Mr. Fish in
Washington, and before the evening was over the
twro had agreed on a confidential memorandum which
was to be the basis of negotiations. From that day
ARBITRATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN 307
until the signing of the Treaty of Washington on
May 8, 1871, events moved in orderly progress under
the firm guidance of the Secretary of State.
Sumner had broken completely with both Grant
and Fish over the San Domingo affair during the
negotiations, but he was still at the head of the
"first committee of the Senate," a place which he
regarded as "equal in position to anything in our
Government under the President"; and Fish, with
his eye fixed on the success of his undertaking, ar-
ranged through Patterson, another member of the
Foreign Relations Committee, for an interview at
Sumner's house. He left with Sumner on January 15
the written memorandum of his understanding with
Rose. It was returned by Sumner two days later
with a note admitting the propriety of Sir John
Rose's idea that "all questions and causes of irrita-
tion between England and the United States should
be removed absolutely and forever" and that "all
points of difference should be considered together";
and concluding with this proposition: "The greatest
trouble, if not peril, being a constant source of anxi-
ety and disturbance, is from Fenianism, which is ex-
cited by the British flag in Canada. Therefore the
withdrawal of the British flag cannot be abandoned
as a condition or preliminary of such a settlement as
is now proposed. To make the settlement complete,
308 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the withdrawal should be from this hemisphere in-
cluding provinces and islands."
An astounding suggestion it seems, and coming
from the chairman of the committee which would
have to pass upon any treaty for which they might
pave the way, not an encouragement to further par-
ley along the lines which the negotiations had in
view; but Fish and Rose, with Grant's fixed approval,
took no account of Sumner's comment and went
ahead with their arrangements without considering
impossible demands.
The British Minister submitted a proposal for the
appointment of a Joint High Commission, to be com-
posed of members to be named by each Government,
to hold its session at Washington, and to treat and
discuss the mode of settling the different questions
which had arisen out of the fisheries, as well as those
affecting the relations of the United States toward
the British possessions in North America. Fish,
backed by Grant, insisted that the Alabama question JC
should be within the scope of discussion and settle- \
ment by the commission, and the British Govern-
ment assented.
Grant, on February 9, 1871, nominated as com-
missioners on the part of the United States: Hamil- j
ton Fish, Secretary of State; Robert C. Schenck, |»itl
Minister to Great Britain; Samuel Nelson, Associate it]
ARBITRATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN 309
Justice of the Supreme Court; Ebenezer R. Hoar, of
Massachusetts; George H. Williams, of Oregon. If
it had not been for Sumner's unreasonableness and
Motley's petulance, the historian of the Dutch Re-
public might well have been a member of the com-
mission, thus adding luster to his fine career.
The British members were: Earl de Grey and Ri-
pon, a member of Gladstone's Cabinet; Sir Stafford
Northcote, a conservative leader in Parliament; Sir
Edward Thornton, British Minister in Washington;
Professor Montague Bernard, of Oxford University;
and Sir John A. Macdonald, the Premier of Canada.
Within six weeks the British and American Joint
High Commission were at work in Washington upon
the treaty. When it was laid before the Senate, on
the 10th of May, Sumner was no longer at the head
of the Committee upon the chairmanship of which he
set such store. He had been deposed in March, for
reasons not directly bearing on the negotiations with
Great Britain, though, as it seems to-day, the ratifi-
cation of a treaty was so vital to the maintenance of
friendly relations with Great Britain, that the un-
precedented action of the Senate might have been
justified by that alone.
Shorn of his place Sumner accepted the treaty
with reasonable grace. It was ratified in due course
on May 24, 1871. The principle of arbitration in in-
310 ULYSSES S. GRANT
ternational disputes had won its first great triumph.
Great Britain appointed as its arbitrator Chief Jus-
tice Alexander Cockburn; the United States, Charles
Francis Adams. The King of Italy, the President of
the Swiss Confederation, and the Emperor of Brazil
named three neutral arbitrators. Lord Tenterden
was the British agent and Sir Roundell Palmer the
counsel. J. C. Bancroft Davis, Assistant Secretary
of State, was agent for the United States. The Amer-
ican counsel were William M. Evarts, Caleb Cushing,
and Morrison R. Waite.
The Board of Arbitration met at Geneva, on De-
cember 15, 1871, and in the following September
it had done its work. But even to the very last the
shadow of Sumner's "massive grievance" and "in-
direct claims" hung over it threatening in the crude-
ness of the manner of their presentation more than
once to bring the arbitration to a futile end. Had it
not been for the firmness, tact, and diplomatic com-
prehension of Charles Francis Adams the arbitration
would have broken on those issues. On September 2,
by a vote of four to one at the twenty-ninth confer-
ence, the tribunal decided to award in gross the sum
of $15,500,000, to be paid in gold by Great Britain
to the United States for the damage done by the
Florida, Alabama, and Shenandoah. Cockburn alone
dissented.
ARBITRATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN 311
Thus Grant must have the credit for establishing
the principle of arbitration in international disputes;
for this was brought about by reason of the firmness
with which he held to the validity of American de-
mands. If anywhere along the line his conduct had
been marked by vacillation, the result could not have
been achieved. To him must also go the credit of
being among the earliest to encourage the principle
of a World's Congress, as afterwards embodied in
the Hague Tribunal, when to the Arbitration Union
in Birmingham he said: "Nothing would afford me
greater happiness than to know that, as I believe
will be the case, at some future day, the nations of
the earth will agree upon some sort of congress,
which will take cognizance of international questions
of difficulty, and whose decisions will be as bind-
ing as the decisions of our Supreme Court are upon
us. It is a dream of mine that some such solution
may be."
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY
In the geography of the Western Hemisphere Hayti
and San Domingo are insignificant. Among the
Latin American republics they cut no figure ; yet they
have had influence on the politics of the United
States quite out of keeping with their own impor-
tance. It is a rare administration which passes with^.
out unhappy experience with one or the other of
these misadventures in negro self-government. Grant
found in San Domingo a tragedy of his career — his
first unqualified defeat.
Although once nominally united, the two sections
of the island had been independent revolutionary
centers for twenty-five years. Hayti, originally un-
der the control of France, occupied a third of the
island and had four fifths of the population. San
Domingo, which had been a colony of Spain, though
sparsely settled, furnished frequent rotations in its
crops of insurrection. For some years, two leaders,
Baez and Cabral, had taken turns at being president, i
sometimes through violence tempered by a popular
primary, sometimes through violence alone.
Baez at the time was called by enemies of Grant
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 313
a mercenary adventurer, but Andrew D. White, who
talked with him in Domingo, describes him as a man
of force and ability, a light mulatto with none of the
characteristics generally attributed in the United
States to men of mixed blood. "In all his conduct
he showed quiet self-reliance, independence, and the
tone of a high-spirited gentleman. His; family was
noted in the history of the island and held large es-
tates near the capital city. . . . There was a quiet
elegance in his manners and conversation which would
have done credit to any statesman in any country.
... I have never doubted that his overtures to
General Grant were patriotic. As long as he could re-
member he had known nothing in his country but a
succession of sterile revolutions which had destroyed
all its prosperity and nearly all its population."
During Johnson's Administration, Baez, out of
power for a while, had come to Washington seeking
intervention. In 1868 he had another term as presi-
dent; while Cabral hovered on the Haytian border,
waiting to pounce on him again. Baez sent a confi-
dential agent to Washington, and Johnson in his
last annual message, at Seward's instigation, recom-
mended the annexation of the entire island.
Baez repeated his overtures almost as soon as the
new Administration was installed. He met with scant
consideration at first except from Grant himself, who
314 ULYSSES S. GRANT
saw in San Domingo not only rich natural resources,
but a refuge for the colored people of the South.
The project of annexation seems to have grown
upon Grant before the Secretary of State or other
members of the Cabinet were fully aware of it. There
was talk about it in Cabinet meetings to which Grant
listened without comment, and it was generally un-
derstood that the policy of the Administration was
against intervention, until one day in May Grant
casually remarked that as the navy seemed to want
Samana Bay for a coaling-station, he thought he
would send General Babcock down to report upon it
as an engineer.
Orville E. Babcock, who had been one of Grant's
staff in the later years of the war, and was now de-
tailed at the White House as an assistant private
secretary, was a young man of great personal charm,
energetic, intelligent, and a competent military en-
gineer; but through his indiscreet activities and dubi
ous associations he contrived in one way and anoth
to get Grant into all kinds of trouble. WhatevJ
merit there may have been in the proposed annexa-
tion, there was very little in Babcock's part in it, for
which Grant with his customary loyalty accepted
full responsibility. Babcock started for San Domingo
in July, 1869, under instructions from the State de-
partment to make a complete inquiry into the pop-
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 315
ulation and resources of the island. A naval vessel
was placed at his disposal.
On September 4 Babcock executed with the Do-
minican authorities a protocol which stipulated for
the annexation of the Dominican Republic with the
payment of $1,500,000 by the United States for the
extinction of the Dominican debt. In the body of
the protocol he assumed the ambitious title of "Aide-
de-camp to His Excellency Ulysses S. Grant, Presi-
dent of the United States of America," and added
the extraordinary pledge that the President "prom-
ises privately to use all his influence in order that the
idea of annexing the Dominican Republic to the
. United States may acquire such a degree of popular-
ity among members of Congress as will be necessary
for its accomplishment."
Fish was astounded when he discovered what
Babcock had brought back with him. "What do you
think?" he exclaimed to Jacob D. Cox. "Babcock 's
back and has actually brought a treaty for the ces-
sion of San Domingo; yet I pledge you my word he
had no more diplomatic authority than any other
casual visitor to that island ! " Fish would have ended
the incident there and forgotten it. He did not
dream that Grant would father Babcock's queer
performance.
At the next Cabinet meeting Grant began by say-
316 ULYSSES S. GRANT
ing, " Babcock has returned, as you see, and has
brought a treaty of annexation. I suppose it is not
formal, as he had no diplomatic powers; but we can
easily cure that. We can send back the treaty, and
have Perry, the consular agent, sign it; and as he is
an officer of the State Department it would make it
all right."
There was an awkward silence, broken finally by
Cox, who asked, "But, Mr. President, has it been
settled, then, that we want to annex San Domingo?'
Grant colored and smoked hard at his cigar. Fish
was impassive, his eyes fixed on the portfolio before
him. There was no response from any one. "As the
silence became painful," writes Cox, "the President
called for another item of business and left the
question unanswered. The subject was never again
brought up before the assembled Cabinet."
Fish was in an intolerable position. Not only
had his department been compromised by Babcock's
undertaking, but his own sincerity was called in
question because in frequent conversations with
Sumner he had always treated the talk of annexation
as idle gossip. He tendered his resignation. Grant
begged him to stay. He wanted San Domingo, but
he needed Fish; and the Secretary, ambitious to
bring the negotiations with Great Britain to a suc-
cessful issue, yielded in San Domingo in order that
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 317
he might achieve the greater end. Babcock was sent
back to San Domingo, where he concluded two treat-
ies, one for annexation, the other for the lease of the
Bay of Samana, giving at the same time the Presi-
dent's guaranty to the Dominican Republic against
all foreign intervention until the treaties could be
submitted to the Dominican people, a guaranty
which was enforced for months by ships of our navy
under Secretary Robeson's explicit instructions.
Leaving our men-of-war in the neighborhood to
insure protection to Baez, Babcock came back to
Washington in December bringing his treaties with
him. Congress was in holiday recess and Grant under-
took to assure himself of the support of Sumner who
was one of the few Senators remaining in town.
On the evening of the first Sunday in January the
President called at Sumner's house and found him
at dinner with two friends, Ben: Perley Poore, the
Washington correspondent, and Colonel John W.
Forney, the Secretary of the Senate. This interview
played a vital part in the subsequent history of the
Administration and marked the beginning of the
irreconcilable breach between Grant and Sumner.
Grant always contended that Sumner promised to
support the treaty. Sumner denied that he had done
anything of the kind. Of the two witnesses Forney
subsequently expressed the opinion that Grant was
318 ULYSSES S. GRANT
justified in feeling he could count on Sumner's back-
ing; while Poore declared that "the President and
the Senator misunderstood each other."
According to Poore, Grant did not have the treaties
or any memorandum of them with him. He dwelt
especially upon the expenditure by General Babcock
of a large sum taken from a secret service fund for
promoting intercourse with the West Indies and im-
pressed Sumner with the idea that he feared an at-
tack in Congress over that expenditure. "While I
know," wrote Poore in 1877, "that Mr. Sumner
thought that the President had come to enlist his
services in defending this expenditure by General
Babcock, I have no doubt but that the President
meant (as Colonel Forney thought and as I thought)
the treaty for the acquisition of the Dominican Re-
public."
The President promised to send General Babcock
to call on the Senator the next day, with copies of the
papers, and left. As Mr. Sumner escorted him to the
door he said, according to Forney: "Well, Mr. Presi-
dent, I am a Republican and an Administration man,
and I will do all I can to make your Administration a
success. I will give the subject my best thought and
will do all I can rightly and considerately to aid you."
Sumner gave his own version in the speech he made in
the Senate December 21, 1870, as follows: "I have
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 319
heard it said that I assured the President that I
would support the Administration in this measure.
Never! He may have formed that opinion, but never
did I say anything to justify it; nor did I suppose he
could have failed to appreciate the reserve with
which I spoke. My language, I repeat, was precise,
well considered, and chosen in advance; 'I am an
Administration man, and whatever you do will al-
ways find in me the most careful and candid consid-
eration.' In this statement I am positive. It was
early fixed in my mind and I know that I am right."
Upon such seemingly slight divergences of view
depended subsequent events. Upon a difference in
interpretation of a single sentence, Grant had no
right to charge Sumner later with a breach of faith,
but there was another feature seldom alluded to by
the historians of the time which contributed to the
bitterness. Sumner always maintained and declared
frequently in conversation that Grant was intoxi-
cated that day, and the charge undoubtedly reached
Grant's ears. Poore says that Grant was "not in the
slightest degree under the influence of alcohol." He
thinks that Sumner drew his inference from the fact
Ithat, before the subject of San Domingo came up for
consideration at all, the President became intem-
perately angry and "expressed himself with more
warmth than I ever saw him display either before or
320 ULYSSES S. GRANT
since that evening," in discussing the case of ex-
Representative Ashley, of Ohio, who had been de-
posed from his position as Governor of Montana,
whom Sumner was anxious to see restored and whom
Grant hotly denounced as a mischief-maker and a
worthless fellow.
Babcock called on Sumner the next day with cop-
ies of the treaties, and Sumner plainly indicated his
displeasure with the terms. He resented it that the
President of the United States should be pledged to
lobby the treaty through the Senate and this resent-
ment intensified the prejudice he held against the an-
nexation project as a whole, feeling as he did that the
extinction of the Black Republic would be a wrong
to the negro who had there an opportunity to work
out a problem in self-government. On January 18 the
treaties were laid before the Committee on Foreign
Relations and a majority of the Committee expressed
their disapproval.
Grant, quick to learn the Committee's attitude,
became more set than ever in his purpose. He sum-
moned Senators to the White House; he camped out
in the President's room at the Capitol and begged
one after another personally to support the treaties.
But it was all in vain. The treaties lay with the
Committee till March 15, when an adverse report
was voted. Sumner, Schurz, Patterson, Cameron,
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 321
and Casserly in favor of rejection; Morton and
Harlan against. Grant still persisted in the face ^
of defeat apparently assured. Two days after the
adverse report he visited the Senate and sent for
fourteen Senators to meet him. He continued his
activities while the annexation treaty was under
consideration, and while it was laid aside for weeks
without action.1 The day before the vote in Com-
mittee he had sent a brief message urging favorable
action and expressing the earnest wish that the Sen-
ate would not permit the treaty to expire by limita-
tion. On May 31 he sent another message urging an
1 Sckurz tells how Grant, meeting him at a reception, asked
him to the White House where he plunged forthwith into the
subject he had at heart. " I hear you are a member of the Senate
Committee that has the San Domingo treaty under consideration,"
he said, " and I wish you would support that treaty. Won't you do
that?" Schurz said frankly he could not do so, and proceeded to
give his reasons at considerable length and with great earnestness.
" At first the President listened to me with evident interest, looking
at me as if the objections to the treaty which I expressed were
quite new to him, and made an impression on his mind. But after
a while I noticed that his eyes wandered about the room and I
became doubtful whether he listened to me at all. When I had
stopped he sat silent for a minute or two. I, of course, sat silent,
too, waiting for him to speak. At last he said in a perfectly calm
tone as if nothing had happened: 'Well, I hope you will at least
vote for the confirmation of Mr. Jones, whom I have selected for a
foreign mission.' " Schurz had never heard of Jones and when his
name came before the Foreign Relations Committee a few days
later, after his nomination to be Minister to Belgium, it appeared
that other members of the committee were equally in the dark.
He was interested in street-car lines in Chicago and was subse-
quently confirmed.
322 ULYSSES S. GRANT
extension of time and pressing with fervor the ad-
vantages of annexation.
"I feel an unusual anxiety," he said, "for the rati-
fication of this treaty, because I believe it will re-
dound greatly to the glory of the two countries inter-
ested, to civilization and to the extirpation of the
institution of slavery. The doctrine promulgated by
President Monroe has been adhered to by all politi-
cal parties, and I now deem it proper to assert the
equally important principle that hereafter no terri-
tory on this continent shall be regarded as subject to
transfer to a European power. The Government of
San Domingo has voluntarily sought this annexation.
It is a weak power numbering probably less than
120,000 souls, and yet possessing one of the rich-
est territories under the sun, capable of supporting
a population of 10,000,000 people in luxury. . . .
The acquisition of San Domingo is an adherence to!
the 'Monroe Doctrine'; it is a measure of national
protection; it is asserting our just claim to a con-
trolling influence over the great commercial traffic
soon to flow from east to west by the way of the Isth-
mus of Darien; it is to build up our merchant marine;
it is to furnish new markets for the products of our
farms, shops, and manufactories; it is to make slav-
ery insupportable in Cuba and Porto Rico at once,
and ultimately so in Brazil; it is to settle the unhappy
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 323
condition of Cuba and end an exterminating conflict;
it is to provide honest means of paying our honest
debts, without overtaxing the people; it is to furnish
our citizens with the necessaries of everyday life at
cheaper rates than ever before; and it is in fine a
rapid stride toward that greatness which the intelli-
gence, industry, and enterprise of the citizens of the
United States entitle this country to assume among
nations."
Thus Grant's conception of the importance of an-
nexation fattened on opposition, and when, on June
30, ratification was defeated by a tie vote in the Sen-
ate, 28 to 28, his anger was proportionately intense,
especially against Sumner, who he believed had
proved faithless after giving him assurance of sup-
port. In debate the Senator had denounced the
manner of negotiations, and had bitterly assailed
Babcock as Grant's personal emissary. Busybodies
were quick to instill in Grant's mind the suspicion
that charges of fraud and corruption which were
widely spread really emanated from Sumner, so that
Grant's resentment centered on the Massachusetts
Senator. When, the day after the rejection of the
treaty, Fish by Grant's direction asked Motley for
lis resignation the general conclusion was inevita-
ble that this was an act of reprisal against Motley's
riend and sponsor.
324 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Grant never admitted this and Motley had been
for months in bad favor with the Administration,
owing partly to his early ineptness in the negotia-
tions with Great Britain and partly to lack of tact in
his dealings with the President, as when he refused to
appoint young Nicholas Fish as one of his secretaries
when Grant personally requested it. Adam Badeau
declares that on May 15, six weeks before the vote on
the treaty, Grant told him at the ^Yhite House that
he was going to remove Motley.
That a change in the English mission had been
under advisement for some time before the rejection
of the treaty, appears from Sumner's own statement
in his subsequent recital of his grounds for grievance
against the Administration. Fish, now loyally sup-
porting the San Domingo project and at the time
still friendly to Sumner, two weeks before the final
vote, had a three hours' conference at the Senator's
house one night, pressing his views, and in the course
of conversation asked, "AYhy not go to London? I
offer you the English mission. It is yours." Sumner
coolly replied, "We have a minister there who can-
not be bettered." He afterwards cited this sugges-
tion as an attempt to influence him improperly. Fish
said the suggestion was made impulsively through
sympathy for Sumner, who had just referred to his
domestic troubles. Whether it was fairly susceptible
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 325
to a sinister interpretation or not, it would certainly
indicate that even before the adverse vote upon the
treaty Motley's tenure was uncertain.
There came also then a sudden request for the
resignation of Attorney-General Hoar, Sumner's only
intimate friend in the Administration. Since Mas-
sachusetts had two cabinet members, Hoar early in
the Administration had placed his resignation in the
hands of the President, but nothing had been done
about it. Grant, who enjoyed Hoar's humor and
companionship in spite of their divergent tastes,
nominated him for a vacancy on the Supreme Bench
in December, 1869, but Southern Senators, whom
Hoar offended by refusing to honor their endorsement
of unfit men for federal judges and marshals in the
South, banded together in resentment and defeated
his confirmation. "What could you expect for a man
who had snubbed seventy Senators?" he remarked
philosophically to his friends of the Saturday Club
who were inclined to sympathize with him.
One afternoon in June, shortly before the San Do-
mingo treaty was to be voted on, he was suddenly
asked for his resignation and was told frankly by
Grant that he had been obliged to take the step in
order to secure support in the Senate from South-
ern Republicans, who demanded the Cabinet place
for a Southern man. The President had no one in
326 ULYSSES S. GRANT
particular in mind for the place, but sent in the
name of Akerman, of Georgia, the next day on Hoar's
own suggestion that quick action would save em
barrassment through Southern pressure for the
place.
Motley remained in London, touched to his sensi
tive soul, broken in spirit, awaiting the summary
removal which finally came in December. The ap
proaches to Great Britain proceeded deftly and con
tinuously. San Domingo slumbered; but naval ves
sels hovered near her coasts. On the reconvening of
> Congress on December 5, 1870, Grant revived the
issue in his annual message. He asked for authority
to negotiate a new treaty, and suggested a resolution
of annexation, as in the case of Texas. "So convinced
am I of the advantages to flow from the acquisition
of San Domingo and the great disadvantages — I
might almost say calamities — to flow from the non
acquisition, that I believe the subject has only to be
investigated to be approved." Morton, fearing the
serious consequences of a defeat for the Administra
tion, induced a compromise on a resolution to ap-
point a commission of investigation, which he forth-
with offered in the Senate.
Sumner was in a rage. His wrath had been fed bj
tales of tattlers. His indignation and intolerance hac
grown through the summer. He "roared like the Bui
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 327
of Bashan" when he got to discussing the President
with his friends. Grant was equally bitter.
Sumner up to this time had not attacked the
President in open debate and now a better politician
and a wiser lawyer would have let the San Domingo
business alone, since it was plain that annexation
either by treaty or joint resolution was dead. He
could have consented gracefully to Morton's innocu-
ous commission of investigation and that would have
been the end of it ; but his fateful propensity for put-
ting himself right in the record followed him now as
at the time of the defeat of the Johnson-Clarendon
Convention. Morton urged him to let the resolution
pass without debate, but he refused; and though he
was warned that if he attacked the Administration
the President's friends would be forced to a defense,
and an open rupture would result, he was immovable.
He was obsessed with animosity, and even went so
far as to assure Morton that his life had been threat-
ened at the White House by Grant and Babcock.
Morton could not laugh him out of his delusion.
He made the attack on December 21, 1870, in a
speech which he entitled "Naboth's Vineyard," be-
ginning, "The resolution commits Congress to a
dance of blood," intimating that Grant was following
in the steps of Pierce, Buchanan, and Andrew John-
! son, and speaking of the President in a manner
328 ULYSSES S. GRANT
" bitter and excited," according to Morton, who adds,
"his course is generally regretted by his best friends
of whom I am one." Chandler and Conkling made
bitter personal attacks on Sumner.
Morton's resolution was adopted in both House
and Senate^A commission was appointed by the
President consisting of Benjamin F. Wade, a radical
Republican, Andrew D. White, an unbiased college
president, and Samuel G. Howe, the abolitionist, a
confidential friend of Sumner. This commission vis-
ited San Domingo accompanied by many news-
paper correspondents and by other observers, and
returned favorable to annexation. They made a
report to Congress containing a statement of facts
and indicating the resources of the country. "The
mere rejection by the Senate of a treaty negotiated by
the President," said Grant in a message of April 5,
1871, transmitting the report, "only indicates a dif-
ference of opinion between two coordinate depart-
ments of the Government, without touching the
character or wounding the pride of either. But
when such rejection takes place simultaneously with
charges openly made of corruption on the part of
the President or those employed by him, the case is
different. Indeed, in such case the honor of the na- .
tion demands investigation. This has been accom- |
plished by the report of the commissioners herewith I
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 329
transmitted, and which fully indicates the purity of
the motives and action of those who represented the
United States in the negotiation. . . . And now my
task is finished and with it ends all personal solici-
tude upon the subject. My duty being done, yours
begins; and I gladly hand over the whole matter to
the judgment of the American people, and of their rep-
resentatives in Congress assembled. The facts will
now be spread before the country, and a decision
rendered by that tribunal whose convictions so sel-
dom err, and against whose will I have no policy to
enforce." Nothing further was ever done toward
annexation, though Grant returned to the subject
repeatedly in his messages to Congress expressing
regret that his recommendations had not been fol-
lowed. He reiterated his arguments years later in his
book. Sumner's wrathful explosion had no effect
whatever upon the ultimate result. It simply served
to fan a feud, fateful alike to him and to the Ad-
ministration he might have served.
Andrew D. White, who entered on the inquiry
with an open mind, sheds interesting light upon
the character of Grant, whom he interviewed at the
White House. "Instead of the taciturn man who, as
his enemies insisted, said nothing because he knew
nothing, had never cared for anything save military
matters, and was entirely absorbed in personal in-
330 ULYSSES S. GRANT
terests, I found a quiet, dignified public officer,
who presented the history of the Santo Domingo
question, and his view regarding it, in a manner
large, thoughtful, and statesmanlike. ... As I took
leave of him he gave me one charge for which I shall
always revere his memory. He said: ' . . . You have
doubtless noticed hints in Congress and charges in
various newspapers that I am financially interested
in the acquisition of Santo Domingo. Now, as a
man, as your fellow citizen, I demand that on your
arrival in the island you examine thoroughly into all
American interests there; that you study land titles
and contracts with the utmost care; and that if you
find anything whatever which connects me or any
of my family with any of them, you expose me to
the American people.' The President uttered these
words in a tone of deep earnestness."
However we may criticize the way Grant tried to
force the San Domingo treaty through the Senate, he
will be justified by history in his intent; for he fore-
saw far in advance of others that some time the island
must be a part of the United States. If we had taken
over San Domingo when we had the opportunity, we
should have been spared unpleasant complications
and sordid scandals running through many years.
Annexation will come about in time, but never with
so little friction or expense.
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 331
"In future while I hold my present office," Grant
wrote in his second inaugural, "the subject of acqui-
sition of territory must have the support of the peo-
ple before I will recommend any proposition looking
to such acquisition. I say here, however, that I do
not share in the apprehension held by many as to
the danger of governments becoming weakened and
destroyed by reason of their extension of territory.
Commerce, education, and rapid transit of thought
and matter by telegraph and steam have changed all
this. Rather do I believe that our Great Maker is
preparing the world, in his own good time, to become
one nation, speaking one language, and when armies
and navies will be no longer required."
The big results of an episode futile in itself soon
began to show. Motley, continuing in office months
beyond the time set for his resignation, was finally, in
December, 1871, subjected to the humiliation of a
summary recall, and Robert C. Schenck, of Ohio, a
person of entirely different type, was named for
London in his place, Frelinghuysen and Morton
having both previously declined the appointment.
Motley's last official act was to write a controver-
sial history of his mission, for the Secretary of State,
an earnest defense of his conduct in office and a crit-
icism of his official superiors. He referred in this to
the rumor that his removal was due to Sumner's
332 ULYSSES S. GRANT
opposition to the San Domingo treaty. Fish in his
reply, which bears internal evidence of having been
written by another for his signature, asserted that
this rumor had its origin in Washington "in a source
bitterly, personally, and vindictively hostile to the
President."
And then follows a passage which, when it camo to
Sumner's eyes on the publication of the correspond-
ence, angered him beyond restraint as a gross and
wanton insult. "Mr. Motley must know — or if he
does not know it he stands alone in his ignorance of
the fact — that many Senators opposed the San Do-
mingo treaty openly, generously, and with as much
efficiency as did the distinguished Senator to whom he
refers and have nevertheless continued to enjoy the
undiminished confidence and the friendship of the
President, than whom no man living is more tolerant
of honest and manly differences of opinion; is more
single or sincere in his desire for the public welfare,
or more disinterested or regardless of what concerns
himself; is more frank and confiding in his own deal-
ings; is more sensitive to a betrayal of confidence or
would look with more scorn and contempt upon one who
uses the words and the assurances of friendship to cover
a secret and determined purpose of hostility."
On January 9 this correspondence was sent to the
Senate. Sumner up to that time, in spite of his aliena-
THE SAN DOMINGO TRAGEDY 333
tion from Grant, had continued in friendly personal
relations with Fish. Within a fortnight he had dined
at Fish's home. When he read this passage, which he
not unreasonably applied to himself, his wrath was
hot. He felt that he had been betrayed by a pre-
tended friend. From that time he had only formal
relations with Fish. It was on January 15, only a
week later, that Fish had to seek the interview with
regard to the mission of Sir John Rose through the
mediation of a common friend. Thereafter Sumner
was ignored by the Administration in handling ques-
tions of diplomacy. Grant had set his heart on being
rid of him.
A new Congress came into being on the 4th of
March. When the Senate entered on the task of
organizing its committees, the supporters of the
Administration served notice that Sumner should be
deposed from his position at the head of the Com-
mittee on Foreign Relations. The Massachusetts
Senator had few real friends among his associates.
His manner for years had been overbearing. Adams
says that, while not exacting deference, "habitual def-
erence was essential to his good-will." Those who,
hadLhe been of different temper, might have sus-
tained him, now left him to his fate. Thenceforward,
he pursued Grant without mercy. His vehement de-
nunciation inspired others to unsparing criticism,
334 ULYSSES S. GRANT
and who can say how far the impressions of writers
of history may have been due to him? Yet Grant
said to Lowell years later at Madrid: "Sumner is
the only man I was ever anything but my real self to;
the only man I ever tried to conciliate by artificial
means." A curious comment.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE CUBAN PROBLEM — SOUND FINANCE —
"BLACK FRIDAY"
Over half of Grant's inaugural was devoted to a dis-
cussion of the nation's financial credit. Four other
topics were treated. He pledged himself to enforce
all laws for the security of "person, property, and
free religion, and political opinion in every part of
our common country without regard to local preju-
dice," an unmistakable warning to the lawless ele-
ment in the South. He declared that he would favor
any course toward the Indians which would tend to
their civilization and ultimate citizenship, the first of
our Presidents to take such advanced position. He
expressed a desire for the ratification of the Fifteenth
Amendment to the Constitution, giving to the negro
the right of suffrage, a wish fulfilled in the first year of
his Administration.
Grant in his inaugural enunciated his foreign
policy in a few robust and pregnant sentences, the
sturdy tone of which carried throughout his entire
Administration. "I would deal with nations as
equitable law requires individuals to deal with each
other, and I would protect the law-abiding citizen,
whether of native or foreign birth, wherever his
336 ULYSSES S. GRANT
rights are jeopardized, or the flag of our country
floats. I would respect the rights of all nations, de-
manding equal respect for our own. If others de-
part from this rule in their dealings with us, we may
be compelled to follow their precedent."
The spirit of this declaration pervaded and gal-
vanized our treatment of Great Britain and Canada
in the Alabama claims and the fisheries and boundary
disputes; of Spain in her relations with Cuba and in
the Virginius affair; of Mexico and the South and
Central American Republics in the maintenance of
the Monroe Doctrine.
We have seen how delicately the British and San
Domingan questions were interlaced. The Cuban
problem was a third thread in the skein.
While Fish, with the aid of Rose, was trying to
bring about a renewal of negotiations with Great
Britain, Grant had turned his attention to the West
Indies where Cuba and San Domingo filled for the
moment the field of vision. Spectacularly the rapid
developments in the Antilles counted for more than
the deft and cautious diplomatic approaches between
our State Department and the British Foreign
Office, but Fish retained throughout a sense of inter-
national proportion. He did not personally approve
Grant's course in San Domingo and felt it necessary
to moderate his chief's desire to meddle in the Cuban
THE CUBAN PROBLEM 337
insurrection, but so long as he had a clear path in
what he deemed the greater problem, he was content
in general to let Grant have his way without the risk
of strained relations through offering unasked ad-
vice. There was much interest throughout the North,
especially in New York financial circles, in the Cuban
revolutionists, who had appealed to our Government
for aid and had enlisted in their cause the sympa-
thetic Rawlins, now Secretary of War.
Grant was strongly inclined to Rawlins's view, and
as early as June 9, 1869, he asked Sumner about issu-
ing a proclamation according belligerent rights to
the insurgents, thus doing unto Spain as Spain had
done to us at the beginning of the Civil War. Sum-
ner advised against it, but Grant stuck to his idea,
and having ordered a proclamation to be drawn up,
he signed it on August 19 in the cabin of one of the
Fall River boats and sent it to Washington by the
hand of Bancroft Davis, the Assistant Secretary of
State, with instructions to Fish to issue the procla-
mation after signing it and affixing the official seal.
Fish, gingerly feeling his way toward reopening ne-
gotiations with Great Britain, was keenly alive to
the difficulty involved in England's recognition of
Confederate belligerency, too great emphasis upon
the enormity of which by Sumner threatened to
make his essay at negotiations abortive.
338 ULYSSES S. GRANT
In his instructions to Motley he had sought to
minimize the bearing upon our claims of the Queen's
proclamation of May, 1861, but the proclamation
still remained an ugly obstacle in his way, and he was
conscious of the inconsistency of even a perfunc-
tory assertion of our grievance while we ourselves
might be upon the point of recognizing belligerent
rights in a band of Cuban guerrillas who, as he after-
wards wrote, " have no army, ... no courts, do not
occupy a single town or hamlet, to say nothing of a
seaport." To his mind, "Great Britain or France
might just as well have recognized belligerency for
the Black Hawk War," and trusting to the efficacy
of delay, he deposited the proclamation in a safe
place after signing it, and left it there awaiting fur-
ther instructions which never came.
Rawlins died September 6; "Black Friday " came;
Grant's mind was fully occupied with pressing ques-
tions; and in the multiplicity of other things Fish had
his way. In his annual message of December 6, 1869,
the President contented himself with disclaiming any
disposition on the part of the United States " to in-
terfere with the existing relations of Spain with her
colonial possessions on this continent." But public
feeling was strong for recognition of belligerency, and
when Congress met there was a growing pressure for
the passage of resolutions to that end. Fish was the
THE CUBAN PROBLEM 339
restraining influence at this time. Had it not been
for him Grant would have doubtless aided those who
called for recognition. Fish advised John Sherman,
who had introduced the resolution in the Senate, "to
prepare bills for the increase of the public debt, and
to meet the increased appropriation which will be
necessary for the army, navy, etc." As the time for
a vote in the House approached, he impressed on
Grant the necessity of sending in a message empha-
sizing the importance of refraining from recognition,
and wrote a special message, which was sent to Con-
gress on June 17, treating the whole subject compre-
hensively. Fish says in his diary that the President
"was induced with great hesitation and with much
reluctance to sign it, and after it was sent in he told
me that he feared he had made a mistake. ... It
evoked a fierce debate, and much denunciation, but
it evoked also much good sense in the speeches of
those who sustained it ; an expression of good sound
international law, and of honesty of purpose, and it
brought the gravity of the case to the consideration
of Congress; and the Administration, after the sever-
est debate on a question of foreign policy which has
occurred for years, was triumphantly sustained."
Of impressive immediate effect was the clear dec-
laration with regard to upholding the public credit.
"A great debt has been contracted by us in securing
340 ULYSSES S. GRANT
to us and our posterity the Union," said Grant.
"The payment of this principal and interest, as well
as the return to a specie basis as soon as it can be
accomplished without material detriment to the
debtor class or to the country at large, must be
provided for. To protect the national honor every
dollar of government indebtedness should be paid
in gold, unless otherwise expressly stipulated in the
contract. Let it be understood that no repudiator of
one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in
public place and it will go far toward strengthening a
credit which ought to be the best in the world, and
will ultimately enable us to replace the debt with
bonds bearing less interest than we now pay. To this
should be added a faithful collection of the revenue, a
strict accountability to the treasury for every dollar
collected, and the greatest practical retrenchment in
expenditure in every department of government."
It required some courage for the President and the
Republican Party to take this attitude, for there was
a strong sentiment in the country in favor of the pay-
ment of five-twenty bonds in greenbacks and a lar^o
issue of greenbacks for that purpose. A considerable
party had come into being in support of this proposal, »
and the feeling had been accentuated by the rapid
contraction of United States notes following the Civil
War, $140,000,000 out of $737,000,000 having been
SOUND FINANCE 341
withdrawn in the two years preceding 1868. Johnson,
although he had at his elbow in Secretary McCulloch
one of the soundest of financial ministers, had extra-
ordinary ideas personally about the repudiation of
interest on government bonds, which found expression
in his last annual message; and the fact that, following
the London panic of May, 1866, business had been in
a bad way, with a decrease in the value of property
and an increase in the face value of debts, was popu-
larly attributed to the contraction of the currency.
Yet there was no hesitancy on the part of the new
Administration.
The Republicans in the platform upon which Grant
was elected had denounced all forms of repudiation
as a national crime and declared that the national
honor required the payment of the public indebted-
ness "in the uttermost good faith to all creditors at
home and abroad not only according to the letter but
the spirit of the laws"; and the very first act of the
Congress which came into existence on March 4,
1869, was a law "to strengthen the public credit,"
which, after passing both House and Senate over-
whelmingly, was signed by Grant on March 18. The
law solemnly pledged the faith of the United States to
the payment, in gold or its equivalent, of the United
States notes and all the United States bonds except
in those cases where the law authorizing their issue
34* ULYSSES S. GRANT
provided expressly for their payment in "other cur-
rency than gold and silver." By the words of the law
the United States also solemnly pledged its faith "to
make provision at the earliest practicable period for
the redemption of the United States notes in coin."
The episode which has come down in history as
the "Gold Conspiracy," with "Black Friday" as its
demoralizing climax, throws light not only upon
Grant's ingenuousness, but also on the fashions of
the hour. At the time of Grant's accession to the
Presidency the two spectacular figures in New York
financial circles were Jay Gould and James Fisk,
Jr., — "Jim" Fisk as he was popularly known.
Gould was the shrewdest, most subtle and ruthless
trader and manipulator in the Street — a railroad
wrecker after the manner of his day, with an extra-
ordinary genius for getting money; slight in figure,
reticent, keen of face, of a Semitic type. Fisk, his
partner in many deals, was a speculator of another
sort, big, coarse, florid in complexion, dress, and
speech, a daring gambler for heavy stakes, a high
liver, unscrupulous in his financial operations, im-
moral in his daily and nightly life.
These two, so strikingly contrasted in everything
except their passion for speculation and financial
power, had combined their diverse talents in 1868 to
gain control of the Erie Railroad. They played with
BLACK FRIDAY 343
power as though it were a toy. They flaunted their
control by putting on the board of directors "Boss"
Tweed and Peter B. Sweeney, the chieftains of Tam-
many Hall.
Gould and Fisk also owned steamers, palatial for
that day, plying between New York and Fall River,
a fleet of which Fisk liked to be called Admiral, and
in command of which he would float up Long Island
Sound with bands playing and flags flying. Gould
had a project to advance the price of gold till wheat
should reach a price which would induce the farmers
of the West to seek the English market with their
breadstuff's, thus causing a movement of crops to
the seaboard, which meant plenty of freight for the
Erie road.
In the early summer of 1869 gold was heavy at
$1.34. There had been little change for months. To
manipulate the market Gould needed a free hand;
but he had to reckon with the Treasury gold re-
serve, and Secretary Boutwell had his own ideas
about the course gold ought to take. He had been
selling gold ever since he took office, setting free
$2,500,000 each month, thus bringing greenbacks
nearer the gold level.
Gould's problem was to stop the sales of gold,
and to this end he laid the wires to get in touch with
Boutwell's superior. Abel Rathbone Corbin, aged
344 ULYSSES S. GRANT
sixty-seven, retired speculator, lobby agent, editor,
and lawyer, recently married to Grant's sister, was
living in New York. Gould used him to secure an
introduction. On June 15, 18G9, Grant visited New
York on his way to the Peace Jubilee at Boston. He
stayed at Corbin's house; Gould met him there.
Gould and Fisk invited Grant to continue his
journey to Boston as their guest on one of the Fall
River boats, and on the run up the Sound they led
the conversation at dinner around to the subject of
finance. "Some one," Gould testified in the inves-
tigation which followed the cataclysm, "asked the
President what his view was," and to the consterna-
tion of the conspirators Grant replied bluntly that
" there was a certain amount of fictitiousness about
the prosperity of the country and that the bubble
might as well be tapped in one way as another."
There was a vacancy in the position of Assistant
Treasurer of the United States at New York, the
custodian of the greatest deposit of gold in the coun-
try. The place was filled on July 1 by the appoint-
ment of General Daniel Butterfield, upon whose
cooperation Gould felt he could rely. Gould did
nothing to influence the market till the time for the
movement of the crops approached. But in the last
ten days of August, through a pool which he formed
with two other large speculators, he bought from ten
BLACK FRIDAY 345
to fifteen millions of gold without, however, materi-
ally increasing the premium.
On September 2, Grant, quite oblivious to what
was going on, passed through New York on his
way to Saratoga, and stayed a few hours at Cor-
bin's house, seeing no one else while there.1 In the
course of conversation Grant became convinced of
the soundness of Gould's theory about marketing
the crops, as expounded by Corbin. He stopped in
the middle of a conversation in which he had ex-
pressed his views and wrote a letter to Secretary
Bout well. Before he had left the house the pur-
port of this letter undoubtedly was communicated
to Gould, who called privately upon Corbin with-
out Grant's knowledge.
Before a Congressional investigating committee,
Boutwell subsequently testified: "I think on the
evening of the 4th of September I received a letter
from the President dated at New York, as I recollect
it. . . . In that letter he expressed an opinion that
it was undesirable to force down the price of gold.
He spoke of the importance to the West of being able
to move their crops. . . . Upon the receipt of the
President's letter on the evening of the 4th of Sep-
tember, I telegraphed to Judge Richardson (Assist-
ant Secretary of the Treasury at Washington) this
1 Henry Adams, The Gold Conspiracy.
346 ULYSSES S. GRANT
dispatch: 'Send no order to Butterfield as to sales
of gold until you hear from me.'"
Thus Gould had information that the policy of the
Administration with regard to the sale of gold was to
be reversed fully a day before the Secretary of the
Treasury himself. He lost no time in taking ad-
vantage of his opportunity. Before leaving Corbin's
house, he had agreed to carry a million and a half of
gold as Corbin testified later "for the sake of a lady,
my wife." That same afternoon his brokers began
buying gold in large quantities. By the time Bout-
well received his letter on September 4, 1869, the pre-
mium had risen from 32 to 37. Then the bears began
to sell short. One of Gould's associates in the pool de-
serted him. The market broke. Corbin made Gould
pay him twenty-five thousand dollars on account.
Gold settled down to 35 and lingered there for a week.
Then Fisk, at Gould's suggestion, went in to buy.
Gould placed a million and a half to Butterfield's
account and half a million to the credit of General
Horace Porter, the President's private secretary,
sending word to them through Corbin. Porter re-
pudiated the purchase promptly. Butterfield took
no notice of the transaction. After the storm broke,
though he denied that he was ever notified of the
transaction, so great was the scandal that he was
forced to resign.
BLACK FRIDAY 347
From the 10th to the 13th of September, Grant
was again in New York and Gould saw him at Cor-
bin's house, though the President by that time had
become suspicious of the motives of the financier; for
according to Corbin he told the servant this should
be the last time Gould should be admitted. "Gould
was always trying to get something out of him." It is
a pity he did not earlier shut the door in Gould's face.
Plainly he had given no definite assurance regard-
ing his policy, for when he left on the 13th for a few
days' stay in the little town of Washington among
the mountains of western Pennsylvania, the con-
spirators in their anxiety, through the complaisant
Corbin, chased him up. They had bought over fifty
millions and had forced the market up to 40 in spite
of the increased activity of the bears. They did not
dare let go for fear of a collapse. It was vital to them
that the President should not direct the Secretary
of the Treasury to resume the sale of gold. Corbin
wrote a letter advising him to maintain his present
attitude regarding the sale of gold, which Fisk sent
speedily by a special messenger to reach him before
his return to the White House. In order to insure
its immediate delivery the messenger carried also a
letter of introduction to Horace Porter. It was not
till after the messenger had gone that Grant discov-
ered the elaborate precautions to insure the prompt
348 ULYSSES S. GRANT
delivery of an apparently unimportant communica-
tion. His suspicions were roused. At his request Mrs.
Grant wrote that night to Mrs. Corbin that the Presi-
dent was distressed to hear that Corbin was speculat-
ing in Wall Street and hoped he would "instantly
disconnect himself with anything of that sort."
Corbin wrote at once to Grant that he had not a
dollar interest in gold — a letter which with the other
he promptly showed to Gould who saw him daily,
suggesting in order to make good the assurance to his
brother-in-law that Gould should give him one hun-
dred thousand dollars and take his gold off his hands.
Gould, who had all the gold he could stagger under
just then, declined the proposal, but offered him one
hundred thousand dollars to stay in and not throw
his million and a half on the market. Corbin refused,
and then, realizing that an order to sell might come
from the Treasury at any moment, Gould hurried
down to Wall Street.
Fisk, still supposing that Grant was following the
advice in Corbin's letter, was buying wildly. The
market bounded to 162. The bears were dazed and
at the mercy of the new Napoleon of the Street, when
Gould without warning began to sell — the bubble
burst. The Street was in a state of excitement with-
out a precedent in all its checkered history. Within
a few minutes gold had fallen to 135. The Treasury
BLACK FRIDAY 349
wired its order to sell, which Gould had been expect-
ing, but which Fisk had not surmised. Gould had got
rid of his gold and his brokers' firm were able to meet
their contracts; but not so with Fisk. He repudiated
all but one. Their victims turned on them in wrath.
They escaped by back entrances to their uptown
office, while armed guards beat back the ruined trad-
ers storming at their downtown doors. There have
been no scenes to equal this in Wall Street before
or since. It was Friday, September 24, 1869, "Black
Friday."
The punishment of the conspirators did not fit the
crime. Fisk and Gould continued in control of Erie, a
little more discredited. Butterfield was permitted to
resign. In addition to letting Gould carry his gold for
him he had borrowed money from him and had spec-
ulated in government bonds. Brother-in-law Corbin,
his dreams of fortune shattered, retired to Washing-
ton, where he was not made uproariously welcome in
the President's house, though he was not cast adrift.
'He had accomplished nothing through his plunge in
high finance, except to set malicious tongues wagging.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE LEGAL TENDER DECISION
When Congress met in December, 1869, with the
financial disturbances still unsettled, the President
in his first annual message urged upon its attention
the evil of an unredeemable currency, repeating the
sentiments expressed in his inaugural. "It is the
duty, and one of the highest duties of Government,"
he said, "to secure to the citizen a medium of fixed,
unvarying value. This implies a return to a specie
basis and no substitute for it can be devised. It
should be commenced now and reached at the earli-
est practicable moment consistent with a fair regard
to the interests of the debtor class." He earnestly
recommended such legislation as would insure a grad-
ual return to specie payments and put an immediate
stop to fluctuations in the paper value of the measure
of all values (gold) which "makes the man of busi-
ness an involuntary gambler, for in all sales where
future payment is to be made both parties speculate
as to what will be the value of the currency to be paid
and received."
At the time the national debt was $2,453,000,000.
It had been decreased since March 1 by $71,903,000.
THE LEGAL TENDER DECISION 351
There had been set aside for the sinking fund
$20,000,000 of bonds, to comply with the law of
1862, that one per cent of the entire debt should be
set apart annually for this purpose. Boutwell, who,
though endowed with little financial imagination,
had economic common sense and thrift, concerned
himself first of all throughout his administration of
the Treasury in the reduction of the national debt, a
policy which helped our credit at home and abroad,
resulting in a total reduction during Grant's two
Administrations of nearly a billion dollars.
Boutwell bought the five-twenty bonds carrying
six per cent interest and sold four and one-half per
cent bonds in a refunding plan elaborated by himself.
He strove for the resumption of specie payments, and
in his first report asked for authority to retire at his
discretion two millions of greenbacks every month;
but Congress failed to give him this power to contract
the currency, a policy which had not been popular
since McCulloch in Johnson's Administration had
retired forty-four million dollars of greenbacks before
further contraction was suspended by Congress in
February, 1868. The contraction from McCulloch 's
retirement of greenbacks and from the withdrawal
and funding of the compound interest legal tender
notes had undoubtedly been too drastic treatment at
a time when the country was none too prosperous.
352 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Morton, of Indiana, called it the "Sangrado policy
of bleeding the country nearly to death to cure it of
a disease which demands tonics and building up."
Hardly had Grant's message of December, 1869,
gone to the country before the whole currency ques-
tion was brought vividly to the notice of the people,
through the decision of the United States Supreme
Court in the case of Hepburn vs. Griswold, that the
Legal Tender Act, under which the greenbacks were
authorized at the beginning of the war, was uncon-
stitutional. The opinion of the court was handed
down on February 7, 1870, by Chief Justice Chase,
under whose administration as Secretary of the
Treasury the law had been enacted. He now argued
that the act impaired the obligation of contracts and
was inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution;
that it deprived persons of property without due
process of law, by forcing creditors to accept dollars
of less value than those which were lent or which by
the terms of the contract they had a right to expect in
payment of claims. "We are obliged to conclude,"
said Chase as Chief Justice, "that an act [fathered by
Chase as Secretary of the Treasury] making mere
promises to pay dollars as legal tender in payment of
debts previously contracted, is not a means appropri-
ate, plainly adapted, really calculated, to carry into
effect any express power vested in Congress; that
THE LEGAL TENDER DECISION 353
such an act is inconsistent with the spirit of the Con-
stitution; and that it is prohibited by the Constitu-
tion."
Justice Miller, one of the ablest jurists who ever
sat on the Supreme Bench, delivered the opinion of
the minority of the court. After quoting Chief Jus-
tice Marshall, he said: " With the credit of the Gov-
ernment nearly exhausted and the resources of tax-
ation inadequate to pay even the interest on the
public debt, Congress was called on to devise some
new means of borrowing money on the credit of the
nation ; for the result of the war was conceded by all
thoughtful men to depend on the capacity of the Gov-
ernment to raise money in amounts previously un-
known. . . . The coin in the country . . . would not
have made a circulation sufficient to answer army
purchases. ... A general collapse of credit, of pay-
ment, and of business seemed inevitable, in which
faith in the ability of the Government would have
been destroyed, the rebellion would have triumphed,
the States would have been left divided, and the
people impoverished. The National Government
would have perished, and with it the Constitution
which we are now called upon to construe with such
oice and critical accuracy. ..."
The court was divided in its decision as handed
down, four to three: Nelson, Clifford, and Field
354 ULYSSES S. GRANT
siding with Chase, while Swayne and Davis agreec
with Miller. Grier, who had sat with the court whei
it first came to its decision on November 27, 18G9
and had then pronounced in favor of the 'constitu-
tionality of the act, had resigned before the announce-
ment of the decision on February 7, by unanimous
request of the other justices, his senile incompetency
having disclosed itself in the mean time through his
statement in another case of an opinion inconsistent
with his position on the Legal Tender case, and his
prompt reversal of his Legal Tender opinion whei
the inconsistency was called to his attention. There
were two vacancies on the bench on the day the de-
cision was handed down. Wayne had died and Griei
had resigned. E. R. Hoar, who had been nominatec
for one of the places, had been rejected by the Senat
four days earlier. Edwin 1VL Stanton, who had been
nominated for the other vacancy and promptly con-
firmed on December 20, had died four days after
confirmation.
It happened that on the very day the decision wa
handed down Grant sent to the Senate the name
of William Strong, of Pennsylvania, and Joseph P
Bradley, of New Jersey. Subsequently, two othe
cases known as the Legal Tender cases were broughl
before the court. A decision affirming the consti-j
tutionality of the acts and overruling the formei
THE LEGAL TENDER DECISION 355
decision was reached and announced on May 1,
1871. The opinion of the court, as read by Justice
Strong at the following term, on January 15, 1872,
declared that "we hold the acts of Congress con-
stitutional as applied to contracts made either before
or after their passage. In so holding we overrule so
much of what was decided in Hepburn vs. Griswold
as ruled the acts unwarranted by the Constitution so
far as they apply to contracts made before their
enactment."
The coincidence of the appointment of these two
justices, and the speedy reversal of the attitude of the
court on the constitutionality of the Legal Tender
Acts, led not unnaturally to the conclusion in many
minds, that Strong and Bradley had been named for
this specific purpose, and Chief Justice Chase, by in-
direction, gave color to the charge that the court had
been packed in order to reverse the earlier decision
in which he had participated. For many years this
suspicion lurked in the public consciousness, and
the motives of Grant and Attorney-General Hoar,
on whose recommendation the appointments were
made, have been frequently called in question.
There is no ground whatever for the charge. Sena-
tor George F. Hoar, loyally defending the memory
of his brother, replied to it conclusively, with great
detail of circumstance, in a letter which appeared
356 ULYSSES S. GRANT
in the "Boston Herald" in 1896 and which after-
wards was printed as a pamphlet, but it did not
require this marshaling of proof to clear the records
of the President and his Attorney-General. The va-
cancies were there; they had to be filled at that time;
and there was every reason why a Republican Presi-
dent should fill them with Republicans, as four of th^
seven justices had Democratic affiliations, Chase
having been a candidate for the Democratic nomina-
tion for President less than two years before. It
would have been hard to find a Republican judge or
lawyer of prominence who was less likely than Strong
and Bradley to favor the constitutionality of the Le-
gal Tender Acts, and there is not the slightest evi-
dence that, when Strong and Bradley were decided
upon by the President and the Attorney-General
and approved by the Cabinet, any one of them had an
inkling of what the decision of the court was to be.
Grant did not "pack the court."
CHAPTER XXXVI
BITTER PROBLEMS — THE SOUTH — THE NEGRO —
ENFORCEMENT ACTS
It was Grant's misfortune to inherit the problem of
the negro and the South in its most sordid and repul-
sive phase. The tragical blunders of Reconstruction,
which under the pressure of political necessity he had
half-heartedly consented to in their incipiency in
Johnson's Administration, bloomed noxiously in his
own. He had been sincerely the friend of the South at
the close of the Civil War, and he was genuinely in
favor of restoring promptly to the conquered Con-
federates the full rights of citizenship. He was
brought by force of circumstances to accept the full
measure of negro suffrage as an unwelcome reprisal
for Johnson's stubbornness; but he did not regard it
as inconsistent with his honest aspirations for a fully
reunited country. "Let us have peace" as he penned
it was not an empty phrase; yet it fell to him as
President to secure what peace was feasible only
through apprehension of the sword, to quell internal
violence by show of force. Threats of turbulence and
bloodshed in the South marked the entire period of
Grant's occupancy of the White House; and with
358 ULYSSES S. GRANT
sanction of Congress he was driven more than
once to measures not contemplated by the Consti-
tution.
The black record of carpet-bag and scalawag po-
litical control of Southern States, through misuse of
the negro vote, is an ugly picture to look back on.
The work of the Ku-Klux Klans and the White
Leagues was equally deplorable, unworthy of a proud-
spirited race and inexcusable even in the distressing
circumstances which inspired them. The former
slaves who reveled ostentatiously in unsought oppor-
tunities were not the best representatives of their
race, but they were victims in a measure of Northern
zealots, who fatuously dreamed that the poor, un-
lettered, childlike creatures could be at once regen-
erated by the baptism of the franchise.
Neither were the Ku-Klux Klans and White
League ruffians typical of the South. Those who at
this day try to paint them so render poor service to a
high-spirited, nobly nurtured people. The outrages,
riots, and murders which figured so conspicuously in
Grant's Administration were as a rule the work of the
lower class of whites, and in justice to the South
should be so credited, exactly as the political misrule
of the carpet-baggers should not be attributed to
those thrifty Northern settlers whose purpose in
leaving their homes was to help restore a war-
BITTER PROBLEMS 359
shattered territory and to participate in its renewed
industrial prosperity.
The New Orleans riot of July, 1866, which Sheri-
dan characterized as "an absolute massacre," was
the first of the social disturbances which later became
too prevalent. It was natural that they should begin
in Louisiana; for this was the first of the Southern
States to be "reconstructed," and the great negro
population thus invited to participate in its govern-
ment were largely plantation hands, the most igno-
rant and vicious of their race, many of whom had
been "sold down the river" by their former masters
for punishment as desperate characters. Northern
adventurers were speedily on the ground at New
Orleans, organizing the freedmen for political control.
Corruption and legislative orgies on the one hand and
violence on the other became the order of the day.
A Republican majority of 26,000 in the spring elec-
tions of 1868 was transformed in November into a
majority of 46,000 for Seymour and Blair.
From 1868 to 1872 misgovernment on the part of
carpet-baggers and negroes, tempered by violence
and intimidation on the part of the white minor-
ity, prevailed, not only in Louisiana, but in other
States containing a large excess of negro population,
although Virginia, thanks to the fact that Schofield
had it long under military rule, escaped the invasion
300 ULYSSES S. GRANT
of carpet-baggers and was thus in Schofield's words
"saved from the vile government and spoliation
which cursed the other Southern States." Bribery,
thievery, and extravagance were commonplaces in
the legislatures and among state officials. There
was corruption in the courts; property values fell;
taxes were in arrears; the state debts soared to pre-
posterous figures; industry was paralyzed.
In Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and Vir-
ginia conservative forces gradually gained ascend-
ancy during the early years of Grant's Administra-
tion; but this was not true of other States. In 1873,
three fourths of the South Carolina Legislature were
negroes, mulattoes, and octoroons, the most present-
able of whom a few years earlier were gentlemen's
servants, others of whom had been raising corn and
cotton under the whip of the overseer. The State
House had been lavishly refurnished; clocks and
mirrors costing $600; chairs costing $60; cuspidors
costing $14, had replaced the simple fittings of ante-
bellum days. A free restaurant and bar was kept
open day and night for the convenience of members
of the Legislature and their friends. The public print-
ing bills during the eight years of negro supremacy
exceeded by $717,589 the total cost of printing dur-
ing the seventy-eight years preceding. The total
taxes paid by all the members of one Legislature
BITTER PROBLEMS 361
were reported to be only $634; and 67 of the 98 negro
members paid no tax at all.
Negroes and carpet-baggers were sent to Congress.
Some of them were men of character; others not.
Men like Blanche K. Bruce, H. R. Revels, John R.
Lynch, Robert Elliott, negroes all, would do credit
to any race.
There is testimony also to violence by negroes in
reconstructed States, tales of burning barns,* cotton
gins, and dwellings; of rape committed upon white
women; of outrages such as bestial beings exulting
in unaccustomed license might be guilty of. There is
no evidence that these things were as prevalent as
has been represented; but they were sufficient in con-
nection with the political orgies at the state capitols
to rouse the whites to action. Hence the increased
activity of the Ku-Klux Klans, the White Leagues,
the terrifying night raids, the midnight whippings,
the lynchings, and innumerable unspeakable offenses,
some of them committed for private vengeance or as
a method of political proscription. The record is one
of infamy; and the late endeavor of a few Southern
novelists, playwrights, and motion-picture producers
to throw about it the halo of righteous retribution and
romance will make it nothing else.1
1 In spite of the notoriety attaching to the operations of the
Ku-Klux Klans, it should be remembered that their operations
362 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Thus Grant was called upon to meet conditions in
the South for which there was no parallel or prece-
dent and for the existence of which he was in no way
were by no means universal in the South. They were widely
separated and their virulence was confined to the black counties
of the afflicted States. The various secret organizations seem to
have had little more than incidental relationship among them-
selves. The most authentic presentation of facts appears in the
majority and minority reports of a joint committee created by
resolution of Congress, April 7, 1871, consisting of seven Senators
and fourteen Representatives — thirteen Republicans and eight
Democrats — who were authorized " to inquire into the condition
of affairs in the late insurrectionary States." The majority point
out that the Ku-Klux Klan was in actual operation both in Ten-
nessee and the adjoining States some time before there were any
negro legislatures or any negro voters.
The report admits the sorry character of the governments im-
posed upon the reconstructed States. "The refusal of their former
masters to participate in political reconstruction necessarily left
the negroes to be influenced by others. Many of them were elected
to office, and entered it with honest intentions to do their duty,
but were unfitted for its discharge. Through their instrumental-
ity, many unworthy white men, having obtained their confidence,
also procured public positions."
In South Carolina, especially, corruption was flagrant. The
testimony taken by the committee discloses the demoralization
which prevailed among Radicals and Democrats, — black and
white alike.
Dr. R. M. Smith, a Democratic member of the Legislature,
when .asked if he would impose a penalty upon a man who bribes
a public official, replied: "No, sir; because when it is understood
that a man is for sale like a sheep, or anything else, any man has
a right to buy him."
General M. C. Butler, later a United States Senator, a Confed-
erate who wore the United States uniform as a volunteer major-
general in the war with Spain, hail this to say concerning land
commission frauds, bv which native South Carolinians sold their
BITTER PROBLEMS 363
to blame — conditions which would never have pre-
vailed had the South been left a little longer under
military control before being plunged into the ex-
perimental bath of Reconstruction. The steps he took
to bring about a semblance of order were drastic and
to some obnoxious; but at the moment they seemed
obvious and necessary — and there was no lack of
definiteness in his method of approach.
Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi having ratified
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, their
Senators and Representatives were admitted to Con-
gress under a resolution containing conditions cal-
culated to prevent these States from slipping from
Republican control. Hiram R. Revels, a quadroon,
had the distinction of being the first colored man to
hold a seat in the United States Senate, succeed-
ing to the place last occupied by Jefferson Davis.
All the Confederate States had now gone through
the process of Reconstruction; but Georgia, which
had been represented in the House of Representa-
tives since 1868 under Johnson's Reconstruction, was
forced to go through the process again. After she
land at five dollars an acre to the State and allowed the commis-
sion to insert ten dollars an acre as the consideration in the deed:
" It was human nature almost. I do not think a strictly honest man
would do it. If I had ten thousand acres of land to sell and a
Senator would come to me and say, 'I will buy that if you will
give me five hundred dollars,' I would buy him up as I would buy
a mule."
364 ULYSSES S. GRANT
had once been admitted to the Union the conserva-
tives in the Legislature had committed the offense
of expelling all the negro members and seating in
their place white men ineligible under the Fourteenth
Amendment. Her Senators-elect had never been per-
mitted to take their seats and her Representatives
were now barred from the House on the organiza-
tion of the Forty-first Congress in March, 1869.
There were comparatively few carpet-baggers in
Georgia, but Bullock, the radical Governor, a man of
force and not oppressed by scruples, had proved him-
self obnoxious. The finances of the State were in-
volved in obscurity and confusion. The Western and
Atlantic Railroad, which for years had been the pride
of the State, was sacrificed to politics and loot. The
superintendent of the road testified that he took
charge "to manage its public and political policy."
The auditor saved thirty thousand dollars a year on
a three thousand dollar salary, as he said, "by prac-
ticing strict economy." Grant in his annual message,
December 6, 1869, recommended the reorganization
of the Legislature. A law was promptly enacted con-
taining strict stipulations regarding membership in
the Legislature, providing that before her Senators
and Representatives should be admitted to Congress,
Georgia must ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, and
that upon the application of the Governor the Presi-
BITTER PROBLEMS 365
dent should employ what military force was necessary
to enforce the act. Terry was assigned to command,
the Legislature was summoned, and under his orders
twenty-four Democrats were ousted. Their places
were filled by Republicans, and the negroes who had
been expelled were readmitted. Thus reconstructed,
the Legislature ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments and elected two Senators.
In Congress there was a desperate attempt not only
to prescribe for Georgia the "fundamental condi-
tions" imposed on Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi,
but to prolong for two years the life of the reorgan-
ized radical Bullock Legislature. Morton, Sumner,
Wilson, and other radical leaders in the Senate carried
on there a long and bitter but unsuccessful fight.
The Bullock scheme for prolongation was beaten and
the right of Georgia to have an election in 1870 as
stipulated in its constitution was confirmed. Thus
for the first time since the early days of Reconstruc-
tion the conservative element in the Republican
Party showed itself in the ascendancy.
Beaten at Washington, Bullock got his hand-picked
Georgia Senate to pass a resolution that the Legisla-
ture should not meet until January, 1872, that no
election for members should be held until Novem-
ber, 1872, and that,until the election, all state officers
should hold their place. There was a fierce fight in
366 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the House over the resolution which was finally
defeated through the influence of Grant. Bullock
then induced the Legislature to pass a law, setting
December 22 as the beginning of an election which
was to continue three days, the plan apparently be-
ing to give the negroes an opportunity to "repeat"
from precinct to precinct. No votes were to be
challenged; none refused. The poll tax levied for
the past three years was declared illegal, so that no
one need be disfranchised for non-payment of taxes.
The white Democrats, intent on clearing the
negroes and carpet-baggers out of the State Capitol,
took things. into their own hands. There were no
"outrages," no intimidation, no turbulence, but there
was plenty of "persuasion." The negroes were un-
usually flush with spending-money for a few days
after the election. Many of them voted the Demo-
cratic ticket. More of them stayed away from the
polls. It was a test of the supremacy of intellect and
cash over the passion of freemen for the ballot.
The Democrats elected two thirds of the Legisla-
ture and five out of seven Congressmen — a good
beginning for a numerical minority. Thereafter
Georgia had "home rule." A Democratic Governor
was inaugurated two years later in 1872. The regen-
erated State has ever since cast its electoral vote for
the Democratic candidate for President. A Southern
BITTER PROBLEMS 367
woman, who late in the winter of 1869 wrote that
"the negroes were almost in a state of anarchy,"
wrote two years later, "The negroes are behaving
like angels." Such was the beneficent result of the
new doctrine of "persuasion."
North Carolina was an old, substantial Whig
State, uncursed by negro supremacy; and yet cor-
ruption ruled. Bribery in the Legislature was open
and usual. All sorts of questionable enterprises were
"put across." The debt of the State increased from
$16,000,000 to $32,000,000. There were Ku-Klux
outrages, though not so many as in other States.
Holden, the Governor, declared two counties in a
state of insurrection, and sent Colonel Kirk with a
body of mountaineer militia to keep the peace. Kirk
arrested a hundred citizens, many of good repute,
and kept them in custody in daily dread of death
under martial law.
" Kirk's Raid," as it was known, stirred Washing-
ton to wrath, and there was hot debate. The judge
of the United States District Court issued a writ
of habeas corpus commanding Kirk to bring his
prisoners before him. Grant sent a regiment to the
scene and the United States Marshal called upon
the troops to execute the order of the court. Finally
Grant turned the whole business over to Attorney-
General Akerman, who sustained the federal judge;
3G8 ULYSSES S. GRANT
whereupon the court discharged the prisoners from
Kirk's "unlawful custody." While all this was going
on, an election was held on August 4, which resulted
in general Republican defeat. The Democrats carried
the Legislature and elected five out of the seven
Congressmen.
Holden, the Governor, made himself especially
obnoxious by garrisoning Raleigh, the State Capital,
with negro troops. He was impeached, found guilty,
and removed from office.
In the midst of disturbances arising from the
emancipation of the negro and his imposition upon
the electorate of the South, the Fifteenth Amend-
ment to the Constitution became valid through rati-
fication by the Legislatures of three fourths of the
States, among them North and South Carolina,
Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, Virginia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Texas, and Georgia, reconstructed States
of the Confederacy. The Secretary of State certified
to this on March 30, 1870.
So impressed was Grant with the significance of
the completion of the trilogy of changes in the or-
ganic law growing out of the Civil War that he made
it the occasion of a special message to Congress, flam-
ing with fervid rhetoric to a degree unusual for
Grant. Although an editorial blue pencil would have
ENFORCEMENT ACTS 369
helped the message, the recommendations it con-
tained were sound: "Institutions like ours, in which
all power is derived from the people, must depend
mainly upon their intelligence, patriotism, and in-
dustry. I call the attention, therefore, of the newly
enfranchised race to the importance of their striving
in every honorable manner to make themselves
worthy of their new privilege. To the race most
favored heretofore by our laws I would say, with-
hold no legal privilege of advancement to the new
citizen. The framers of our Constitution firmly be-
lieved that a republican government could not en-
dure without intelligence and education generally
diffused among the people. ... I would therefore
call upon Congress to take all the means within
their constitutional powers to promote and en-
courage popular education throughout the country
and upon the people everywhere to see to it that all
who possess and exercise political rights shall have
the opportunity to acquire the knowledge which will
make their share in the Government a blessing and
not a danger."
But the first acts of Congress under the second
section of the Amendment, giving that body power
"to enforce this article by appropriate legislation,"
did not lie in the direction of popular education.
On the contrary, they were intended to meet the
370 ULYSSES S. GRANT
turbulent conditions in Southern States which hac
resulted in so many instances in the intimidation oi
the negro and the suppression of his vote by an in-
telligent and ruthless minority bent upon restoring
the political control of their state governments to
those best qualified to administer them.
In quick succession Congress passed three "en-
forcement acts," the first of which was signed by
Grant on May 31, 1870. "The scope and purpose
of the bill," said Carl Schurz in its support, "is that
no State shall enforce a law with regard to elections,
or the processes preliminary to elections, in which in
any way, either directly or indirectly, discrimination
is made against any citizen on account of race, color,
or previous condition; . . . neither a State nor an
individual shall deprive any citizen of the Unitec
States on account of race and color, of the free exer-
cise of his right to participate in the functions of self-
government; and the National Government assumes
the duty to prevent the commission of the crime and
to correct the consequences when committed."
Thurman and other Democratic Senators de
nounced the act as "outrage and oppression" anc
Edmunds bitingly called attention to the irony of the
circumstance that the machinery for the enforcement
of the act should have been borrowed from the Fugi-
tive Slave Law of 1850.
ENFORCEMENT ACTS 371
One section of the act was directed toward the
suppression of the Ku-Klux Klan; another author-
ized the President to employ when necessary the
military force of the United States " to aid in the exe-
cution of judicial process" under the act, and there
were special provisions for the enforcement of the
Fourteenth Amendment.
Having had its taste of blood Congress went to
greater lengths. On February 28, 1871, a second
Enforcement Act was approved by Grant, entitled
"An Act to enforce the rights of citizens of the
United States to vote in the several States of this
Union." It placed the elections for members of Con-
gress under federal control; provided for the appoint-
ment of supervisors by judges of the United States
Courts to insure a fair vote and honest count; em-
powered United States Marshals to appoint deputies
to prevent interference with the right of voting, any
one of whom might summon the posse comitatus of
his district to aid in the enforcement of the law.
The act, of course, applied to all the States; in
fact, it was subsequently brought to bear upon the
election frauds of Tammany in New York; but its
immediate object was to protect the negroes in the
exercise of suffrage in the South, where, by a strange
perversion of the intention of the Emancipation
Proclamation and the constitutional amendments,
372 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the white population already were beginning to
realize that by counting the negro in the census and
failing to count his vote they could enjoy a greater
proportional representation in the House of Repre-
sentatives even than before the war.
The third Enforcement Act had the like general
purpose in view of establishing order in the South.
The new Congress — the Forty-second — which be-
gan its sessions on March 4, according to the law
enacted to curb Johnson's activities, had before it
the report of a special committee appointed during
the preceding session to investigate affairs in the
South. On March 23, Grant called attention to the
report in a special message in which he said: "A
condition of affairs now exists in some of the States
of the Union rendering life and property insecure
and the carrying of the mails and the collection of
the revenue dangerous. The proof that such a con-
dition of affairs exists in some localities is now be-
fore the Senate. That the power to correct these
evils is beyond the control of the state authorities I
do not doubt; that the power of the Executive of
the United States, acting within the limits of exist-
ing laws, is sufficient for present emergencies is not
clear. Therefore I urgently recommend such legisla-
tion as in the judgment of Congress shall effectu-
ally secure life, liberty, and property and the en-
ENFORCEMENT ACTS 373
forcement of the law in all parts of the United
States."
Feeling was intense at the moment, and Congress
quickly complied with the request of the President,
by passing the law of April 20, 1871, "to enforce the
provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment." This
law conferred upon the President extraordinary
powers. One section authorized him to suspend the
privileges of the writ of habeas corpus, the author-
ity to expire at the end of the succeeding session of
Congress.
The election of 1872 was approaching and there
were signs of division among Republican leaders, but
with a few exceptions the party stood well together
in support of the Ku-Klux Bill as it was called.
The Democrats of the Senate were vehement in
opposition, even while admitting the existence of
the outrages. Thurman declared the bill unconstitu-
tional. But Morton, who led the Republican major-
ity declared: "Shall Reconstruction be maintained;
shall the constitutional amendments be upheld; shall
the colored people be protected in their enjoyment
of equal rights ; shall the Republicans of the South-
ern States be protected in life, liberty, and property?
— are the great issues to be settled in 1872."
Eleven years later the Supreme Court of the United
States declared the act unconstitutional. The court
374 ULYSSES S. GRANT
already in 1875 had declared unconstitutional the
principal sections of the first Enforcement Act of
May 31, 1870, "as involving the exercise by the
United States of powers in excess of those granted
by the Fifteenth Amendment."
In only one instance did Grant make use of the
extraordinary powers given him by the Ku-Klux Act;
and that was in the case of South Carolina, which he
had particularly in mind when he wrote his message.
Scott, the carpet-bag Governor, had applied for
troops, declaring that combinations of armed men,
unauthorized by law, were committing acts of vio-
lence in the State. On the 3d day of May Grant
issued a proclamation declaring : " I will not hesitate
to exhaust the powers thus vested in the Executive
whenever and wherever it shall become necessary to
do so for the purpose of securing to all citizens of
the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the
rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and
aws.
On October 17, 1871, he issued a proclamation sus^
pending the writ of habeas corpus in nine countie.1
named. Under these proclamations many person;
were arrested and some were prosecuted and pun
ished.
The measures taken had a speedy effect. Accord
ing to the report of the Ku-Klux Investigating Com
ENFORCEMENT ACTS 375
mittee there was an "apparent cessation" of Ku-
Klux operations by February 19, 1872. Grant in his
annual message of December 2, 1872, declared that
he could not question " the necessity and salutary
effect" of the enforcement acts, and in his second
inaugural, March 4, 1873, he felt justified in saying:
" The States lately at war with the general Govern-
ment are now happily rehabilitated and no execu-
tive control is exercised in any one of them that
would not be exercised in any other State under like
circumstances."
To Grant's firmness in using the instruments of
enforcement placed in his hands by Congress must
be attributed in great measure this result. A weaker
Executive would have dallied with the disturbances
until they passed beyond control. He regretted the
necessity, but it was his nature to enforce obedience
to the law — a part of his day's work. In Grant's
second Administration there were racial and politi-
cal conflicts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and South
Carolina which necessitated the interposition of fed-
eral troops. That is an unhappy episode in American
history, which in its proper place shall have a chap-
ter to itself.
In bright contrast is the gradual extension of am-
nesty to former participants in rebellion. By special
acts amnesty was extended to 3185 former Confed-
376 ULYSSES S. GRANT
erates during the Forty-first Congress, which came to
an end March 4, 1871, but many Southerners were
too proudly sensitive to petition for a removal of
their disabilities. General legislation was needed to
obviate these special acts.
A magnanimous and lucid paragraph illuminates
Grant's annual message of December 4, 1871 : " More
than six years having elapsed since the last hostile
gun was fired between the armies then arrayed
against each other — one for the perpetuation, the
other for the destruction, of the Union — it may well
be considered whether it is not now time that the
disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment
should be removed. That amendment does not ex-
clude the ballot, but only imposes the disability to
hold offices upon certain classes. When the purity of
the ballot is secure, majorities are sure to elect offi-
cers reflecting the views of the majority. I do not see
the advantage or propriety of excluding men from
office merely because they were before the rebellion
of standing and character sufficient to be elected to
positions requiring them to take oaths to support the
Constitution, and admitting to eligibility those enter-
taining precisely the same views but of less standing
in their communities. It may be said that the former
violated an oath, while the latter did not; the latter
did not have it in their power to do so. If they had
AMNESTY 377
taken this oath, it cannot be doubted they would
have broken it as did the former class." But he
added, with Jefferson Davis, Jacob Thompson, and
perhaps others in mind: "If there are any great crim-
inals, distinguished above all others for the part they
took in opposition to the Government, they might,
in the judgment of Congress, be excluded from such
an amnesty."
A bill providing for general amnesty had passed the
House. It would have passed the Senate had not
Sumner insisted on his supplementary Civil Rights
Bill as an amendment.
This Civil Rights Bill, which Sumner's biographer
summarizes as prohibiting discriminations against
colored people "by common carriers, by proprietors
of theaters and inns, managers of schools, of cemeter-
ies and of churches, or as to service as jurors in any
courts, state or national," was peculiarly obnoxious
to the Southern whites as an attempt to force upon
them social equality with the negro, and it was
equally offensive to Northern men who resented
such an attempt by the National Government to in-
terfere with perfectly natural social conditions within
the States.
Its enactment would have done the negro a poor
service; but this the devoted Sumner could not com-
prehend, and owing to his obduracy, in face of the
378 ULYSSES S. GRANT
appeals of some of the negroes' best friends in Con-
gress, the Amnesty Bill failed of passage. Finally in
May, 1872, a bill for general amnesty passed the
House unanimously, and after Sumner's civil rights
amendment had been voted down, passed the Senate
with equal celerity. This bill did not go so far as the
bill which Sumner killed in the Senate. It left be-
tween three hundred and five hundred former Con-
federates still subject to political disabilities.
Sumner, who cast one of two negatives, said he
could not vote for it " while the colored race are
shut out from their rights and the ban of color is
recognized in this chamber. Sir, the time has not
come for amnesty. You must be just to the colored
race before you are generous to former rebels."
Grant signed the bill on May 22, 1872. It removed
the disabilities of all except Senators and Representa-
tives of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Con-
gresses, officers in the judicial, military, and naval
service of the United States, heads of departments
and foreign ministers of the United States. But the
disabilities of men of this excepted class were re-
moved later as occasion required, and many of them
rendered their reunited country unselfish and patri
otic service.
CHAPTER XXXVII
CAUSES FOR PARTY DISAFFECTION
" He has sat by and seen the country tolerably well
governed," said Samuel Bowles in the " Springfield
Republican" in November, 1871. Bowles was good
at epigram. He was a journalist of rare attainments,
of fine ideals in politics, of vivid personality, with a
suggestion of the iconoclast. He never hesitated to
differ with contemporaries, even his closest friends.
With most of them he took issue at the very beginning
of Grant's Administration, when, two days after the
precedent-smashing appointments to the Cabinet
were made public, he wrote to Henry L. Dawes: "I
like the Cabinet — you ought to like it because it is
a revolution, because it breaks up rings, and makes
reform more easy and possible"; and he may have
been less surprised than others because a month
earlier he had written: "My opinion is that Grant's
Cabinet and the way it is made up will prove a bomb-
shell, in especial congressional and political circles."
Plainly a change had come upon the vision of the
Springfield seer. The change was typical of many of
his kind, and it foreshadowed happenings which,
while they had but little influence on Grant's career,
380 ULYSSES S. GRANT
have had a share in fixing the repute of his Adminis-
tration quite out of keeping with their bearing on the
times. Though Bowles was not a bookish man, and
gained his learning almost wholly from his daily con-
tact with the world, absorbing information here and
there as bees suck honey, he had the delicate sense of
values with which all writers for the press should be
endowed, combined with the fine fervor befitting one
who had passed through the fires of a great moral
conflict and a civil war, and thus had much in com-
mon with men like Adams, Godkin, Curtis, Schurz,
and Sumner, who ranked him easily in scholarship,
though not in high ideals. His taste was for the
" literary fellers," whom Zachariah Chandler bap-
tized with expletives when Lowell intruded on the
patronage preserves by taking office as Minister to
Spain. Men of his type idealized the finer qualities in
Grant which marked heroic moments in his military
career. Grant's quiet simplicity and reserve appealed
to them, — his complete indifference to the fame
which soldiers are supposed to crave.
" I am no great admirer of military heroes," wrote
Motley to the Duchess of Argyle a few weeks after
Appomattox, " but we needed one at this period, and
we can never be too thankful that such a one was
vouchsafed to us — one so vast and fertile in concep-
tion, so patient in waiting, so rapid in striking, had
CAUSES FOR PARTY DISAFFECTION 381
come, and withal so destitute of personal ambition, so
modest, so averse to public notoriety. The man on
whom the gaze of both hemispheres has been steadily
concentrated for two years seems ever shrinking from
observation. All his admiration warmly expressed is
for Sherman and Sheridan. So long as we can pro-
duce such a man as Grant our Republic is safe. . . .
There is something very sublime to my imagination
in the fact that Grant has never yet set his foot in
Richmond, and perhaps never will." A rare tribute
and merited; but how strangely in contrast with the
vituperative lashings by Motley's friend Sumner, six
years later.
And this from Holmes to Motley is characteristic of
exchanges between friends in the Boston group: " He
is one of the simplest, stillest men I ever saw. . . .
Of all the considerable personages I have seen, he
appears to me to be the least capable of an emotion of
vanity. . . . Did he enjoy the being followed as he
was by the multitude? ' It was very painful.' This
answer is singularly characteristic of the man. ... I
cannot get over the impression he made on me. I
have got something like it from women sometimes,
hardly ever from men — that of entire loss of self-
hood in a great aim, which made all the common in-
fluences which stir up other people as nothing to him."
Such was the figure Grant cut in scholarly imag-
382 ULYSSES S. GRANT
inations while the halo of successful generalship was
new upon him and before his garments had been
soiled by contact with the slime of politics. Had he
been endowed with a taste for things which men of
culture fancy, or been much inclined to their com-
panionship, he might well have retained their liking
and support even though he had shattered their
ideals and their fine faith in his political impeccabil-
ity. They would have been more willing to charge to
the requirements of the time unhappy incidents
which offended them, and history would have been
spared the sorry spectacle of personal quarrels and
unjust attacks upon his motives and sincerity. The
times were doubtless ripe for punishment, but not
for such as that which men like Sumner, Godkin,
Bowles, and Schurz meted out to Grant, chiefly be-
cause he lacked the social atmosphere to comprehend
their point of view.
Even before he had been sworn in as President he
displeased many who would have been ready with
advice by quite neglecting to seek counsel or ask for
help in writing his inaugural and picking out a cabi-
net. He was ingenuous as a child in politics, and be-
fore he was thrown against the nation's conscious-
ness by the rush of war had hardly shown even the
ordinary interest in public questions which is sup-
posed to be the birthright of every true American.
CAUSES FOR PARTY DISAFFECTION 383
His disagreeable encounter with the most unpleas-
ant side of things in Johnson's Administration had
emphasized his natural disinclination to fraternize
with men trained in affairs. Before Appomattox he
had known nothing of the ways of Washington ex-
cept as he was made unpleasantly aware at times of
bureaucratic interference with his military plans. He
had never seen a legislative body in session, or vis-
ited a state capital, save to capture it, except when
he was waiting at Springfield for a regiment.
His familiarity with literature hardly extended
beyond his textbooks at West Point. He read novels
sometimes for the story, never for the style. His li-
brary was limited to the books on the center table in
the parlor and the what-not in the corner. He cared
little about history, except as he helped to make it
or learned it by attrition in the process.
He was indifferent to the literature even of his
own trade. When he came home from the war Phila-
delphia and Washington presented him with houses;
Boston thought to show its gratitude by giving him
a library. Samuel Hooper undertook to find out
quietly what military books he had so that duplicates
might be avoided, and discovered to his astonish-
ment that Grant had no military books whatever.
His proficiency in war came to him through intuition,
and his genius for adapting military principles to un-
384 ULYSSES S. GRANT
foreseen emergencies and such capacity as he showed
in public affairs came in the same way. " His states-
manship," says Boutwell, " had no other art or magic
in it than what may be found in the relations of an
honest country people."
The companions he liked and cultivated were
not men who appealed to exquisite tastes. He had
many more points of contact with the "generously
good" George William Childs than with the schol-
arly George William Curtis, political essayist and
reformer. He took advice from Zachariah Chandler,
John A. Logan, and Roscoe Conkling more readily
than from Charles Sumner, Carl Schurz, and Lyman
Trumbull. He grouped Adam Badeau and John
Lothrop Motley as historians of similar merit, and
personally preferred Badeau, who says Grant once
offered him Motley's place in London, a decoration
which Badeau with commendable self-abnegation
brushed aside.
Even with Fish, the ornament and pillar of his
Administration, in whom he placed implicit confi-
dence, and whom he favored as his own successor,
there was so little intimacy that when years later the
two were living near each other in New York, they
hardly ever met.
Grant had not been in the W'hite House a year be-
fore signs of party disaffection were discernible.
CAUSES FOR PARTY DISAFFECTION 385
Sumner's break with the Administration over San
Domingo was the first noticeable evidence of revolt
against it, rendered all the more conspicuous be-
cause Grant took his defeat so much to heart, after
displaying a pertinacity of method better fitted to
the conduct of a desperate military campaign than to
the delicate negotiation of a parliamentary contro-
versy requiring strategy and compromise. Grant's
personal visits to the Capitol, his pressure upon re-
luctant Senators, his persistent lobbying, his seem-
ing lack of comprehension of the dignity of his high
place, lowered him perceptibly in the estimation of
men whose good opinion he should have been zealous
to retain. The deposition of Sumner from his place
at the head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Re-
lations offended men of culture and literary attain-
ments everywhere; for while they might not sym-
Dathize with Sumner in his various perversities, he
lad come to be regarded as an institution, one of the
ew public men in Washington at that day who could
)e safely matched against the statesmen of England,
^rance, and Germany, trained in the universities.
It was bad enough to have Sumner humiliated, but
o have his mantle fall upon Simon Cameron, seemed
o those who were not familiar with the Senate tra-
ition determining committee rank by seniority a
rutal and wanton affront. The recall of Motley
386 ULYSSES S. GRANT
quickly followed, and that, too, was regarded by
those who were not familiar with all the circum-,
stances as a deliberate injustice to a diplomatist of
learning and distinction. It was no salve to lacerated
sensibilities when General Robert C. Schenck was
named as his successor, an Ohio Congressman oi
moderate attainments, destined to earn some fame iD
London as promoter of the Emma Mine and author
of a textbook on draw poker.
Grant's summary demand on June 15, 1870, for
Judge Hoar's resignation as Attorney-General, anc
his appointment of the unknown Akerman to fill tru
vacancy, helped to intensify the feeling of distrust.,
It was not then generally known that Hoar was sacri-.
ficed because the Southern Senators whose vote:
Grant needed for his San Domingo Treaty insisted oi
his putting a Southerner at the head of the Depart
ment of Justice as the price of their support. It wa
known simply that one of the two members of th
Cabinet whom the independents and reformers hel
in unreserved respect had been dismissed.
The other was Jacob D. Cox, of Ohio, who fror
their point of view had made a fine record as Secre
tary of the Interior, not only in honestly administei
ing the affairs of his department, but in resisting th
demands of patronage hunters in the Patent Office
the Census Bureau, and the Indian Office, in protecl
CAUSES FOR PARTY DISAFFECTION 387
ing his clerks against political assessments and in his
unswerving devotion to civil service reform. Within
four months after Hoar's resignation, Cox also re-
signed, making way for Columbus Delano, of Ohio,
a politician of no special reputation whose service
was characterized by acts of questionable propriety.
Cox is the chronicler of the circumstances both of
Hoar's withdrawal and of his own. He was in fre-
quent friction with Cameron and Chandler, political
managers who insisted that the clerks in the depart-
ments should contribute a portion of their salaries to
the party funds. Grant had said at the time of Hoar's
resignation that " there was no man whom he loved
more than Governor Cox"; but Chandler, Cameron,
and the rest were a political necessity to him in Con-
gress; and as between them and Cox there was no
choice, Cox had to go.
Cox's letter of resignation, written on October 3,
1870, tells the story frankly, and concisely: "When
Congress adjourned in the summer I was credibly
informed that a somewhat systematic effort would
be made before their reassembling in the winter to
force a change in the policy we have pursued in the
Interior Department. The removal of the Indian
Service from the sphere of ordinary political patron-
ige has been peculiarly distasteful to many influen-
zal gentlemen in both houses; and in order to enable
1
388 ULYSSES S. GRANT
you to carry out your purposes successfully, I am
satisfied that you ought not to be embarrassed by
any other causes of irritation in the same depart-
ment. My views of the necessity of reform in the
civil service have brought me more or less into colli-
sion with the plans of our active political managers,
and my sense of duty has obliged me to oppose some
of their methods of action through the arrangement."
Hoar never had the satisfaction of thus recording
the reasons for his resignation, but Cox has saved the
story as Hoar told it at the time: "I was sitting in
my office yesterday morning attending to routine
business," Hoar said on the day the astonished Cox
saw the newspaper announcement of the Attorney-
General's resignation, " with no more thought of
what was to come than you had at that moment,
when a messenger entered with a letter from the
President. Opening it I was amazed to read a naked
statement that he found himself under the necessity
of asking for my resignation. No explanation of any
kind was given or reason assigned. The request was,
as curt and as direct as possible. My first thought
was that the President had been imposed upon by
some grave charge against me. A thunderclap could
not have been more startling to me. I sat for a while
wondering about it, what it could mean — why there!
had been no warning, no reference to the subject ii
CAUSES FOR PARTY DISAFFECTION 389
our almost daily conversations. The impulse was to
go at once and ask the reasons for the demand; but
self-respect would not permit this, and I said to my-
self that I must let the matter take its own course,
and not even seem disturbed about it. I took up my
pen to write the resignation and found myself natu-
rally framing some of the conventional reasons for it,
but I stopped and destroyed the sheet, saying to my-
self, ' Since no reasons are given or suggested for the
demand it is hardly honest to invent them in reply';
so I made the resignation as simple and unvarnished
as the request for it had been."
In spite of this unpleasant experience Hoar never
wavered in his personal friendship for Grant and re-
mained his stanch supporter to the end. Cox joined
with Trumbull, Schurz, and Sumner in the Liberal
Republican movement eighteen months later.
The substitution of Akerman and Delano for Hoar
and Cox lowered still further in the estimation of the
critics a Cabinet which had been generously de-
nounced at its beginning. Robeson, the Secretary of
the Navy, a man of brilliant qualities, was acquiring
a newspaper reputation not altogether deserved for
extravagance and favoritism in the administration
of his department. W. W. Belknap, the Secretary of
War, was laying the foundations for the scandals
which later led to his resignation in the face of im-
390 ULYSSES S. GRANT
peachment. The personnel of the Administration was
held in light repute, especially with those who were
far cleverer at writing history than at making it,
though the ordinary citizen as shown in the election
returns retained his confidence in Grant.
The White House was populous with military aides
who performed the duties usually assigned to civilian
secretaries, — General Horace Porter, an accom-
plished soldier with an aptitude for public service in
which he afterwards gained high distinction; Genera
Frederick Dent, the President's brother-in-law, com-
panionable but useless; Babcock, likable, brilliant
and untrustworthy. Grant was fond of them all, anc
had faith in them, which in some cases was not wholly
justified.
The moment Grant began to emerge from obscur-
ity at the beginning of the war, he was beset by rela-
tives for favors, and so long as he was President, he
had his sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins on his
hands. His father was early at the game, as his
correspondence shows. "Father also wrote about a
Mr. Reed," Grant writes his sister from Cairo, in
October, 1861. "He is now here, and will probably
be able to secure a position. I do not want to be im-
portuned for places. I have none to give and want
to be placed under no obligation to any one. My
influence, no doubt, would secure places with those
CAUSES FOR PARTY DISAFFECTION 391
under me, but I become directly responsible for the
suitableness of the appointee, and then there is no
telling at what moment I may have to put my hand
upon the very person who has conferred the favor, or
the one recommended by me." This was Grant's
military instinct in time of war, but when it came
to the Presidency, with innumerable places at his
hand and no civil service regulations to interfere
with their free distribution, it was not so easy to
resist the appeals of relatives who wanted office for
themselves and for their friends.
He found his father postmaster at Covington,
Kentucky, and kept him there. He made his brother-
in-law Minister to Denmark. Upon other relatives of
himself and of his wife he good-naturedly bestowed
more or less lucrative positions, not many in the
aggregate, but numerous enough to give color to the
cry of "nepotism." Sumner, in his ridiculous ha-
rangue against Grant in the Senate on May 31, 1872,
devoted an amazing amount of space to showing
" how the presidential office has been used to advance
his own family on a scale of nepotism dwarfing every-
thing of the kind in our history and hardly equaled
in the corrupt governments where this abuse has
most prevailed. . . . One list makes the number of
beneficiaries as many as forty-two — being probably
every known person allied to the President either by
392 ULYSSES S. GRANT
blood or marriage. Persons seeming to speak for the
President, or at least after careful inquiries, have de-
nied the accuracy of this list, reducing it to thirteen.
It will not be questioned that there is at least a
baker's dozen in this category — thirteen relations
of the President billeted on the country, not one
of whom but for this relationship would have been
brought forward, the whole contributing a case of
nepotism not unworthy of those worst governments
where office is a family possession."
Truly an appalling picture of the peril to the re-
public embodied in consideration shown by a kindly
disposed relative to old Jesse Grant, brother-in-law
Cramer, and the other Grants and Dents.
Grant accepted without compunction gifts which
were showered upon him by a grateful people after
the close of the war. Houses in Philadelphia and
Washington, articles of greater or less intrinsic value,
for most of which he had no use, and many of which
remained unopened in the White House basement so
long as he remained in Washington. He saw no im-
propriety in taking presents even from those for whom
he afterwards did favors, as sometimes happened. So
straightforward was he in all his dealings that it
never entered his own mind or the suspicions of those
who knew him best that there was any improper con-
nection between the favor and the gift, but traits
CAUSES FOR PARTY DISAFFECTION 393
of this kind offered rare ammunition to those who
needed it in a political campaign.
Grant was not fastidious in his friends. He picked
them as he chose without regard to others' liking.
When Rawlins died he lost the only man whose
judgment about others had a deciding influence on
his own. No one could fill the place which Rawlins
left in his affection and respect, and Grant's associ-
ates became more miscellaneous after death robbed
him of Rawlins at the very threshold of his term.
"What Grant needs," Charles Eliot Norton wrote
to Curtis, "... is independent, sympathetic, intel-
ligent, and trustworthy counselors. . . . He is easily
influenced by what one may call second-class ideas if
skilfully put before him; and his magnanimity, which
was conspicuous during the war, degenerates into
something not far from a vice in the peaceful regions
of politics." 1 Norton here deftly caught a phase of
Grant which few have seen; and yet there is no patent
on his remedy. It takes no prescience for a stranger to
discern a ruler's need of suitable advice. The counselor
whom Norton had in mind was Curtis or some one
else agreeable to both. But Grant had his own tastes
and ways; he could not be made over. It is just pos-
sible that in the long run it was quite as well.
1 Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, vol. i, p. 413.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
REFORMS — THE TARIFF; THE CIVIL SERVICE;
THE INDIAN
It was open season for reformers; they were trying
their luck at all sorts of abuses, real and imaginary.
The protective tariff was a favorite shot, and " rev-
enue reform" a popular cry — a recrudescence of the
"free trade" policy which had prevailed since the
beginning whenever Democrats were in control. But
now it was not limited by party lines, for there were
good Republicans who strongly urged revision of the
Morrill Tariff enacted just before the outbreak of
the Civil War. This sentiment was strong especially
among Republicans in the Middle West, who had
come to look upon the tariff as a scheme to benefit
New England and Pennsylvania manufacturers.
Men like Allison and Garfield, just rising into promi-
nence in the House, urged a reduction in duties.
Garfield, a student, was almost a free trader, an hon-
orary member of the Cobden Club of England, but
he was "practical" in his conception of the applica-
tion of reform. "Whatever may be the personal or
political consequences to myself," he told the House,
" I shall try to act, first for the good of all and within
REFORMS 395
that limitation for the industrial interests of the dis-
trict which I represent. ... If I can prevent it I
shall not submit to a considerable reduction of a few
leading articles in which my constituents are deeply
interested when many others of a similar character
are left untouched or the rate on them increased."
The agitation resulted in the Tariff Act of 1870, in
which after a hard struggle the friends of protection
retained their advantage, the reduction in duties,
counting both the free and dutiable list, averag-
ing only about five per cent. The chief gain the re-
formers made was in reducing the duty on pig iron
from $9 to $7 per ton. The battle raged around pig
iron. Horace Greeley told Garfield that if he could
he would make the duty one hundred dollars a ton,
and all other duties in proportion. It was a time of
general recrimination. The friends of protection then
as now were charged with working for the "inter-
ests," while the attitude of the reformers was attrib-
uted to the malign influence of the Cobden Club and
lavish expenditure of " British gold."
Grant made no boast of economic wisdom, but in
his annual message of December, 1870, he said just
enough to show that he had the tariff on his mind. It
was the beginning of the short session of an expiring
Congress and there could be no further legislation
for at least a year. " Revenue reform has not been
39G ULYSSES S. GRANT
defined by any of its advocates to my knowledge,"
he wrote with pertinent irony, " but seems to be ac-
cepted as something which is to supply every man's
wants without any cost or effort on his part." His
own opinion was that "with the revenue stamp dis-
pensed by postmasters in every community, a tax
upon liquors of all sorts, and tobacco in all its forms,
and by a wise adjustment of the tariff, which will
put a duty only upon those articles which we could
dispense with, known as luxuries, and on those
which we use more of than we produce, revenue
enough may be raised after a few years of peace and
consequent reduction of indebtedness to fulfill all our
obligations. . . . Revenue reform, if it means this, has
my hearty support. If it implies a collection of all
the revenue for the support of the Government, for
the payment of principal and interest of the public
debt, pensions, etc., by directly taxing the people,
then I am against revenue reform, and confidently
believe the people are with me. If it means failure to
provide the necessary means to defray all the ex-
penses of government and thereby repudiation of the
public debt and pensions, then I am still more op-
posed to such kind of revenue reform."
A year later at the beginning of the new Congress
he again took up the question urging that the surplus
be reduced "in such a manner as to afford the great-
REFORMS 397
est relief to the greatest number," and recommending
the "free list" for many articles not produced at
home "which enter largely into general consumption
through articles which are manufactured at home
from which little revenue is derived." Should a fur-
ther reduction be advisable, he suggested "that it
be made upon those articles which can best bear it
without disturbing home production or reducing
the wages of America's labor."
Two tariff bills were enacted by the new Congress;
one which Grant signed on May 1, 1872, put tea and
coffee on the free list, thus contributing to " the
free breakfast table" extolled by Republican protec-
tionists. The second, approved May 3, 1872, was a
compromise. It lowered duties on a good many arti-
cles, among them salt, bituminous coal, tin, leather,
manufactures of cotton, wool, iron, and steel, shaved
the stamp taxes, and forgot to renew the friendless
income tax. The act, like all tariff compromises, was
a log-rolling affair. Samuel Bowles wrote one of his
comforting letters to his dear friend Henry L. Dawes,
who managed the bill in the House as chairman of the
Ways and Means Committee: " You certainly have
won a brilliant victory on the tariff. ... It is not
statesmanship and you know it. . . . There is a bet-
ter way of making a tariff than by a combination or
compromise of all the cotton mills and woolen mills
398 ULYSSES S. GRANT
and sheep farmers and pin factories and coal mines of
all the congressional districts of the land."
The times were shaping for revolt. So virulent were
the attacks on Grant by men like Sumner, Schurz,
and Godkin, that it was easy to forget what he had
done for causes they had much at heart. They were
so busy throwing remorseless lights on faults which
now, when we look back on them, seem trifling, that
they neglected merits better worth their while, and
left unpraised his high accomplishments.
Who now remembers that Grant was first among
our Presidents to emphasize the need of change in
federal appointments so that they should be made
for merit, not for pull? Yet he went farther on the
road to a clean civil service than all his predecessors
in the preceding forty years. Lincoln, like every
other President since Jackson, had accepted the
spoils system as a commonplace of government. Po-
litical considerations decided almost every case of
office-filling from clerkships to the Cabinet. All
through the war the trail of spoils was visible in mili-
tary things. Butler and McClernand were not the
only politicians whose epaulettes bore stars. That
Lincoln's final break with Chase should be upon a
piece of petty patronage was taken as an incident in
course. When Sumner introduced a bill in 1864 es-
tablishing the merit system it was treated lightly by
REFORMS 399
his colleagues as one of Sumner's fads. Yet at the
outset of his Administration Grant tackled this un-
profitable question which others had ignored.
"Nor have we had from any President a single
word of manly protest against this monstrous sys-
tem," said George William Curtis, the accepted
leader of the civil service reformers, before a group
of men who thought with him in 1869, " until now
President Grant says in words which in spirit are
worthy to stand with those of Washington,' There has
been no hesitation in changing officials in order to
secure an efficient execution of the laws; sometimes,
too, when in mere party view undesirable political
results were likely to follow. Nor has there been any
hesitation in sustaining efficient officials against re-
monstrances wholly political.' At last, thank God,
we have got a President whom trading politicians did
not elect, and who is no more afraid of them than he
was of rebels, and these manly and simple words are
as full of cheerful promise as the bulletins of his ad-
vance upon Vicksburg."
But such exuberance of eulogy was not to be main-
tained, though in his second annual message Grant
denounced the spoils system as "an abuse of long
standing" which he would like to see remedied at
once. He would have the merit system cover not
only the tenure but the manner of making all ap-
400 ULYSSES S. GRANT
pointments. " There is no duty which so much em-
barrasses the Executive and heads of departments as
that of appointments. Nor is there any such arduous
and thankless labor imposed on Senators and Repre-
sentatives as that of finding places for constituents.
The present system does not secure the best men and
often not even fit men for public place. The eleva-
tion and purification of the civil service of the Gov-
ernment will be hailed with approval by the whole
people of the United States." Here was a new note
in executive communications. A few weeks later he
signed the first Civil Service Reform Bill ever passed
by Congress, providing for a commission to establish
regulations to ascertain the fitness of candidates for
office; and he named Curtis as its chairman.
At the very beginning of the next session, in De-
cember, 1871, he urged on Congress in a special
message appropriations to perpetuate the Commis-
sion. " If left to me without further congressional
action the rules . . . will be faithfully executed; but
they are not binding without further legislation
upon my successor. ... I ask for all the strength
which Congress can give me to enable me to carry
out the reforms in the civil service recommended by
the Commission."
Congress, wedded to the spoils system, soon cut
off the appropriation altogether. Ardent reformers
REFORMS 401
blamed Grant for not doing more, but it would have
taken all Grant's influence to force on Congress the
merit system as a permanent policy at that time,
and he had none to spare. Few Senators or Repre-
sentatives had any use for it. The strongest of them,
like Morton, Chandler, Conkling, Carpenter, and
Cameron, held it in contempt; most people did not
care. It was the favorite issue of a group of scholarly
men, of high ideals, but neither numerous nor po-
tential then or for years thereafter. It was greatly
to Grant's credit that he went so far along the path
they led, yet he was subject to attack because he
did not force the unattainable. Had he urged a civil
service propaganda in and out of season and made
"reform" the cry of his Administration, he would
no doubt have held the adoration of essayists and
historians, and faults which they have emphasized
might then have been excused. But the time was
far from ripe for these new-fangled civil service
methods and he had infinitely greater problems
pressingly in hand — the maintenance of our pres-
tige abroad, the safeguarding of American lives and
property on foreign soil, the rigid execution of the
law at home, the firm establishment of public credit.
Reform might wait upon the growth of public senti-
ment and the dissemination of right ideas, but these
fundamental things involving the perpetuity of gov-
402 ULYSSES S. GRANT
eminent itself must be attended to at once or not
at all. All others must be made subordinate to
them.
Thus it came about that, after a few years of trial
with an unpaid board, he found it useless to keep
up the fight alone, and in his message of December,
1874, acknowledging the obvious, he frankly an-
nounced to Congress that, if adjournment came
without positive legislation in support of civil serv-
ice reform, " I will regard such action as a disap
proval of the system and will abandon it except sc
far as to require examinations for certain appointees
to determine their fitness. Competitive examina-
tions will be abandoned." He could not let the op-
portunity go by without a dig at a too common trait
of advocates of the merit system then and since :i
" Generally," he said, " the support which this re-i
form receives is from those who give it their support
only to find fault when the rules are apparently de-
parted from." On the whole he thought the rules
had been beneficial and had tended to the elevatior
of the service. "The gentlemen who have giver,
their services without compensation as members ol
the board to devise rules and regulations for thd
government of the civil service of the country havd
shown much zeal and earnestness in their work, and i
to them as well as to myself it will be a source o.
REFORMS 403
mortification if it is to be thrown away. But I repeat
that it is impossible to carry this system to a suc-
cessful issue without general approval and assistance
and positive law to support it."
In all the circumstances this was common sense,
and Curtis recognized it later when he said: "A
President who should alone undertake to reform the
evil must feel it to be the vital and permanent issue
and must be willing to hazard everything for its suc-
cess. He must have the absolute faith and the in-
domitable will of Luther, 'Here stand I; I can no
other.' . . . General Grant, elected by a spontane-
ous patriotic impulse, fresh from the regulated order
of military life, and new to politics and politicians,
saw the reason and the necessity of reform. . . . Con-
gress, good-naturedly tolerating what it considered
lis whim of inexperience, granted money to try an
experiment. The adverse pressure was tremendous.
I am used to pressure,' smiled the soldier. So he
vas, but not to this pressure. He was driven by un-
known and incalculable currents. He was enveloped
a whirlwinds of sophistry, scorn, and incredulity.
le who upon his own line had fought it out all sum-
aer to victory, upon a line absolutely new and un-
sown was naturally bewildered and dismayed. . . .
t was indeed a surrender, but it was the surrender
f a champion who had honestly mistaken both the
404 ULYSSES S. GRANT
nature and the strength of the adversary and his own
power of endurance."
Grant did not then receive the credit as a pioneer
which history must assign him. He had no gift for
advertising his own wares, and he was so lacking in a
politician's artifice that in the eyes of critics some of
his very merits wore the guise of faults. In this as
in too many other things he was the victim of hi?
honesty.
Grant's interest in the Indians dates from his lif<
in the Far West, when as a young army officer he sa^
with what injustice they were treated by the whites
George W. Childs says that he "then made up hi.>
mind if he ever had any influence or power it shoulc
be exercised to try to ameliorate their condition.'
He was as good as his word. Brief as was his first in
augural, it was long enough to contain a reference t<
" the proper treatment of the original occupants o
this land," as deserving careful study. " I will favo:
any course toward them which tends to their civili
zation and ultimate citizenship." He appointed ai
Indian Commission headed by William Welsh, o
Philadelphia, whom Hayes later made Minister b
England, and composed largely of leading member
of the Society of Friends, which he pointed out in hi
annual message of December, 1869, " is well known a
having succeeded in living in peace with the IndiaD
REFORMS 405
in the early settlement of Pennsylvania while their
white neighbors of other sects in other sections were
constantly embroiled." He adopted the novel policy
of giving all the agencies to such religious denomina-
tions as had established missionaries among the In-
dians, the societies selecting their own agents subject
to the approval of the Executive. In his second
annual message, he wrote: "I entertain the confi-
dent hope that the policy now pursued will in a few
years bring all the Indians upon reservations where
they will live in houses and have schoolhouses and
churches and will be pursuing peaceful and self-
sustaining avocations and where they may be visited
by the law-abiding white man with the same im-
punity that he now visits the civilized white settle-
ments." Here we have the first serious attempt at
a humanitarian treatment of the Indian by the
Government — the germ of whatever benefit has
come to him as the nation's ward. Yet Grant was
duly censured because an Indian ring infested the
Interior Department as had been the case before his
day and has been ever since.
" The most troublesome men in public life," said
Grant a few years later, " are those over-righteous
people who see no motives in other people's ac-
tions but evil motives, who believe all public life is
corrupt, and nothing is well done unless they do it
400 ULYSSES S. GRANT
themselves. They are narrow-headed men, their two
eyes so close together that they can look out of the
same gimlet-hole without winking." Fish in his "Di-
ary" tells how during the San Domingo controversy
Grant remarked: "It is strange that men cannot al-
low others to differ with them, without charging cor-
ruption as the cause of difference. . . . There is little
inducement other than a sense of duty in holding
public position in this country — but for that I do
not know what there is to induce a man to take either
the place I hold, or one in the Cabinet, and were it
not for that I would resign immediately." Remarks
which help us better to understand the loyalty with
which he stood behind those men in his Administra-
tion who were most violently assailed.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE GREELEY EPISODE
Among the public men of the Reconstruction period
Carl Schurz had a place peculiarly his own. Never a
force of much constructive influence he was for years
a striking figure, an irrepressible critic, an apostle of
unrest, who though not popular himself had popu-
lar repute. A Prussian by birth, a revolutionist and
refugee of 1848, he came to comprehend the theory of
American institutions as few Americans have com-
prehended it, yet in the very atmosphere of liberty
he remained a revolutionist and dissenter to the end.
He never became completely Americanized or local-
ized. He lacked the "homing instinct." After leav-
ing his native country, he lived successively in Swit-
zerland, France, and England, and coming to the
United States in 1852 he fluttered over Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Missouri, before finally
alighting in New York. He never remained long with
any political group or respected party fealty.
Minister to Spain at the beginning of the war and
afterwards a brigadier-general of volunteers, he was
unsparing in censure of his military and civilian su-
periors. His admonitions at a trying moment in the
408 ULYSSES S. GRANT
darkest days of the struggle elicited from the long-
suffering Lincoln a caustic rebuke which has become
an epistolary classic.1
As an editor in Missouri directly after the war,
Schurz supported radical Reconstruction measures.
As Johnson's messenger to the South in 1865, he
made a report which was used by radical leaders in
Congress against Johnson's policies. He was elected
a Republican Senator in 1869; yet he was hardly in
his seat before he broke with Grant, joining Sumner
in opposition to the San Domingo Treaty. He voted
for all except the last of the enforcement acts, which
he held to be unconstitutional, and had the satisfac-
tion years later of seeing the Supreme Court declare
1 " I have just received and read your letter of the 26th. The
purport of it is that we lost the last elections and the Administra-
tion is failing because the war is unsuccessful, and that I must not
flatter myself that I am not justly to blame for it. I certainly
know that if the war fails, the Administration fails, and that I will
be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not. And I ought to be
blamed if I could do better. You think I could do better; there-
fore you blame me already. I think I could not do better, there-
fore I blame you for blaming me. I understand you now to be
willing to accept the help of men who are not Republicans, pro-
vided they have ' heart in it.' Agreed. I want no others. But who
is to be the judge of hearts or of 'heart in it'? If I must discard
my own judgment and take yours, I must also take that of others;
and by the time I should reject all I should be advised to reject,
I should have none left, Republicans or others — not even your-
self. For be assured, my dear sir, there are men who 'have heart
in it' that think you are performing your part as poorly as you
think I am performing mine." (Letter to Carl Schurz, November
2t, 1SG2. Lincoln's Complete Works, vol. n, p. 257.)
THE GREELEY EPISODE 409
unconstitutional acts for which he voted as well as
that to which he was opposed. He was a lucid and
logical writer, a master of English style, a speaker of
unusual ability when thoroughly prepared, a critic, a
musician, a man of culture who in another country
might have played a large part in Government, but
whose talents were ineffective here because of his in-
satiate appetite for opposition amounting to a pas-
sion for minorities.
Schurz more than any other single individual was
responsible for the Liberal Republican movement of
1872. It was at his instigation that the call was is-
sued for the national convention which nominated
Greeley in Cincinnati. Dissent in Missouri depended
on conditions peculiar to the State, just as dissent
in Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and other
places was determined largely by local conditions in
every case. But it happened that Missouri furnished
the earliest opportunity for organized protest against
Administration tendencies. On a question of local
interest — the reenfranchisement of Southern sym-
pathizers — Republican dissenters nominated for
Governor B. Gratz Brown, and he was elected by
a combination with the Democrats, thus turning the
State over to Democratic control. Frank P. Blair
had already been chosen Senator.
There was nothing national in the issue of reen-
410 ULYSSES S. GRANT
franchisement, for Grant had urged a general am-
nesty, and Congress was on the point of granting it,
but Schurz had become an advocate of tariff reform,
and that was made a plank in his new party plat-
form. Greeley, in the "New York Tribune," char-
acterized the Missouri Liberals as bolters. Schurz,
perceiving signs of discontent in other States as the
time for electing a new President approached, con-
vened his new party at Jefferson City on January 24,
1872. The name of "Liberal Republicans" was as-
sumed and a call was issued to all Republicans op-
posing the Administration and favoring reform to
meet in Cincinnati on the first Wednesday in May.
There was plenty of material at hand for such a
gathering, although there was no common bond of
sympathy except dissatisfaction with Grant and his
Administration. In New Y^ork there was a factional
quarrel. The two United States Senators were in
fighting mood. Reuben E. Fenton, a crafty political
manipulator, had been the leader of the State while
Governor from 1865 to 1869, but Conkling had
gained ascendancy with the Administration in Wash-
ington. Greeley, always afflicted with the itch for
office, was Fenton's candidate for Governor in 1870,
but was beaten in convention. In the convention of
1871 there was a titanic struggle for supremacy, and
Conkling, taking command in person of his forces
THE GREELEY EPISODE 411
on the floor, had driven the friends of Greeley and
Fenton out, and assumed full control of the party
organization.
Greeley had long been querulous about the Na-
tional Administration. Both he and Fenton now
attributed their defeat to Conkling's use of federal
patronage and to Grant's support. They thus were
ripe for the revolt which had been shaping in the
West. It was hard for Greeley, the most vociferous
advocate of high protection in the United States, to
swallow the Missouri Liberals' declaration for "a
genuine reform of the tariff," but let that question
be laid aside, he intimated in the " Tribune," " and
we will go to Cincinnati." In due season he signed
the response of Eastern Republicans to the Missouri
invitation, but outside their own State the New York
men in the convention found few except free traders.
The Cincinnati gathering did not consist of dele-
gates regularly chosen; but any person of Republican
antecedents was permitted to participate. No such
collection of curiously assorted men ever before or
since has undertaken to organize a political party.
The Liberal Republican movement, in so far as it
embodied a real passion for reform, was peculiarly
the product of writers for the press.
Schurz was an editor and pamphleteer by prefer-
ence, and with him in the instigation of revolt were
412 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Samuel Bowles, of the " Springfield Republican,"
Murat Halstead, of the " Cincinnati Commercial,"
Joseph Medill, Horace White, of the " Chicago Trib-
une," Alexander K. McClure, of the " Philadelphia
Times," E. L. Godkin, of the " Nation," and Wil-
liam Cullen Bryant, of the "New York Evening
Post." On some things they were agreed, on others
they were wide apart. The movement at its incep-
tion was under the guidance of writers, theorists,
dissenters, and doctrinaires, most of whom had done
a vast amount of thinking about how the Govern-
ment ought to be run, but few of whom had ever
really tried their hand at helping run it. Almosl
without exception in the beginning they were men
of fine ideals, but as the organization took shape, it
drew in the customary quota of disappointed and
discredited politicians.
There were a few men with both real political ex-
perience and high principles like John M. Palmer
and Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, Stanley Matthews,
George Hoadley, and Jacob D. Cox, of Ohio, Austin
Blair, the War Governor of Michigan. Finally there
were men like David A. Wells, Theodore Tilton, Ed-
ward Atkinson, Frank W. Bird, and General William
F. Bartlett, some of them faddists, none of them with
experience in elective office. Sumner, David Davis,
and Charles Francis Adams were among the later
THE GREELEY EPISODE 413
acquisitions. The germinating force was in the edi-
torial rooms of the " Chicago Tribune," the " Spring-
field Republican," the " Cincinnati Commercial,"
the " Nation," the " New York Evening Post," the
" New York Tribune," and the " Louisville Courier-
Journal," this last a Democratic paper rich in the
fulminations of Henry Watterson. Some of these
were less intense in their allegiance at the beginning
than others, but all in time joined in the cry against
Grant, though most of them were sorely disappointed
in the work of their convention.
Had they realized it they were doomed to failure
from the start, for they were lacking, not only in the
sagacity of the professional politician, but in the im-
pulse of an absorbing moral issue. Perhaps their
greatest lack was in a vivid personality to embody
their conception of reform. It is strange that observ-
ant newspaper editors could have imagined a success-
ful campaign against a party entrenched in power,
under such leadership as that to which they were
confined, — Charles Francis Adams, Lyman Trum-
bull, David Davis, Horace Greeley, — all men without
organized political or personal following and none
except Davis with practical political sense.
"The office-seeking fraternity," says Horace
White, "were mostly supporters of Davis, whose
appearance as a candidate for the Presidency was
4H ULYSSES S. GRANT
extremely offensive to the original promoters of the
movement. As a judge of the Supreme Court his
incursion into the field of politics, unheralded, but
not unprecedented, was an indecorum. Moreover,
his supporters had not been early movers in the
ranks of reform. . . . Davis's chances were early
demolished by the editorial fraternity, who, at a din-
ner at Murat Halstead's house, resolved that they
would not support him if nominated, and caused
that fact to be made known. Greeley's candidacy
had not been taken seriously by the editors at Hal-
stead's dinner-party. . . . Adams and Trumbull were
the only men supposed by us to be within the sphere
of nomination, and the chances of Adams were
deemed the better of the two. We had yet to learn
that there are occasions and crowds where personal
oddity and a flash of genius under an old white hat
are more potent than high ancestry or approved
statesmanship, or both those qualifications joined
together." l
The austere Adams at least was wise enough to
recognize his own defects as a candidate. " If I am to
be negotiated for and have assurances given that I
am honest, you will be so kind as to draw me out of
that crowd," he wrote to David A. Wells as he was
sailing for Europe to attend the Court of Geneva
1 Life of Lyman Trumbull, pp. 380-81.
THE GREELEY EPISODE 415
Arbitration, a fortnight before the convention. ... "I
never had a moment's belief that when it came to
the point, any one so entirely isolated as I am from
all political associations of any kind could be made
acceptable as a candidate for public office; but I am
so unlucky as to value that independence more highly
than the elevation which is brought by a sacrifice of
it. . . . If the good people who meet at Cincinnati
really believe that they need such an anomalous
being as I am (which I do not), they must express
it in a manner to convince me of it, or all their labor
will be thrown away."
Impossible material for a successful candidate for
votes, yet such was the idealistic and impractical
character of the disinterested devotees of the new
cult that the optimistic Bowles made this deadly
letter public in the innocent belief that it would bring
about the writer's nomination and election.
Not only did Greeley capture the nomination,
but he kept out of the platform any endorsement of
tariff reform, the one live issue outside Grant's per-
sonality upon which the promoters of the convention
came nearest to being united. He was the most ir-
reconcilable protectionist in the United States; he
was far less friendly than Grant to civil service re-
form, and had been profanely emphatic in expressing
his contempt for the merit test. It was a cruel
416 ULYSSES S. GRANT
awakening for the protagonists of revolt, many of
them scholars loyal to the universities, who with wry
faces found themselves straggling behind the fan-
tastic banner of the most trenchant opponent of
the theories they had most at heart, and marveling
at their complaisance as they recalled the pungent
prayer with which tradition says he used to enliven
the youthful meditations of aspiring writers for the
" Tribune," " Of all horned cattle, God deliver me
from the college graduate!"
Stanley Matthews, the temporary chairman, went
back to Grant as soon as possible, writing to a friend:
" I am greatly chagrined at the whole matter, my
own participation in it included, and have concluded
. . . that as a politician and a President-maker I am
not a success." William Cullen Bryant wrote to
Trumbull: "We who know Mr. Greeley know that
his administration, should he be elected, cannot be
otherwise than shamefully corrupt. . . . There is
no abuse or extravagance into which that mi
through the infirmity of his judgment may not
betrayed. It is wonderful how little in some of his
vagaries the scruples which would influence other
men of no exemplary integrity restrain him." Trum-
bull could think of no better reason for supporting
him than that he was " an honest but confiding man"
who with proper surroundings " would be an im-
provement on what we have."
THE GREELEY EPISODE 417
" The wiser heads in the convention were stunned,"
wrote Horace White. " Of all the things which could
possibly happen, this was the one thing which every-
body supposed could not happen." Carl Schurz,
chagrined at the result, wrote Greeley inviting him
to withdraw, presenting all the discouraging fea-
tures, " and now if the developments of the campaign
should be such as to disappoint your hopes, it shall
not be my fault if you are deceived about the real
state of things." Yet Schurz would support Greeley
"in a modified and guarded manner." So satisfied
was he of " the necessity of defeating Grant and dis-
solving party organization " that he was all ready to
use any instrument for the purpose, looking forward
" with a hopefulness bordering on enthusiasm to the
good things which will grow out of the confusion
following on Greeley's election" — an opportunist
view which Godkin could not accept, glad as he
should be to join Schurz in supporting Greeley,
' Schurz being the one man in American politics who
nspires Godkin with some hope concerning them."
?arke Godwin was even more bitter: " The man is a
:harlatan from top to bottom, and the smallest kind
)f a charlatan, from no other motive than a weak and
merile vanity. His success in politics would be the
uccess of whoever is most wrong in theory and most
corrupt in practice. . . . Grant and his crew are bad
418 ULYSSES S. GRANT
— but hardly so bad as Greeley and his would be."
The country surely was in sorry straits when those
who had constituted themselves its only hope were
limited to such alternatives.
The free traders in New York held a mass meeting
at Steinway Hall, invited to a conference those who
favored a less rigid protective policy than Greeley's,
and nominated William S. Groesbeck for President.
The invitation was signed by Carl Schurz, perma-
nent chairman of the Cincinnati Convention, J. D.
Cox, W. C. Bryant, D. A. Wells, Oswald Ottendorfer,
and Jacob Brinkerhoff — dissenters from dissent, who
in due time came back to Greeley after the Democrats
at Baltimore had endorsed the Cincinnati ticket.
An "Address to the People of the United States"
was issued at Cincinnati to launch the platform ol
principles. It was an undiluted denunciation ol,
Grant: "The President of the United States ha;
openly used the powers and opportunities of his hif
office for the promotion of personal ends. He hs
kept notoriously corrupt and unworthy men ii,
places of power and responsibilities to the detrimen
of the public interest. He has used the public servic,
of the Government as machinery of corruption an*
personal influence and has interfered with tyrannic.'
arrogance in the public affairs of States and munk
palities. He has rewarded with influential and lucn
THE GREELEY EPISODE 419
tive offices men who had acquired his favor by valua-
ble presents, thus stimulating the demoralization of
our political life by his conspicuous example. He has
shown himself deplorably unequal to the task im-
posed upon him by the necessities of the country and
culpably careless of the responsibilities of his high
office." His partisans were denounced for standing
" in the way of necessary investigations and indis-
pensable reforms"; for keeping alive "the passions
and resentments of the late Civil War . . . instead
of appealing to the better instincts and latent patriot-
ism of the Southern people"; for "base sycophancy
to the dispenser of executive power and patronage,
unworthy of republican freemen."
Following this denunciatory address the platform
reads tamely. It demanded the " immediate and ab-
solute removal of all disabilities imposed on account
)f the rebellion"; "local self-government with im-
partial suffrage"; "the supremacy of the civil over
he military authority"; the protection of the habeas
corpus; "a thorough reform of the civil service," to
vhich end " it is imperatively required that no Presi-
lent shall be a candidate for reelection"; the main-
enance of the public credit; a speedy return to specie
'ayments; and an end " to further grants of land to
ailroads or other corporations."
The extraordinary plank in this reform platform
420 ULYSSES S. GRANT
was the obvious straddle in regard to the tariff:
" Recognizing that there are in our midst honest but
irreconcilable differences of opinion with regard to the
respective systems of protection and free trade, we
remit the discussion of the subject to the people in
their congressional districts and the decision of Con-
gress thereon, wholly free from executive interfer-
ence or dictation."
This was an admirable declaration of principles.
It would have been more impressive had it not been
that some of its most commendable paragraphs were
duplicated in the Republican platform adopted at
Philadelphia on June 5 and 6, when Grant was re-
nominated with great enthusiasm, and by acclama-
tion. The Republicans favored a reform of the civil
service system " by laws which shall abolish the evils
of patronage and make honesty, efficiency, and fidel-
ity the essential qualifications for public positions
without practically creating a life-tenure of office.
They opposed " further grants of the public lands tc
corporations and monopolies"; declared that rev
enue, " except so much as may be derived from a tax
upon tobacco and liquors, should be raised by dutie
upon importations, the details of which should be sc
adjusted as to aid in securing remunerative wages tc
labor and promote the industries, prosperity, anc
growth of the whole country."
THE GREELEY EPISODE 421
His own party at Philadelphia was so thoroughly
united behind Grant that the only suggestion of di-
vision was in the nomination for Vice-President. Col-
fax would doubtless have been named again had he
not once withdrawn and then changed his mind after
Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, had been brought
forward as a candidate. While Speaker of the House
in Johnson's time and for a while Vice-President
with Grant, he had stood well in general esteem, but
of late he had incurred the distrust of the represent-
ative newspaper correspondents at Washington, a
body as quick then as their successors now in detect-
ing false notes in our public men. Their efforts more
than any other one thing gave Wilson the nomina-
tion; a choice of special significance because Wilson's
colleague, Sumner, only a few days before, in the
speech of May 31, had portrayed Grant in riotous
violence of color as a military usurper debauching
his office with an unholy zest which any Roman
Emperor might have envied him. The Democrats at
Baltimore, on July 9, endorsed Greeley, thus com-
pleting an incongruous picture; for they could not
have picked another man so radically at odds with
every political theory which they held. His only
point of sympathy with either convention was dis-
content with Grant — no unusual attitude with him;
for he had been an unsparing critic of every Presi-
422 ULYSSES S. GRANT
dent for thirty years, no matter whether his own
party or the opposition happened to be in power.
Greeley really never had a chance of election from
the day he was nominated, but so eager was the
campaign against Grant that for a time some even of
the most sagacious of the seasoned political observers
were in doubt. Sumner's assault of May 31 furnished
a text for hardened orators and writers of the opposi-
tion.
" Not only are Constitution and law disregarded,"
cried Sumner, "but the presidential office itself is
treated as little more than a plaything and a per-
quisite — when not the former, then the latter. Here
the details are ample; showing how from the begin-
ning this exalted trust has dropped to be a personal
indulgence, where palace cars, fast horses, and sea-
side loiterings figure more than duties; how personal
aims and objects have been more prominent than the
public interests; . . . how in the same spirit office has
been conferred upon those from whom he had re-
ceived gifts or benefits, thus making the country
repay his personal obligations; how personal devo-
tion to himself rather than public or party service
has been made the standard of favor; how the vast
appointing power conferred by the Constitution for
the general welfare has been employed at his will
to promote his schemes, to reward his friends, to1
THE GREELEY EPISODE 423
punish his opponents, and to advance his election to
a second term; how all these assumptions have ma-
tured in a personal government, semi-military in
character and breathing the military spirit, being
a species of Csesarism or pcrsonalism, abhorrent to
republican institutions, where subservience to the
President is the supreme law.
"... I protest against him as radically unfit for
the presidential office, being essentially military in
nature, without experience in civil life, without apti-
tude for civil duties, and without knowledge of re-
publican institutions."
Thus "Csesarism" became the cry against the
most diffident and unassuming soldier of his genera-
tion, one who signalized his first night at the White
House by dispensing with the squad of soldiers de-
tailed there as a night guard and ordering away from
Washington all the troops on duty there at the time
of his inauguration. " I was trying last night," said
Matthew H. Carpenter replying to Sumner's tirade,
"to recall a single instance if in conversation in re-
gard to the late war I had heard General Grant al-
lude to himself, and I could not. I have heard him
speak in the most glowing terms of his comrades in
arms. I have heard him speak of the exploits of
Sherman. I have heard him allude to what was done
by Logan, McPherson, and many other officers of
424 ULYSSES S. GRAXT
the Union army. I never heard him say, speaking
of a battle, 'at such a juncture I thought I would do
so and so,' or, ' I ordered a battalion this way or
that,' or, ' I turned the scale by such a maneuver.'
I never heard him allude to himself in connection
with the war. I believe you might go to the White
House and live with him and converse about the
war day after day, and you never would know from
anything he said that he was in the war at all."
Such is the uniform testimony of those who knew
him best. It is true that his companionships were
not all over-nice; that instead of spending his sum-
mers in Washington he spent them at the seashore,
as has been the habit of almost every President since
his day; that he liked to drive fast horses as when a
boy on his father's place; that he accepted presents
indiscriminately as a thing of course; that he had
relatives in the public service; but if these were faults
deserving censure, they were faults of judgment, not
of malign intent, and history will weigh them lightly.
Grant was keenly sensitive to the attacks upon
him, but he never had the slightest doubt of his suc-
cess, though the most experienced political observ-
ers had their blue days. George W. Childs tells how
during the campaign Wilson, who had just made
a tour of the country, came to his house in Phila-
delphia greatly depressed. " I went to see General
THE GREELEY EPISODE 425
Grant and I told him about this feeling particularly
as coming from Senator Wilson. The General said
nothing, but he sent for a map of the United States.
He laid the map down on the table and went over it
with a pencil and said, ' We will carry this State, that
State, and that State ; until he nearly covered the
whole United States. It occurred to me he might as
well put them all in." He wrote to Washburne in
August that even if Greeley remained in the field
till November, he would not carry a single Northern
State.
His foresight was justified. The only States Gree-
ley carried were Maryland, Georgia, Missouri, and
Kentucky. Grant received 286 electoral votes out
of 349. His popular vote was 3,597,132, an increase
over his vote in 1868 of 484,299.
It was a cruel thing for Greeley. He who had
rioted all his life in searing Presidents and candidates
cringed now when he felt his own soul pressed
against the iron. The Scriptural admonition, that he
who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword,
was never more convincingly exemplified. "I was
the worst beaten man who ever ran for high office,"
he wrote Colonel Tappan, " and I have been assailed
so bitterly that I hardly knew whether I was running
for President or the Penitentiary. In the darkest
hour my suffering wife left me, none too soon, for she
42G ULYSSES S. GRANT
had suffered too deeply and too long. I laid her in the
ground with hard, dry eyes. Well, I am used up; I
cannot see before me. I have slept little for weeks,
and my eyes are still hard to close, while they soon
open again." Before the Electoral College met he
died broken in heart and mind.
But Grant's great personal triumph had its taste
of wormwood too; for he had been through slander
and vituperation such as seldom comes to public men.
How it had eaten into him became plain to his
countrymen a few months later when they read the
closing words of his second inaugural: —
" I did not ask for place or position, and was en-
tirely without influence or the acquaintance of per-
sons of influence, but was resolved to perform my
part in a struggle threatening the very existence of
the nation. I performed a conscientious duty, with-
out asking promotion or command, and without a
revengeful feeling toward any section or individual.
"Notwithstanding this, throughout the war, and
from my candidacy for my present office in 1868 to
the close of the last presidential campaign, I have
been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever
equaled in political history, which to-day I feel that
I can afford to disregard in view of your verdict,
which I gratefully accept as my vindication."
CHAPTER XL
CREDIT MOBILIER — THE BACK PAY GRAB — THE
SANBORN CONTRACTS
As we look back upon Grant's early years as Presi-
dent, we see that he was criticized more for the man-
ner than the matter of his deeds. The result in 1872
showed clearly that the conservative forces of the
country retained their faith in him. While Greeley
had great crowds to hear him speak, — so great as
for a time to frighten old Republican campaigners,
■ — the outcome demonstrated that they were drawn
by curiosity to see and hear a man who had been
writing to them many years. The "sober second
thought" which he invoked brought voters to the
polls for his opponent. He was himself submerged
in the great "tidal wave" on which his visionary
helpers set such store. Grant won because, however
much his methods might be questioned, men felt that
in the fundamental qualities then needed he was
sound. He had sustained the country's credit in
finance, had greatly added to America's prestige
abroad, and had shown firmness in the execution of
the laws both North and South, a trait which led
strong men of all political complexions to believe in
428 ULYSSES S. GRANT
him. He had been guilty of two faults which fairly
merited reproof. One was a weakness for unworthy
friends, on whom he showered responsible positions
without regard to their experience or capacity and
who too often played on his good faith in furthering
their aims; the other was the practice, which he car-
ried to a greater length than any of his predecessors,
of interfering with congressional affairs. Of these
faults the first was personal to him and transitory; the
other, in the hands of a more crafty President, might
well become an evil packed with peril; for the grow-
ing ease with which our recent Presidents usurp the
functions of the legislative branch threatens the very
fundamentals of our Government. There could be no
handier tool for one who had designs upon our liber-
ties than a subservient Congress. With Grant the
tendency was less alarming than it might be with
others, more artful in the ways of politics; for Grant
was not a demagogue; he never dreamed of such a
thing as playing with his office for popular applause
to hold himself in power. He acted always with
a definite and patriotic aim, though often erring
through his unfamiliarity with the machinery of civil
government. He drove straight at his goal without
regard to legal technicalities, and cut across lots with
sublime indifference to signs forbidding trespass.
While he was gratefully accepting the verdict
CREDIT MOBILIER 429
of the country on his first Administration, freshly
gathered clouds were hanging over him. The Con-
gress just then coming to an end was to be notable in
its disclosure of two scandals — the Credit Mobilier
and the "Back Pay Steal," in one of which its only
office was to mete out justice, though both besmirched
the party in control, in spite of evidence that Demo-
crats should share responsibility for whatever guilt
there was. Both were symbolic of the temper of the
hour, and symptomatic of conditions by no means
limited to Washington. "My own public life has
been a very brief and insignificant one," said George
F. Hoar about that time, "extending little beyond
the duration of a single term of senatorial office; but
in that brief period I have seen five judges of a high
court of the United States driven from office by
threats of impeachment for corruption or maladmin-
istration. I have heard the taunt, from friendliest
lips, that when the United States presented herself
in the East to take part with the civilized world in
generous competition in the arts of life, the only
product of her institutions in which she surpassed all
others without question was her corruption. I have
seen, . . . the political administration of her chief
city become a disgrace and a byword throughout the
world. . . . When the greatest railroad of the world,
binding together the continent and uniting the two
430 ULYSSES S. GRANT
great seas, was finished, I have seen our national tri-
umph and exultation turned to bitterness and shame.
... I have heard in highest places the shameless
doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office
that the true way by which power should be gained
in the Republic is to bribe the people with offices
created for their service."
Thus marshaled, it presents a sorry record; but
it would be absurd to charge it up to Grant or his
Administration. The period just following the war
was one of rude upheaval and of shattered standards.
It cannot fairly be compared with more quiescent
times. It was Grant's fortune to have fallen on it.
Another in his place would hardly have done bet-
ter; a weaker President might have been over-
whelmed.
And in spite of Hoar it would be hard to name a
country with equal opportunities where corruption
was then less prevalent than in our own. The scan-
dals of the day emblazoned by political assault were
uncouth in comparison with finer faults in less dis-
torted times, but they had precedents in earlier ad-
ministrations and have been rivaled since. With all
his classic phrase and fine ideals Hoar often was the
victim of his own hyperbole. Like Sumner he was a
dogmatic partisan even in a noble cause, and those
who knew him best were well aware that in his eyes
CREDIT MOBILIER 431
the things he greatly disapproved were monstrous,
while "all his geese were swans."
In the midst of the campaign the "New York Sun"
had sprung a charge of bribery in connection with
the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, for
which Oakes Ames, a Congressman from Massachu-
setts, a forceful and far-seeing business man, had
been responsible. It was asserted that Ames had
distributed among influential Congressmen and Sen-
ators shares of stock in the Credit Mobilier. This
was a Pennsylvania company, the unused franchise
of which had been acquired by the managers of the
Union Pacific, that they might thus secure the con-
tract for the building of the road. The device which
Ames and his associates adopted was an ingenious
adaptation of methods then prevailing in the con-
struction of private lines.
It was not feasible at that time to secure sub-
scriptions to the authorized capital stock in cash as
was required by the statutes and as might have been
done later. If Ames had not come forward with his
credit, the enterprise would probably have fallen
through; and the "spanning of the continent" would
have been delayed for years. But through the aid of
the Credit Mobilier, the stockholders in which were
almost identical with the stockholders in the Union
Pacific, the road was opened in 1869. Whatever the
432 ULYSSES S. GRANT
benefits, this was an evasion of the law providing
that the stock should be paid for in full in money,
when as a fact it went to men "who paid for it at
not more than thirty cents on the dollar in road-
making." From the viewpoint of Ames the arrange-
ment with the Credit Mobilier was wise and neces-
sary as well as profitable, for otherwise the work
could not have been done. At the time when it was
undertaken in 1865-66, he did not dare ask Con-
gress to amend the charter, lest in the crush of Re-
construction legislation, permission would be indefi-
nitely delayed.
Ames had been a member of the House since 1863,
and from that vantage had watched the interests of
the road. Washburne, of Illinois, "the watch-dog of
the Treasury," had shown intermittent symptoms of
demanding an investigation of the road's affairs.
Ames wanted nothing further in the way of legisla-
tion, but he cannily conceived that friendliness among
the leading men in Congress might be a handy asset. I
At his suggestion, in the fall of 1867, three hundred '
and forty-three shares of the Credit Mobilier were
transferred to him as trustee. "I shall put these,"
he wrote to an associate, "where they will do the
most good to us. I am here on the spot and can
better judge where they should go." Whereupon he
entered into contracts with leading Senators and
CREDIT MOBILIER 433
Representatives to sell them stock at par with inter-
est from the first day of the previous July. One hun-
dred and sixty shares were thus contracted for. Large
dividends were already due upon the stock and it
was worth no less than double par. Some bought their
shares outright, while Ames agreed to carry others.
This was the ground of charges exploited in the
closing days of the campaign. The names of Senators
and Representatives were given, based on a list made
out by Ames before the distribution of the stock and
disclosed that summer in a suit before a Pennsylvania
court. They were a score of the most influential men
in Congress, among them Colfax, Conkling, Garfield,
Blaine, and Wilson. When Congress met a few weeks
after the election, Blaine, then Speaker, took the
floor and asked for an investigation. Two commit-
tees were appointed — one headed by Luke Poland,
of Vermont, to investigate the charges against mem-
bers of the House, the other headed by Wilson, of
Indiana, and George F. Hoar to inquire into the man-
agement of the affairs of the Union Pacific and the
Credit Mobilier. The result was a complete exonera-
tion of most of those whom Ames had on his list.
Some, like Blaine, Conkling, and Boutwell, had re-
fused the stock. Others had given it back when they
discovered there were to be suspicious profits. Only
those who, during the campaign or later, had pre-
of
us
434 ULYSSES S. GRANT
varicated in wholesale denials, though guiltless
corrupt intent, were held in fault. Colfax, for his
prevarication and for questionable transactions re-
vealed in the inquiry, was driven out of public life.
Patterson, of New Hampshire, was recommended by
the Senate Committee for expulsion, but his term
came to an end before the Senate was prepared to act.
Ames and James Brooks, a New York Democratic
member, a government director of the road who was
implicated with him, were recommended for expul-
sion from the House. Brooks died before his case wasi
reached. The House censured Ames, and he too diec
within a month, the victim of a broken heart. Unti
the scandal broke, he had not thought of the trans
action as anything except a public service in keeping
with the habit of the times, for which he should be
given praise, not blame: "The same thing," he ex
plained to the committee, "as going into a business
community and interesting the leading business meD
by giving them shares." He never dreamed of co:
rupting members of Congress in any way; "they were
all friends of the road and my friends. If you want
bribe a man you want to bribe one who is opposed tc1
you, not to bribe one who is your friend. ... I nevei
made a promise to or got one from any member o
Congress in my life, and I would not dare to atteinpl
it." His final statement, read in the House before the
THE BACK PAY GRAB 435
vote of censure, merits a record in the history of the
time: "I have risked reputation, fortune, everything
in an enterprise of incalculable benefit to the Govern-
ment from which the capital of the world shrank. . . .
I have had friends, some of them in official life, with
whom I have been willing to share advantageous
opportunities of investment. ... I have kept to the
truth through good and evil report; denying nothing,
concealing nothing, reserving nothing. Who will say
that I alone am to be offered up a sacrifice to appease
a public clamor or expiate the sins of others?"
The revelations and the disrepute which followed
:hem mark the beginning of a change in public con-
science, which thenceforth was alive to wrong in
nethods hitherto unblamed. They had no rightful
rearing on Grant's Administration, as the transac-
ions were all before his time.
The Congress, which had done so well in handling
he Credit Mobilier affair, stirred public indignation
a its dying hours by the enactment of the "Salary
Jrab," providing for an increase in salaries of Sen-
tors and Representatives and the higher officers of
be Government. The salary of the President was
aised from $25,000 to $50,000 a year, that of Sen-
tors and Representatives from $5000 to $7500.
'here was an increase in the pay of the Vice-Presi-
it, of the members of the Cabinet, and of the Jus-
436 ULYSSES S. GRANT
tices of the Supreme Court. These advances could
not properly be criticized; for they were innocent and
necessary, and should not have been delayed so long;
but there was a provision that the increased salaries
of Senators and Representatives should date from
the beginning of the present Congress, so that each
would be entitled to receive $5000 in addition to what
he had been already paid — a retroactive arrange-
ment which roused the people to a fierce storm of
protest. It was depicted as a conspiracy to loot the
Treasury, and those who voted for it were held up
to public scorn.
Democrats and Republicans had joined in its sup-
port; one party was as guilty as the other, but as the
Congress was Republican, that party had to bear the
blame. The appropriation bill containing the obnox-
ious clause was not enacted till the day before ad-
journment, so that Grant could not refuse to sign the:
bill without compelling a special session of the ncwl>
chosen Congress, solely to make the necessary appro-
priations for the continuance of an essential govern-
mental function. He afterwards urged Congress tc
give the Executive power to veto portions of appro
priation bills without vetoing the whole — a reforn
which has been often advocated since without result
So violent was the outcry against the "Back Pa;
Steal" that many Senators and Representative
THE BACK PAY GRAB 437
turned back into the Treasury the back pay which
had been voted them, and one of the first acts of the
new Congress which met in December, 1873, was to
repeal the law except as it applied to the President
and Justices of the Supreme Court. The issue figured
largely in the next congressional election and was
in part responsible for the Republican defeat. Its
shadow lay on Congress for over thirty years, and not
until the Roosevelt Administration did any member
dare propose the salary increase which all knew to be
right, resorting rather to manipulation of their pay
by petty subterfuge in separate allowances for mile-
age, clerk hire, and stationery, in timorous deference
to a public feeling which did not exist.
No one has ever told why Grant as President took
up with Butler, whom as Lieutenant-General he had
sent home from City Point and who, in "Butler's
Book" years later, smeared Grant's war record with
a filthy brush. It may have been because of his dis-
like for Sumner, whose Massachusetts friends de-
tested Butler's ways, or it may have been his inbred
trait of standing in a fight by any one who seemed to
him unfairly handled; but under all, we may sur-
mise Butler's frank brutality of method, which per-
haps appealed to him more strongly than the finer
Brahmin touch. He always clung to those with whom
he felt at home. The Massachusetts patronage he
438 ULYSSES S. GRANT
gave to Butler much to the general disgust. His
choice of Simmons, "the young Christian Soldier,"
a Methodist class leader and Butler's henchman, for
Collector of the Port of Boston, aroused resentment
in the State and stirred to protest men like Sumner,
Pierce, Whittief, and Holmes, all bitterly opposed to
Butler's strong ambition to be Governor. Six New
England Senators voted against Simmons, only one
for confirmation. The Hoar brothers tried to induce
Grant to withdraw the nomination; but Grant was
obdurate.
"Butler says he has a hold on you," said Judge
Hoar, as he sat beside the President; and Rhodes, to
whom this story came direct, relates that "Grant set
his teeth, then drew down his jaw, and without chang-
ing countenance looked Hoar straight in the eye, but
said not a word. A long and painful silence ensued
and Hoar went away." George F. Hoar in his "Au-
tobiography" tells how he broached the Simmons
topic while walking with the President by Lafayette
Square. Grant quietly replied that to withdraw the
nomination would do injustice to the young man
The conversation continued in a friendly vein unti
they turned the corner by Sumner's house, whei
Grant's whole manner changed, and shaking lii;
closed fist he said, "I shall not withdraw the nomina
tion. That man who lives up there has abused me ii
GRANT IN HIS SECOND TERM
Photograph by Brady
From the collection »t Frederick Hill Meserve
THE SANBORN CONTRACTS 439
a way which I have never suffered from any other
man living!" This was in the winter of 1873, only a
few weeks before Sumner's sudden end.
The scandal of the Sanborn contracts grew out of
Butler's influence with the Administration. William
A. Richardson, who had been Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury under Boutwell and who succeeded
Boutwell when the latter became a Senator, came
from Lowell, Butler's town. Richardson had no ad-
ministrative service save in the Washington depart-
ments. It was of him that George F. Hoar remarked,
when asked about his Massachusetts record, "his
reputation is strictly national." In 1872 Congress
had repealed the dangerous law by which informers
received a moiety of the recoveries from delinquent
payers of internal revenue taxes, but a clause had
been smuggled into an appropriation bill empowering
the Secretary of the Treasury " to employ not more
than three persons to assist the proper officers of the
Government in discovering and collecting any money
belonging to the United States whenever the same
shall be withheld." Under this clause, Richardson,
first as Assistant Secretary, afterwards as Secretary of
the Treasury, made contracts with John D. Sanborn,
a Boston friend of Butler's, already in the Govern-
ment's employ as special agent for the Treasury, to
collect taxes which were said to have been evaded by
440 ULYSSES S. GRANT
distillers, railroad companies, legatees, and others.
By successive amendments to his contract, Sanborn
induced the Treasury officials to let him gather in his
net several thousand individuals and almost every
railroad company in the United States, and to wink
at fraudulent swearing to delinquencies.
Under this contract $427,000 was collected, from
which Sanborn received his moiety of $213,500. Of
his share Sanborn testified that $156,000 was spent
in hiring men to help him carry on the work, and
most of this, it has been intimated, went to those who
were engaged in the advancement of Butler's polit-
ical designs. A congressional committee in 1874 found
that a large percentage of the revenue collected was
not a proper subject for contract under the law and
would have been collected by the Internal Revenue
Bureau in ordinary course; that many of the trans-
actions were fraudulent, and that the Commissioner
of Internal Revenue had been studiously ignored
throughout. They agreed unanimously to report a
resolution that the House had no confidence in Rich-
ardson and demanded his removal.
When Grant got word of this he sent for individual
members of the committee and urged them to with-
hold the resolution, with the understanding that the
Secretary should resign and be taken care of in some
other branch of service. As no one intimated that
THE SANBORN CONTRACTS 441
Richardson had profited by the arrangement and
the real complaint against him was for negligence,
the committee accepted Grant's proposal. Richard-
son was made a justice of the Court of Claims, and
Benjamin H. Bristow, a Kentucky lawyer who had
made a record for effectiveness as United States At-
torney, was appointed Secretary in his place.
CHAPTER XLI
VETO OF THE INFLATION BILL — THE RESUMPTION
ACT
For more than two years after the Supreme Court's
reversal of its Legal Tender decision there was a
period of seemingly unexampled prosperity. Busi-
ness boomed; new railroads shot out through the
Western country to gather up the grain for which
Europe waited with outstretched hands; others
pierced the coal and iron regions of Pennsylvania and
the border States. In the four years from 1869 to
1872 the railroad mileage of the United States in-
creased over twenty -four thousand miles — more
than three times the average annual increase during
the years from 1865 to 1868. All this meant a tremen-
dous demand for iron and steel, a great expansion of
shipping on the Great Lakes. Workshops and mills
were run at full capacity; labor was in demand; wages
were high; the tide of immigration was at flood. New
issues of railway bonds were frequent, at high rates of
interest; and they were widely distributed among
people like clergymen, school teachers, and others of
meager pay, who eagerly welcomed the unusual re-
turns upon their small investments.
VETO OF THE INFLATION BILL 443
Many of these railway bonds, notably those of the
Northern Pacific, were floated by Jay Cooke & Co.,
who, ever since their great success in handling the
Government bond issues of the Civil War, had stood
in the popular imagination as the house of Morgan
later stood for so many years, the representative
banking institution of the United States. Besides the
legitimate business advancement, there were thou-
sands of wildcat schemes.
Every one was busy about something; every one
had money; the world was looking up; the Vanderbilts
and other men, who for years had been doing the
biggest things in the biggest way, were carrying on
their constructive schemes with sublime confidence
in the future. They saw no clouds ahead; why should
the average citizen who had faith in their experience?
Then in the late summer of 1873, a few months after
Grant had entered on his second term, money began
to tighten even more than usual for that season of the
year, when it was needed for the movement of the
crops. There were other indications which might
well have been taken as warnings that the boom had
gone too far. And finally on September 18, 1873, the
country was stunned by the announcement that Jay
Cooke & Co. had failed.
The props were knocked from under the flimsy
structure of prosperity and it crumbled overnight.
4-14 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Bank after bank went to the wall in all parts of the
United States. The stock exchanges remained closed
for eight days; greenbacks and national bank notes
were hoarded; clearing-house certificates were issued
for the first time in the history of panics; every con-
ceivable device was resorted to for luring money back
into circulation. The country was stricken with in-
dustrial paralysis. Grant did not see "good times"
again while he was President.
At the height of the panic the frightened financiers
of New York cried to Washington for help. Three
days after the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., Grant came
over to New York with Richardson, the Secretary of
the Treasury, and was besieged at the Fifth Avenue
Hotel by the business leaders of the city. "I hap-
pened in New York on that Sunday," said Morton,
of Indiana, "and saw the crowds of bankers, brokers,
capitalists, merchants, manufacturers, and railroad
men, who throughout that day thronged the halls,
corridors, and parlors of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, be-
seeching the President to increase the currency by
every means in his power, and declaring that unless
the Government came to the rescue nothing could
save the country from bankruptcy and ruin."
Two measures of relief were at Grant's hand.
Before McCulloch was stopped by Congress he had
retired and canceled $44,000,000 out of $400,000,000
VETO OF THE INFLATION BILL 445
greenbacks authorized by law, leaving in circulation
$356,000,000. Boutwell at times had reissued these
notes in small amounts to meet the current expenses
of the Government and had retired them again as the
need passed. Grant now had it in his power to reissue
these notes in the financial emergency. Some of the
biggest men in the Street begged him to do it.
But he refused thus to inflate the currency in order
to ease the money market. At best it would have
been a temporary and fictitious relief and probably
illegal, though that irregularity would doubtless have
been overlooked in so great a crisis. There were other
surplus greenbacks in the Treasury, however, and he
directed the Secretary to use these to buy bonds, thus
restoring to the savings banks $13,000,000 of cur-
rency, which, while it did not go directly into circula-
tion for the benefit of Wall Street, was far-reaching
in its moral effect.
Congress meeting in December, 1873, found the
country in financial depths looking to Washington
for relief. There were few Senators or Representa-
tives without a remedy, fresh from home. The cry
for inflation, which had been blatant many years,
now gained in volume.
Grant called attention in his message to the falling-
off of revenues " owing to the general panic now pre-
vailing." It was the duty of Congress to provide
446 ULYSSES S. GRANT
"wise and well-considered legislation." "My own
judgment is that however much individuals may have
suffered, one long step has been taken toward specie
payments, and we can never have permanent pros-
perity until a specie basis can be reached and main-
tained, until our exports, exclusive of gold, pay for
our imports, interest due abroad, and other specie
obligations, or so nearly so as to leave an appreciable
accumulation of the precious metals in the country
from the products of our mines. ... To increase our
exports sufficient currency is required to keep all the
industries of the country employed. Without this,
national as well as individual bankruptcy must ensue.
Undue inflation, on the other hand, while it might
give temporary relief, would only lead to inflation of
prices, the impossibility of competing in our own
markets for the products of home skill and labor, and
repeated renewals of present experiences. Elasticity
to our circulating medium, therefore, and just enough
of it to transact the legitimate business of the country
and to keep all industries employed, is what is most
to be desired. The exact medium is specie, the recog-
nized medium of exchange the world over. That ob-
tained, we shall have a currency of an exact degree of
elasticity. If there be too much of it for the legiti-
mate purposes of trade and commerce, it will flow
out of the country. If too little, the reverse will result.
VETO OF THE INFLATION BILL 447
To hold what we have and to appreciate our currency
to that standard is the problem deserving of the most
serious consideration of Congress."
John Sherman was chairman of the Finance Com-
mittee of the Senate; and under his sound guidance
early in December the majority of the committee
reported a resolution looking to the resumption of
specie payments. Ferry, of Michigan, offered a reso-
lution looking to inflation. Morton and Logan were
eager advocates of cheaper money. Thurman called
these three "the paper money trinity." Their de-
mands ranged from the issue of $100,000,000 in
greenbacks, which Ferry had in mind, to the reissue
of the entire amount retired by McCulloch, which
was Morton's plan. This latter would have brought
the amount outstanding to $400,000,000, but it would
have necessitated the actual issue of only $18,000,000;
for without justification in law, Richardson had been
busy ever since the panic in inflation on his own
account to make up for falling revenues, and to
provide for current disbursements. McCulloch had
retired $44,000,000, and at the time of the Septem-
ber panic in 1873 the total amount of greenbacks
outstanding was $356,000,000. Richardson at con-
venient intervals since that time had put out, by
the middle of January, 1874, a total of $26,000,000
for the payment of current expenses.
448 ULYSSES S. GRANT
There was a decided difference of opinion about the
legality of Richardson's performance, but the imme-
diate question before Congress was whether to au-
thorize the issue of $18,000,000 more, while silently
assenting to what he had done. It was a question
of principle rather than of amount. "If now," said
Sherman, "in this time of temporary panic, we yield
one single inch to the desire for paper money in this
country, we shall pass the Rubicon, and there will be
no power in Congress to check the issue. If you want
$40,000,000 now, how easy will it be to get $40,000,-
000 again ! . . . Will there not always be men in debt?
Will not always men with bright hopes embark too
far on the treacherous sea of credit? Will there not
always be a demand made upon you for an increase? "
The debate covering a wide range lasted for four
months. Sherman's committee reported a bill fixing
the maximum amount of greenbacks at $382,000,000,
where Richardson had left it. This was amended to
provide for a maximum of $400,000,000, thus legaliz-
ing Richardson's issue and authorizing $18,000,000
more. In this form it passed the Senate and House
by ample margins and on April 4, 1874, went to the
President.
Now comes one of the most dramatic and credit-
able incidents in Grant's career. With the passage of
the inflation bill the country settled down to the
VETO OF THE INFLATION BILL 449
expectation that it would become a law. There was
reason for this belief. While Grant's public and pri-
vate utterances hitherto had been consistently on the
side of financial stability, there were passages both
in his private and public papers not inconsistent with
a moderate expansion of the circulating medium, and
he had tacitly assented to the irregularities of Bout-
well and Richardson even though he may not have
approved them in advance. Morton and Logan were
his stanch political supporters. They had sustained
him when he had been most bitterly assailed. But
here was an occasion where he fully realized the
responsibility of his position of command.
It would have been easy to say nothing and sign
the bill; still easier to let the bill become a law with-
out his signature. In either case he would have little
criticism. Whatever blame there was would fall on
Congress.
Grant never thought of shirking the responsibility.
He first expected to approve the bill and actually
wrote a message telling why: but when he came to
read his own production, he could not honestly en-
dorse the arguments. He tore up his first message,
wrote another, and on the 22d of April astonished the
country with a veto.
"The only time I ever deliberately resolved to do
an expedient thing for party reasons, against my own
450 ULYSSES S. GRAXT
judgment," he later said, "was on the occasion of
the expansion or inflation bill. I never was so pressed
in my life to do anything as to sign that bill — never.
It was represented to me that the veto would destroy
the Republican Party in the West; that the West and
South would combine and take the country, and
agree upon some even worse plan of finance, some
plan that would mean repudiation. Morton, Logan,
and other men, friends whom I respected, were elo-
quent in presenting this view. I thought at last I
would try and save the party, and at the same time
the credit of the nation, from the evils of the bill. I
resolved to write a message, embodying my own rea-
soning and some of the arguments that had been
given me, to show that the bill, as passed, need not
mean expansion or inflation and that it need not
affect the country's credit. The message was intended
to soothe the East and satisfy the foreign holders of
the bonds. I wrote the message with great care and
put in every argument I could call up to show that
the bill was harmless and would not accomplish what
its friends expected from it. When I finished my
wonderful message which was to do so much good to
the party and country, I read it over and said to my-
self: 'What is the good of all this? You do not believe
it. You know it is not true.' Throwing it aside I re-
solved to do what I believed to be right, veto the
VETO OF THE INFLATION BILL 451
bill ! I could not stand my own arguments. While I
was in this mood — and it was an anxious time with
me, so anxious that I could not sleep at night, with
me a most unusual circumstance — the ten days were
passing in which the President must sign or veto a
bill. On the ninth day I resolved inflexibly to veto
the bill and let the storm come."1
Grant wrote his veto with his own hand, as was
generally the case with his important messages. It
was a sturdy and inspiring paper. He declared his
unalterable opposition to any inflation of the currency
as "a departure from true principles of finance, na-
tional interest, national obligations to creditors, con-
gressional promises, party pledges (on the part of
both political parties), and of personal views and
promises made by me in 'every annual message sent
to Congress and in each inaugural address." It was
the turning-point in the financial policy of the
United States. If Grant had done no other praise-
worthy thing in his eight years of office, this in itself
would have given him rank among our great execu-
tives. It fixed the place of the United States among
the financial powers of the world.
But something still remained for him to do; for
though inflation had been dealt a deadly blow, addi-
tional legislation was required to bring about a cur-
1 Young, vol. ii, p. 153.
452 ULYSSES S. GRANT
rency based unmistakably upon the monetary stand-
ards of the world. In 1874 the country was ready
for a party change. Hard times, the record made by
Congress, Credit Mobilier, the "Back Pay Grab,"
and scandals like the Sanborn contracts, had cul-
minated in a storm of disapproval which broke in
the election of a Democratic House. The two-thirds
Republican majority of the Forty-fourth Congress
was almost reversed, and for the first time since 1861,
Senate and House would be of differing political
complexion. Whatever legislation looking to the re-
sumption of specie payments the Administration
had in mind must be enacted while a Congress in
sympathy with this policy was still in power; for
sound finance had no place in the Democratic creed.
When Congress met in December, 1874, for its
last short session, Grant in his message brought re-
sumption boldly to the front, pressing his argument
with earnestness and with convincing force. He dwelt
upon the national need which had devised a cur-
rency impossible to keep at par with the recognized
currency of the civilized world, urged that a foreign
indebtedness, contracted in good faith by borrower
and lender, should be paid in coin, and according to
the bond agreed upon when the debt was contracted
— gold or its equivalent. "The good faith of the
Government cannot be violated toward creditors
THE RESUMPTION ACT 453
without national disgrace." In his judgment the
first step toward the encouragement of American
commerce was " to secure a currency of fixed, stable
value; a currency good wherever civilization reigns;
one which, if it becomes superabundant with one
people, will find a market with some other; a cur-
rency which has as its basis the labor necessary to
produce it, which will give to it its value. Gold and
silver are now the recognized medium of exchange
the civilized world over, and to this we should return
with the least practicable delay. ... I believe firmly
that there can be no prosperous and permanent re-
vival of business and industries until a policy is
adopted — with legislation to carry it out — looking
to a return to a specie basis. ... I believe it is in the
power of Congress at this session to devise such legis-
lation as will renew confidence, revive all the indus-
tries, start us on a career of prosperity to last for
many years, and to save the credit of the nation and
the people."
He suggested measures which seemed to him abso-
lutely necessary to a return to specie payments. "The
Legal Tender clause to the law authorizing the issue
of currency by the National Government should be
repealed, to take effect as to all contracts entered
into after a day fixed in the repealing act. . . . Pro-
vision should be made by which the Secretary of the
454 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Treasury can obtain gold as it may become necessary
from time to time, from the date when specie resump-
tion commences. To this should be added a revenue
sufficiently in excess of expenses to insure an accumu-
lation of gold in the Treasury to sustain permanent
redemption. . . . With resumption, free banking may
be authorized with safety, giving the same full pro-
tection to bill-holders which they have under existing
laws. Indeed, I regard free banking as essential. It
would give proper elasticity to the currency." And
pressing home his plea he urged: "I commend this
subject to your careful consideration, believing that
a favorable solution is attainable, and if reached by
this Congress that the present and future generations
will ever gratefully remember it as their deliverer
from a thralldom of evil and disgrace."
Congress wras quick in its response. John Sherman,
chairman of the Committee on Finance at the first
party caucus, moved a committee to harmonize the
various diverging views of the majority and formu-
late a bill. He was made chairman. By mutual con-
cessions a bill was shaped, the vital section of which
provided that on January 1, 1879, the Government
should begin the redemption of greenbacks in coin;
and, to make possible this resumption of specie pay-
ments, authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to
use the surplus revenue and to sell bonds for the
THE RESUMPTION ACT 455
purpose of accumulating gold. The bill also pro-
vided for free banking, for the withdrawal of green-
backs as fast as national bank notes were issued in
the proportion of $80 to $100 until the greenbacks
were reduced to $300,000,000; for subsidiary silver
coins to take the place of the paper fractional cur-
rency.
The bill promptly passed both Senate and House,
and on January 14, 1875, Grant made it law, sig-
nalizing his approval in a message congratulating
Congress, urging further steps to make the law effec-
tive through the increase of revenue, and suggesting
other helpful legislation. It fell to Sherman as Secre-
tary of the Treasury under Hayes to carry out the
law with whose enactment he had so much to do,
and thus complete a chapter in finance of which all
good Americans may rightfully be proud.
CHAPTER XLII
A SOLID SOUTH IN THE MAKING
One cannot review the story of the South during
these years without a feeling of deep melancholy. We
have seen how in the flood of negro suffrage the
States of the Black Belt had been misgoverned, and
we have had a dark recital of the extravagance, dis-
honesty, and ignorance which laid a heavy hand upon
a proud though conquered people. There are few in-
stances in history of such complete misapprehension
of a human problem by those entrusted with its set-
tlement. The North, befooled by myths about the
negro, failed utterly to comprehend the mental atti-
tude of those who after exercising feudal power found
themselves suddenly subordinate to former slaves, a
race still looked upon by them as of a hopelessly in-
ferior type. The hurried grant of universal suffrage
was an offense for which both North and South have
paid a grievous penalty. In throwing off a hateful
burden, the people of the South, as if pursuant to a
law of nature, have let all other problems wait upon
the vital problem of local government. It would be
hard to overestimate the injury done the nation as a
whole by the existence of the "Solid South," where
A SOLID SOUTH IN THE MAKING 457
there is found the finest essence of the Anglo-Saxon
race, yet where there is no adequate debate of timely
themes because the negro question overshadows all.
That it may now be a fantastic fear is quite beside
the point. The dread of negro domination has become
ingrained through memory of actual experience in
Reconstruction times. The South itself must bear
the cruel load of its solidity; but the North, which
furnished the excuse unwittingly, must share the
expiation because it shares the blame.
The part Grant had to play in his endeavor to do
justice in the South is one he neither relished nor de-
served. He did not favor negro suffrage at the start,
and acquiesced in it as a necessity only when through
others' folly it seemed unavoidable. But when cor-
ruption and malfeasance led to bloodshed his soldier's
instinct led him to enforce the law. His use of federal
troops, subject to hot denunciation at the time, has
been thrown up against him ever since; as if it were
the cause of violence and not intended as the cure.
The opposition charged that he essayed to play the
role of Csesar, that he aimed to keep himself in office
by military force, till men forgot that all the federal
soldiers in the South could hardly have policed a
single town. It took four years of fighting and two
million men to put down insurrection in a territory
which he was charged with trying to enslave with
458 ULYSSES S. GRANT
four thousand soldiers scattered through a dozen
States. That was the highest number in the South
under arms at any single time, embracing the garri-
sons of all the forts between the Delaware and the
Gulf of Mexico.1 It would have been a great thing
for the South, in Grant's opinion, if some of the
streams of emigration from New England and the
Middle States had been diverted in that direction
instead of toward Iowa and Kansas. In the light of
history and his own experience we must examine with
respect Grant's matured views upon the problem
which pressed upon him heavily so long: —
"Looking back over the whole policy of Recon-
struction, it seems to me that the wisest thing would
have been to have continued for some time the mili-
tary rule. Sensible Southern men see now that there
was no government so frugal, so just, and fair as what
they had under our generals. That would have en-
abled the Southern people to pull themselves together
and repair material losses. . . . Military rule would
have been just to all, to the negro who wanted free-
dom, the white man who wanted protection, the
Northern man who wanted Union. As State after
1 The whole number of troops in the States of Louisiana, Ala-
bama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Ken-
tucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Maryland, and Virginia
at the time of the election was 4082. This embraces the garrisons
of all the forts from the Delaware to the Gulf of Mexico! (Rich-
ardson, Messages and Papers, vol. vn, p. 298.)
A SOLID SOUTH IN THE MAKING 459
State showed willingness to come into the Union, not
on their own terms, but upon ours, I would have
admitted them. This would have made universal
suffrage unnecessary, and I think a mistake was
made about suffrage. It was unjust to the negro to
throw upon him the responsibilities of citizenship,
and expect him to be on even terms with his white
neighbor. It was unjust to the North.
"In giving the South negro suffrage, we have given
the old slaveholders forty votes in the Electoral Col-
lege. They keep those votes, but disfranchise the
negroes. That is one of the gravest mistakes in the
policy of Reconstruction. ... I am clear now that
it would have been better for the North to have
postponed suffrage, Reconstruction, State Govern-
ments, for ten years, and held the South in a ter-
ritorial condition. ... It would have avoided the
scandals of the State Governments, saved money,
and enabled the Northern merchants, farmers, and
laboring men to reorganize society in the South. But
we made our scheme, and must do what we can with
it. Suffrage once given can never be taken away and
all that remains for us now is to make good that gift
by protecting those who have received it." *
Such elections as were held in 1873 disclosed a
Democratic trend, due partly to the panic, partly to
1 Young, p. 362.
4G0 ULYSSES S. GRANT
other things, and as election day approached in 1874,
the Democratic trend throughout the North became
intensified. In sympathy with the general tendency
there was a recurrence in several Southern States
of anti-negro demonstrations, which Grant described
in his December message.1
In Alabama, "men of intelligence and property"
1 " I regret to say that with preparations for the late election
decided indications appeared in some localities in the Southern
States of a determination, by acts of violence and intimidation, to
deprive citizens of the freedom of the ballot because of their polit-
ical opinions. Bands of men, masked and armed, made their ap-
pearance; White Leagues and other societies were formed; large
quantities of arms and ammunition were imported and distributed
to these organizations; military drills, with menacing demonstra-
tions, were held, and with all these murders enough were commit-
ted to spread terror among those whose political action was to be
suppressed, if possible, by these intolerant and criminal proceed-
ings. I understand that the Fifteenth Amendment to the Consti-
tution was made to prevent this and a like state of things, and the
Act of May 31, 1870, with amendments, was passed to enforce its
provisions, the object of both being to guarantee to all citizens
the right to vote and to protect them in the free enjoyment of
that right. Enjoined by the Constitution ' to take care that the
laws be faithfully executed,' and convinced by undoubted evi-
dence that violations of said act had been committed and that a
widespread and flagrant disregard of it was contemplated, the
proper officers were instructed to prosecute the offenders, and
troops were stationed at convenient points to aid these officers,
if necessary, in the performance of their official duties. Complaints
are made of this interference by federal authority; but if said
amendment and act do not provide for such interference under
the circumstances as above stated, then they are without mean-
ing, force, or effect, and the whole scheme of colored enfranchise-
ment is worse than mockery and little better than a crime." (Rich-
ardson, Messages and Papers, vol. vn, p. 297.)
A SOLID SOUTH IN THE MAKING 461
had determined to redeem the State. And there were
reports which gained wide credence in the North
of "riots, murderings, assassinations and torturings"
more common than at any time since Lee's surrender.
These stories were discredited by newspaper writers,
but Grant under authority of the Enforcement Acts
sent 679 soldiers to Alabama to insure a fair election.
Yet in face of this display of force which emboldened
the negroes to vote the Republican ticket, a Dem-
ocratic Governor and Legislature were elected by
comfortable majorities. A select committee of the
House of Representatives investigated the election,
and the Republican members reported that it was
carried by "fraud, violence, proscription, intimida-
tion, and murder." The Democrats admitted that
there were riots in several places on election day,
in which the negroes got the worst of it, but they
maintained that in these riots the negroes were ag-
gressors.
In Arkansas there had been in 1872 an armed dis-
pute between the followers of Brooks and those of
Baxter — rival Republican candidates for Governor.
Grant recognized Baxter, the more conservative of
the two, as the lawful executive. Baxter's Legisla-
ture passed a bill calling a constitutional convention.
The people endorsed this action. The constitution
framed by this convention was ratified on October
162 ULYSSES S. GRANT
15, 1874, by popular vote and on the same day A. H.
Garland, Democrat, afterward Attorney-General of
the United States, was elected Governor with a Dem-
ocratic Legislature and four Democratic Congress-
men. The President took up the Arkansas problem
from a new viewpoint. On February 8, 1875, he sent
a special message to Congress, expressing the opin-
ion that Brooks, instead of Baxter, had been legally
elected Governor in 1872; that he had been illegally
deprived of the possession of the office since that
time; that "in 1874 the constitution of the State was
by violence, intimidation, and revolutionary proceed-
ings overthrown and a new constitution adopted and
a new State Government established." He asserted
that these proceedings, if permitted to stand, practi-
cally ignored all rights of minorities in all the States.
". . .1 earnestly ask that Congress will take definite
action in this matter to relieve the Executive from
acting upon questions which should be decided by
the legislative branch of the Government."
Grant's thought was that all proceedings under the
illegal Baxter regime should be annulled, in which
event Brooks would be restored to the office which
was rightfully his under the old constitution till
January, 1877.
A committee of the House, headed by Luke P.
Poland, reported a resolution that "in the judgment
A SOLID SOUTH IN THE MAKING 463
of this House no interference with the existing gov-
ernment in Arkansas by any department of the Gov-
ernment of the United States is advisable," and the
resolution was adopted by the overwhelming vote of
150 to 81, in a House overwhelmingly Republican.
Poland in supporting his resolution asserted that the
change from one constitution to another was as
peaceful a change as ever took place in his own State
of Vermont; that under the Garland Government
everything was as peaceful and quiet as in Massa-
chusetts.
In February, 1875, a Civil Rights Bill was en-
acted, not quite on Sumner's lines, aimed to secure
to negroes equal rights in inns, public conveyances,
theaters, and other places of amusement and to pre-
vent their disqualification for services as jurors. It
was a wanton irritant, futile in results; for eight years
later, in 1883, the Supreme Court declared its chief
provisions unconstitutional.
In Mississippi there was a condition different from
either Arkansas or Alabama. The Legislature, in con-
trol of negroes and carpet-baggers, had laid heavy
taxes for the support of an ambitious system of
public schools which roused the indignation of the
Ku-Klux Klan and led to persecution of the negroes
and Northern women who came there to teach.
Adelbert Ames, who had seen gallant service in the
4G4 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Army of the James, was Governor. He was an earn-
est and consistent champion of the negro. In Yicks-
burg, where over half the population were negroes,
the whites, exasperated by high taxes, forced Crosby,
the Republican sheriff, to resign. Ames told the sher-
iff to hold his office, and Crosby called upon the ne-
groes of the county to sustain him. There were riots
in which twenty-nine negroes and two whites were
killed. Sheridan, who was in command at New Or-
leans, sent soldiers to Vicksburg. Crosby was rein-
stated and peace restored.
In 1875 the "men of intelligence and property"
organized to carry the election and control the Leg-
islature. There were fifteen thousand more negro
voters in the State than whites. The problem was to
persuade the negroes to vote the Democratic ticket
or stay away from the polls. "Peaceful persuasion"
was the programme, but, unfortunately, Mississippi
had the shotgun habits of other frontier communi-
ties; every one carried either a bowie knife or a
pistol. Negro meetings were broken up by armed
white bands. A few whites and many negroes were
killed; negroes were shot down in cold blood by way
of retribution for the killing of the whites. Ames
telegraphed to Grant, asking him to proclaim mar-
tial law. But Grant refused. "The whole public,"
Grant telegraphed to Attorney-General Pierrepont
A SOLID SOUTH IN THE MAKING 465
from Long Branch, "are tired out with these an-
nual autumnal outbreaks in the South, and the great
majority are ready now to condemn any interference
on the part of the Government. I heartily wish that
peace and good order may be restored without issu-
ing the proclamation, but if the proclamation must
be issued I shall instruct the commander of the
forces to have no child's play; the laws will be exe-
cuted and the peace will be maintained in every
street and highway of the United States."
Ames, full of pugnacity, organized the state mili-
tia, mostly negroes, and armed them with Springfield
breech-loaders. The whites formed military com-
panies of their own, and bloodshed would have been
general had it not been for a "peace agreement"
brought about through the conciliatory efforts of an
agent of the Department of Justice. Ames disbanded
his militia and the Democratic bands dispersed, but
while the menacing civil warfare was averted, intimi-
dation proved equally effective.
The "Mississippi Plan," as it was called, consisted
in an organized conspiracy to frighten the negroes
away from the polls. Salutes with cannon were fired
on the public roads; "To let the niggers know that
there was going to be a fair election," Private John
Allen said. Horsemen with ropes tied to the pommels
of their saddles would ride up to a polling-place where
4CG ULYSSES S. GRANT
black voters were waiting to cast their ballots. "How
soon will the polls be opened?" one asked another.
"In about fifteen minutes," was the reply. "Then the
hanging will not begin for about fifteen minutes,"
was the response. Not a word to the blacks, but be-
fore the fifteen minutes were up, they had all dis-
appeared. The Democrats carried the election by
nearly 31,000, had a majority of 93 in the Legis-
lature, elected most of the county officers, and 4 out
of 6 members of Congress.
Grant wrote on July 26, 1876: "Mississippi is
governed to-day by officials chosen through fraud and
violence such as would scarcely be accredited to sav-
ages, much less to a civilized and Christian people."
Ames was impeached by the new Legislature, but
the Legislature subsequently dismissed the charges
and Ames resigned. " He bore himself," wrote Roger
A. Pryor, "like a brave and honorable gentleman."
Of all cases that of Louisiana was the hardest.
The struggle there was marked by differences be-
tween Republican factions as well as by Democratic
resistance to carpet-bag rule. Henry C. Warmotlu
heading one faction, disclosed conservative tenden-
cies. Opposed to him were S. B. Packard, United
States Marshal, and "William Pitt Kellogg, who had
been a lawyer in Illinois, Colonel of an Illinois regi-
ment in the Civil War, and whom Lincoln had made
A SOLID SOUTH IN THE MAKING 467
Collector of Customs at New Orleans in 1865. War-
moth in 1872 had joined the conservative Democrats
in supporting a fusion state ticket headed by John
McEnery as candidate for Governor. Kellogg was
the Republican candidate. Both sides claimed the
election of Governor and Legislature. Under the
Louisiana law a returning board composed of the
Governor, the Lieutenant-Governor, the Secretary
of State, and two others specifically named had the
power of throwing out the returns from any voting-
places which in their judgment had been carried by
violence, intimidation, bribery, or corrupt influence.
Warmoth, who had the returns in his own hands,
reconstructed the returning board; the new board
announced the election of McEnery and enough
fusion members of the Legislature to make a major-
ity. The Republicans got up a returning board of
their own and declared Kellogg with a Republican
Legislature elected. The United States Circuit Judge
issued an order late at night directing the United
States Marshal to take possession of the State House.
Packard was not only sheriff, but chairman of the
State Committee. By authority of the Attorney-
General he had the United States troops at his dis-
posal, and with them he seized and held the State
House. L'nder his protection, Kellogg assumed the
governorship.
468 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Grant sent a special message, February 25, 1873,
arguing in favor of the Kellogg Government. He
said that if Congress took no action he should recog-
nize and support it.
Turbulence followed in the trail of recognition.
There was a massacre at Colfax on the Red River,
three hundred and fifty miles from New Orleans,
within two months, white men riding into the town
and demanding that the negroes lay down their arms
and surrender the court-house. The court-house in
which sixty or seventy negroes had taken refuge was
fired; as the negroes rushed out, some were killed
and some were captured. Those captured were merci-
lessly shot down. In all, the negroes killed at Colfax
were fifty-nine, whites only two. "This deed was
without palliation or justification," wrote George F.
Hoar, who as chairman of a congressional committee
made a report. "It was deliberate, barbarous, cold-
blooded murder. It will stand like the Massacre of
Glencoe or St. Bartholomew, a foul blot on the page
of history," — hyperbole again, perhaps, but the
bloody deed was black enough to have a marked
effect upon the feeling of the North, which was begin-
ning at that time to turn against the men who were
exploiting negro suffrage for their own political gain.
A little over a year later, at Coushatta, a little farther
up the river, there was another massacre, equally
A SOLID SOUTH IN THE MAKING 469
foul. After an assault upon the blacks by mem-
bers of the White League, with killing on both sides,
six white Republican office-holders, lately from the
North, gave themselves up to the White League, who
had demanded that they resign. While they were
being taken under guard to Shreveport, they were
set on by another band and murdered in cold blood.
Grant having withdrawn the federal troops, except
a few who were still garrisoned in New Orleans, the
white conservatives, on September 14, 1874, started
an insurrection in that city, barricaded the streets,
fought with the colored metropolitan police, and
seized the State House, where their leaders started
to reorganize the Government. Grant at once sent
troops, under whose protection the Kellogg Govern-
ment was set up again. The armed force sustaining
the conservatives was broken up.
In the election for members of the Legislature in
1874, the conservatives on the face of the returns
elected a majority of 29. Kellogg's returning board,
after weeks of thought, threw out conservatives on
charges of intimidation and fraud till they found that
53 conservatives and 53 radicals had been elected.
With regard to five seats they rendered no decision.
When the Legislature met in January, 1875, there
were scenes of wild disorder. The conservatives
seized control, elected a speaker, and seated their
470 ULYSSES S. GRANT
five contestants for the vacant seats. The Republi-
cans withdrew in order to break a quorum.
General de Trobriand, armed with an order from
Kellogg to clear the hall of all persons not returned
as legal members by the returning board, appeared
with a file of soldiers. With fixed bayonets the
soldiers approached one by one each of the five
members sitting in his place and forced him to leave
the hall. The conservative Speaker and his party
withdrew, the Republicans returned and organized
as best they could.
Sheridan, whom Grant had ordered to New Orleans,
now assumed command. "I think," he telegraphed,
"that the terrorization now existing in Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Arkansas could be entirely removed
and confidence and fair dealing established by the
arrest and trial of the ringleaders of the armed White
League. If Congress would pass a bill declaring them
banditti they could be tried by a military commission.
. . . It is possible that if the President would issue a
proclamation declaring them banditti, no further
action need be taken, except that which would de-
volve upon me."
Belknap, the Secretary of War, telegraphed Sheri-
dan: "The President and all of us have full confidence
and thoroughly approve your course. ... Be assured
that the President and Cabinet confide in your wis
A SOLID SOUTH IN THE MAKING 471
dom and rest in the belief that all acts of yours have
been and will be judicious."
The opposition newspapers in the North and the
anti-Administration band in the Senate flamed out
against Sheridan, against de Trobriand, especially
against Grant. "If this can be done in Louisiana,"
cried Schurz, "and if such things be sustained by
Congress, how long will it be before it can be done in
Massachusetts and Ohio? . . . How long before a
general of the Army may sit in the chair you occupy,
sir, to decide contested election cases, for the purpose
of manufacturing a majority in the Senate? How
long before a soldier may stalk into the National
House of Representatives and, pointing to the
Speaker's mace, say, 'Take away that bauble!'"
Indignation meetings were held in Cooper Institute
and Faneuil Hall.
Charles Foster, William Walter Phelps, and Clark-
son N. Potter, a congressional committee who had
been in New Orleans to investigate the action of
Kellogg's returning board, and who were there during
the disturbances at the State House, united in a
report "that the action of the returning board on the
whole was arbitrary, unjust, and, in our opinion,
illegal," and that this alone prevented the return of
a conservative majority in the Legislature. They
asserted that " the conviction has been general among
472 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the whites since 1872 that the Kellogg Government
was an usurpation." Another committee, consisting
of George F. Hoar, William A. Wheeler, and William
P. Frye, reported that intimidation had prevented
"a full, free, and fair election" in 1874 and that Gen-
eral de Trobriand's interference "alone prevented a
scene of bloodshed." On their recommendation the
" Wheeler Compromise " was accepted, giving a con-
servative majority in the House; the Senate was
Republican ; by resolution the Legislature agreed not
to disturb the Kellogg Government.
South Carolina for a moment shot a ray of light
across the gloom. Daniel H. Chamberlain, a Massa-
chusetts soldier, a lawyer, a graduate of Yale, with
high ideals, Attorney-General from 1868 to 1S72,
with fine courage set his face against misrule. He was
elected Governor in 1874, succeeding the scoundrel
Moses, who in his turn had followed the disreputable
Scott. He vetoed numerous plunder bills, reformed
the courts, and cut loose from the rogues. "My
highest ambition," he said, "has been to make the as-
cendancy of the Republican party in South Carolina
compatible with the attainment and maintenance
of as high and pure a tone in the administration of
public affairs as can be exhibited in the proudest
State of the South." In his two years as Governor
he partially succeeded. But he was not omnipotent.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE WHISKEY RING — THE BELKNAP CASE —
GRANT'S STEADFAST LOYALTY — THE CHIEF
JUSTICESHIP
"Grant is honest as Old Jack Taylor," Sherman
wrote home from Vicksburg in reply to hints of deals
with traders who swarmed the Union camps bar-
tering their country for Mississippi cotton; and it is
history that attacks on Grant all through the war
originated with unscrupulous contractors whose crook-
edness he had exposed, forbidding them to ply their
wretched traffic in his jurisdiction. Yet he was fated
in the White House to be a ready target for the press
by reason of disclosures affecting men in whom he
placed his trust. Our Civil War, like every other war
in history, had left corruption in its trail, though dif-
fering from most others in the rapidity with which
men set themselves to cleaning out the thieves and
the contemporaneous publicity of the disclosures.
Many suspicious things which came to light while
Grant was President would have occasioned little
comment in other times or other countries. It is a
lasting tribute to the spirit of the day that evildoers
were so quickly brought to punishment, though at
474 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the moment, the very triumph of reform cast on the
period a cloud which history has not yet dispelled,
for history, like politics, is ever true to form in over-
emphasizing superficial faults at the expense of in-
grained quality.
Grant did not seek the easy fame which comes to
the crusader; he had no mission to reform the ways of
other men; he was so wholly human that he could
never quite divorce his public functions from his pri-
vate life. As President he kept about him those he
liked, and while we may regret his taste in choice of
some of his companions, we cannot blame the faith
with which he clung to them. " Grant was the only
man I ever knew," says one who was for eight years
at his side, "upon whose promise you could safely go
to sleep. He never failed to keep his word even in the
smallest things. If once he pledged himself you could
dismiss it from your mind, and travel round the
world. It would be done."1 This trait of constancy
contributed to his success, but in conjunction with
his childlike trust it was a dangerous thing, which
brought him bitterness of soul. Experience did not
seem to profit him. He had the unsuspecting chivalry
of friendship; throughout his life his sympathy went
out to those he thought the victims of injustice;
though they might be at fault, his instinct was to
» General C. C. Smffen.
THE WHISKEY RING 475
shield them from attack. In the grim chase of justice
his heart ran with the fox, not with the hounds.
Of all the men by whom he stood for good or bad,
Babcock, his aide and secretary, brought him the
greatest care, for Babcock had a genius for getting
into scrapes, some doubtless innocent for all their
ugliness. He was charged first with mercenary aims
in San Domingo; but there was never any evidence
that he was guilty there of anything but indifference
to proprieties. The fact that he was then exonerated
tied Grant more closely to him, as one who had been
persecuted in a cause Grant had at heart.
Babcock was charged with having had a hand in
paving contracts when Alexander Shepard was Gov-
ernor of the District, but could be blamed apparently
for nothing worse than indiscretion. Shepard was
ruthless in his methods; undoubtedly his friends made
money out of real estate and contracts under his
regime; but nothing short of ruthlessness could have
wrought such miracles as he performed almost in a
night while changing Washington from a straggling,
ragged town of mud and huts into a Capital with spa-
cious avenues consistent with the splendid plans of
l'Enfant three quarters of a century before. The
country rang with cries against "Boss" Shepard at
the time, and Congress changed the form of govern-
ment, creating a commission for the District in order
476 ULYSSES S. GRANT
to get rid of him as Governor and eliminate the "Dis-
trict Ring." Grant aroused resentment when he sent
Shepard's nomination to the Senate as one of the
Commissioners. Shepard, discredited and poor, be-
took himself to Mexico, but when he came back, af-
ter twenty years of exile, he was the hero of a civic
demonstration. His statue now embellishes the Ave-
nue which he restored.
Babcock became the center of the scandal of the
"Whiskey Ring," dragging the President himself into
a compromising place. The story of the Whiskey
Ring is an unhappy chapter of the time. Bristow, who
succeeded Richardson as Secretary of the Treasury
in June, 1874, had some experience as a prosecuting
officer through having been a federal attorney, but
he was little known outside Kentucky until he made
his record in the Treasury as a minister of reform.
There he found matters ready at his hand to test his
quality and add to his repute.
For years there had been frauds upon the revenue
through a conspiracy of distillers and rectifiers in the
whiskey-making centers of the Middle West, — St.
Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee, — who, with the
connivance of dishonest internal revenue officials,
cheated the Treasury out of taxes due. The richest
pickings were in Johnson's time, but it is said that
during three years, under Grant, three times more
THE WHISKEY RING 477
whiskey was shipped from St. Louis alone than
paid the tax, and that the Government in six years
was defrauded out of revenue amounting to nearly
$3,000,000. It had long been suspected that frauds
were perpetrated on the revenue by the distillers;
and with Grant's approval in the summer of 1874
steps had been taken to put a stop to them, but with-
out success; the service was so honeycombed with
clerks participating in illegal profits of the ring that
any move to interfere with the conspirators was
promptly known to every one involved. It was not
till G. W. Fishback, editor of the " St. Louis Demo-
crat," gave to Bristow secret information and with
Bristow's sanction set unofficial agencies to work,
that it was possible to ferret out the methods of the
ring without some guilty partner in the Treasury
divulging what was going on. This word was confi-
dentially conveyed to Bristow in February, 1875, and
on the 10th of May, after a train of evidence had been
laid skillfully, he lit the fuse. Simultaneous raids
were made all over the United States. In St. Louis,
Milwaukee, and Chicago, sixteen distilleries and six-
teen rectifying establishments were seized, and fraud-
ulent packages were found in almost every other
town of any size. The thing at once had public noto-
riety and for months thereafter newspapers spread
the record of the revelations and the trials. Grant
478 ULYSSES S. GRANT
was well in touch with the inquiry and joined in the
pursuit.
Before long it was found that Babcock had been
corresponding with the leaders of the ring, and there
were intimations, not only that he shared the profits,
but that he used this means of raising funds for
Grant's election in 1872 and was preparing to finance
a third term by the same device. Helping Dyer, the
Government Attorney, in the preparation of the case,
was John B. Henderson, the former Senator, one of
Grant's most malignant critics. McDonald, the super-
visor at St. Louis, who was convicted and jailed, says
that Henderson asked him to plead guilty and be-
come a witness for the Government (promising him
immunity from punishment). Because of his devo-
tion, he says, he refused to testify against Grant and
Babcock and went to the penitentiary willingly in
order to preserve Grant and the Nation from scandal.1
Barnard, a St. Louis banker, wrote to Grant, de-
nouncing Henderson and Dyer, and urging that " the
interest of the Government and your own past record
should be protected by additional counsel ... re-
gardless of the prospective influence of press, party,
1 Rhodes, vol. vn, p. 187. But McDonald's book, Secrets of the
Great Whiskey Ring, which was issued as a campaign document in
1880, is a mass of falsehoods, and while some of the statements may
have been correct by accident, it is not safe to accept a single one
of them as true. McDonald could not have written the book him-
self. He was illiterate.
THE WHISKEY RING 479
or self-aggrandizement." The letter gave the names
of many who should be called as witnesses and told
of revenue officials who had been quoted as saying
Grant could not give them up or Babcock would be
lost. This letter came to Grant at Long Branch on
July 29, and he at once referred it to the Secretary
of the Treasury with an endorsement in his own
hand: "... I forward this for information and to the
end that if it throws any light upon new parties to
summon as witnesses they may be brought out. Let
no guilty man escape if it can be avoided. Be specially
vigilant — or instruct those engaged in the prosecu-
tion of fraud to be — against all who insinuate that
they have high influence to protect — or to protect
them. No personal consideration should stand in the
way of performing a public duty."
The ink was hardly dry on this historic note before
conspiracies began to multiply within conspiracies.
Those implicated in the frauds upon the revenue, in
wriggling to escape, were glad for a pretense to drag
the scandal to the White House door, in hope that
this might bring to them immunity. Bristow, an
honest and courageous man himself, had in his train
a stream of flatterers exciting his political ambition,
and the press began to talk about him as a candidate
for President. Around Grant there revolved a multi-
tude of satellites, continually whispering a third term
480 ULYSSES S. GRANT
and poisoning his mind against the machinations of
the friends of Bristow. Pervading the Administration
was the venom of distrust. In August the investi-
gators found a dispatch from Babcock addressed to
an indicted officer, signed "Sylph," and reading, "I
have succeeded. They will not go. I will write you."
This was interpreted to mean that he had kept the
ring informed about the Treasury's activities. Much
was made of this dispatch till it was found to have
no bearing on the frauds, though it suggested a com-
panionship impure in other ways.
A little later Grant, with Babcock, visited several
Western cities, St. Louis with the rest, and before he
started Bluford Wilson, Solicitor of the Treasury,
wrote to Henderson reminding him of the importance
of neglecting no precaution "to reach the bottom or
top of the conspiracy," and advising that the defend-
ants be placed under strict surveillance "for the next
ten days or two weeks"; and Wilson later said: "I
wrote that letter intending that General Babcock
should be looked after. If he was in the ring, I in-
tended to catch him if it was in my power. If he was
not, I intended to demonstrate his innocence beyond
the shadow of a doubt if it were possible to do so."
The manner of this chase of Babcock angered
Grant, who was convinced that a plot was hatching
to besmirch himself. Two of the ring had been con-
THE WHISKEY RING 481
victed, and in December, on evidence which these
trials divulged, Babcock was indicted in St. Louis
"for conspiracy to defraud the revenue," a special
military court of inquiry having previously been
called at Babcock's request. Critics of the Adminis-
tration declared that this court, which never sat to
hear the case, was granted to forestall the civil suit.
Henderson in the course of one of the trials had
cried: "What right had the President to interfere
with the honest discharge of the duties of a Secretary
of the Treasury? None whatever ! Is it to continue in
this country that because a man holds an office at the
hands of another he is to become his slave?" — and
much more to the same purport. When this was read
by Grant, he promptly ordered Henderson's dismis-
sal, a step which, coming the day after Babcock's
indictment, caused a wild outcry in the press, though
Henderson was replaced with James O. Brodhead,
the Democratic head of the St. Louis bar, at least as
good a man as Henderson had been. The change was
first talked over in the Cabinet, and every member,
including Bristow, voted for Henderson's removal,
regarding his performance "as an outrage upon pro-
fessional propriety."
Grant was viciously attacked because with his ap-
proval the Attorney-General sent a letter to all dis-
trict attorneys to stop the wholesale granting of im-
482 ULYSSES S. GRANT
munities, which had been instigated by the Treasury
to reach men "higher up." "Suggestions have been
made," he wrote, "that quite too many guilty men
are to go unpunished. ... I am determined as far as
lies in my power to have these prosecutions so con-
ducted that when they are over, the honest judgment
of the honest men of the country — which is sure in
the main to be just — will say that no one has been
prosecuted from malice, and that no guilty one has
been let off through favoritism, and that no guilty
one who has been proved guilty or confessed himself
guilty has been suffered to escape punishment."1
A copy of this letter fell into Babcock's hands and
he gave it to the press. "They were trying to destroy
me," he explained to the Attorney-General, "and I
had a right to anything I could get hold of"; and
Pierrepont testified before the House Committee,
1 Out of all those indicted and as a result of several trials, only
three of the St. Louis ring served a jail sentence. One of these was
McDonald, who was sentenced to three years' imprisonment and
was pardoned after serving two. Former Paymaster-General Cul-
ver C. Sniff en, who was one of Grant's secretaries throughout both
Administrations, and who has made a careful study of the records,
says: " A surprising number of immunities from punishment were
granted to confessed criminals. Out of forty-seven persons indicted
in Chicago during October and November, 1875, criminal immunity
was granted in advance of the time for trial in almost every instance,
while up to August 4, 1876, but three of them had been given light
jail sentences and representatives of the distillers were then in
Washington claiming civil immunity. In St. Louis, out of fourteen
distillers, thirteen pleaded guilty in one day and none received
other than civil punishment, while the acknowledged organizer of
THE WHISKEY RING 483
"I heard the President say five or six times in the
progress of the case, ' If Babcock is guilty there is no
man who wants him so much proven guilty as I do,
for it is the greatest piece of traitorism to me that a
man could possibly practice.'"
When Babcock's trial came off in February, Grant
asked to be a witness, and at his request his deposi-
tion was taken at the White House by the Chief Jus-
tice of the United States, Bristow and Pierrepont
present, with attorneys for Babcock and the Govern-
ment. He swore that he had never seen anything in
the conduct or talk of Babcock which indicated to
his mind connection with the Whiskey Ring; that
Babcock had evinced fidelity and integrity as regards
the public interest, performed his duties as private
secretary "to my entire satisfaction"; that "I have
always had great confidence in his integrity and effi-
ciency"; and that "I never had any information
from Babcock or any one else indicating in any
manner, directly or indirectly, that any funds for
political purposes were being raised by any improper
the ring escaped punishment altogether. The court stated in
advance that any one who pleaded guilty would not be sentenced
until all the cases had been disposed of except those who had
absconded, and most of the cases were later dismissed. According
to a statement given out by the Attorney-General and printed in
the New York Herald, February 29, 1876, there had been at that
time 253 indictments. Of these 40 distillers, 6 distillery employees,
and 21 others had pleaded guilty. There had been 17 trials, result-
ing in 13 convictions, 3 acquittals and 1 disagreement."
481 ULYSSES S. GRANT
methods." He swore that Babcoek never spoke to
him about the charges against the Whiskey Ring,
and had not sought to influence him in any way.
He went with full detail into his own relation to the
investigation; said that if Babcoek had been guilty
of misconduct he would have known it. The un-
precedented spectacle of the President proffering his
testimony in a case like this, his boldness in coming
forward to defend his secretary, his accepted hon-
esty, had a far-reaching influence, and silenced all
but the most raucous critics. Not through Grant's
testimony, but through the absence of convincing
evidence, Babcoek was speedily acquitted.
The "New York Tribune," which up to that mo-
ment had been vitriolic in its comments, declaring
that a President with such a complete misconception
of the nature and limitations of his authority "is
better fitted to rule an Asiatic kingdom than a free
American republic," now had to congratulate the
country heartily on the result: "The indictment has
been submitted to the severest legal tests. No one
can complain that the court was biased in Genera]
Babcock's favor, or that the prosecution was ineffi-
cient, or that the jury were prepossessed. ... At the
entrance of the White House, the scandal has been
met and turned back."1
1 New York Tribune, February £o, 1876.
THE WHISKEY RING 485
Babcock was acquitted on February 24. When he
returned to Washington he went as usual to his desk.
Grant followed him, and the two were closeted for a
long time. When Grant came out, his face was set in
silence. A little later Babcock locked his desk and
left the room. He never came back to the White
House as a secretary, and thereafter occupied his
other office blocks away as Superintendent of Public
Buildings and Grounds. It has been said that Bab-
cock for a time was restored to his old place. That
is not true. His intimate relations with the President
were not renewed.1
Nor did Grant forgive the men whom he believed
had tried to bring the White House into the affair.
Bristow to his mind was one of these. He had not
liked the manner of Bristow's handling of the case,
and in the progress of the investigation they had
many differences.2 Bristow was beset with enemies
1 E. Rockwood Hoar, a hard-headed man and an acute judge
of his fellows, knew Grant through and through and believed him
strictly and thoroughly honest. " But, do you feel sure," he was
asked, "that in all these suspicious transactions no money stuck
to his fingers?" With a purposed anachronism to give emphasis to
his quaint remark, he replied: " I would as soon think St. Paul had
got some of the thirty pieces of silver." (Rhodes, vol. vn, p. 188.)
2 " As for the President, those who know the most of the secret
history of this move are freest to declare that in no instance did he
do anything designed by him to protect the guilty or impede the
course of justice. That his acts and his delays often accomplished
both is now painfully apparent.
" At the same time it is true that whenever the ring, by false
486 ULYSSES S. GRANT
who carried tales to Grant and Grant had critics who
encouraged Bristow. The Secretary more than once
resigned, but was induced by Grant to stay. And
Grant once had made up his mind to ask for Bristow \s
resignation. After Babcock's acquittal Bristow was
summoned before the investigating committee of the
Democratic House, looking for material to use in the
political campaign, but he declined to testify, claim-
ing that proceedings of the Cabinet were privileged.
Grant released him promptly: "I beg to relieve you
from all obligations of secrecy on this subject, and
desire not only that you may answer all questions
relating to it, but that all members of my Cabinet
and ex-members of my Cabinet may also be called
upon to testify in regard to the same matter." Grant
representations, had developed serious Executive opposition to
some feature of the prosecutions, or excited suspicion against the
Secretary, the latter, until a late day, was always able to remove
both, and disconcert the ring by a plain and courageous talk with
the President. On these occasions General Grant always inclined
to the right. But the constant recurrence of such explanations^
and the infamous character of the plottings which made them
necessary, continually impeded the prosecutions and discouraged
the Secretary. It is also true that on several occasions when he
had decided to resign, the President insisted upon his remaining,
and for a time thereafter the contingency of a resignation for such
causes seemed to render the President alive to the situation.
" Considering the nature and influence of the forces arrayed
against the Secretary, and the facilities they enjoyed for constant
access to the President, it is scarcely a matter of wonder that at
times his eyes were blinded and his deepest prejudices aroused."
(Henry V. Boynton in North American Review, October, 1876.)
THE WHISKEY RING 487
was angry, too, because the Treasury sought to indict
Logan, against whom there was no evidence, and
to discredit others of his friends who were supposed
to be in favor of a third term. Four days after the
Cincinnati Convention, Bristow walked over to the
White House, met the President at the foot of the
stairs leading to the Executive offices, took from his
pocket an envelope and handed it to Grant, who went
his way without a word, entered his buggy at the door
and took his usual drive. It was Bristow's resignation.
A few days later Grant asked Postmaster-General
Jewell to resign. He had sided strongly with Bristow
all the time, and had had other differences with his
official chief. The next day James N. Tyner, the As-
sistant Postmaster-General, was summoned to the
White House. "Mr. Tyner," said the President, "I
have decided to ask you for your resignation," — and
paused. Tyner reddened to the neck and bowed sub-
missively. "And appoint you Postmaster-General,"
continued Grant.
The Democratic House elected in 1874 had set it-
self to work as soon as possible to get political mate-
rial for the campaign then near at hand, which prom-
ised to be closely fought. Almost at once, when
Congress met, the House began to poke around for
scandal. Committees were soon raking every bureau
488 ULYSSES S. GRAM"
of administration for evidence of those Republican
misdeeds concerning which the press had been so
clamorous.1 They had comparatively little time for
ordinary legislation. After weeks of unrequited labor,
one of the committees investigating expenditures in
the War Department fell on the Belknap case. The
Belknaps had been socially ambitious and the women
of the family were extravagant. The Secretary had
no money and his salary was small. His wife in trying
to devise new means of income was told of the post
traderships, which had for years been let by contract
to favored bidders, and offered generous rewards to
thrift. Belknap, who became Secretary after Raw-
lins, had not been in office long when Mrs. Belknap,
visiting the New York house of Caleb P. Marsh, sug-
gested that Marsh apply for a post tradership and
give to her a share of the emoluments. Marsh made
application for a rich post at Fort Sill, in Indian
Territory, and was told to see the incumbent Evans,
1 " Members of both parties have been represented in every great
fraud yet discovered in Washington. The old Indian Ring of the
days when Democracy ruled eclipsed all later efforts of Republican
thieves. The palmy days of the Whiskey Ring were in Andrew-
Johnson's time; for then the spirit tax was higher. Credit Mobilier
had its Democratic participators; so of Black Friday and Pacific
Mail; so of the District Ring; so of land jobs; and so of the Mem-
phis and El Paso swindle. It was even impossible for Republican
rascals to shake off Democrats when they came to rob the black
man's savings-bank." (Henry V. Boynton in Xorth American
Review, October, 187G.)
THE BELKNAP CASE 489
who was then in Washington looking to keep the
place. The two agreed that Marsh should not press
for the position, but should receive from Evans as
the price of his withdrawal $12,000 annually, to be
paid him quarterly in advance. Payments began in
1870, and as each arrived one half was sent to Mrs.
Belknap. There was no certain evidence that Bel-
knap knew about the deal. It was said in his defense
that he supposed the money to be income on invest-
ments, as his wife was understood to have some prop-
erty before she married him. Mrs. Belknap died, and
payments were continued as before, although they
were reduced by half as Marsh's dividends from
Evans were cut in two. In all, the Belknaps received
$20,000. Heister Clymer, as chairman of the Com-
mittee on Expenditures in the War Department, re-
ported on March 2, 1876, that at "the very threshold
of their investigation " the committee had found un-
contradicted evidence of Belknap's malfeasance, and
recommended that he be impeached of high crimes
and misdemeanors while in office. The House at once
adopted a resolution of impeachment by a unanimous
vote.
Clymer's report was not presented until three
o'clock that afternoon, but by ten o'clock that morn-
ing Belknap, anticipating what would happen, had
resigned his place, and Grant immediately accepted
490 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the resignation "with great regret." Proceedings in
the Senate hung on till August, and conviction failed
for lack of a two-thirds majority. Most of those who
voted against conviction were said to have believed
in Belknap's guilt, but as he was already separated
from his office, doubted the Senate's jurisdiction in
the case. Belknap took up his residence in Washing-
ton, and though in disgrace and poverty, he retained
his personal popularity until his death. There still
lurks around the Capital a tale of knightly sacrifice
to save a woman's name.
When Cox resigned as Secretary of the Interior,
because he thought the President did not sustain
him in his fight against the politicians bent on spoils,
Grant said the trouble was that Cox had made him-
self impossible, because he thought himself of too
great consequence.1 Columbus Delano, who took the
place, was an Ohio lawyer of good repute at home, but
lacking in the quality to circumvent the schemers
who from the establishment of the department have
sought its exploitation for pecuniary gain. Indian
rings and land rings reveled in his administration,
much to the public scandal, and at last, discouraged
1 " The trouble was that General Cox thought the Interior
Department was the whole government, and that Cox was the
Interior Department. I had to point out to him in very plain
language that there were three controlling branches of the Govern-
ment, and that I was the head of one of these and would like so to
be considered by the Secretary of the Interior." (Garland, p. 427.)
THE CHIEF JUSTICESHIP 491
by his inability to handle his accumulating evils, he
resigned. Chandler, of Michigan, had just been
beaten for the Senate, and Grant gave him the place.
Chandler did not stand well with the professional
reformers, and they received the tidings with alarm.
Some thought it meant the triumph of corruption,
for Chandler, always forceful and direct, had bitterly
denounced "reform" and treated its apostles with
contempt. He was a Stalwart to the marrow, and a
Republican of the unbending type, a sturdy Western
pioneer, who had had a striking business success. He
believed in spoils and patronage and all the ways of
politics which men like Schurz and Godkin specially
abhorred, but his administration stands as an exam-
ple of effectiveness which none of his successors has
surpassed. He drove the money-changers out of the
department, squelched the rings, and cleaned the
place where public plunder had intrenched itself for
many years. He gave a new exemplification of prac-
tical reform.1
Grant was one of the few Presidents to whom has
fallen the impressive responsibility of selecting a
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
1 Schurz in succeeding him was impelled to write: "I think I
am expressing the general opinion of the country when I say you
have succeeded in placing the Interior Department in far better
condition than it has been in for years, and that the public is in-
debted to you for the very energetic and successful work you have
performed." (Life of Chandler, p. 355.)
492 ULYSSES S. GRANT
States. When the chance came to him upon the death
of Chase in 1873, he went at it as if he were called
upon to pick a chief of staff. It must be said that
in this temper he did not differ much from other
Presidents whose antecedents should have given
them respect for the great functions of the court,
but who for personal or party reasons have chosen
justices without considering first of all preeminence
on the bench or at the bar. The highest service done
their country by Taft and Harrison was in the way
of their upholding the noblest standards of the court.
No poorer service can be done by any President than
to lower that court's prestige; one who would con-
sciously force on the bench a lawyer who, whether
justly or unjustly had been charged with unprofes-
sional practices, would thus prove his own unfitness
for his place.
Grant was a layman with no pretensions in the
law, and so might be excused some lack of sym-
pathy with its traditions. Yet his selections for the
bench were on the whole of a high order. Stanton,
Hoar, Bradley, Strong, and Hunt were thoroughly
equipped in legal knowledge for the court, and all
but Stanton had a fine judicial temper. Stanton
was named because the Senate asked for his appoint-
ment when he was at the point of death. Hoar,
though an ideal judge at every point, was turned
THE CHIEF JUSTICESHIP 493
down by the Senate in a pet. In each case, though
in different ways, the Senate made of lawyers had
treated lightly the traditions of the court. Why then
should Grant hold it in greater sanctity?
His first choice fell on Conkling, his closest friend
in politics, who had ability commensurate with the
place and might have taken rank among the noted
jurists of the time, not only as a lawyer, but in the
dignity of bearing which marked him as a leader in his
State and on the Senate floor. Conkling was lordly
in his ways, and supercilious, which told against his
popularity, a lover of good books who packed the
classics in a capacious memory, an orator tremen-
dously imposing in his way, whose speeches, carefully
elaborated and rehearsed, have not survived the fame
of their occasion. He was a Stalwart politician with
no illusions or fine dreams, a firm believer in the doc-
trine of the spoils, and a past master in its practice.
He had, by his frank detestation of reformers and
reform, roused the hostility of the independent press,
and when word passed that Grant would like to have
him as Chief Justice, a storm of censure fell upon
Grant's head. Conkling refused the place because he
much preferred the fray of politics. He was still
young and had no wish to shrine himself upon the
bench. Then Grant, for lack of something better
close at hand, offered the place to George H. Wil-
494 ULYSSES S. GRANT
liams, his Attorney-General. Williams, who hailed
from Oregon, had little reputation as a lawyer, and
had acquired the sobriquet of "Landaulet" because
his family made social calls in a department carriage
at the Government's expense. The Bar Association
of New York remonstrated against his confirmation,
as he was "wanting in those qualifications of intel-
lect, experience, and reputation which are indispen-
sable to uphold the dignity of the highest national
court." The Senate dallied with the nomination,
which was withdrawn at Williams's request.
Then Grant sent in the name of Caleb Cushing, a
learned lawyer who had fame at the bar and in diplo-
macy and who had been the leading counsel of the
United States in the Geneva Arbitration. But with
all his intellectual astuteness,* wide culture, and plaus-
ibility, Cushing's political and professional record
was at fault. He had been listed as a Copperhead at
the beginning of the war, and his professional probity
was seriously in question, though Grant did not know
this when he sent in his name. Among right-thinking
men he was condemned, as Howe and Hamlin wrote,
" because he lacked principle." For this reason, the
nomination would have been rejected if it had been
kept before the Senate, but Grant's supporters spared
him this rebuff by offering in evidence a letter which
Cushing wrote in March, 18G1, to his "dear friend"
THE CHIEF JUSTICESHIP 495
Jefferson Davis to recommend another friend for an
appointment in the Confederate Civil Service. Giv-
ing this letter as an excuse, the Senate Republicans
in caucus asked that the nomination be withdrawn,
and this was done. Cushing's is almost the only case
in the entire history of the court where the profes-
sional integrity of a nominee to that tribunal has
been in question. Even to have the question raised
should be sufficient reason to disqualify; for confirma-
tion by a partisan majority cannot remove the stain;
and one who takes his place upon the bench in face
of charges not disproved shows himself by that act
alone to be unworthy of the gown. Grant tried
again for Conkling, but without success, and then
named Morrison It. Waite, a little-known Ohio law-
yer, whose only national repute had come from serv-
ice among the counsel before the Geneva Tribu-
nal. Waite was a modest man who stood well at
the Ohio bar. He was not open to objection. His
fourteen years of service as Chief Justice reflected
credit on the court and fully justified his choice.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876
As the time drew near for choosing a new President,
parties began to take account of stock. Grant, though
the target for sustained abuse by the Democratic
and the independent press, still stood high in the
estimation of the people, and there was talk about
another term. The faults of his Administration had
been overemphasized, but the public was not fooled,
though in the way of politics men looked for change.
They had not been enamored of the Democratic
House with which they had been saddled as the price
of discontent. Its muck-raking propensities, its petty
scramble for cheap spoils, its parade of party spawn
like Doorkeeper Fitzjiugh, boasting that he was
"biger than old Grant," had made it something of a
stench and failed to whet the country's appetite for
more. But industry was paralyzed and times were
out of joint.
Stalwart Republicans like Conkling, Cameron, and
Logan felt that, while the party had lost ground,
talk of a third term for Grant would keep the ranks
intact. But Grant was tired of controversy and
wanted to retire. Early in 1875 the Pennsylvania
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 497
Republicans were ready to endorse him for another
term, and the President of their convention wrote
him so. He made up his mind at once, called a meet-
ing of the Cabinet to tell them what he was going to
do, and mailed personally a letter in reply declaring:
"The idea that any man could elect himself Presi-
dent, or even renominate himself, is preposterous.
Any man can destroy his chances for an office, but
none can force an election or even a nomination. I
am not nor have I ever been a candidate for renom-
ination. I would not accept a nomination if it were
tendered, unless it should come under such circum-
stances as to make it an imperative duty — circum-
stances not likely to arise."
The censorious said there was a string to this re-
fusal, but it did the work. 1 Before the meeting of the
National Republican Convention in June, 1876, the
third-term talk had died away.
Blaine, the most fascinating figure of the day, out
of touch with the Administration group, was mar-
1 So persistent did the pressure become as time went on that,
when Congress came together in December, a resolution in the
House, presented by the Democrats and supported by 77 out of 88
Republicans, was passed as follows: " That, in the opinion of this
House, the precedent established by Washington and other Presi-
dents of the United States, in retiring from the presidential office
after their second term, has become, by universal occurrence, a
part of our republican system of government, and that any de-
parture from this time-honored custom would be unwise, unpatri-
otic, and fraught with peril to our free institutions."
498 ULYSSES S. GRANT
velously popular, but there were whispers that as
Speaker he had been involved in questionable deals,
and in spite of all he and his friends could say this
led to his undoing. Conkling and Morton had their
followers and each hoped for Grant's support, but
he kept his hands off the convention. He had a secret
notion that in case of a close struggle Fish was a likely
compromise, and he wrote a letter to be used if Fish
should have a chance.1 Bristow was a strong favorite
with the reformers. They could not stand with any
one who stood with Grant, but they were equally at
odds with Blaine. Hayes was the Ohio candidate —
a man of unassuming merit with a record in the Civil
1 " I took no part in the discussions antecedent to the Cincinnati
Convention, because the candidates were friends, and any one,
except Mr. Bristow, would have been satisfactory to me, would
have had my heartiest support. Bristow I never would have sup-
ported for reasons that I may give at some other time in a more
formal manner than mere conversation. Mr. Blaine would have
made a good President. ... I did not see any nomination for
Blaine, Morton, or Conkling. Bristow was never a serious candi-
date, never even a probability. Looking around for a dark horse,
in my own mind I fixed on Fish. Bayard Taylor said to me in
Berlin that the three greatest statesmen of this age were Cavour,
Gortchakoff, and Bismarck. I told him I thought there were four,
that the fourth was Fish, and that he was worthy to rank with the
others. This was the estimate I formed of Fish after eight years of
Cabinet service, in which every year increased him in my esteem.
So I wrote a letter to be used at the proper time — after the
chances of Blaine, Morton, and Conkling were exhausted — ex-
pressing my belief that the nomination of Governor Fish would be
a wise thing for the party. The time never came to use it. Fish
never knew anything about this letter until after the whole con-
vention was over." (Young, vol. n, pp. 273-75.)
I
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 499
War, who in 1874 had led the fight against inflation
in his State, defeating "Fog Horn" Allen, Demo-
cratic candidate for Governor, thus for the time
eliminating that financial heresy from the Democratic
creed. There were other "favorite sons."
There is little doubt that Blaine would have been
chosen but for a chain of circumstances which need
not be detailed. The deadly enmity of Conkling and
the dramatic series of disclosures skillfully staged to
catch the public notice as the convention was about
to meet make a rare chapter in the history of the
time. Not even Conkling's hatred or the work of the
machine could have defeated him had it not been for
the pervasive dread that he might prove a vulnerable
candidate. The elements opposed to Blaine at last
combined on Hayes, and on the seventh ballot Hayes
was nominated. No other name could have been
found to cause so little disappointment among the
friends of rival candidates, and when the Democrats
a few days later named Tilden, who had been elected
Governor of New York in 1874, there was a feeling
that the lines were drawn for a respectable campaign.
"There is very little to choose between the candi-
dates," wrote Lowell, and many Liberal Republicans
came back into the fold. l
1 Henry Watterson has given us a charming picture of the
Democratic candidate, who was his personal friend: —
"To his familiars, Mr. Tilden was a dear old bachelor, who lived
500 ULYSSES S. GRANT
But the contest developed virulence. The Demo-
crats were voluble against Republican misrule. "Re-
form is necessary!" was their cry, and "Turn the
Rascals out!" Their platform called for the repeal of
the Resumption Act, but Tilden was regarded as a
friend of sound finance. The Republicans, deprived
of the inflation issue on which they counted, began to
"wave the bloody shirt" and to point the finger at
the "Rebel Brigadiers" who, through "bull-dozing"
and intimidation, they said, were conspiring to return
to national control by joining to a "Solid South" the
slums of the great cities of the North. Tilden had
made false income tax returns during the Civil War;
he was the first of presidential candidates to "tap
a bar'l" or employ a "literary bureau." Zachariah
in a fine old mansion in Gramercy Park. Though sixty years of age
he seemed in the prime of his manhood; a genial and overflowing
scholar; a trained and earnest doctrinaire; a public-spirited, pa-
triotic citizen, well known and highly esteemed, who had made
fame and fortune at the bar, and had always been interested in
public affairs.
"He was a dreamer with a genius for business, a philosopher yet
an organizer. He pursued the tenor of his life with measured tread.
. . . His home life was a model of order and decorum, his house
as unchallenged as a bishopric, its hospitality, t hough select, profuse
and untiring. . . . He was a lover of books rather than music and
art, but also of horses and dogs and out-of-door activity. His
tastes were frugal, and their indulgence was sparing. He took his
wine not plenteously, though he enjoyed it . . . and sipped his
whiskey and water on occasion with a pleased composure, redolent
of discursive talk. ... His judgment was believed to be infalli-
ble." {Century, May, 1913.)
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 501
Chandler was chairman of the committee in charge
of the Republican campaign and William E. Chand-
ler, who had been secretary in the two preceding
campaigns, was now, as a member of the Committee
from New Hampshire, specially assisting him — two
brainy and courageous managers, who knew no senti-
ment in politics except success, and who, while repre-
sentative of different Republican schools, were both
intensely loyal in the party faith. Abram S. Hewitt
was the Democratic chairman, but Tilden was him-
self a deft political manipulator and really handled
the campaign.
It looked on Election night as though the Demo-
crats had won, and with two conspicuous exceptions,
every newspaper in the United States made that
announcement, basing this judgment on the fact that
Tilden had carried New York, New Jersey, Connecti-
cut, and Indiana, and the assumption that he had
the "Solid South," which would have given him a
safe majority. And now there comes a passage in our
history hardly surpassed in fiction.
William E. Chandler, who had gone home to vote,
arrived at headquarters in the Fifth Avenue Hotel
just before daylight to find the place deserted, the
other officers of the committee having gone to bed
convinced that Hayes had lost. He met there John
C. Reid, news editor of the "New York Times,"
502 ULYSSES S. GRANT
with information that the late returns bore indica-
tions of possible Republican success, and by a process
of swift calculation perceived that the result de-
pended on the votes of Florida, Louisiana, South
Carolina, Oregon, and California. He sent at once
to party leaders in each State dispatches of which
the following is typical: "Hayes is elected if we have
carried South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. Can
you hold your State? Answer immediately."
Here began a controversy which put our form of
government to a crucial test. Zachariah Chandler
later in the morning endorsed the action of the
younger Chandler, announcing that "if the dis-
patches are correct, and he has no reason to doubt
them, Governor Hayes is elected beyond a doubt,"
and a dispatch was sent broadcast which has become
historic: "Hayes has 185 electoral votes and is
elected." l
1 " On election day in the afternoon I went from Concord to
Boston and on to New York by night train, reaching the Fifth
Avenue Hotel a little before complete daylight. Mr. Vilas at the
clerk's desk told me that Tilden was elected. I said I could not
believe it and went around to the committee room No. 1. There
was no one there. In the hallway I met John C. Reid, of the
New York Times, just arriving. He told me that if we had carried
South Carolina and Florida, also one or two small far Western
States, we had saved the election. We went into the committee
room, I examined the various dispatches on the deserted desks and
then went up to Senator Chandler's room and with difficulty
aroused him from sleep and told him what we hoped, and asked
him if he knew to whom he had been telegraphing in several
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 503
There were days of great excitement, claims and
counter-claims. Hayes must have all the votes of the
disputed States to win. It was known almost at once
that Oregon and California were safe, and that South
Carolina was Republican on the face of the returns.
As Chamberlain, the Governor, was candidate for
reelection, it was assumed that in that State there
would be no change. Chamberlain, remembering the
"Hamburg Massacre" and fearing election riots, had
asked for troops. Grant had sent them, and they were
now at the state capital.1
States the night before. He was very weary and gave me little in-
formation and told me to do what I thought best. Returning to
the committee room I wrote various dispatches, signing to some
Mr. Chandler's name and to others my own, and Mr. Reid took
them downtown to send by telegraph. Then I went to breakfast
and came back to the committee room about the time that various
callers began to arrive and. shortly Mr. Chandler came down. We
discussed the situation and he sent out his famous telegram,
•Hayes has 185 votes and is elected.' Our spirits arose during the
day, and in the afternoon there was a consultation as to what
should be done. Among other plans adopted it was decided that
I must go south." (Statement by William E. Chandler, hitherto
unpublished.)
1 "In no case, except that of South Carolina, was the number
of soldiers in any State increased in anticipation of the election,
saving that twenty-four men and an officer were sent from Fort
Foote to Petersburg, Virginia, where disturbances were threatened
prior to the election.
"No troops were stationed at the voting-places. In Florida and
in Louisiana, respectively, the small number of soldiers already
in the said States were stationed at such points in each State as
were most threatened with violence, where they might be avail-
able as a posse for the officer whose duty it was to preserve the
504 ULYSSES S. GRANT
On the face of the returns, Tilden had a majority
in Louisiana and Hayes in Florida, but "the face of
the returns" was an uncertain problem at that junc-
ture, and party leaders on both sides sped South,
while those at home awaited the result with tense
solicitude.
On Grant rested the responsibility for keeping
peace. He did not wait for violence to develop. On
November 10, three days after the election, he sent
to Sherman, the General of the Army, this dispatch :
"Instruct General Augur in Louisiana, and General
Ruger in Florida, to be vigilant with the force at their
command to preserve peace and good order, and to
see that the proper and legal boards of canvassers
are unmolested in the performance of their duties.
Should there be any grounds of suspicion of a fraudu-
lent count on either side, it should be reported and
denounced at once. No man worthy of the office of
President should be willing to hold it if counted in
or placed there by fraud. Either party can afford to
be disappointed in the result. The country cannot
afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of
illegal or false returns."
peace and prevent intimidation of voters. Such a disposition of
the troops seemed to me reasonable and justified by law and prec-
edent, while its omission would have been inconsistent with the
constitutional duty of the President of the United States ' to take
care that the laws be faithfully executed.' " (Richardson, Messages
and Papers, vol. vn, pp. 419-20.)
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 505
On the face of the returns it appeared that Florida
had gone for Hayes by a plurality of 48 votes, a nar-
row margin, which the Board of State Canvassers
increased into a plurality of 925 on the ground of
frauds and irregularities. Only by leaning backward
could the Republican board have given the State to
Tilden. The real contention was in Louisiana, where
on the face of the returns, the Democratic electors
had majorities ranging from 6300 to 8957, and where
the returning board, having the final word, was the
same board which made the trouble in 1874 and had
been condemned by two congressional committees.
The chairman was J. Madison Wells, the former
Governor, whom Sheridan had characterized ten
years before as a political trickster and a dishonest
man. The three other members of the board were of
his moral stripe; and two of them were negroes. All
were Republicans, the only Democrat having resigned
two years before, leaving a vacancy which had not
been filled. With such material, almost any re-
sult might be expected, and the country centered
its attention on New Orleans. "Visiting Statesmen"
were quickly on the ground, Grant having invited
prominent Republicans like Sherman, Garfield,
Kasson, Stanley Matthews, and Lew Wallace, while
Hewitt asked as many Democrats, among them
Palmer, Trumbull, Randall, Curtis, Julian, and
500 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Watterson. Committees of these "Visiting States-
men" attended the meetings of the returning board
and on December 6, the board announced that Hayes
electors had been chosen by majorities varying from
4G26 to 4712, securing this result by throwing out
13.250 Democratic votes and 2042 Republican. The
final sessions of the board were held in secret and it
was claimed by Hewitt that Wells and his associates
tried to sell out to the Democrats for cash. No evi-
dence was ever offered. A number of the Republi-
can "Visiting Statesmen" on the day of the return
signed a statement which was sent to Grant giving
the names of parishes along the Mississippi and
Arkansas border where outrages had been per-
petrated and where, "when violence and intimida-
tion were inefficient, murder, maiming, and mutila-
tion were resorted to." The Democratic statesmen
signed a letter to Hewitt, in which they said, "The
fact that there was no riot or bloodshed in any local-
ity, no force, intimidation, or violence in any parish
in Louisiana where both parties voted, gives strong
presumption that there was no valid excuse for the
Republican voters in absenting themselves from the
polls, but they were purposely kept away to subserve
partisan ends." Of the Democratic "Visiting States-
men" Palmer, Trumbull, and Julian were formerly
Republicans. "New converts are proverbially bitter
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 507
and unfair towards those they have recently left,"
remarks John Sherman.
In a letter to Hayes just prior to the determination
by the returning board, Sherman had written of the
bull-dozed parishes: "It seems more like the history
of hell than of civilized and Christian communities.
. . . That you would have received at a fair election
a large majority in Louisiana, no honest man can
question."1
When the electors came to ballot in the several
States on December 6, two days after Congress met,
Hayes had 185 duly authenticated votes, Tilden 184.
The Democrats protested that the four votes from
Florida and the eight from Louisiana rightfully
belonged to Tilden. They also claimed one from
Oregon, where a Republican elector, Watts, was held
to be ineligible under the Constitution, being a dep-
uty postmaster. If this claim were granted, Tilden
would still have 185 votes even though the two
Southern States were credited to Hayes.
Had both branches of Congress been Republican
the contest would have ended here, and Hayes would
have been declared elected in due course, perhaps
with oratorical objection on the part of the minority.
But the Senate, Republican by a majority of 17, was
offset by a Democratic House with a majority of 74.
1 Recollections, p. 558.
508 ULYSSES S. GRANT
The Constitution and the statutes were inadequate
to meet this situation. Republicans, among them
Hayes himself, contended that when the Constitu-
tion said, "The President of the Senate shall, in the
presence of the Senate and the House of Representa-
tives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then
be counted," it implied that when there were two
certificates from a State, the President of the Senate
must decide which one was valid, count the votes
and declare the result; that it was a mere ministerial
duty; and that Congress had no right to interfere.
But there had been adopted in 1865 a joint rule
providing that "No vote objected to shall be counted
except by the concurrent votes of the two Houses."
The rule had been rescinded by the Senate almost
unanimously, and it was not now regarded by the
Senate as in force. Should the House, insisting on
the rule, reject the votes of Florida and Louisiana,
Tilden would have a majority. The Senate could
not retaliate by rejecting votes of other Southern
States, because, in that event, . there would be no
election and the Democratic House would then pro-
ceed under the Constitution to elect Tilden in a vote
by States.
There seemed to be no common ground. Republi-
cans throughout the country, with few exceptions,
believed that whatever might be the technicalities
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 509
about returning boards, Hayes was entitled to the
office, because if there had been a fair election he
would undoubtedly have carried all the disputed
States with others in the South. The Democrats
were even more vehement in contending that they
had chosen the electors in Florida and Louisiana and
made much also of the undisputed but irrelevant
circumstance that throughout the country Tilden
electors had received a majority of 300,000 in the
popular vote.
There was wild talk by frenzied partisans; all sorts
of tales had currency; it was said that Grant aspired
to dictatorial power. There were reports of South-
ern rifle clubs to march on Washington to help seat
Tilden; and Tilden "minute men" were said to be en-
rolling through the North — an Army of Democratic
veterans of the Civil War. Any mad story, no matter
how impossible, was sure to have its dupes, and there
was need of a firm hand in Washington. Grant was
self-contained and imperturbable. He used all his
influence to bring the embittered factions into line,
and so insure a peaceful settlement of the dispute.
McCrary, of Iowa, who afterwards was made by
Hayes a member of the Cabinet, introduced a resolu-
tion in the House for a committee to act in conjunc-
tion with any similar committee appointed by the
Senate to report without delay a measure through
510 ULYSSES S. GRANT
which might be removed "all doubts and uncer-
tainty" as to the manner of determining questions
as to the legality and validity of returns, "to the
end that the votes may be counted and the result
declared by a tribunal whose authority none can
question and whose decision all will accept as final."1
Grant knew about this resolution in advance and
summoning Hewitt to the White House secured his
acquiescence in the compromise, which promptly
passed both House and Senate without debate.
Edmunds was chairman for the Senate, Henry B.
Payne, of Ohio, for the House.
The committees unanimously reported a bill for
an Electoral Commission, to be composed of five
Senators, five members of the House, and four Jus-
tices of the Supreme Court, who were to choose
another Justice of the Court, thus making a commis-
sion of fifteen. The bill provided that "No electoral
vote or votes from any State from which but one
return has been received shall be rejected except by
the affirmative vote of the two Houses." In the case
of States from which there was more than one return
"all such returns and papers should be submitted to
the judgment and decision, as to which is the true
and lawful electoral vote of such State," of the Elec-
toral Commission. The decision of the Commission
1 Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Election, p. 190.
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 511
could be overthrown only by the concurrence of both
Houses acting separately.
Edmunds, Conkling, and Thurman delivered argu-
ments for the bill which take high rank. Morton,
Blaine, and Sherman antagonized it. They said it
was unconstitutional, but their real reason was the
fear that it would work unfavorably to Hayes. The
bill was carried in both branches by Democratic
votes; 26 Democrats and 21 Republicans voted for
it in the Senate, 16 Republicans and one Democrat
against. In the House the ayes were 159 Democrats
and 32 Republicans; the noes were 18 Democrats
and 68 Republicans. It was expected by both parties
that the Commission would be more likely to favor
Tilden than Hayes.
On January 29, Grant signed the bill and at the
same time sent a virile message announcing his ap-
proval. "It is the highest duty of the lawmaking
power," he said, "to provide in advance a constitu-
tional, orderly, and just method of executing the
Constitution in this most interesting and critical of
its provisions. ... It must be that one of the two
candidates has been elected; and it would be de-
plorable to witness an irregular controversy as to
which of the two should receive or which should
continue to hold the office. . . . The country is agi-
tated. It needs and it desires peace and quiet and
512 ULYSSES S. GRANT
harmony between all parties and all sections. Its
industries are arrested, labor unemployed, capital
idle, and enterprise paralyzed by reason of the doubt
and anxiety attending the uncertainty of a double
claim to the Chief Magistracy of the Nation. It
wants to be assured that the result of the election
will be accepted without resistance from the support-
ers of the disappointed candidate, and that its high-
est officer shall not hold his place with a questioned
title of right."
During these strenuous days, when history was in
the making and his own future with his coun-
try's was at stake, Tilden withdrew himself into his
cloistered sanctuary in Gramercy Park, feebly and
stealthily whispering now and then a futile scheme.
While others struggled with the tremendous problem,
he "devoted more than a month to the preparation
of a complete history of the electoral counts from the
foundation of the Government, to show it to have
been the unbroken usage of Congress, not of the
President of the Senate, to count the electoral votes,"
a work which could have been prepared almost as
well by a skilled lawyer's clerk.1 He was inadequate
to a great opportunity, and had he been made Presi-
dent would have been a weak executive, of the
Buchanan type.
1 Bigclow, Life of Tilden.
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 513
The Democrats in Congress were fated to a cruel
disappointment. The Justices of the Supreme Court
indicated in the bill were Clifford, Strong, Miller, and
Field, representing four great geographical divisions,
and equally divided in their political beliefs. It was
agreed that they would choose as the fifth Justice,
David Davis, who had once been a Republican, but
who had wavered in the faith ; but at the last minute,
just before the bill was laid before the House, word
came from Illinois, where the Legislature had been
for weeks in deadlock over a second term for Logan
in the Senate, that the Democrats had joined the
independents and elected Davis. Thus he was barred.
The four Justices selected Bradley in his stead, a
jurist with a delicate sense of honor, and of singu-
larly fine grain.
The Senate chose as members of the Commission
Edmunds, Morton, Frelinghuysen, Thurman, and
Bayard; the House, Payne, Hunton, Abbott, Hoar,
and Garfield. When the joint session met on Febru-
ary 1, all went smoothly till Florida was reached,
with three certificates, and on objection that case
went to the Electoral Commission which held its ses-
sions in the room of the Supreme Court. Here was
to be a precedent for all the other cases. Could the
Commission go back of the returns? After a week of
arguments and secret sessions, the Commission held
S14 ULYSSES S. GRANT
that it could not. The interest in Bradley's opinion
was intense. Later he wrote that it "expressed the
honest conclusion to which I had arrived, and which,
after a full consideration of the whole matter, seemed
to me the only satisfactory conclusion of the ques-
tion." "It seems to me," he said, "that the two
Houses of Congress, in proceeding with the count,
are bound to recognize the determination of the State
Board of Canvassers as the act of the State and as
the most authentic evidence of the appointment
made by the State; and that while they may go be-
hind the Governor's certificate, if necessary, they can
only do so for the purpose of ascertaining whether
he has truly certified the results to which the board
arrived. They cannot sit as a court of appeals on
the action of that board."
The decision of the Commission was reported to
the joint session. The Senate retired to its chamber
and ratified the decision; the House refused ratifica-
tion, and by the terms of the act creating the Com-
mission, the two Houses not having concurred in
overthrowing its decision, the decision stood. There
were similar proceedings with regard to Louisiana,
Oregon, and South Carolina. The Democrats be-
came more angry, as the count progressed from
day to day. They were convinced that they were
being swindled out of what was fairly theirs, and
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 515
blindly reaching for a victim of their wrath, they hit
on Justice Bradley and rained denunciation on his
head. For a time he was the most detested man in
the United States. One would have thought that he
had sought this opportunity to perpetrate a fraud,
instead of shrinking from the lot that fell to him. No
graver instance of injustice could have been con-
ceived. The cabalistic number 8 to 7 was bandied
back and forth and Bradley's name became a byword
and reproach.
Yet Bradley was merely one of a tribunal. There
was no better reason for upbraiding him than for
denouncing Strong and Miller, his associates. He
was not chosen as the umpire; he was an individual
member of the Commission clothed with the same
responsibility as the rest — a responsibility which he
had looked forward to with dread. Besides, there is
good ground for the belief that Davis would have
done as he did in his place.1
Sixty Democratic Representatives, most of them
from the North and West, tried by a filibuster to delay
1 " The day after the inauguration of Hayes, my kinsman Stan-
ley Matthews said to me, ' You people wanted Judge Davis. So
did we. I will tell you what I know, that Judge Davis was safe for
us as Judge Bradley. We preferred him because he carried more
weight.' The subsequent career of Judge Davis in the Senate
gives conclusive proof that this was true." (Henry Watterson,
r The Hayes-Tilden Contest for the Presidency," in the Century
for May, 1913.)
516 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the count until March 4, when Congress would expire
by limitation, leaving the Presidency hanging in the
air. But as soon as the Florida decision foreshadowed
the result, 42 Southern Democrats "solemnly pledged
themselves to each other upon their sacred honor to
oppose all attempts to frustrate the counting of the
votes for President." Speaker Randall, with patriotic
firmness, held the House in hand till, at the close of
an all-night session, at four o'clock in the morning of
March 2, the count was finished and the President
pro tempore declared Hayes elected.
The 4th of March was Sunday, and to save further
complications Hayes was quietly sworn in that day
by Chief Justice Waite, with Grant and Fish as wit-
nesses. On Monday he was formally inaugurated as
peacefully as though there had been no controversy
Grant rode to the Capitol by his side.
There is no doubt the country as a whole believed
that Tilden should have been declared elected; the
question will always be open to dispute. The North
had tired of talk about intimidation in the South and
were beginning to lose all interest in the negro now
that it was found that he could not exercise without
support the right of suffrage which had been imposed
upon him. The violence and fraud in the back par-
ishes of Louisiana were only vaguely pictured in the
public consciousness, while the fact of throwing out
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 517
13,000 Democratic votes by the returning board was
obvious to all. There is no reasonable doubt that, with
a fair election, niore Southern States than those fi-
nally accorded him would have been carried for Hayes,
and it is not forgotten that the South, by reason of
increased representation due to the suppressed negro
vote, had 35 votes in the Electoral College with which
to overcome Republican majorities in Northern
States. There was great clamor at the time and for
years after about a "stolen Presidency," and' Hayes
is thought by many fair-minded men to-day to have
been a fraudulent incumbent; but with strict accu-
racy it must be said that he was legally elected. If
there was "stealing," it was not in Washington. If
the Electoral Commission, for which the Democrats
were willing at the time of its creation to accept re-
sponsibility, by its decision made it possible for Con-
gress to count the contesting Democratic electors,
there would have been no talk of fraud. Yet there is
no fair ground for saying that the minority of the
Commission were right, and the majority wrong. It
happened that all voted along party lines. If there
was "stealing," it must have been in Florida and
Louisiana, and in the multitude of testimony it will
always remain a question there as to who commit-
ted the first theft.
Before the count of electoral votes had been com-
518 ULYSSES S. GRANT
pleted, Ohio friends of Hayes, perhaps without his
knowledge, had told Southern Democrats that after
his nomination he would not continue military inter-
vention in the South, but this assurance had no bear-
ing on the ultimate result. l Hayes had hardly taken
his seat before he sent for Chamberlain and Wade
Hampton, who had set up rival governments in South
Carolina, and with the consent of both withdrew the
federal troops from the state capital, leaving the
Hampton Government in control.
In Louisiana, where Packard and Nicholls were still
contesting the governorship and where Packard had
made a better showing in the returns than Hayes, the
troops were also withdrawn, and the Nicholls Govern-
ment, representing white supremacy, assumed con-
trol of state affairs. Grant, just before he went out of
office, had been appealed to by the Packard Gov-
ernment, but had replied that public opinion in the
North would no longer tolerate military interference.2
1 The Wormley Conference.
2 Executive Mansion,
Washington, D.C., March 1, 1ST".
To Gov. S. B. Packard,
New Orleans, La.: —
In answer to your dispatch of this date, the President directs me
to say that he feels it his duty to state frankly that he does not
believe public opinion will longer support the maintenance of the
State Government in Louisiana by the use of the military, and
that he must concur in this manifest feeling. The troops will
hereafter, as in the past, protect life and property from mob vio-
THE DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876 519
The time had manifestly come for the new order in
the South, which has ever since prevailed.
Grant's attitude throughout this time of general
upheaval had been a powerful factor in preserving
peace, and helping a harmonious solution. To him is
due a great share of credit for creating the Electoral
Commission and assuring acquiescence in the result.1
lence when the State authorities fail, but during the remaining
days of his official life they will not be used to establish or to pull
down either claimant for control of the State. It is not his purpose
to recognize either claimant.
C. C. Sniffen, Secretary.
1 George W. Childs tells in his recollections how Grant sent for
him in Washington and said: "I have spoken of an Electoral
Commission, and the leaders of the party are opposed to it, which
I am sorry to see. They say that if an Electoral Commission is
appointed you might as well count in Mr. Tilden. I would
sooner have Mr. Tilden than that the Republicans should have
a President who could be stigmatized as a fraud. If I were Mr.
Hayes I would not have it unless it was settled in some way out-
side the Senate. This matter is opposed by the leading Republicans
in the House and Senate and throughout the country." ... I'
named a leading Democrat in the House, . . . whom it would be
well for General Grant to see in the matter, and the suggestion
was acted on. I sent for this gentleman to come to the White
House, and put the dilemma to him in President Grant's name. . . .
The answer at once was that the Democrats would favor it, and
it was through that gentleman and General Grant that the matter
was carried through. He sent for Mr. Conkling and said, with
deep earnestness: "This matter is a serious one, and the people
feel it very deeply. 1 think this Electoral Commission ought to
be appointed." Conkling answered: "Mr. President, Senator
Morton (who was then the acknowledged leader of the Senate)
is opposed to it and opposed to your efforts: but if you wish the
Commission carried I can do it." He said: "I wish it done."
Mr. Conkling took hold of the matter and put it through. The
520 ULYSSES S. GRANT
"Nothing could have been wiser than the Electoral
Commission," he said a little later, "and nothing
could be more unpatriotic than the attempt to impair
the title of Mr. Hayes as fraudulent. There was a
good deal of cowardice and knavery in that effort.
Mr. Hayes is just as much President as any of his
predecessors. ... I never believed there would be a
blow, but I had so many warnings that I made all my
preparations. ... I was quite prepared for any con-
tingency. Any outbreak would have been suddenly
and summarily stopped. ... If Tilden was declared
elected, I intended to hand him over the reins, and
see him peacefully installed. ... I would not have
raised my finger to have put Hayes in, if in so doing I
did Tilden the slightest injustice. All I wanted was for
the legal powers to declare a President, to keep the
machine running, allay the passions of the canvass,
and allow the country peace. ... I felt, personally,
that I had been vouchsafed a special deliverance. It
was a great blessing to the country. . . . We had peace,
and order, and observance of the law, and the world
had a new illustration of the dignity and efficiency of
the Republic. This we owe to the wisdom and fore-
sight of the men who formed the Electoral Commis-
sion, Democrats as well as Republicans."
leading Democrat I have spoken of took the initiative in the
House and Mr. Conkling in the Senate.
CHAPTER XLV
THE ADMINISTRATION IN REVIEW
Divested of his rank and office, Grant found him-
self once more the looming figure of the time, as he
had been directly after Appomattox. The venom of
attack was dissipated with the disappearance of offi-
cial power. There was a quick rebound in public
sentiment as often happens with a people jealous
of those on whom they have conferred supreme au-
thority. There was no more talk of Csesarism, nepo-
tism, or corruption. The folly of the first was obvious
now that the "Csesar" pictured by the party press
was a plain citizen seemingly thankful to return to
private life; the silliness of the attacks on nepotism
was manifest now that the little flock of office-holding
relatives found their petty titles and emoluments at
the disposal of a President on whom they had no
claim; as for corruption and gift-taking, here was
Grant at the close of sixteen years of service in such
financial straits that he was puzzled how to get along.
True, he had houses presented by the people, but
they were not endowed, and in them he could not
afford to live; he had a farm at Gravois, near St.
Louis, the site of the Dent homestead, on which he
522 ULYSSES S. GRANT
had spent borrowed money and which had never
paid; he had used up his salary while President, and
though he had a little income from investments, he
would have been far better off if he had spent the
sixteen years in trade. Those who had been most
virulent in their attacks upon him for eight years now
felt that they had done him wrong. He was again
the idol of his countrymen, who at last could com-
prehend the merits of an administration, thrown in
the shadow for a time by superficial faults. They
realized how they had leaned on him during the
months when the succession was in doubt, and it
began to dawn upon them that the United States
during his term as President had held high rank, that
there had never been a period in our history when an
American citizen could count so surely on world-
wide respect, and that we now stood higher in the
world's regard than at any other moment since the
Government began.
No President ever had a firmer or more consistent
foreign policy than Grant. Fish is entitled to all the
credit which belongs to him and which Grant himself
was always generous to bestow, but Fish alone could
not have carried through the diplomatic triumphs
which shed on Grant's Administration their resplend-
ency. Fish was far-seeing, firm, and sensible, but he
wrould have been quite futile without Grant. It was
THE ADMINISTRATION IN REVIEW 523
the steady backing of the White House that made it
possible for Fish to carry through his foreign policy,
and in most instances the programme was as truly
Grant's as his.
A case in point is the Virginius incident early in
the second term, which might have brought on war
with Spain if badly managed, but which was handled
with such firmness and discretion that without war
we won in our contention and held our national re-
spect. The Virginius was an American-built steamer
which for some years had been employed at intervals
in landing military expeditions to aid the Cuban
insurrection. On October 31, 1873, while bound
from Kingston in Jamaica to a Cuban port, flying
our flag but carrying war material, it was captured
by a Spanish man-of-war and taken into Santiago.
She had on board one hundred and fifty-five passen-
gers and crew, most of them Cubans planning to join
the insurrection, but some of them citizens of the
United States. Early in November fifty-three of the
passengers and crew were sentenced by court martial
and shot, among them eight of our citizens. "If it
prove that an American citizen has been wrongfully
executed, this Government will require most ample
reparation," Fish promptly cabled Sickles, our Min-
ister to Spain. Castelar, the Spanish President, at
once and no doubt with sincerity expressed regret.
524 ULYSSES S. GRANT
The country was ablaze with wrath. The press de-
manded swift revenge. Mass meetings heard hot
speeches. Fish was too slow. The people east of the
Missouri were for immediate hostilities. War seemed
at hand.
But Fish, sustained by Grant, proceeded cau-
tiously. He was not swept off his feet by clamor, but
he had lost no time in stating our position and he did
not now dally with well-phrased diplomatic notes.
"Unless abundant reparation shall have been vol-
untarily tendered," he cabled Sickles on November
14, "you will demand the restoration of the Virginius
and the release and delivery to the United States of
the persons captured on her who have not yet been
massacred, and that the flag of the United States
be saluted in the port of Santiago and the signal pun-
ishment of the officials who were concerned in the
capture of the vessel and the execution of the pas-
sengers and crew. In case of refusal of satisfactory
reparation, written twelve days from this date, you
will . . . close your legation and leave Madrid."
Feeling ran high in Madrid as well as in the United
States, and Sickles was at times hysterical, but Grant
and Fish retained their poise. Fish took the business
up in Washington with Polo, the Spanish Minister,
and these two reached a satisfactory agreement.
The Virginius and her survivors were to be restored
THE ADMINISTRATION IN REVIEW 525
immediately. Spain was to have an opportunity to
prove that the Virginius at the time of capture was
not entitled to fly our colors, and if unable to prove
this before December 25, she must salute our flag.
Officials guilty of illegal acts of violence toward citi-
zens of the United States were to be punished.
On December 18, the Virginius, flying our flag, was
delivered to our navy at Bahia Honda in Cuba, but
while on her way to New York sank in a storm. Two
days later the surviving prisoners were surrendered
and reached New York in safety. Investigation
showed that the Virginius when captured was im-
properly carrying the American flag and conse-
quently there was no salute. In the hands of Grant
and Fish the whole affair was handled with dignity
and self-respect. Pending negotiations, Grant put
the navy on a war footing, "trusting to Congress and
the public opinion of the American people to justify
my action."1
"I would sum up the policy of the Administra-
tion," Grant had said in his second annual message,
"to be a thorough enforcement of every law; a faith-
ful collection of every tax provided for; economy in
the disbursement of the same; a prompt payment of
every debt of the nation ; a reduction of taxes as rap-
idly as the requirements of the country will admit;
1 Richardson, Messages and Papers, vol. vn, p. 242.
526 ULYSSES S. GRANT
reductions of taxation and tariff to be so arranged
as to afford the greatest relief to the greatest number;
honest and fair dealings with all other peoples, to the
end that war with all its blighting consequences may
be avoided, but without surrendering any right or
obligation due to us; a reform in the treatment of
Indians and in the whole civil service of the country;
and finally, in securing a pure, untrammeled ballot,
where every man entitled to cast a vote may do so
just once at each election, without fear of molesta-
tion or proscription on account of his political faith,
nationality, or color."
And at the beginning of his second term he thus
outlined his purposes in his inaugural: "My efforts
in the future will be directed to the restoration of
good feeling between the different sections of our
common country; to the restoration of our currency
to a fixed value as compared with the world's stand-
ard of value — gold — and, if possible to a par with
it; to the construction of cheap routes of transit
throughout the land; to the end that the products of
all may find a market and leave a living remunera-
tion to the producer; to the maintenance of friendly
relations with all our neighbors, and with distant
nations; to the reestablishment of our commerce and
share in the carrying trade upon the ocean; to the
encouragement of such manufacturing industries as
THE ADMINISTRATION IN REVIEW 527
can be economically pursued in this country to the
end that the exports of home products and industries
may pay for our imports — the only sure method of
returning to and maintaining a specie basis; to the
elevation of labor; and by a humane course to bring
the aborigines of the country under the benign influ-
ences of education and civilization."
No programme was ever more faithfully carried
out by any President. We have seen how firmly he
upheld American rights abroad; how he was first in
history to establish arbitration in the settlement of
international disputes; how he stood for the Monroe
Doctrine in all his dealings with other American
Republics. He was equally firm with Mexico, with
Spain, with France, with England, respecting no dis-
tinction between weak and powerful governments
when national dignity was involved. He demanded
the recall of Catacazy, the Russian Minister, who
had abused American officials and had interfered
obnoxiously in the relations between the United
States and other powers. "It was impossible," he
said to Congress, ''with self-respect or with a just
regard to the dignity of the country, to permit Mr.
Catacazy to continue to hold intercourse with this
Government." He settled boundary disputes with
Great Britain, and claims with the American Repub-
lics, took up with Spain and England questions of
528 ULYSSES S. GRANT
extradition, securing from Spain the extradition of
"Boss" Tweed who had escaped to Cuba; would
have taken over San Domingo while the time was
ripe; maintained peace with all the world amid grave
international problems, yet never thought to make
a sanctimonious merit of having kept the country
out of war.
Congress interfered with his ambition to establish
firmly a reformed civil service, but he gave reform
an impetus which has continued to this day. He en-
forced the laws, maintained economy in government
expenditures, lowered taxes, and reduced the na-
tional debt. That he could not secure a pure, un-
trammeled ballot was not his fault. He tried; but
here he ran against impossible conditions which no
Executive could hope to overcome.
He urged in every way the building-up of an
American merchant marine. " It is a national humili-
ation," he said, "that we are now compelled to pay
from twenty to thirty million dollars annually . . .
to foreigners for doing the work which should be
done by American vessels, American-built, Ameri-
can-owned, and American-manned."1
"A revival of shipbuilding, and particularly of
iron steamship building," he said again, — for he
kept returning to this theme, — "is of vast impor-
1 Richardson, Messages and Papers, vol. vn, p. 53.
THE ADMINISTRATION IN REVIEW 529
tance to our national prosperity. ... I would be will-
ing to see a great departure from the usual course of
Government in supporting what might usually be
termed private enterprise. I would not suggest as a
remedy direct subsidy to American steamship lines,
but would suggest the direct offer of ample com-
pensation for carrying the mails between Atlantic
seaboard cities and would extend this liberality to
vessels carrying the mails to South American States
and to Central America and Mexico, and would pur-
sue the same policy from our Pacific seaports to for-
eign seaports on the Pacific. . . ."l
He was the first President to call emphatic atten-
tion to the peril of an ignorant foreign-born elector-
ate, lacking in knowledge of the significance of our
institutions. "The compulsory support of the free
school and the disfranchisement of all who cannot
read and write the English language, after a fixed
probation, would meet my hearty approval. . . .
Foreigners coming to this country to become citizens,
who are educated in their own language, should ac-
quire the requisite knowledge of ours during the nec-
essary residence to obtain naturalization. If they did
not take interest enough in our language to acquire
sufficient knowledge of it to enable them to study the
institutions and laws of the country intelligently, I
1 Richardson, Messages and Papers, vol. vn, pp. 301-02.
530 ULYSSES S. GRANT
would not confer upon them the right to make such
laws or to select those who do." 1
He suggested a readjustment of the tariff "so as to
increase the revenue, and at the same time decrease
the number of articles upon which duties are levied.
Those articles which enter into our manufactures and
are not produced at home, it seems to me, should be
entered free. Those articles of manufacture which we
produce a constituent part of, but do not produce the
whole, that part which we do not produce should
enter free also." 2
When Grant entered on the Presidency, to use his
own words "the country was laboring under an enor-
mous debt contracted in the suppression of the rebel-
lion; and taxation was so oppressive as to discourage
production." There was danger of a foreign war.
Not only was the war averted by the Treaty of Wash-
ington, establishing the principle of arbitration, but
in the first seven years of his Administration taxes
were reduced by nearly $300,000,000, and the na-
tional debt by $435,000,000. By refunding opera-
tions the annual interest on the debt was reduced
from $130,000,000 to $100,000,000, an adverse bal-
ance of trade amounting to $130,000,000 was trans-
ferred to a balance of $120,000,000 in our favor.
I
1 Richardson, ftfessages and Papers, vol. vn, p. -ill.
2 Ibid., pp. 293-94.
THE ADMINISTRATION IN REVIEW 531
Provision had been made for the resumption of specie
payments and inflation, which was rampant, had
been dealt a deadly blow.
For one who entered on his service with no politi-
cal experience whatever, who was a stranger to the
ways of statecraft and diplomacy, Grant's Presi-
dency presents a record of success almost as striking
though less dramatic than his career in war. His
messages, from which citations have been made,
were mostly written with his own hand, and he was
always in close touch with the innumerable impor-
tant questions in which the various members of his
Cabinet were immediately concerned.
Considering all these things there is a needless note
of pathos in the personal reference which he incor-
porated in his last message in December, 1876: —
" It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to
the office of Chief Executive without any previous
political training. From the age of seventeen I had
never even witnessed the excitement attending a
presidential campaign but twice antecedent to my
own candidacy, and at but one of them was I eligible
as a voter.
"Under such circumstances it is but reasonable to
suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred.
Even had they not, differences of opinion between
the Executive, bound by an oath to the strict per-
532 ULYSSES S. GRANT
formance of his duties, and writers and debaters,
must have arisen. It is not necessarily evidence of
blunder on the part of the Executive because there are
these differences of views. Mistakes have been made,
as all can see, and I admit, but it seems to me oftener
in the selections made in the assistants appointed to
aid in carrying out the various duties of administer-
ing the government — in nearly every case selected
without a personal acquaintance with the appointee,
but upon recommendation of the representatives
chosen directly by the people. It is impossible, where
so many trusts are to be allotted, that the right par-
ties should be chosen in every instance. History
shows that no Administration from the time of
Washington to the present has been free from these
mistakes. But I leave comparisons to history, claim-
ing only that I have acted in every instance from a
conscientious desire to do what was right, constitu-
tional, within the law, and for the very best interests
of the whole people. Failures have been errors of
judgment, not of intent." *
In constructive achievements, coming as it did
directly after the demoralization of the war and the
upset of traditions due to Lincoln's military measures
in that imperative emergency, Grant's Administra-
tion ranks second only to that of Washington, who
1 Richardson, Messages and Papers, vol. vn, pp. 399-400.
THE ADMINISTRATION IN REVIEW 533
had to set the Government in motion under the Con-
stitution. He might safely "leave comparisons to
history." If we except the baneful Southern problem
which was bequeathed to him, and where his fault, if
fault there was, lay in the rigid execution of the law, it
would be hard to place the finger now on an execu-
tive policy approved by him which subsequent ex-
perience has condemned.
CHAPTER XLVI
THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD — THE THIRD
TERM
A few weeks of adulation and then Grant went
abroad. He sailed from Philadelphia in middle May.
His daughter Nellie, who had married Algernon
Sartoris in the White House, was living in her hus-
band's home in England. Beyond seeing her he had
few plans.
Great crowds bade him good-bye in Philadelphia,
thronging the wharves from which he sailed with
Mrs. Grant and Jesse, his youngest boy. To his
amazement even greater crowds were at the wharves
in Liverpool. Ten thousand Englishmen pushed
through the custom house to welcome him. He was
presented with the freedom of the city, both at
Liverpool and Manchester, and his run toward
London was like a triumph. In London the experi-
ence was repeated. English tradespeople and work-
ingmen held him in higher honor than he thought.
To them he was the world's most famous living
general, personifying in their eyes the marvel of
democracy.
Shortly, the scions of nobility took him in hand.
THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD 535
When Fillmore and Van Buren were visitors in Eng-
land they had little more attention than any other
private citizen and trudged along complacently at
the tail end of the line, but Grant, through some di-
plomacy by our Minister in London, was treated as a
former sovereign — not that he cared for it especially,
but Pierrepont felt that as a former President of the
United States he must not be slighted. Whatever
those at home might think about it, the Englishman
familiar with court etiquette would size it up as an
indignity, not alone to Grant, but to the country
whence he hailed.
Aside from minor incidents the pleasure of the
English visit was undimmed and the example of the
London court followed Grant around the world. He
visited every capital of Europe and almost every im-
portant town. He talked with Bismarck and Von
Moltke in Germany, with Gambetta and MacMahon
in France, with Gortchakoff in Russia, with Castelar
in Spain, with kings and queens and emperors, the
Czar, the Pope. In almost every capital he was
asked to witness a review of troops and he invariably
declined. To the Crown Prince of Germany he said:
"The truth is I am more of a farmer than a soldier. I
take little or no interest in military affairs. I never
went into the army without regret and I never retired
without pleasure." He wandered dumbly through
536 ULYSSES S. GRANT
the galleries and museums, was bored by paintings,
sculptures, and cathedrals, but was impressed by the
imposing grandeur of the Alps, great engineering
works, and by the Pyramids. He loved especially to
stroll the streets and see the common people. James
Russell Lowell, our Minister to Spain, who enter-
tained him at Madrid, has left a picture which may
apply to all his wanderings : —
"As he speaks nothing but English, he was as in-
communicable as an iceberg and I think is rather
bored by peregrination. What he likes best is to
escape and wander about the streets with his
Achates Young. After being here two days I think he
knew Madrid better than I. He seemed to be very
single-minded, honest, and sensible — very easy to be
led by anybody he likes. He is perfectly unconscious
and natural, naively puzzled, I fancied, to find him-
self a personage, and going through the ceremonies to
which he is condemned with a dogged imperturba-
bility that annotated to me his career in general." l
From Europe Grant went to Egypt and the Pyra-
mids, and then to Asia, visiting the Holy Land, and
later India, Siam, China, and Japan. He was greatly
taken with the Orient. Japan he marveled at. China
appealed to him. Li Hung Chang, with whom he
1 To Charles Eliot Norton, Letters of James Russell Loicell,
p. 233.
THE TRIP AROUND THE WORLD 537
talked, he rated among the world's four master
minds in statecraft and diplomacy.
While Grant was lingering abroad, rinding new
scenes to lure him on and pleased by the atten-
tion showered upon him, politics was shaping up at
home. Hayes had pledged himself against a second
term, and in no event could he have been elected if he
had tried to run, so general was the feeling that his
title had a taint. His course as President had alien-
ated the men who had done most to put him in the
place. The group which had been influential under
Grant now found themselves of little consequence
with the Administration. Conkling, Cameron, Logan,
and others of the Stalwart wing were out of favor
and out of sorts, while Sherman, Evarts, Hoar, and
Schurz had Hayes's ear, and Southern Democrats
were called in council when it came to naming office-
holders in the South. The new Administration knew
not Joseph. It was completely out of sympathy with
"the machine" and recognized few party obligations
of the old-fashioned kind. Blaine, who was pressing
forward as the candidate for President, had not much
in common either with Hayes or with the Stalwart
group. The Stalwarts turned instinctively toward
Grant.
Word kept coming back about his European prog-
ress, and the tidings stirred the people's pride, no
538 ULYSSES S. GRANT
matter what their politics; for in Grant's person they
could see the Old World paying honor to the New.
It was soon clear that his return would be a sequel
for great popular acclaim. The thing to do was to
prevent his coming back too soon so that the impetus
of his reception might carry on to the Republican
Convention. He had not been gone a year when
the Stalwarts began to send him messages asking him
not to hurry home and hinting at political develop-
ments. He was human and took pleasure in the
flattering hints. "Most every letter I get from the
States, like Porter's to you, asks me to remain
abroad," he wrote from Rome to Badeau in March,
1878. "They have designs on me which I do not
contemplate for myself. It is probable that I shall
return to the United States early in the fall or early
next spring." But he did not return that fall. It was
September, 1879, when he sailed up the Golden Gate,
and found still greater crowds awaiting him than he
had seen at Philadelphia or Liverpool. He wandered
up and down the coast, visited old haunts at Hum-
boldt and Vancouver, which his experience there, if
what it has been sometimes pictured, might have
made him shun; then started east across the conti-
nent, arriving at Galena the day following election,
after a sweeping progress through the cities of the
West. There he was greeted by his old neighbors, and
THE THIRD TERM 539
after loafing with them for a week, he started east
again through demonstrations all along the line from
crowds in cities numbered by the hundred thousands,
at last in Philadelphia completing his circuit of the
world.
To Grant the country must have seemed unani-
mous, but from the politician's point of view his
coming back was premature — six months too early
for their calculations. Besides, neither Grant nor the
"Old Guard" seems to have been fully conscious of
the deep-seated feeling against a third term in the
Presidency. The people's adoration could not have
been transmuted into votes. He did nothing to en-
courage or discourage what was going on. He was
quite ready to await results.
He went to Mexico and Cuba continuing in this
way his world itinerary — the most widely traveled
citizen of the United States.
Those who engineered the Third Term plan were
daring and resourceful leaders. In the whole his-
tory of our politics there has never been another
group to rival them in intellectual force, in discipline,
in ruthlessness, in organizing skill. We have since
often had "Old Guards" on paper and in frenzied
campaign cries; for "Old Guards" are easy buga-
boos, but most of them have been the creatures of
disordered fancies or demagogical appeal. The ele-
540 ULYSSES S. GRANT
merits of which they are assumed to be composed
have seldom stood consistently together or wielded
their imaginary power. But here was an "Old
Guard" in truth whose members had no squeam-
ishness about the name, whose faults at least were
manly faults, and who were strangers to hypocrisy.
Conkling in New York, Don Cameron in Pennsyl-
vania, Logan in Illinois, each at the head of his bat-
talions, formed a "Triumvirate" which derived its
fitting title from Roman history, and like its Ro-
man prototype was entitled to respect. They had
their disciplined allies in other States, and, reaching
into every corner of the country, they had their
pickets placed.
In February, while in Cuba, Washburne had writ-
ten Grant about the prospects for another nomina-
tion. The tone of his reply showed that he then ex-
pected it, though he betrayed no great concern. "All
that I want is that the Government rule should re-
main in the hands of those who saved the Union until
all the questions growing out of the war are forever
settled. I would much rather any one of many I
could mention should be President rather than that I
should have it. . . . I shall not gratify my enemies
by declining what has not been offered. I am not a
candidate for anything, and if the Chicago Conven-
tion nominates a candidate who can be elected, it will
THE THIRD TERM 541
gratify me, and the gratification will be greater if it
should be some one other than myself. . . . Blaine I
would like to see elected, but I fear the party could
not elect him." l
Later, from Galveston, on March 25, he wrote
again to Washburne, who had suggested that he
should authorize some one to say that in no event
would he consent even to be a candidate after 1880:
"I think any statement from me would be mis-
construed, and would only serve as a handle for my
enemies. Such a statement might well be made after
the nomination, if I am nominated in such a way as to
accept. It is a matter of supreme indifference to me
whether I am or not. There are many persons I would
prefer should have the office to myself. I owe so
much to the Union men of the country that if they
think my chances are better for election than for
other probable candidates in case I should decline, I
cannot decline if the nomination is tendered without
seeking on my part."
From these expressions there could be little ques-
tion about his expectation that he would be called to
serve or about his readiness to heed the call. Coming
back from Mexico he followed up the Mississippi
from New Orleans to Cairo, by way of Vicksburg
and Memphis, tracing back the militant journey
1 Letters to a Friend, Havana, Cuba, February 2, 1880.
542 ULYSSES S. GRANT
he had taken nearly twenty years before — and at
last was at Galena, where he awaited the conven-
tion, seemingly indifferent himself about the out-
come, but acquiescent in the wishes of his family
and friends.
Meantime the "Old Guard" had been diligent.
They were not too fastidious in their ways. They
rushed resolutions through the New York and Penn-
sylvania Conventions in February, imposing the unit
rule upon the delegations from those States. In
Illinois the State Convention elected Grant dele-
gates from every district, ignoring protests from dis-
tricts whose representatives did not approve. Simi-
lar tactics prevailed in other States.
When the National Republican Convention met in
June, they had three hundred delegates for Grant in-
cluding a clear majority from New Yrork, Illinois, and
Pennsylvania, and almost all the Southern and border
States. Blaine had fewer votes than Grant, but they
were well distributed throughout the North, while
Sherman had, besides his own State of Ohio nearly
solid, a scattering support, including some negro
delegates in the South. Edmunds, Windom, and
Washburne each had his friends, although no one of
these was ever really in the running.
As June approached, and it was evident that Grant
could not be named without a bitter contest, some of
THE THIRD TERM 543
his intimates, who feared for the result in case the
nomination came that way, earnestly begged him to
withdraw, but by that time he had gone too far and
could not quit without embarrassing his friends. His
family were smitten with a longing to get back to
Washington, and he acceded to their importunities.
John Russell Young went to Galena and with much
difficulty, in opposition to their wishes, induced
Grant to write a letter addressed to Cameron, once
in his Cabinet and now chairman of the Republican
National Committee, authorizing his supporters if
at any time so minded to withdraw his name. No
copy of the letter was preserved and it was never
used.
In all the history of conventions there has never
been another such as this. No gathering of any party
has been so rich in stirring incident, so fertile in
dramatic scenes, so pregnant in the tragedy of per-
sonal and party feuds. It wrecked ambitions, opened
new careers, and brought about strange combinations
in the field of politics. The Triumvirate were beaten
in trying to impose the unit rule, which would have
given Grant the solid vote of New York, Illinois, and
Pennsylvania, and with the impetus thus gained have
carried him at once across the line. They failed in
other arbitrary schemes which gave rise to many
hours of strategy and hot debate.
544 ULYSSES S. GRANT
Conkling led their forces on the floor, showing
superb contempt for opposition, stirring resentment
among friends of Blaine and other candidates, repel-
ling by his domineering ways those whom another
would have tried with tact to win, questioning their
party loyalty, sneering at their political consistency,
exulting in their hate. No one at all familiar with
convention records is unfamiliar with the speech in
which he introduced Grant's name, the opening lines
of doggerel transmuted into eloquence by his auda-
cious, dominating personality: —
" And when asked what State he hails from,
Our sole reply shall be,
He hails from Appomattox
And its famous apple tree."
Convention oratory in its extravagance and swift
impressions is a thing apart, and Conkling's ranks
among its great examples, but there were sentences
in this speech of his which were to be remembered
beyond the moment: "His services attest his great-
ness." "His fame was earned, not alone by things
written and said, but by the arduous greatness of
things done." "To him immeasurably more than to
any other man is due the fact that every paper
dollar is at last as good as gold." "When he refused
to receive Denis Kearney of California, he meant
that communism, lawlessness, and disorder, although
THE THIRD TERM 515
it might stalk high-headed and dictate law to a whole
city, would always find a foe in him." 1
1 " From his first utterance in the convention to the last, Mr.
Conkling's manner was one studied taunt to his opponents.
Nothing approaching it in arrogance and insolence has been wit-
nessed in a political convention, either before or since. If there had
been any chance of a compromise of one faction in favor of the
other, he destroyed it utterly in the first half-hour.
His first act was to move a resolution binding the members of
the convention to support the nominee, whoever he might be. In
doing this he took pains to intimate with unmistakable plainness
his belief that the Blaine men would bolt in case Grant was nomi-
nated, unless they were pledged in advance not to do so. This
resolution was adopted, but the debate upon it made him the most
unpopular man in the convention with the supporters of all other
candidates than Grant, and thus debarred the latter from hope of
recruits. His next important effort was to have the unit rule en-
forced upon all delegations in order that a majority in each should
be able to cast the solid vote of the State for the candidate of their
choice. In this effort he was as offensive as he had been in his
previous one. A long chapter might be filled with Mr. Conkling's
astounding arrogance. . . .
" In his speech nominating Grant he went out of his way to give
mortal offense to the Blaine forces and to all other elements of the
convention that were opposing Grant. In his written copy of the
speech, which was given out in advance to the press, he had this
simple sentence at the beginning: 'When asked whence comes
our candidate, we say from Appomattox.' There is dignity, sim-
plicity, and dramatic force in that sentence, which is certainly not
to be found in the ' improved ' version which seems to have been
an inspiration of the moment.
" When the balloting began and it was his duty as chairman of
the New York delegation to announce its vote, he did so with
studied insolence toward the anti-Grant members. His favorite
formula was: ' Two of the New York delegates, Mr. Chairman, are
said to be for Mr. Sherman, seventeen for Mr. Blaine, fifty-one
are for Grant.' He repeated this with slight variations till the
chairman of the West Virginia delegation mimicked his manner and
540 ULYSSES S. GRANT
For thirty-six ballots, and for two days, the "Old
Guard" battled, holding their lines with a stern dis-
cipline never rivaled before or since. Others weak-
ened here and there as the maneuvering went on —
not they. On the first ballot they threw to Grant 304
votes. In the two days they did not fall below 302,
and even on the thirty-fifth ballot, after the tide
began to set toward Garfield, they were 313. On the
last ballot, when the stampede was on, their line re-
mained unbroken, and the 306 who voted at the very
end for Grant have won their place in history.
Garfield, who had entered the convention pledged
to Sherman, who had led the forces against Conkling
on the floor, and who from the beginning had re-
ceived a single vote in almost every ballot, was nomi-
nated by the friends of Blaine in a resistless rush
which some said had long been prearranged, although
the evidence of this was never clear. To mollify the
"Old Guard," Arthur, whom Grant had made Col-
lector of the Port of New York and who had been
removed by Hayes, was nominated for Vice-Presi-
dent. Conkling would have spurned the sop when the
New York delegation was requested to select a man,
method so perfectly that the whole convention roared. After that
he did not venture on further repetition, but resorted to such say-
ings as that a member who was absent was possibly 'meditating
some new form of treachery.' " (Bishop, Presidential dominations
and Elections, pp. 80-84.)
THE THIRD TERM 547
but Arthur, who was a delegate-at-large, whispered
to Conkling that he would like the place — a hint
which had far-reaching consequences.
Through it all Grant went about his business at
Galena. Conkling, in nominating him, with a covert
sneer at Blaine had said: "He has no place; and
official influence has not been used for him. Without
patronage, without emissaries, without committees,
without bureaux,, without telegraph wires running
from his house or from the seats of influence to this
convention, without appliances, without electioneer-
ing contrivances, without effort on his part, Grant's
name is on his country's lips."
This was all true. During the convention, while
bulletins were coming in, he spent his time with two
or three at Rowley's office. When word arrived that
Conkling's lines on Appomattox had been greeted by
a storm of cheers which lasted half an hour, he went
home saying to his son with something like a sigh:
"I am afraid I am going to be nominated." Through-
out the hours of balloting he gave no sign. When he
was told about the final vote, he brushed the ashes
from his cigar, said, "Garfield is a good man. I am
glad of it. Good-night, gentlemen," and walked
home without another word. But he was not im-
pervious to defeat. He was hurt to think that with
the Cameron letter in their hands the "Old Guard"
548 ULYSSES S. GRANT
let him go so far. "My friends have not been honest
with me," he said. "I could not afford to be de-
feated. They should not have placed me in nomina-
tion unless they felt perfectly sure of my success."
And some whom he thought had not played him fair
he never quite forgave — among them Washburne,
who let his own name be used to divide Logan's
strength in Illinois.
CHAPTER XLVII
THE END
When Grant left the White House he should have
said good-bye to politics. That was a game in which
he was not qualified to play; he would have been
happier if he had frankly recognized the truth. But
he had friends to whom he felt under obligation and
for their sake he bared his dignity to his successors in
the Presidency, laying it open to rebuff. During most
of Hayes's term Grant watched the Administration
from abroad. He did not sympathize with Hayes's
course in Louisiana and South Carolina, abandoning
the local governments while profiting himself by
practically the same returns as those on which both
Chamberlain and Packard based their claims.
Not only did Hayes reverse Grant's Southern
policy, but he alienated Conkling by the summary
removal of Cornell and Arthur from the New York
Custom House. During his Administration there was
a general softening of party fiber.
After Garfield's nomination Grant went to Colo-
rado. He sent no message of congratulation. Many
thought that he would sulk; some even that he
would support Hancock, his former comrade in arms.
550 ULYSSES S. GRANT
But in September, when things looked blue for
Garfield, he publicly declared his purpose to support
the ticket, and brought Conkling into line, with
others of the Stalwart group. Grant and Conkling
both went on the stump — for Grant had learned to
speak in public while abroad. After the election, for
the result of which he felt himself in large part re-
sponsible, he was not asked for his advice and did not
tender it. He was displeased and mortified when told
that Blaine was booked to head the Cabinet, yet went
to Washington after the 4th of March and pledged
Garfield his support. But quickly came the Robert-
son appointment in New York, the resignation of
Piatt and Conkling from the Senate by way of pro-
test, and the ill-fated struggle for their reelection.
Robertson, who had led the fight against Grant in
the New York delegation at Chicago, was especially
obnoxious, and Grant strongly sympathized with
Conkling in the feud. He was angered, too, because
without consulting him Garfield had made a place for
Merritt, the deposed New York collector, by arbi-
trarily transferring his own particular appointees
abroad.1
1 " In their letter of resignation, .addressed to Governor Cornell
on May 14, 1881, Senators Conkling and Piatt say: — 'Some
weeks ago the President sent to the Senate in a group the nomi-
nations of several persons for public offices already filled. One of
these offices is the collectorship of the port of New York, now held
by General Merritt; another is the consul-generalship at London,
THE END 551
Grant was in Mexico that spring, whence he wrote
in May: "I am completely disgusted with Garfield's
course. It is too late now for him to do anything to
restore him to my confidence. I will never again lend
my active aid to the support of a presidential candi-
date who has not strength enough to appear before a
convention as a candidate. . . . Garfield has shown
that he is not possessed of the backbone of an angle-
worm. 1 hope his nominations may be defeated." His
feeling against Garfield was generally known through
personal letters which slipped into print. When Gar-
field was shot, Grant for a time, like Conkling, was a
target for the people's wrath, which had hardly died
away when in September he followed Garfield's
coffin, as he had followed those of Sumner, Motley,
and Greeley — each in turn.
now held by General Badeau; another is charge d'affaires to Den-
mark, held by Mr. Cramer; another is the mission to Switzerland,
held by Mr. Fish, a son of the former distinguished Secretary of
State. ... All these officers save only Mr. Cramer are citizens of
New York. It was proposed to displace them all, not for any al-
leged fault of theirs, or for any alleged need or advantage of the
public service, but in order to give the great office of Collector of
the Port of New York to Mr. William H. Robertson as a " re-
ward " for certain acts of his said to have " aided in making the
nomination of General Garfield possible." The chain of removals
thus proposed was broken by General Badeau's promptly declin-
ing to accept the new place to which he was sent.' A protest
against the change in collectorship signed by Arthur, Conkling,
Piatt, Postmaster-General James, and Governor Cornell, had been
addressed to the President and ignored." (A. R. Conkling, Life
and Letters of R. Conkling, pp. 639-40.)
552 ULYSSES S. GRANT
With Arthur he was at first on cordial terms and
Arthur freely asked him for advice. At his suggestion
Frelinghuysen was appointed Secretary of State, and
Governor Morgan of New York was asked to take the
Treasury. Morgan declined, and Grant proposed
John Jacob Astor, first for the Treasury and then
for Minister to England, but neither suggestion was
adopted. Before long Arthur came to shun his Stal-
wart friends, perhaps because he felt that they pre-
sumed on old association. He wanted to be President
in his own right, and to accomplish this, saw the ne-
cessity for different ties. That was a trait entirely
foreign to Grant's nature, the sort of thing he could
not understand. Through all his life he had been
loyal to his friends even to the peril of his own good
name.
Invited to the White House for a visit, he was be-
set by satellites and relatives begging him to urge
upon the President their claims for office or for favor,
and he good-naturedly yielded to their importunities
till Arthur plainly showed displeasure and at times
evaded him. He wanted his friend General Beyle
made Secretary of the Navy. Arthur appointed in
his stead William E. Chandler, who as the friend of
Blaine had been a leading factor in the defeat of
Grant for a third term. After that the coolness
between Grant and Arthur grew. "He seems more
GRANT AT SIXTY
Photograph by Freilricks, New York, 1882
From the collection of Frederick /fill Meserve
THE END 553
afraid of his enemies and through this fear more in-
fluenced by them than guided either by his judgment,
personal feelings, or friendly influences," Grant
wrote in February, 1883, and a year later, on the
eve of the National Convention, he wrote: "Arthur
will probably go into the convention second in the
number of supporters, when he would not probably
have a single vote if it was not for his army of
officials and the vacancies he has to fill."
He had a grievance, not due to patronage, but to
Arthur's failure to right what Grant had come to
look on as a wrong — his own refusal while President
to allow Fitz John Porter a second trial. Since then,
through a more thorough study of the evidence, he
had become convinced that Porter was innocent of
the charge of which he had been convicted by court-
martial during the war. The sentence having been
reversed at last by the board of which Schofield was
the head, Grant worked hard to put the bill through
Congress authorizing the President to restore Porter
to his former rank, and when Arthur vetoed the bill
on the ground that Congress had infringed upon
the executive prerogative in designating a person by
name whom the President was to appoint, Grant did
not hesitate publicly to criticize the motive behind
the veto. As between Blaine and Arthur in 1884,
Grant preferred the nomination of Blaine, but owing
554 ULYSSES S. GRANT
to his illness he did not vote for him. A year before
the election he had written: "The Republican Party,
to be saved, must have a decisive, declared policy. It
has now no observable policy except to peddle out
patronage to soreheads, in order to bring them back
into the fold, and avoid any positive declarations
upon all leading questions." l In his political convic-
tions Grant was a Stalwart to the end.
Grant had no sooner come back from his trip
abroad than he began to think about a livelihood.
He was obliged to turn his hand to making money, a
trick in which he never had shown skill. Just before
coming East from Colorado he had written: "One
thing is certain; I must do something to supple-
ment my income, or continue to live in Galena or
on a farm. I have not got the means to live in a
city."
He always had a lively interest in Mexico, and
now, after the third term episode, his friend Rom-
ero, for years the Mexican Minister in Washington,
joined with him in organizing a company, of which
Grant became president, the purpose of which was to
build a railroad south to the Guatemalan border.
The enterprise was not successful, but in 1882, at
Frelinghuysen's hint, Arthur made him a commis-
sioner to negotiate a commercial treaty with Mexico,
1 Grant in Peace. Badeau, p. 34J.
THE END 555
an appointment which he accepted solely because of
his ambition to establish closer business and political
relations between the two Republics.
The treaty was concluded. Grant would have had
quick action by our Senate; for delay he knew would
give to foreign interests an opportunity to influence
adversely the Mexican authorities, but the Adminis-
tration did nothing further. The treaty was not
ratified, and no more was heard of it.
Here ends the record of Grant's public service. Had
this been all, it would have been a tame and futile
termination of a great career which had its crown in
the tumultuous welcome home after his triumphal
march around the world. In three years he had fallen
in the popular esteem. His fatal acquiescence in the
third term move; his meddling with the patronage;
his good-natured readiness to place his influence at
the disposal of his friends, had all contributed to blur
his fame. He had gone into Wall Street and the
people knew it. He thought that he was making
money. So did they. Prosperity alarms idolatry;
incense burns grudgingly on the Stock Exchange;
and Grant in this followed the way of other heroes.
But his life, already packed with contrasts, was to un-
dergo one more swift transformation. The few months
left him were to bring both tragedy and triumph,
556 ULYSSES S. GRANT
misfortune in the end restoring him to his own right-
ful province in the people's love.
When Grant went abroad he entrusted to Ulysses
S. Grant, Jr., what property he had, and the son, who
was supposed to have a business head, enlarged the
trust. He had married the daughter of Senator
Chaffee, a Colorado millionaire, and had settled in
New York, where in 1879 he became acquainted
with young Ferdinand Ward, just blossoming as a
Napoleon of the Street. Through some of Ward's
ventures he made money for the General, which
enabled Grant to complete his trip around the world.
In the fall of 1880, Ward proposed a private banking
firm to do a Wall Street business under the style of
Grant & Ward, he to be financial agent, young
Grant to be an active partner, with the General and
James F. Fish, Ward's father-in-law, the President of
the Marine Bank of Brooklyn, as silent partners.
The new firm ranked high; Ward was the marvel of
the Street; he had unbounded credit; the market
boomed; the firm's investors received amazing divi-
dends. From operations in stocks, bonds, and railway
contracts, the firm of Grant & Ward, beginning with
a paid-in-capital of $400,000, mostly contributed by
Chaffee, and other connections of the Grants, — both
Fred and Jesse had married well and settled in New
York, — had in three years acquired a rating of
THE END 557
$15,000,000 and a deposit of nearly a million in Fish's
bank. Grant having put in all his money paid no at-
tention to the business details, nor did his son. They
simply saw their income pouring in and trusted
Ward implicitly. But while Ward talked to them
of railway contracts and huge rates of interest for
emergency loans to subcontractors, he talked to cus-
tomers about Grant's influence in getting contracts
from the Government — a form of business which
Grant expressly stipulated the firm should never un-
dertake. He knew that this would be an impropriety.
"I had been President of the United States," he
later testified, "and I did not think it was suitable
for me to have my name connected with Govern-
ment contracts, and I knew that there was no large
profit in them except by dishonest measures. There
are some men who get Government contracts year
in and year out, and whether they manage their
affairs dishonestly to make a profit or not, they are
sometimes supposed to, and I did not think it was
any place for me."
Grant, all unconscious of impending fate, was
looking forward to prosperity in his remaining years.
Some of his nearest friends were men of wealth, and
now he felt that he could associate with them on even
terms. He had a handsome house in Sixty-sixth
Street, near Fifth Avenue, and there, surrounded by
558 ULYSSES S. GRANT
his family and trophies, he planned to end his days in
profitable ease. Besides his generous dividends from
Grant & Ward, he had a $15,000 income from a fund
subscribed for him by New York financiers. He had
no public cares or aspirations, no lingering restless-
ness for power; his skies were clear of clouds; he was
content.
The day before Christmas in December, 1883, he
slipped on the icy sidewalk before his house, crush-
ing the muscles of his leg. He did not leave his bed
for weeks. Then for months he hobbled about
on crutches, recovering his strength somewhat in
Washington and Fort Monroe, but never quite re-
gaining his health. At home again in April, still lame
but prosperous, he drove about and went downtown
on business, free from financial worry.
One Sunday evening, May 4, 1884, Ward came to
see him, told him the Marine Bank was in trouble,
that the City Chamberlain had drawn heavily late
the afternoon before, imperiling the bank's reserve,
and unless $400,000 could be raised at once the bank
must close its doors on Monday morning, tying up
the firm's deposit of $660,000 and threatening ruin.
He had himself raised $250,000, but could go no
farther and Grant must raise the rest. This was new
business for the General. He did not know where to
turn, but Ward suggested W. H. Vanderbilt, and
THE END 559
Grant saw Vanderbilt that night, told him the story,
and obtained from him $150,000 — not for the sake of
the Marine Bank or of the firm of Grant & Ward, as
Vanderbilt assured him, but as a personal loan. The
next day the loan was paid, so Grant supposed,
through the firm's check drawn on the bank. On
Tuesday morning, when Grant limped into the firm's
office, he was stunned by his son's greeting: "Grant
& Ward have failed and Ward has fled! " He turned
away without a word, ascended slowly to his own
private room, and late that afternoon the cashier
found him sitting there, close to his desk, clasping the
arms of his chair convulsively, head bowed.
Before night it was known that every dollar he
possessed was swept away. The firm had no deposits
in the bank. The securities Ward talked about were
worthless. All the Grants were pauperized; their
entire fortunes were tied up with the firm. Trades-
men's bills came pouring in, and had it not been for
prompt and generous action by a stranger,1 who
forced Grant to accept a loan "on account of my
share for services ending April, 1865," he could not
have bought provisions for a meal. He was too proud
and silent to appeal for credit then.
In order to save something from the vultures,
Vanderbilt insisted on security for his personal loan,
1 Charles Wood, of Lansingburg, New York.
560 ULYSSES S. GRANT
and to hiin Grant assigned his farm, his wife's real
estate in Philadelphia and Chicago, and all his per-
sonal property — including the trophies of the war,
his medals, swords, and uniforms. The debt to Van-
derbilt was one of honor. With him it had prece-
dence over obligations of the firm of Grant & Ward.
Vanderbilt afterwards tried to transfer the property
to Mrs. Grant, but she refused his offer, except as to
the trophies, which she accepted in trust, to be placed
at the disposal of the Government. For their con-
spiracy to defraud, Fish was sentenced to seven years
in prison, Ward to ten.
Stripped of his livelihood, harassed by obligations,
chagrined by failure, smarting under unjust stings,
feeble in body, with age creeping on, Grant had
again to face the world. He could no longer justify his
simple faith in human nature. "I have made it the
rule of my life," he said, "to trust a man long after
other people gave him up; but I don't see how I can
ever trust any human being again." Yet his bitter-
ness of soul was sanctified. Without it history could
not record the last fine chapter of his contradictory
career, shedding a halo over all that went before.
His bearing in adversity beatified him in the world's
regard.
Before his failure the "Century Magazine," which
had begun its series on the battles of the Civil War,
THE END 561
had urged him to write the story of Shiloh or of the
Wilderness. But he was not inclined to do it. Writing
was not his trade. Now they came back with their
proposal. It would divert his mind; he could earn
money in this way; his need decided him. He wrote
an article on Shiloh and was astonished at himself to
find that he could make a story full of human interest
as easily as he had once indited orders and reports.
He had the faculty of narrative in an unusual degree,
as he had often shown among his intimates; for all
his life he was an entertaining talker, at times mo-
nopolizing conversation in choice groups of friends.
His stillness fell upon him only in public or with those
he slightly knew.
After Shiloh came Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and
the Wilderness for the "Century," and from these
grew the "Memoirs." He was absorbed in his new
work, and urged on by the demand for more. Thus
he occupied the summer at Long Branch, writing
daily with the help of Badeau and his oldest son, who
verified his records and combined his notes; but he
was daily growing feebler, till in October on his return
to town he became conscious of pains shooting
through his throat. The physicians told him it was
cancer. Soon he could not swallow without torture.
He had no wish to live if he could not recover. For a
time he did not care to write or talk. He "often sat
562 ULYSSES S. GRANT
for hours propped up in his chair, with his hands
clasped, looking at the blank wall before him, silent,
contemplating the future; not alarmed, but solemn, at
the prospect of pain and disease; and only death at
the end. It was like a man gazing into his open
grave. He was in no way discouraged," writes Ba-
deau, " but the sight was to me the most appalling
I have ever witnessed."
Then there came a change. He grimly turned
once more to his new work. He would complete his
task for his own sake, his family, and those to whom
he was in debt. The first money he received he sent
the stranger who had given him the loan in May.
But he could hardly hope to wipe out all his obliga-
tions, and when in January came the doctor's final
verdict that he could not recover, he was in mental
agony; not that he had to die, but that he might not
live till he had fully cleared his name.
A bill had passed the Senate the preceding winter
to restore his rank and place him on the retired list
of the Army, but Arthur had hinted that he would
veto it, as in the Fitz John Porter case, if Grant were
to be restored by name. He felt this keenly and it
contributed to his distress.
Soon the world knew that he was dying and sym-
pathy came pouring in from everywhere. The bill
for his retirement, modified to meet the President's
THE END 503
objections, was revised, but was held up for party
reasons in the House, the Democrats attempting to
embarrass Arthur by forcing through the earlier bill,
and thus compelling him to reverse himself or veto it.
Congress was near its end, and Grant, who looked
upon the measure as in some way a vindication, felt
the rebuff. The bill was beaten in the House on
February 16, the anniversary of Donelson. It was
felt then that any day might be his last. The country
was aroused and public sentiment prevailed. On the
4th of March, in the closing hours of Congress, the
bill, amended as Arthur wished, was rushed through
House and Senate by unanimous consent, and Ar-
thur sent in Grant's name just in time. Cleveland
signed the new commission — the second act of his
Administration.
Grant's life thenceforward was a desperate fight
with death. More than once the end seemed right at
hand, and once the doctors thought that it had come.
For months he could not lie in bed, but sat propped
up in chairs, suffering excruciating pain. Even those
with whom he had long been in feud now shared the
universal sympathy. On the anniversary of the day
that Richmond fell he dictated this message: "I
am very much touched and grateful for the sym-
pathy and interest manifested in me by my friends —
and by those who have not hitherto been regarded as
5G4 ULYSSES S. GRANT
friends. I desire the good-will of all, whether hitherto
friends or not."
It is not necessary to prolong the story. Its plain
recital cuts one like a knife. He kept at work upon
his book, dictating when he could not speak above a
whisper, more often penciling his sentences on pads.
The passages he wrote in the last weeks were just and
lucid. They read so simply that we can hardly realize
how every paragraph was drenched in pain. In June
they carried him to Mount McGregor, and there on
July 23 he died. He did not drop his pencil till his
work was done. Three weeks before his death, on
July 2, he wrote to his physician, Dr. Douglass, a
letter with which this record of his life may fittingly
conclude: —
"I ask you not to show this to any one, unless the
physicians you consult with, until the end. Particu-
larly, I want it kept from my family. ... I know
that I gain strength some days, but when I do go
back it is beyond where I started to improve. I
think the chances are very decidedly in favor of
your being able to keep me alive until the change of
weather towards winter. Of course there are con-
tingencies that might arise at any time that would
carry me off suddenly. ... I would say, therefore,
to you and your colleagues, to make me as com-
fortable as you can. If it is within God's providence
■ - msmmm;
From the collection of Frederick Hill He
GRANT WRITING HIS MEMOIRS AT MOUNT McGREGOR
THE END 565
that I should go now, I am ready to obey His call
without a murmur. I should prefer going now to en-
during my present suffering for a single day with-
out hope of recovery. As I have stated, I am thank-
ful for the providential extension of my time to
enable me to continue my work. I am further thank-
ful, and in a much greater degree thankful, because
it has enabled me to see for myself the happy
harmony which has so suddenly sprung up between
those engaged but a few short years ago in deadly
conflict. It has been an inestimable blessing to me to
hear the kind expression towards me in person from
all parts of our country, from people of all nationali-
ties, of all religions and of no religion, of Confederates
and of National troops alike, of soldiers' organiza-
tions, of mechanical, scientific, religious, and other
societies, embracing almost every citizen in the land.
They have brought joy to my heart, if they have not
effected a cure. So to you and your colleagues I
acknowledge my indebtedness for having brought me
through the valley of the shadow of death to enable
me to witness these things."
THE END
INDEX
Abbott, Josiah G., 513.
Acquisition of territory, G.'s
views on, 331.
Adams, Charles Francis, Before
and After the Treaty of Wash-
ington, quoted, 289, 290; as
Minister to Great Britain, de-
mands reparation for damage
caused by Alabama, etc., 293;
quoted, on effect of Sumner's
speech, 295 ; on Geneva Board
of Arbitration, 310; quoted,
on Sumner, 333; quoted, on
himself as candidate for
Liberal Republican nomina-
tion, 414, 415; 282, 380, 412,
413.
Adams, Henry, The Gold Con-
spiracy, 345.
Agassiz, Louis, 291.
Akerman, Amos T., Attorney-
General, 326, 367, 386, 389.
Alabama, reorganized state gov-
ernment in, 230; in 1872, 460,
461.
Alabama claims, Johnson-Clar-
endon Convention, 294, 295;
Sumner's estimate of, 295-97;
reopening of negotiations con-
cerning, 302, 303; the Joint
High Commission, 308, 309;
the Geneva Arbitration and
Award, 310.
Alexander II, Czar, 535.
Allen, John ("Private"), 465.
Allen, William ("Fog-horn"),
499.
Allison, William B., 394.
Ames, Adelbert, Governor of
Mississippi, 464, 465, 466.
Ames, Oakes, and the Credit
Mobilier, 431 ff. ; censured by
House, 434, 435.
Amnesty, special acts for in-
dividuals, 375, 376; G.'s spe-
cial message on, 376 ; general,
blocked by Sumner, is finally
accomplished, 377, 378.
Andrew, John A., 231, 291.
Appomattox Court-House, meet-
ing of G. and Lee at, 196 ff.
Arbitration of international dis-
putes, Treaty of Washington
first triumph of principle of,
309, 310; G. entitled to credit
for establishing, 311.
Argyle, Duchess of, 380.
Arkansas, in 1872 and 1874,
461-63.
Arthur, Chester A., nominated
for Vice-President in 1880,
and why, 546, 547; as Presi-
dent, G.'s relations with, 552-
54; vetoes Fitz-John Porter
bill, 553; 549, 562, 563.
Ashley, James M., 320.
Astor, John Jacob, 552.
Atkinson, Edward, 412.
Augur, C. C, 504.
Babcock, Orville E., his mis-
sion to San Domingo, 314;
unauthorized, signs protocol
providing for annexation to
U.S., 315, 316; his second
visit to San Domingo results
in treaties for annexation,
etc., 317; and the paving con-
tracts, 476 ff. ; the center
of Whiskey Ring scandal,
£76 ff. ; indicted for conspiracy,
481; G. comes to defense of,
508
INDEX
483, 484; acquitted, 484, 485;
his later relations with ('<.,
485; 125, 189, 281, 318, 320,
323, 327, 390.
Back Pay Grab. See Salary
Grab.
Badeau, Adam, his Military
History of the U.S. quoted, on
G., 147-49; his Grant in Peace
quoted, 554; 125, 226, 274,
324, 384, 538, 550 n., 561.
Baez, Buenaventura, President
of San Domingo, seeks inter-
vention of U.S., 313; A. D.
White quoted on, 313; 317.
Baltimore, riots threatened at,
in 1866, 243, 244.
Bancroft, George, 234.
Banks, Nathaniel P., 59, 118,
123, 130, 133, 160, 161.
Barnard, Mr. (whiskey scandal),
478, 479.
Bartlett, William F., 412.
Baxter, Mr. (Arkansas), 461,
462.
Bayard, Thomas F., 513.
Beale, Edward F., 552.
Beauregard, G. P. T., succeeds
to chief command at Shiloh on
death of A. S. Johnston, 88,
89; beaten in second day's
battle, 91, 92; evacuates Cor-
inth, 93; 84, 85, 96, 160, 171.
Belknap, William W., Secretary
of War, investigated by Con-
gressional Committee, 488,
489; impeached, and resigns,
489, 490; Senate fails to con-
vict, 490; 389, 470.
Belknap, Mrs. W. W., 488, 489,
490.
Belmont, Ky., battle of, 63, 64,
65.
Bernard, Montagu, on Joint
High Commission, 309.
Bigelow, John, quoted, on G.'s
first Cabinet, 282, 283; his
Life of Tilden, 512.
Bird, Frank W., 412.
Bishop, J. B., Presidential Nomi-
nations and Elections, 545 n.
Bismarck, Prince Otto von,
498 n., 535.
Black Friday, 342 ff.
Blaine, James G., why he failed
of the nomination in lv7i>,
498, 499; his candidacy in
1880, 537, 542, 544, 545 n.,
547; 433, 511, 541, 550, 552,
553.
Blair, Austin, 412.
Blair, Francis P., Jr., 47, 359,
409.
"Bloody Shirt," waved by Re-
publicans in campaign of
1876, 500.
Borie, Adolph E., 278.
Boston Herald, 356.
Boutwell, George S., Secretary
of the Treasury, 277; and the
corner in gold, 343 ff. ; his deal-
ings with the public debt, 351 ;
433, 439, 445.
Bowers, T. S., 125, 163.
Bowles, Samuel, quoted on G.,
379; his character, 379, 380;
on tariff act of 1872, 397, 398;
382,412,415.
Boynton, Henry V., on G. and
the Whiskey Ring, 485 n.,
488 n.
Bradley, Justice Joseph P., and
the second Legal Tender de-
cision, 354-56; selected as
fifth Supreme Court mem-
ber of Electoral Commission
(1877), 513; his opinion in
Florida case, 514; denounced
by Democrats, 515; 492.
Bragg, Braxton, at Shiloh, 88,
89, 90; 107, 108, 130, 131, 132,
136, 138.
BrinkerhorT, Jacob, 418.
Bristow, Benjamin H., Secretary
of Treasury, 441; and the
Whiskey Ring frauds, 476 ff. ;
INDEX
569
G. displeased with his handling
of the cases, 485, 486; resigns,
487; as candidate for presi-
dential nomination in 1876,
498 and n.
Brodhead, James O., 481.
Brooks, James, 434.
Brooks, Mr. (Arkansas), 461,
462.
Brown, B. Gratz, nominated for
Governor of Missouri, by Re-
publican dissenters in 1872,
409.
Brown, John, of Ossawatomie, 8.
Brown, Owen, father of John, 8.
Bruce, Blanche K., 361.
Bryant, William Cullen, quoted,
on nomination of Greeley,
416; 412, 418.
Buchanan, James, 38, 72, 270,
327.
Buchanan, R. C, forces G.'s re-
tirement, from the army in
1854, 35.
Buckner, Simon B., at West
Point with G., 21 ; in Mexican
War, 30; helps G. in time of
need, 37; in command at
Bowling Green, 69 ; takes com-
mand at Donelson, and sur-
renders to G., 73, 74.
Buell, Don Carlos, at West
Point with G., 21; at Shiloh,
90-92; 57, 69, 70, 77, 78, 84,
85, 86, 93, 94, 95, 133, 150.
Bullock, Rufus B., Governor of
Georgia, 364, 365, 366.
Burnside, Ambrose E., 130, 131,
136, 137, 139, 150.
Butler, Benjamin F., at New
Orleans, 104; his blunders
in command of Army of the
James upset G.'s plans, 170,
171 ; his quarrels with " Baldy"
Smith, 174, 175; alleged by
Smith to have blackmailed G.,
175; sent home "for the good
of the service," 175, 176; G.'s
friendship for, during his
presidency, a mystery, 437;
Butler's Book, 437; controls
patronage in Mass., 437, 438;
selects Simmons for Boston
collectorship, 438; had he a
"hold" on G.? 438; and the
Sanborn contracts, 439 ff. ;
59, 159, 161, 215, 272, 398.
Butler, Matthew C, 361 n.
Butterfield, Daniel, Assistant
Treasurer at N.Y., and the
"Gold Conspiracy," 344 ff.;
forced to resign, 346.
Cabinet of Pres. Johnson, and
the quarrel with G., 264, 265,
266.
Cabinet, G's first, 275-78.
Cabral, Jose M. (San Domingo),
312, 313.
"Casarism," 423, 457, 521.
Cameron, J. Donald, 496, 537,
540, 543, 547.
Cameron, Simon, 145, 320, 385,
387, 401.
Campaign of 1876, the, 500, 501.
Campbell, John A., 188.
Campbell, Mr., Minister to
Mexico, 245, 247.
Canada, annexation of, sug-
gested, 297; real obstacle to
annexation, 297, 298; Sumner
demands Great Britain's with-
drawal from, 307, 308.
Carpenter, Francis B., 168.
Carpenter, Matthew H., de-
fends G. against Sumner, 423,
424; 401.
Carpet-baggers, 272, 358, 359.
Casserly, Eugene, 321.
Castelar, Emilio, 524.
Catacazy, M-, 527.
Cavour, Count, 498 n.
Cedar Creek, battle of, 180.
Century Magazine, G. writes
stories of his battles for, 560,
561; 499 n., 515 n.
570
INDEX
Chaffee, Jerome B., 556.
Chaffee, Miss, 556.
Chamberlain, Daniel H., Gov-
ernor of South Carolina, 472,
518, 549.
Chandler, William E., first to
claim Hayes's election, 501,
502 n.; 552.
Chandler, Zachariah, Secretary
of the Interior, 491 and n.;
213, 215, 297, 328, 380, 384,
387, 401, 500, 501, 502 and n.,
503.
Chapultepec, battle of, 28.
Chase, Salmon P., distrustful of
G.'s success, in 1864, 169; as
Chief Justice, his majority
opinion in Hepburn vs. Gris-
wold, 352, 353; suggests that
Court was packed with a view
to overruling that decision,
355; his death, 492; 223, 356,
398.
Chattanooga, G. arrives at head-
quarters at, 136, 137; battle of,
137-40.
Chicago, whiskey frauds in, 476,
477.
Chicago Tribune, 412, 413.
Chickamauga Creek, battle of,
130, 131, 132.
Childs, George W., his Recollec-
tions quoted, 519 n.; 384, 404,
424, 425.
Cincinnati Commercial, 412, 413.
City Point, G.'s headquarters at,
a secondary Union capital,
188.
Civil Rights bill, of 1866, passed
over Johnson's veto, 236.
Civil Rights bill, of 1875, de-
clared unconstitutional, 463;
377, 378.
Civil Service Commission, cre-
ated, 400; appropriation for,
withheld, 400 ff.
Civil-Service reform, in party
platforms of 1872, 419, 420.
Clarendon, George W. F. Villiers,
Earl of, 294, 300.
Cleveland, Grover, signs G.'s
new commission as lieutenant-
general, 563.
Clifford, Justice Nathan, 353,
513.
Clymer, Heister, 489.
Cobden Club, 395.
Cockburn, Sir Alexander, on
Geneva Board, 310.
Cold Harbor, battle of, 165, 166;
G.'s admission concerning,
165.
Colfax, Schuyler, Vice-President
with G., 270, 271; 421, 433.
Colfax, La., massacre of negroes
at, 468.
Columbus, Ky., seized by Polk,
61.
Comstock, Cyrus B., 125, 259,
263.
Confederacy, the, condition and
prospects of, when G. as-
sumed chief command, \b2ff.;
in sore straits in winter of
1864, 187, 188.
Confederates, amnesty granted
to, 375, 376.
Congress, Thirty-Eighth, fails to
recognize reconstituted state
government of Louisiana,
210, 211.
Thirty-Ninth, opposition to
Johnson's policy in, organized
by Stevens and Sumner, 231;
refuses to admit members
from reconstructed States,
234, 235; passes Freedmen's
Bureau bill, but sustains veto,
235; overrides veto of Civil
Rights bill, resolution leading
to 14th Amendment, new
Freedmen's Bureau bill, 236,
Reconstruction Act (1867),
and Tenure of Office Act, 248,
249; Reconstruction measures
of, reviewed, 250.
INDEX
571
Fortieth, adverse results of
elections to, 240; strips John-
son of authority under Recon-
struction acts, 251; Senate re-
fuses assent to suspension of
Stanton, 259; House passes
resolutions of impeachment
of Johnson, 259, 269; trial of
Johnson, in Senate, results in
acquittal, 269, 270; passes
resolution concerning removal
of civil officers in the South,
272.
Forty-First, Senate refuses
to ratify Johnson-Clarendon
Convention, 295, and San
Domingo treaties, 320-323;
Senate appoints committee
to investigate San Domingo
matter, 326 ff. ; Cuban ques-
tion debated in, 339; passes
act to strengthen public credit,
341 ; bars representatives from
Georgia, 364; passes "En-
forcement Acts," 369 ff., and
many special amnesty acts,
375, 376.
Forty-Second, Senate rati-
fies Treaty of Washington,
309; Senate deposes Sumner
from chairmanship of Foreign
Relations Committee, 333,
385; passes act to enforce pro-
visions of 14th Amendment,
373; House passes general
amnesty bill, 378; tariff bills
passed by, 397; passes Civil-
Service Reform Act, 400, but
withholds appropriation for
Commission, 400 ff.; investi-
gates Credit Mobilier scandal,
433, 434; passes salary in-
crease bill, 435, 436.
Forty-Third, repeals salary
increase, as to Members of
Congress, 437; investigates
Sanborn contracts, 440; and
the currency, 445 ff.; passes
inflation bill, 448, which G.
vetoes, 451; passes Resump-
tion Act, 454, 455; passes
Civil Rights bill, 463; House
investigates Belknap case
and passes resolutions of im-
peachment, 488, 489; Senate
acquits Belknap, and why,
490.
Forty-Fourth, House con-
trolled by Democrats, 452;
House had made itself obnox-
ious, 496; House passes anti-
third-term resolution, 497 n.;
and the disputed election of
1876, 507 ff.; bill creating
Electoral Commission re-
ported by special committee,
and passed, 510, 511; Demo-
crats in, and the threat to de-
lay count of vote until after
March 4, 515, 516.
Forty-Eighth, passes bill
making it possible to restore
G. to his former rank, etc.,
563.
Conkling, A. B., Life and Letters
of Roscoe Conkling, 550 n.
Conkling, Roscoe, declines
Chief-Justiceship, 493; leads
G.'s supporters in Conven-
tion of 1880, 544; J. B. Bishop
quotedon hisleadership,545n.;
takes stump for Garfield, 550;
resigns Senatorship and seeks
reelection, 550 and n.; 328,
384, 401, 410, 433, 496, 498
and n., 499, 511, 519 n., 537,
540, 546, 547, 549, 551.
Constitution, Fourteenth Amend-
ment, seceding States refuse
to ratify, 241; act to enforce
provisions of, 373; 236, 237,
364, 365.
Fifteenth Amendment, rati-
fied, 335, 368; 273, 363, 365.
Cooke, Jay, & Co., failure of, and
its consequences, 444 ff.
572
INDEX
Corbin, Abel R., G.'s brother-
in-law, and the "Gold Con-
spiracy," 343 ff.; 274.
Corbin, Mrs. Abel R., 348.
Corinth, Miss., taken by Hal-
leck, 96; 84, 85, 93, 106, 107.
Cornell, Alonzo B., 549, 550 n.
Coushatta, La., 468, 409.
Cox, Jacob D., Secretary of the
Interior, 278, 386; resigns,
386-88; joins Liberal Repub-
lican movement, 389, 412;
315, 316, 418, 490 and n.
Cramer, Michael J., G.'s brother-
in-law, appointed Minister to
Denmark, 391, 392; 550 n.
Credit Mobilier scandal, the,
431 ff.
Creswell, John A. J., Post-
master-General, 278.
Crittenden, Thomas L., 130.
Crosby, Sheriff (Miss.), 464.
Cuba, problem of, 336 ff.
Cuban insurgents, issuance of
proclamation recognizing bel-
ligerency of, blocked by Fish,
337-39.
Cumberland, Army of the,
130 ff.
Currency, G.'s views on, 350,
445, 446; inflation bill, vetoed
by G., 448-51.
Curtis, George W., commends
G.'s attack on spoils system,
399, 403, 404; 103, 380, 384,
393, 505.
Cushing, Caleb, his part in re-
opening negotiations with
Great Britain, 302; nomina-
tion of, for Chief Justice, with-
drawn, 494, 495 ; 310.
Dana, Charles A., his Recollec-
tions of the Civil War quoted,
on Rawlins and G., 126, 127,
and on G., 129; sent by
Stanton "to spy out the
Western armies," etc., 126; a
factor in fixing G.'s reputa-
tion, 127; Lincoln's support of
G. largely due to his reports,
128; trusted by G., 128; after
Vic-ksburg suggests G. as com-
mander-in-chief of Armies of
the West, 129; quoted on
Missionary Ridge, 138, 139,
and on Meade, 157; 119, 132,
133, 134.
Dana, Richard H., Jr., quoted
on G. in Washington, 146,
147; 291.
Davis, Charles H., 104.
Davis, Justice David, candi-
date for nomination of Liberal
Republicans in 1872, 413, 414;
354, 513, 515 and n.
Davis, Jefferson, leaves Rich-
mond, 193; captured, 200; 84,
88, 162, 173, 188, 205, 363,
377, 494.
Davis, John C. Bancroft, 310,
337.
Dawes, Henry L., 379, 397.
De Grey, George F. S. Robin-
son, Earl, on Joint High Com-
mission, 309.
Delano, Columbus, Secretary of
the Interior, 387, 389, 490, 491.
Democratic Convention of 1872,
indorses Greeley, 421.
Democrats, control House in
44th Congress, 452; responsi-
ble for passage of bill creating
Electoral Commission, 511;
angered by its decision, 514,
they denounce Bradley, 515,
and threaten to delay the
count by filibustering, 515,
516.
Dent, Frederick T., G.'s brother-
in-law, 25, 390.
Dent, Julia, becomes G.'s wife,
25-27. And see Grant, Mrs.
Julia Dent.
Dent, "Colonel," G.'s father-in-
law, 25, 27, 37, 38, 42.
INDEX
573
Donelson, Fort, strategic posi-
tion of, 69; attacked and
taken by force under G., 72-
74; capture of, the first sub-
stantial victory for the North,
75.
Douglas, Stephen A., 270.
Douglass, Dr., attends G. in his
last illness, 564, 565.
Dyer, Mr., and the whiskey
frauds, 478 ff.
Early, Jubal A., his raid in
July, 1864, 172; beaten by
Sheridan in the Valley, 179,
180.
Edmunds, George F., 370, 510,
511, 513, 542.
Election of 1868, 270, 271.
Election of 1872, 425, 427.
Election of 1876, dispute over,
501 ff.
Elections of Representatives in
Congress placed under federal
control, 371.
Electoral College, vote of, in
1876, 507.
Electoral Commission (1877)
bill creating passes both
Houses, 510, 511; composi-
tion of, 513; decision of, 514,
515; G.'s share in creation of,
and securing acquiescence in
its decision, 519 and n., 520.
Elliott, Robert, 361.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 291.
"Enforcement Acts," passed by
41st Congress, 370 ff. And
see Supreme Court of the
U.S.
England, G.'s reception in, 534,
535. And see Great Britain.
Erie Railroad, 342.
Europe, G.'s visit to (1877),
534 ff.
.Evans, Mr., and the Belknap
scandal, 488, 489.
Evarts, William M., 310, 537.
Ewell, Richard S., at West
Point with G., 21 ; quoted, 23;
193, 194.
Farragut, David G., takes New
Orleans, 104, and Mobile, 177;
238.
Fenianism, 294, 297, 307.
Fenton, Reuben E., 410, 411.
Ferry, Thomas W., 447.
Fessenden, William P., 222.
Field, Justice Stephen J., 353,
513.
Fillmore, Millard, 535.
Financial Affairs. See Currency,
Greenbacks, Specie Payments.
Fish, Hamilton, succeeds Wash-
burne as Secretary of State,
282; relations with Sumner,
285 ; his instructions to Motley
as Minister to Great Britain,
299, 300; censures Motley for
disregarding instructions, 301 ;
opens negotiations with Rose,
302, 303; agrees on basis of
negotiations, 306 ; Sumner's
note to, 307, 308; on Joint
High Commission, 308; and
Babcock's "queer perform-
ance" in San Domingo, 315;
his difficult position, 316;
resigns, but yields on San
Domingo, 317; demands Mot-
ley's resignation, 323, 324; on
the reasons for Motley's re-
moval, 332; Sumner's break
with, 332, 333; and the Cuban
problem, 336 ff. ; blocks issu-
ance of proclamation recogniz-
ing belligerency of insurgents,
337-39 ; G.'s later relations
with, 384; quoted, 406; as a
"dark horse" in 1876, 498
and n.; G.'s high estimate of,
498 n. ; 284, 292, 298, 323, 368,
516, 522, 523, 524, 525.
Fish, James F., 556, 557, 560.
Fish, Nicholas, 324, 550 n.
574
INDEX
Fishbaok, George W., 477.
Fisher, Fort, capture of, 187.
Fisk, James, Jr., and "Black
Friday," 342 ff.
Fiske, John, 91.
Five Forks, battle of, and its
effects, 192, 193.
Florida, in disputed election of
1S76, 502, 503 and n., 504,
505, 507, 508, 509, 513, 514.
Floyd, John B., in command at
Donelson, 72, 73; hands over
command to Buckner, 73.
Foote, Andrew H., cooperates
with G. in attack on Donel-
son, 70-72; 77.
Foreign policy, G.'s statement
of, in inaugural, 335, 336.
Forney, John W., and the quar-
rel between G. and Sumner,
317 ff.
Forrest, Nathan B., 107, 108.
Foster, Charles, 471.
Franco-Prussian War, 305.
Franklin, William B., at West
Point with G., 21.
Franklin, Tenn., battle of, 182.
Frederick, Crown Prince of
Germany (1877), 535.
Free traders, nominate Groes-
beck for President in 1872,
418.
Freedmen's Bureau bill, first,
vetoed by Johnson, 235; sec-
ond, passed over Johnson's
veto, 236.
Frelinghuysen, Frederick T.,
331, 513, 552, 554.
Fremont, John C, commands
Department of the West, 57;
reprimands G., 63; his procla-
mation of confiscation and
emancipation in Missouri,
modified by Lincoln, 67, 68;
superseded by Halleck, 68;
nominated for President by
radical Republicans, 1864,
172; 38, 59, 61, 62, 66, 270.
Fry, James B., quoted concern-
ing G. at West Point, 22, 23.
Frye, William P., 472.
Gambetta, L6on, 535.
Garfield, James A., "almost a
free trader," 394; quoted on
the tariff, 394, 395; nominated
for President in 1880, 546;
death of, 551; 433, 505, 513,
549, 550.
Garland, A. H., Governor of
Alabama, 462, 463.
Garland, Colonel, on G. at
Chapultepec, 28.
Garrison, William Lloyd, 233.
Geneva Arbitration Board, its
membership and award, 310.
Georgetown, Ohio, 5, 6.
Georgia, reorganized state gov-
ernment in, 230; second "re-
construction" in, 363-67;
secures "home rule," 366; 360.
Gibbon, Edward, 68.
Gillmore, Quincy A., 174.
Godkin, Edwin L., quoted on
Motley, 292 n.; 380, 382, 398,
412, 417, 491.
Godwin, Parke, quoted, on
nomination of Greeley, 417.
Gold, manipulation of, by
Gould and Fisk, 343 ff.
"Gold Conspiracy," the, 342.
Gortchakoff, Prince, 498 n., 535.
Gould, Jay, and "Black Friday,"
342 ff.
('■rant, Frederick D., G.'s son,
556, 561.
Grant, Hannah (Simpson), G.'s
mother, 4; some characteris-
tics of, inherited by G., 8, 9;
G.'s relations with, 8, 9.
Grant, Jesse Root, G.'s father,
at Point Pleasant, 3, 4; moves
to Georgetown, O., 4, 5; his
character and opinions, 6, 7;
G.'s relations with, 9; decides
to send G. to West Point, 17;
INDEX
575
on G.'s resignation from the
army, 36; in prosperous cir-
cumstances, 39; his injudi-
cious defense of G., 100, 102;
letters of G. to, 101, 102, 142;
postmaster at Covington, Ky . ,
391; 11, 13, 18,43,46, 52,53,
54, 390, 392.
Grant, Jesse R., G.'s son, 534,
556.
Grant, Mrs. Julia (Dent), G.'s
wife, 37, 191, 217, 348, 391,
534, 560.
Grant, Matthew, 7.
Grant, Nellie. See Sartoris,
Nellie (Grant).
Grant, Noah, G.'s grandfather,
7, 8."
Grant, Peter, G.'s half-brother,
8.
Grant, Simpson, G.'s brother,
39.
Grant, Ulysses S.
I. Early years.
Birth, 3; first called Hiram
Ulysses, 4; entered at West
Point as Ulysses Simpson by
mistake, 4; characteristics in-
herited from his mother, 9;
his knack with horses, 9, 10,
12; his persistence, 9; his
youth of hard work, 10, 11;
the best-traveled boy in the
village, 11, 12; anecdotes, 11-
14; his early schooling, 15, 16;
certain traits of, 15, 16; re-
fuses to follow his father's
trade, 17; appointed to West
Point, 17, 18; his views there-
on, 17, 18; quoted concerning
his term there, 19, 20; his
nicknames, 21; certain fellow
cadets quoted concerning, 21,
22, 23; his feats of horseman-
ship, 22; his admiration for
Scott and C. F. Smith, 23, 24;
his rank on graduation, 24;
commissioned in Fourth Infan-
try, 24 ; distaste for military
uniforms, 24, 25; at Jefferson
Barracks, 25, 26; pays court
to Julia Dent, and marries
her, 25-27; joins Taylor's
army of occupation, 27; op-
posed to Mexican War, 27, 28;
his service in the War, 28-30;
describes his feelings in bat-
tle, 29, 30; his experience in
Mexico of great service to him
in the Civil War, 30; a sub-
altern at frontier posts, 30 ff. ;
ordered to California, 32; his
quality shown on the journey
across the Isthmus, 32; at
Vancouver and Humboldt,
32, 33; fondness for his home,
33 ; extent of his addiction to
drink, 33; why did he leave
the army? 34; resigns on pro-
motion to captaincy, 35; tries
farming at Whitehaven, 37,
38; in real estate business in
St. Louis, 38 ; had no political
affiliations, 38; clerk for his
brothers at Galena, 111., 39,
40.
II. The Civil War (1).
On the approach of war, 41,
42 ; drills Galena company, 41 ;
his views after Sumter, 42-44;
at Springfield, filling out army
forms, 46; drill-master at out-
lying camps, 46, 47 ; offers his
services to Adjutant-General
of the army, 48, 49; appointed
colonel of 21st Illinois Volun-
teers, 50; first contact with
his command, 51, 52; six
weeks in Missouri, 52-55; his
first experience in independ-
ent command, 55, 56; made
brigadier-general by Lincoln,
58; Washburne's friendship
for, 58 ; his advantageous posi-
tion, 59, 60; in camp at Cairo,
Ky., 61; seizes Paducah, 62;
576
INDEX
warns Kentucky legislature,
62: reprimanded by Fremont,
63; attacks Polk's camp a1
Belmont, 63-65; his command
consists almost wholly of vol-
unteers, 66; his plan of opera-
tions received coldly by Hal-
leck, 68, 69; his plan described,
69, 70; takes Fort Henry, 71;
attacks Fort Donelson, and
compels its surrender, 72-74;
Buckner quoted concerning,
74; Sherman's magnanimity
toward, 74, 75; the military
idol of the day, 75; markedly
excluded by Halleck from com-
mendation for Donelson, 76,
77, but is first man promoted
to major-general by Lincoln,
77; charged by Halleck with
disobedience to orders, and su-
perseded by C. F. Smith, 7s,
79; grudgingly restored to his
command by Halleck, 79,
who wrongfully attributes re-
sponsibility to McClellan, 80,
81; his Memoirs quoted, 81,
82; his relations with Smith.
82; his Memoirs quoted, as to
best plan of campaign after
Donelson, 83; proposes to ad-
vance on Corinth, 85; but is
forced to fight at Shiloh, 86
88; his imperturbability, 87;
fighting at a disadvantage, 88 ;
theory on which he fought the
second day's battle, 89, 90;
called "Butcher Grant," 90;
why he did not pursue the
beaten foe, 91, 92; Northern
denunciation of, after Shiloh,
94; suggests movement on
Vicksburg, and is rebuked by
Halleck, 95; his strategic
theory, 95, 96; Halleck's
treatment of, 96, 97; asks to
be relieved from duty, 97;
Sherman's advice to, 97, 98;
defended by Sherman, 98, and
bitterly criticized by Harlan,
98, 99; restored to separate
command and goes to Mem-
phis, 99; succeeds Halleck in
Western command, 99, 100;
at Corinth, doing nothing,
in suinmerof 1862, 100; letters
to Washburne and to his
father on the attacks upon
him, 100, 102; results of his
strategy down to Shiloh, 104;
his original plan for reduction
of Vicksburg, concerted with
Sherman, 106, 107; its failure,
107, 108; McClernand's am-
bition and rivalry the main
obstacle to his success, 109-
11; recalls McClernand, 111:
ultimate result of his con-
troversy with McClernand,
112; relieves him of his com-
mand for breach of discipline,
112, 113; McClernand's last
attack on, unsuccessful, 113;
Sherman quoted on, 114; his
further plans against Vicks-
burg, 115; expels "Jews as a
class" from his department,
115; his order countermand-
ed by Lincoln, 116; on trial
at Washington, 116; ignores
Stanton's "bribe," 116; the
"wonderful" Vicksburg cam-
paign, 117-19; his one set-
back, 118; Pcmberton sur-
renders to, 119; Sherman gives
full credit to, for plan and exe-
cution, 119, 120; his fame safe
i hereafter, 120; his conviction
that he was to be the one to
end the war, 120, 121; Lin-
coln's letter to, 122, 123 ; made
a major-general, 123; his rela-
tions with Rawlins, 124 ff. ;
Rawlins's influence on, 1L'.">,
126; his drinking habit, and
Rawlins's service to him in
INDEX
577
connection therewith, 125,
126; his indebtedness to Dana,
and relations with him, 123,
128; Young and Dana quoted
concerning, 128, 129; his army
scattered after Vicksburg,
130; and Rosecrans, 131; dis-
courages suggestions that he
be transferred to the East,
131, 132; placed by Stanton
in command of new Depart-
ment of the Mississippi, 133;
headquarters at Chattanoo-
ga, 134, 135; relations with
Thomas, 134; Chattanooga,
the most completely planned
of all his battles, 137, 138;
Lincoln's telegram to, 139;
" the coming man," 139 ; grade
of lieutenant-general revived
for, 140; made General-in-
Chief of all the armies of the
U.S., 140; letters to Wash-
burne and Jesse Grant as to
his ambition, 141, 142; dissi-
pates Lincoln's fear of the
"man on horseback," 141,
142; remains at Nashville
through winter of 1863-64,
143; his fine letter to Sher-
man, and Sherman's reply,
143, 144; urged by Sherman
to remain in West, 144.
III. The Civil War (2).
At Washington to receive
his commission, 145 ff.; his
first interview with Lincoln,
145; pen-pictures of, by R. H.
Dana, 146, Horace Porter,
147, and Badeau, 147, 148;
Lincoln's parting words to,
and his reply, 149, 150; Lin-
coln's dealings with, contrast-
ed with those with other
generals, 150, 151; conditions,
military and political, North
and South, when he took com-
mand, 152-54; his relations
with Meade, 154-56; his re-
view of past operations, and
plan of campaign, 157-59;
aims to destroy Lee's army,
159 ff.; capture of Richmond
subordinate thereto, 159; his
all-embracing plan, 160-62;
underrates Lee, 162; the cam-
paign in Virginia, 162 ff. ; the
Wilderness, 163; his reception
of bad news, 163; "a dis-
closure of his soul," 164; from
the Wilderness to the repulse
at Cold Harbor, 165, 166, 168;
the frontal charge a mistake,
165; "I propose to fight it
out on this line if it takes all
summer," 166; character of
his campaign changed after
Cold Harbor, 166; eludes Lee
by flanking movement and
threatens Petersburg, 167;
criticized on account of the
campaign, 168, 169; his aims
and achievements compared
with McClellan's, 169, 170;
quoted by J. R.Young, 170 n.;
his plans foiled by blunders of
Butler and Smith, 170, 171 ; at
City Point in winter of 1864-
65, 172; his troubles with his
subordinates, 174; the Butler-
Smith dispute, 174, 175; why
he relieved Smith from duty,
174, 175; relieves Butler after
Fort Fisher, 175, 176; or-
ders Sheridan to transform
Meade's cavalry into a fight-
ing force, 177, 178; sends
Sheridan against Early, 179,
180; quoted on Sheridan, ISO,
181; approves Sherman's plan
for marching to the sea, 181,
182; fails to appreciate
Thomas, 183; chafes over
Thomas's failure to attack
Hood at Nashville, 183-85;
recommends Thomas's ap-
578
INDEX
pointment as a major-general
after the battle, 185; momen-
tarily outdazzled by Sherman,
186; their cordial relations,
186; events shape the success
of his grand strategy, 187;
his headquarters at City
Point, 188-91; leaves City
Point, 191; occupies Peters-
burg, 192, 193; asks Lee to
surrender, 194; their corre-
spondence, 194-96; meets
Lee at Appomattox Court-
House, 196 ff. ; the terms of
surrender, 197 and n., 198,
199; informs Stanton of the
surrender, 199; a tower of
strength in Washington after
Lincoln's death, 200; saves
Sherman from humiliation in
matter of Johnston's surren-
der, 201; reviews the army,
201; disbanding the armies,
202.
IV. In Johnson's Adminis-
tration.
Distrusts Seward, 103; re-
lations with Stanton, 203,
217, 227, 260 n.; opposes
Johnson's threat to try Lee
for treason, 203-05; urges in-
tervention to drive Maximil-
ian from Mexico, 206, 207;
Johnson seeks to make him
his friend, 217; his non-com-
mittal policy, 218; his mission
to the South, and his report,
220-22; his troubles in Wash-
ington, 226, 227; a giant
among pygmies, 227 ; if he had
been in supreme control, 227,
228; his Personal History
quoted on negro suffrage, 228,
and on Reconstruction, 229;
forced by circumstances to
support wholesale negro suf-
frage, 229, 457; his "swing
around the circle" with John-
son, and its effect, 238, 239;
letter of, to Sheridan on con-
ditions in South, 239, 240;
quoted as to his actions during
the trouble between Johnson
and Stanton, 242, 243; in-
duces Johnson not to send
troops to Baltimore, 243, 244;
ordered to Mexico by John-
son, but declines to go, 244-
47; his justification, 245, 246;
Sherman quoted on the sub-
ject, 246, 247; and the Recon-
struction Act, 249; has lit-
tle influence on legislation,
251; protests against removal
of Stanton and Sheridan,
251-53; uncertainty as to his
attitude, 254, 256; appointed
Acting Secretary of War, 254,
255; G. Welles quoted on, 255;
his taking the office a mistake,
256, 257; his action criti-
cized in North, 256, 258; breaks
with Johnson over removal of
Sheridan, 257, 258; relin-
quishes office to Stanton, 259;
Stanton's discourtesy to, 260;
question of veracity between
Johnson and, 261 ff.; his
meeting with the Cabinet,
Jan. 14, 1868, 263-65; his
correspondence with Johnson
challenges the latter's verac-
ity, 265-68; refuses to hold
further intercourse with John-
son or his Cabinet, 268; nomi-
nated for President by Repub-
licans, 270, 271, and elected,
271; in seclusion between
nomination and election, 272.
V. President.
Confronted by critical con-
ditions in the South, 273; re-
fuses to ride with Johnson on
inauguration day, 274; his
first inaugural written wholly
by himself, 274, 275; his Cab-
INDEX
579
inet, 275-78; asks Senate to
repeal the law making Stewart
ineligible for Treasury, 276;
brief review of his adminis-
tration, 278-80; selects Fish
as Secretary of State, 281;
Seward's criticism of the ap-
pointment, 281, 282; J. Bige-
low quoted on the Cabinet,
282, 283; relations with Sum-
ner, 284 ff. ; mental and physi-
cal contrast between Sumner
and, 289, 290; believes in ex-
pansion toward the South,
297, 298; quoted on Motley's
instructions and his disregard
of them, 301 ; gives Fish a free
hand with Great Britain, 304 ;
his first annual message, 304;
his second annual message,
305; approves of Fish's ignor-
ing Sumner in renewed ne-
gotiations, 308 ; entitled to
credit for establishing princi-
ple of arbitration of interna-
tional disputes, 311; Baez of
San Domingo makes over-
tures to, 313; sends Babcock
to San Domingo to report on
Samana Bay, 314, 315; his
attitude on Babcock's action,
315, 316; induces Fish to favor
annexation, 316, 317; seeks
ratification of treaty of an-
nexation which results from
Babcock's second mission,
317 ff. ; his attempt to win
Sumner, and the ensuing
quarrel, 317-20; charged by
Sumner with being intoxi-
cated at the interview, 319;
his persistent attempts to in-
fluence Senators, 320-23, 321
ft. ; angered by defeat of treaty,
323; was Motley's removal an
act of reprisal against Sum-
ner? 323, 324, 331, 332; why
Hoar was asked to resign, 325 ;
revives San Domingo issue,
326; Sumner's violent attack
on, 327, 328; his message
transmitting report of San
Domingo Committee, 328,
329; A. D. White quoted on,
329, 330; his purpose in re-
gard to San Domingo justified
by events, 330; his views on
acquisition of territory, 331;
Fish's comment on his toler-
ance of honest difference of
opinion, as applied to Sum-
ner, 332, 333; Sumner's con-
tinued denunciation of, 333;
his own comment on his rela-
tions with Sumner, 334; his
inaugural address, 335, 336;
his foreign policy, 335; pro-
poses tr> recognize belligerency
of Cuba n insurgents, but is dis-
suaded by Fish, 337-39; his
declaration on public credit,
339, 340; his connection with
Gould and "Black Friday,"
through Corbin, 343 ff. ; his
recommendations concerning
the currency, 350; appoints
Strong and Bradley to Su-
preme Court, 354-56; charged
with "packing" the Court,
355; problem of the negro
and the South, 357 ff. ; con-
ditions that he had to meet,
362 ff. ; his action in Georgia,
364, and No. Carolina, 367;
his special messages on ratifi-
cation of 15th Amendment,
368, 369, and on report of
committee to investigate af-
fairs in South, 372; acts in
So. Carolina under Ku-Klux
Act, 374; rehabilitation of
seceding States due to his
firmness in executing laws, 375;
signs general amnesty bill, 375;
S. Bowles quoted on, 379;
Motley and Holmes quoted on,
580
INDEX
380, 381; why ho failed to
retain the liking of men of
their type, 3N2; his ingenuous-
ness in politics, 3N2; hi* indif-
ference to literature, 383, 384;
his favorite companions, 384;
early signs of party disaffec-
tion with, and their causes,
385-89; deterioration of his
Cabinet, 389, 390; his military
aides, 390; his many relatives,
390, 391; Sumner's charge of
"nepotism," 391, 392; freely
accepts gifts, 392; Rawlins's
death a loss to, 393; C. E.
Norton quoted, on his needs
in the way of counselors, 393;
his messages of 1870 and 1871
quoted, on the tariff, 396, 397;
his civil-service record, 398 ff. ;
commended by Curtis, 399,
400, 403, 404; urges appropria-
tions for Civil Service Com-
mission, 400; abandons the
attempt at reform, 402, 403;
his interest in the Indians,
404, 405; quoted, on the <>\ er-
righteous, 405, 406; dissatis-
faction with, the only bond
among Liberal Republicans,
410, 413; their "Address" an
undiluted denunciation of,
418, 419; renominated by
Republicans, 420; Sumner's
May 31 speech on, 421, 422,
423; cry of "Csesarism"
raised against, 423, 457; de-
fended by Carpenter, 423,
424; reelected, 425; meanint:
of result of election, 427, 428;
his two faults, 428; signs sal-
ary increase bill, 436; Butler's
unfortunate influence over,
437, 438; his leniency to Rich-
ardson in matter of Sanborn
contracts, 410, 441; refuses to
innate currency in panic of
1873, 444, 445; his annual
message of 1873 quoted on
financial matters, 446, 447;
vetoes inflation bill, 448-51;
his action commended, 451;
in annual message of 1874
urges resumption, 452-54;
quoted on the problem of the
South, 458, 459; his special
message on Arkansas troubles,
462; refuses to proclaim mar-
tial law in Mississippi, 464,
465; his special message on
Louisiana troubles, 468; pro-
tects Kellogg government
there, 469; Sherman quoted
on his honesty, 473; his loy-
alty to his friends, worthy or
unworthy, 474; relations with
Babcock, 475; compromised
by Babcock in whiskey
frauds, 476 ff. ; angered by
"persecution" of Babcock,
480; charged with intervening
to protect him, 481, 482; tes-
tifies in his favor, 483, 484;
relations with Babcock after
his acquittal, 4S5; prejudiced
against BristOw,485, 486, who
resigns Treasury portfolio,
487; accepts Belknap's resig-
nation "with regret" after
his impeachment, 489, 490;
appoints Chandler Secretary
of the Interior, 491 ; charac-
ter of his appointments to
Supreme Court, 492 ; his vari-
ous nominations for Chief
Justice to succeed Chase, 493-
95; finally appoints Waite,
495; his attitude on a third
term in 1876, 497; emoted on
the candidates for the succes-
sion, 498 n.; takes measures to
keep the pence after the elec-
tion, 503, 504; sends "Visiting
Statesmen" to Louisiana,
505; strives to bring about a
peaceful settlement, 509, 510;
INDEX
581
approves Electoral Commis-
sion bill, 511, 512; his atti-
tude a powerful factor in bring-
ing about a peaceful solution,
519 and n., 520; his adminis-
tration reviewed, 521 ff. ; his
firm and consistent foreign
policy, 522, 523; the Virgin-
ius case, 523-25; his messages
and second inaugural quoted,
as to his policies, 525-27; up-
holds American rights abroad,
527, 528; urges building up of
an American merchant ma-
rine, 528, 529 ; on the perils of
an ignorant, foreign-born elec-
torate, 529, 530; reduction of
public debt, 530, 531; his ad-
ministration, in constructive
achievement, second only to
Washington's, 532.
VI. Last Years.
His trip around the world,
534 ff. ; J. R. Lowell quoted on,
536; his friends out of credit
with Hayes's Administration,
537; beginning of third-term
talk, 538; his return from
abroad premature, 539; goes
to Mexico and Cuba, 539 ; the
engineers of the third-term
plan, 539, 540; quoted as to
his attitude toward the plan,
540, 541 ; the Republican Con-
vention of 1880, 542 ff.; his
forces led by Conkling, 544,
545 and n.; his friends stand
by him to the end, 546; his
feeling as to the result, 547,
548; supports the ticket, 550;
sympathizes with Conkling in
his row with Garfield, 550,
551; relations with President
Arthur, 552, 553; the Fitz-
John Porter case, 553; com-
missioner to negotiate com-
mercial treaty with Mexico,
554, 555; had fallen in public
esteem, and why, 555; the
Grant & Ward disaster, 556-
59; loses all his property,
559; is helped by friends, 559,
560; writes the story of his
battles for the Century, 561,
followed by his Personal
Memoirs, 561, 562, 563, 564;
Congress passes bill under
which he is restored to rank of
lieutenant-general (March 3,
1885), 563; his commission
signed by Cleveland, 563; his
death, 564; his letter to Dr.
Douglass, 564, 565.
Grant, Ulysses S., Jr., and
Grant & Ward, 556 ff.
Grant & Ward, 556 ff.
Great Britain, outstanding dif-
ferences with, 293; the John-
son - Clarendon Convention,
294 ff. ; violently attacked by
Sumner, 295, 296; Fish's in-
structions to Motley, 299,
300 ; reopening of negotiations
with, 303 ff., 306 ff.; Sumner
insists on withdrawal of, from
Canada, 307, 308; the Joint
High Commission, 308, 309;
negotiations with, influence
handling of Cuban problem,
337, 338.
Greeley, Horace, on Missouri
Liberal Republicans, 410; his
dissatisfaction with G.'s ad-
ministration leads to his in-
dorsement of Liberal Repub-
lican movement, 411; nomi-
nated by Liberal Republicans
for President, 415; unreason of
his nomination, 415, 416; di-
vers comments on it, 416,417;
indorsed by Democrats, 421;
had no chance of election,
422 ; his overwhelming defeat,
425, and death, 426; 395, 413,
427, 551.
Greenbacks, retired by Mc-
582
INDEX
Cullough, 444, 445; G. refuses
to reissue in 1873, 446; pro-
posals in Congress to reissue,
447; bill to authorize maxi-
mum of $400,000,000 vetoed
by G., 448-51.
Grier, Justice, 354.
Grimes, James \V., criticizes G.'s
generalship, in Senate, 169.
Groesbeck, William S., nomi-
nated for President by free
traders in 1872, 418.
Hague Tribunal, the, 311.
Halleck, Henry W., supersedes
Fremont, 68 ; his character, 68 ;
and G.'s plan of operations,
68,69; after Donelson, praises
everybody but G., 76, 77;
reprimands G., and puts
Smith over his head, 78, 79;
grudgingly restores G. to his
command, 79; attributes mis-
understanding to McClellan,
80, 81; G.'s comment on his
action, 81, 82 ; his plan of cam-
paign after Donelson, 84;
his humorous "capture" of
Corinth, 93; difference be-
tween his strategic theory and
G.'s, 95, 96; his treatment of
G., 96, 97; his reply to Lin-
coln as to responsibility for
Shiloh, 97; made commander-
in-chief, vice McClellan, 99,
100; and G.'s Vicksburg cam-
paign, 117 ff. ; his prejudice
against G. overcome by Vicks-
burg, 121; 59, 71, 72, 83, 94,
105, 111, 131, 134, 136, 137,
150, 165, 166, 167, 184, 226.
Halstead, Murat, 412, 414.
Hamer, Thomas L., appoints G.
to West Point, 17.
Hamilton, Schuyler, at WTest
Point with G., 21.
Hamlin, Hannibal, 494.
Hampton, Wade, 518.
Hancock, Winfield S., 247, 549.
Hardee, William J., at Wesl
Point with G., 21; quoted,
23.
Harlan, James, criticizes G. in
Senate, 98, 99; 321.
Harris, guerrilla officer, 54, 55.
Harrison, Benjamin, 492.
Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden Dis-
puted Election, quoted, 509,
510.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 291.
Hay, John, 214.
Hayes, Rutherford B., nomi-
nated for President in 1876,
498, 499; dispute as to his
election, 501 ff. ; has majority
of one in Electoral College,
507; declared elected, 516;
was he a fraudulent incum-
bent? 517, 520, withdraws
troops from Charleston, 518;
pledged against a second term,
537, but could not have been
reelected, 537; 455, 508, 509,
511, 546, 547.
Hayti, 312.
Heintzelmann, Samuel P., 59.
Henderson, John B., and the
whiskey frauds, 478 ff.
Henry, Fort, strategic position
of, 69; taken by G., 71.
Hepburn vs. Griswold (Legal
Tender case), 352-54; over-
ruled, 355.
Hewitt, Abram S., 501, 505, 506,
510.
Hillyer, Captain, 121.
Hoadley, George, 412.
Hoar, Ebenczer Rockwood, ap-
pointed Attorney- General,
277; his difficulties with Sena-
tors, 277; his nomination to
Supreme Court rejected, 277,
325; on Joint High Commis-
sion, 309; his resignation as
Attorney-General requested,
and why, 325, 326, 386, 388,
INDEX
583
3S9; accused of having as-
sisted in "packing" the Su-
preme Court, 355, 356; quoted
on G.'s honesty, 485 n. ; 354,
438, 492, 493.
Hoar, George F., quoted in de-
fense of his brother, 355, 356,
and on corruption in public
life, 429, 430; the victim of
his own hyperbole, 430; his
Autobiography quoted on G.'s
anger with Sumner, 438;
quoted on massacre at Col-
fax, 468; 439, 472, 513, 537.
Holden, Governor of North
Carolina, 367, 368.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Life of
Motley, quoted, 303; quoted
onG., 381; 291.
Hood, John B., supersedes
Johnston, 173; beaten by
Schofield at Franklin, 182;
before Nashville, 182-84;
beaten by Thomas there, 185;
177, 181.
Hooker, Joseph, replies to Stan-
ton's "bribe " by losing Chan-
cellorsville, 116; at Lookout
Mountain, 138; 59, 131, 132,
137, 150, 160, 164.
Hooper, Samuel, 383.
Howard, Oliver O., 160.
Howe, Samuel G., 328.
Hunt, Justice Ward, 492.
Hunter, David, 59, 71.
Hunter, R. M. T., at City Point,
188.
Hunton, Eppa, 513.
Hurlbut, Stephen S., 85, 109.
Immigrants, literacy test for, be-
fore naturalization, urged by
G., 529, 530.
Impeachment of President John-
son, early talk of, comes to
nothing, 259; House passes
resolutions of, 259, 269; trial
in Senate, 269 ff.
Indians, the, G.'s interest in,
404 ff.; 335.
Inflation. See Currency and
Greenbacks.
Ingalls, Rufus, at West Point
with G., 21; G.'s superior in
his own field, 162.
Ireland, American sympathy
with, 294.
Island No. 10, 99, 104.
Jackson, Andrew, 398.
Jackson, Claiborne, 47, 57.
Jackson, Thomas J. ("Stone-
wall"), in Mexican War, 30.
Jackson, Miss., taken byG., 118.
James, Thomas L., Postmaster-
General, 550 n.
Jewell, Marshall, Postmaster-
General, asked to resign, 487.
Johnson, Andrew, nominated
for Vice-President, 172; his
threat to try Lee for treason
opposed byG., 203-05; denies
amnesty to Lee and Long-
street, 205 and n. ; declines to
interfere in Mexico, 207; his
accession regarded in North
as a Godsend, 212, 213; his
swift change of policy, 213,
214; his proclamation of am-
nesty, 215, 216; his character
and defects, 215-17, 219; tries
to win G.'s friendship, 217;
favors qualified negro suffrage,
218, 219; his early course com-
mendable, 218; sends G. on
mission to Southern States,
220; alienates both North and
South, 227, 228; his plan
of Reconstruction apparently
approved in North, 230, 231:
might have won by a concilia-
tory course, 231, 232; his
message of Dec, 1865, gener-
ally approved, 234; Sumner's
criticism of, 234; vetoes
Freedmen's Bureau bill, 235;
584
INDEX
his violent speech of Feb. 22.,
1866, 235, 236; his v< I
Civjl Rights bill and new
Freedmen's Bureau bill over-
ridden, 236; troubles with
Congress due chiefly to per-
sonal considerations, 237; his
"swing around the circle,"
238, 239; his relations with
Stanton badly strained, 239;
his fatuous opposition to Con-
gress and the result, 240, 241 ;
his influence responsible for re-
fusal of seceding States to rat-
ify 14th Amendment, 241; G.
out of sympathy with, 242,
250; orders G. to Mexico,
246-47; sends Sherman in
G.'s place, 247; his veto of
Reconstruction Act overrid-
den, 249; removes Republi-
can placemen, 249; his veto of
Tenure of Office Act overrid-
den, 249; and the measures of
the 40th Congress, 251; his
breach with Stanton com-
plete, 251; tells G. of his pur-
pose to oust Stanton and dis-
place Sheridan, 251, 252;
asks Stanton to resign, 253;
suspends Stanton and ap-
points G. ad interim, 254;
breaks with G. over Sheri-
dan's removal, 257, 258; his
removal of Stanton leads to
impeachment, 258, 259, 269;
resents G.'s surrender of sec-
retaryship, 261; question of
veracity between G. and,
261 ff. ; his interpretation of
Tenure of Office Act, 261;
fails to understand G., 263;
G. breaks off intercourse with,
268; endeavors to get rid of
Stanton, 269; wishes to test
Tenure of Office Act in courts,
269; acquitted on impeach-
ment trial, 269, 270; recom-
mends annexation of San
Domingo, 313; suggests re-
pudiation of interest on debt,
341; 260 n., 274, 279, 293,
327, 372, 408, 476.
Johnson, Reverdy, Minister to
Great Britain, negotiates John-
son - Clarendon Convention,
293, 294.
Johnson-Clarendon Convention,
terms of, 294; ratification de-
feated in Senate, 295; 299,
300, 304.
Johnston, Albert Sidney, in
Mexican War, 30; commands
Confederate troops west of
Alleghanies, 69; commands at
Shiloh, 84, 85, and is killed
there, 88; effect of his death,
88; 72, 76.
Johnston, Joseph E., defeats
Rosecrans at Chickamauga,
130; forced back to Atlanta
by Sherman, 172; superseded
by Hood, 173; difficulty as to
terms of his surrender to Sher-
man, 201; 118, 131, 160, 161,
170 n., 185, 191, 193.
Johnston, William P., his Life
of A. S. Johnston quoted, 70.
Joint High Commission (1871),
its powers, 308; membership
of, 308, 309; submits Treaty
of Washington, 309.
Jomini, Baron Henry, 54.
Jones, Mr., Minister to Belgium,
321 n.
Juarez, President of Mexico, 247.
Julian, George WM quoted on
accession of Johnson, 213;
505, 506.
Kasson, John A., 505.
Kearney, Denis, 544.
Kearny, Philip, 59.
Kellogg, William P. (Louisiana),
466, 467, 469, 471, 472.
Kentucky Legislature, adopts
INDEX
585
resolution favorable to Union,
62.
Keyes, Erasmus D., 59.
Kirk, Colonel, 367.
"Kirk's Raid," 367, 368.
Ku-Klux Act. See " Enforce-
ment Acts."
Ku-Klux-Klan, 358, 361 and n.,
367, 371, 373, 374, 375, 463.
Laird, Mr., builder of the Ala-
bama, 294.
Lee, Francis, quoted on G. at
Chapultepec, 28.
Lee, Robert E., in Mexican War,
30; (in Civil War) responsibil-
ity of, limited to his own com-
mand, 162; G. underrates his
quality, 162; precipitates bat-
tle of the Wilderness, 163;
forced back to Cold Harbor,
where G. is repulsed, 165, 166;
never face to face with G.
again, 166; his army eluded
by G. in flanking movement,
167; his losses in the Wilder-
ness campaign, 169; tries to
break through lines at Peters-
burg and join Johnston, 191;
evacuates Petersburg, 192,
193; at Jetersville, 193; asked
by G. to surrender, 194; cor-
respondence with G., 194-96;
their meeting at Appomattox,
196 ff. ; accepts G.'s terms,
197-99; their further conver-
sation, 200; threat of trial for
treason, opposed by G., 203-
05; denied amnesty, 205 and
n.; 99, 142, 143, 145, 153, 155,
156, 161, 169, 170 and n., 171,
172, 173, 178, 179, 181, 183,
187, 188, 201.
Legal Tender Act, held uncon-
stitutional by Supreme Court
(1869), 352-54; held constitu-
tional in 1872, 355. And see
Supreme Court.
L 'Enfant, Major, 475.
Liberal Republican movement
of 1872, originates in Mis-
souri, 409; history of, 410 ff.;
principal figures in, 411-13;
absurdity of nomination of
Greeley, 415, 416.
Liberal Republicans, summoned
to meet at Cincinnati, 410;
convention of, how consti-
tuted, 411; candidates for
nomination of, 413, 414; nom-
inate Greeley, 415 ff. ; their
address to the people, 418,
419; their platform and its
tariff "straddle," 419, 420.
Li Hung Chang, 536, 537.
Lieber, Francis, 212.
Lincoln, Abraham, appoints G.
brigadier-general, 58, 59; his
modification of Fremont's
emancipation proclamation
displeases North, 67, 68; ap-
points Halleck in Fremont's
place, 68; first promotes G.
alone for capture of Donelson,
77; compels G.'s restoration
to his command, 79; and the
responsibility for Shiloh, 96,
97; his characterization of G.,
99; makes Halleck comman-
der-in-chief, 99; his patron-
age of McClernand and Logan,
109, 110; conditionally in-
dorses McClernand's Missis-
sippi plan of campaign, 110,
ill; denies McClernand's re-
quest for court of inquiry, 113;
and Swett's quarrel with G.,
116; his letter to G. after
Vicksburg, 122, 123; makes
G. major-general, 123; Dana's
reports largely responsible for
his clinging to G., 128; his
telegram to G. after Chatta-
nooga, 139; makes G. lieu-
tenant-general and comman-
der-in-chief, 140; fears advent
58G
INDEX
of man on horseback, 141; his
fears dissipated, 142; G.'s
first interview with, 145; his
last words to G. leaving for
the front, 149, 150; his deal-
ings with G. and with other
generals, 150, 151; Northern
discontent with his conduct of
the war, 154; telegraphs G.
after Cold Harbor, 167, 168;
quoted on G., 168; renomi-
nated in 1864, 172; calls for
500,000 volunteers, 173; the
famous memorandum of Au-
gust 23, 173; and the Smith-
Butler row, 175; quoted, 179,
180; congratulates Sherman,
186; meets Peace Commission
at City Point, 188-90; pro-
posed message to Congress
urging compensation to slave-
owners, withheld, 190, 191;
murder of, 200, 212, 213; his
probable course in Recon-
struction, 208, 209; vetoi
Reconstruction Act of 1S64,
209, 210; his plans opposed
by radicals, 210, 211; his
speech of April 11, 1865, 211,
212; Sumner's failure to un-
derstand, 285, 286; 33, 41, 66,
108, 126, 130, 177, 181, 183,
191, 193, 219, 227, 229, 232,
398, 466, 502.
Lodge, Henry Cabot, Early
Memories, quoted on Sum-
ner, 288, 289.
Logan, John A., ordered to re-
place Thomas at Nashville,
185; favors inflation, 447,
449, 450; 384, 423, 496, 513,
537, 540, 548.
Longfellow, Henry W., 291.
Longstreet, James, at West
Point with G., 21; quoted on
G. at Molino del Rey, 29;
denied amnesty by Johnson,
205 n.
Lookout Mountain, 138.
Louisiana, reorganized govern-
ment of, not recognized by
Congress, 210; conditions in,
under G., 359; (1872-1875),
466-72; in disputed election
of 1876, 502, 503 n., 504, 505,
506, 507, 508, 509; 375, 514.
Louisville Courier- Journal, 413.
Lowell, James Russell, quoted,
67, 284, 536; 291, 380, 499.
Lynch, John R., 361.
Lyon, Nathaniel, 47, 59.
McClellan, George B., at West
Point with G., 21 ; his aims and
achievement contrasted with
G.'s, 169; clamor in North for
G.'s supersession by, 173; 57,
59, 65, 70, 77, 80, 81, 99, 131,
150, 151, 153, 183.
McClernand, John A., super-
sedes Sherman, 108; his am-
bition and jealousy of G.,
109 ff. ; as a Douglas Demo-
crat, courted by Lincoln, 110;
his self-praise and attacks on
G., 110; his plan for the Mis-
sissippi River campaign con-
ditionally a] proved by Lincoln,
1 10, 1 1 1 ; recalled by G., com-
plains to Lincoln, 111; his in-
subordination, 112; relieved of
command for breach of dis-
cipline, 112, 113; attacks G. in
request for court of inquiry,
113; Sherman quoted on, 113,
114; 51, 52, 59, 64, 73, 77, 85,
86, 88, 94, 115, 118, 298.
McClure, Alexander K., 412.
McCook, Alexander M., 130.
McCrary, George W., 509.
McCullough, Hugh, Secretary
of the Treasury, greenbacks
retired by, 444, 445, 447; 341,
351.
Macdonald, Sir John A., on
Joint High Commission, 309.
INDEX
587
McDonald, Mr., and the whis-
key frauds, 478 and n., 482 n.
McDowell, Irvin, 57, 59.
McEnery, S. J. (Louisiana), 467.
MacMahon, Marie-E-P-M. de,
539.
McPherson, James B., G.'s
warm praise of, 143; 113, 144,
423.
Marine Bank of Brooklyn, and
the failure of Grant & Ward,
556 ff.
Marsh, Caleb P., 488, 489.
Marshall, Chief Justice John,
353.
Massachusetts, refuses assent to
Johnson's policy, 231.
Matthews, Stanley, 412, 416,
505, 515 n.
Maximilian, Archduke, in Mex-
ico, 130, 205, 206, 244.
Meade, George G., retained in
command of the Army of the
Potomac by G., 154; his rela-
tions with G., 155, 156; his
difficult temper, 156, 157; his
long siege of Petersburg, 172;
and Sheridan, 177, 178; 53,
131, 153, 159, 161, 174, 175,
193.
Medill, Joseph, 412.
Meigs, Montgomery C, 57.
Merchant marine, building up
of, urged by G., 528, 529.
Merritt, Wesley, 192, 550 and n.
Mexican War, G. quoted on, 27,
28.
Mexico, G. negotiates com-
mercial treaty with, 554, 555.
And see Maximilian.
Military rule in South, G.'s
views on, 458, 459.
Mill Springs, battle of, 71.
Miller, Justice Samuel F., mi-
nority opinion in Legal Tender
case, 353; 513, 515.
Milwaukee, whiskey frauds in,
476, 477.
Missionary Ridge, 138, 139.
Mississippi, reorganized state
government in, 230; Senators
and Representatives from, ad-
mitted to Congress, 363; in
1875, 463-66; 375.
" Mississippi Plan," the, 465,
466.
Missouri, and the Liberal Re-
publican movement of 1872,
408, 409.
Molino del Rey, battle of, 29.
Moltke, Count von, 535.
Monroe Doctrine, 322, 336, 527.
Monterey, battle of, 28.
Morgan, Edwin D., 552.
Morgan, J. P. & Co., 443.
Morrill Tariff, 394.
Morris, Thomas, 17.
Morton, Oliver P., favors infla-
tion. 447, 449, 450; 231, 321,
326, 327, 328, 331, 352, 365,
373, 401, 444, 498, 513, 519 n.
Moses, Franklin J., Jr., 472.
Motley, J. Lothrop, quoted on
G., 139, 140, 380, 381; urged
by Sumner as Minister to
Great Britain, 291, and ap-
pointed, 295; defects of his
qualities, 292 and n. ; prepares
memorandum of instructions
to be given him, which Fish
disregards, 299, 300; in first
interview with Clarendon dis-
regards instructions, 300, 301,
302; G. desires his immediate
dismissal, 301; censured -by
Fish, 301; negative results of
his mission, 301, 302; Sir J.
Rose's comments on, 303;
demand for his resignation
charged to G.'s anger with
Sumner, 323-25, 331, 332; re-
moved, 326, 331, 385, 386;
284, 338, 551.
Napoleon III, withdraws troops
from Mexico, 244; 206.
INDEX
Nashville, Hood and Thomas in
presence at, 182-84; battle of,
the most complete Union vic-
tory in the war, 185.
Nation, the, 412, 413.
National Intelligencer, quoted,
264.
Negro suffrage, approved by
Johnson, with qualifications,
218, 219; desired by Sumner
without discrimination, 219,
220; Schofield's views on, 223,
224; G.'s views on, 228, 357,
457, 459; G. forced by events
to support, 229, 457; attitude
of North toward, 232, 233; in
election of 1808, 271; passage
of 15th Amendment, 273;
effect of hasty grant of, 450,
457.
Negroes, in "reconstructed"
States, 359, 360, 361 ; dread of
domination of, in the South,
457; in Mississippi, in 1875,
463, 464; massacre of, at Col-
fax, La., 468.
Nelson, Justice Samuel, on Joint
High Commission, 308; 353.
Nelson, William, 80, 87, 89.
New Orleans riot (1806), 359.
New York, factional quarrel in,
in 1872, 410; row over ap-
pointment of Robertson as
Collector of, 550 and n.
New York Evening Post, 412,
413.
New York Sun, 431.
New York Tribune, quoted on
Whiskey Ring prosecutions,
484; 410, 411, 413, 416,
Nicholls, Francis T. (Louisiana),
518 and n.
North, the, denunciation of G.
after Shiloh, by press of, 94;
military position of, when G.
assumed chief command, 152,
153; general conditions in,
154; July and August, 1864,
the darkest months of the war
in, 172 ; one faction in, clamors
for supersession of G. by Mc-
Clellan, 173; Johnson's re-
construction policy generally
approved in, at first, 230, 232,
233; blames G. for acquiescing
in Stanton's removal, 256;
misapprehension of Southern
attitude toward negroes in,
456.
North American Review, quoted,
485 n., 488 n.
North Carolina, reorganized
government in, 230; cor-
ruption in; 367, 368; 360.
Northcote, Sir Stafford, on Joint
High Commission, 309.
Norton, Charles Eliot, quoted,
103, 200, 393.
"Old Guard," the. See Stal-
wart Republicans.
Ord, Edward O. C, 105, 193,
196
Oregon, dispute as to an elector
in, 507, 514.
Ottendorfer, Oswald, 418.
Packard, S. B. (Louisiana), 466,
467, 518 and n., 549.
Paducah, Ky., seized by G., 62.
Painter, U. H., 214.
Palmer, John M., 412, 505, 506.
Palmer, Sir Roundell, 310.
Panic of 1873, 443 ff.
Patronage. See Spoils System.
Patterson, James W., 307, 320,
434.
Payne, Henry B., 510, 513.
Peace Commission, the, 188-90.
Pemberton, John C, surrenders
Vicksburg, 119; 30, 100, 108,
117, 118, 170 n.
Pennsylvania, refuses assent to
Johnson's policy, 230.
Perry, Mr., U.S., consular agent
in San Domingo, 316.
INDEX
589
Petersburg, Va., threatened by
G., 167; Butler fails to attack,
171; garrison of, reinforced,
171; long siege of, 171, 172;
occupied by G., 192, 193.
Phelps, William W., 471.
Philadelphia Times, 412.
Phillips, Wendell, denounced by
Johnson, 236; 233.
Pierce, Franklin, 327.
Pierrepont, Edwards, Attorney-
General, 464, 4S1, 482, 483,
535.
Pillow, Gideon H., in command
at Donelson, 70; G.'s low opin-
ion of, 70; 72, 73.
Pittsburg Landing, 85, 86.
Pius IX, Pope, 535.
Piatt, Thomas C., resigns New
York Senatorship and seeks
reelection, 550 and n.
Point Pleasant, Ohio, 3.
Poland, Luke P., 433, 462, 463.
Polk, Leonidas, 61, 63, 70, 76.
Polo, Senor, Spanish Minister to
U.S., 524.
Poore, Ben : Perley, and the quar-
rel between G. and Sumner,
317 ff.
Pope, John, 48, 59, 77, 93, 95,
104, 131, 164.
Port Hudson, value of, to Con-
federacy, 105.
Porter, David D., runs Vicks-
burg batteries, 117; 110.
Porter, Fitz-John, his conviction
reversed, 553; 59.
Porter, Horace, his Campaigning
with Grant quoted, 87, 134,
135, 136, 147; 125, 165, 192,
346, 347, 390, 538.
Potomac, Army of the, G.'s first
contact with, 155; from the
Wilderness to Cold Harbor,
162-66; losses in the cam-
paign, 168.
Potter, Clarkson N., 471.
Prentiss, Benjamin M., cap-
tured at Shiloh, 59, 85, 87, 88,
89, 92; 94, 109.
Price, Sterling, 63, 105.
Pryor, Roger A., 466.
Public credit, G. on the necessity
of upholding, 339, 340; Con-
gress passes act to strengthen,
341.
Public debt, proposal to pay, in
greenbacks, 340, 341; in 1869,
350, 351; reduction of, in G.'s
administration, 530, 531.
Quinby, Isaac F., at West Point
with G., 21.
Railroads, great increase in mile-
age of, 442; finances of, 443.
Randall, Samuel J., 516.
Rawlins, John A., J. H. Wilson
quoted on G. and, 124; was
G.'s conscience, 124; selection
of, for the staff, most fortu-
nate for G., 124, 125; his char-
acter and influence on G., 125,
126; his service to G. in con-
nection with the drink habit,
125, 126; Dana quoted on,
126, 127; appointed Secretary
of War, 277, 278; sympathizes
with Cuban insurgents, 337;
his death, 338; a great loss
to G., 393; 33, 119, 134, 163,
266.
Reconstruction, Lincoln's plan
of, 208 ff. ; Stevens's and
Sumner's views of, 211; Lin-
coln's speech of April 11, 1865,
on, 211, 212; what might have
been, 219, 220, 224, 225; in
G.'s administration, 357 ff. ;
G.'s views on wisest policy of,
458, 459.
Reconstruction Act of 1864, ve-
toed by Lincoln, 209, 210.
Of 1867, passed by Congress over
Johnson's veto, 248, 249;
terms of, 249.
590
INDEX
Reconstruction Committee of
House, reports resolutions of
impeachment of Johnson, 259,
269.
Red River, 105.
Regiment, Fourth U.S. Infantry,
G. commissioned second lieu-
tenant in, 24; joins "army of
occupation" in Texas, 27.
Regiment, Twenty-First Illinois,
G. appointed colonel of, 50, 51.
Reid, John C., 501, 502 n.
Republican National Conven-
tion of 1 868, nominates Grant
and Colfax, 270; financial
platform adopted by, 341.
Of 1872, renominates G.,
420, with H. Wilson, 421.
Of 1880, third-term move-
ment in 542-47; nominates
Garfield, 546.
Republican party, suffers on ac-
count of salary grab, 437;
loses control of House in 44th
Congress, 452.
Revels, Hiram R., 361, 363.
Revenue reform. See Tariff re-
form.
Rlxxles, James Ford, History of the
U.S., quoted, 146, 147, 485 n.
Richardson, William A., Sec'y
of the Treasury, and the San-
born contracts, 439 ff. ; ap-
pointed to Court of Claims,
441; reissues greenbacks, 447,
448; 345, 444, 476.
Richmond, G.'s view of impor-
tance of capture of, 159, 160;
abandoned by Confederate
Government, 193.
Robertson, William H., sequel
of his appointment as Collec-
tor of New York, 550 and n.
Robeson, George M., Secretary
of the Navy, 278, 317, 389.
Romero, Matias, 554.
Roosevelt, Theodore, 437.
Rose, Sir John, negotiates with
Fish, 302, 303, 306-08; quoted
on Motley, 303; 333, 336.
Rosecrans, William S., at West
Point with G., 21; wins bat-
tle of Stone River, 108; his
reply to Stanton's "bribe,"
116; defeated by Johnston at
Chickamauga, 130; and G.,
131; cooped up in Chatta-
nooga, 132, 133; 57, 96, 105,
107, 183.
St. Louis, whiskey frauds in,
476, 477.
St. Louis Democrat, 477.
"Salary Grab," the, 435-37.
Samana Bay, 314, 317.
San Domingo, rotation of Baez
and Cabral in presidency (if,
312, 313; Baez seeks interven-
tion of U.S., 313; Johnson re-
commends annexation of, 313,
which is favored by G., 314;
Babcock executes protocol to
that end, 315, 316; his second
visit results in treaty of an-
nexation, etc., 317; Senate re-
fuses ratification, 320-23; G.
renews efforts for annexation,
326 ff. ; committee of investi-
gation appointed, 326-28, and
reports favorably, but no ac-
tion is taken, 329; was G. on
the right path? 330; Schurz
opposed to annexation of, 408.
Sanborn, John D., and his
contracts, 439-41.
Sartoris, Algernon, 534.
Sartoris, Nellie (Grant), G.'s
daughter, 534.
Saturday Club, the, 291.
Schenck, Robert C, on Joint
High Commission, 308; 15,
331, 386.
Schofield, John M., beats Hood
at Franklin, 1S2; ordered to
replace Thomas, 184; on ne-
gro suffrage, 223-24; his mis-
INDEX
591
sions to Mexico and Paris,
244 ; his Forty-Six Years in the
Army, quoted, 360 n.\ Secre-
tary of War, vice Stanton, 277 ;
130, 160, 225, 359, 360, 553.
Schurz, Carl, Reminiscences,
quoted, 283, 285, 286, 321 n.,
370; his history and character,
407, 408 and n., 409; rebuked
by Lincoln, 408 n. ; opposes
San Domingo treaty, 408;
mainly responsible for Liberal
Republican movement of 1872,
409, 410; his companions in
the movement, 412; urges
Greeley to withdraw, 417;
quoted, 471, 491 n.; 320, 380,
382, 384, 389, 398, 418, 491,
537.
Scott, Robert K. (So. Carolina),
472.
Scott, Winfield, G.'s early im-
pressions of, 23, 24; general-
in-chief at outbreak of Civil
War, 57; 30, 31.
Sedgwick, John, 155.
Seward, William H., Secretary
of State, distrusted by G.,
203; quoted, 281, 282; 145,
188, 189, 207, 244, 245, 250,
291, 294.
Seymour, Horatio, Democratic
candidate for President in
1868, 271; 359.
Sharkey, W. L. (Mississippi),
218, 219.
Shepard, Alexander, Governor
of the District of Columbia,
475, 476.
Sheridan, Philip H., and Meade,
177, 178; whips Stuart at
Yellow Tavern, 178, 179; Ce-
dar Creek and "Sheridan's
Ride," 180; G. quoted on,
180, 181; wins battle of Five
Forks, 192; Johnson's reason
for wishing to displace, 251;
G. protests to Johnson against
his displacement, 252; this
question leads to break between
Johnson and G., 257, 258; in
Louisiana (1875), 470, 471;
134, 139, 156, 170 n., 191, 193,
194, 196, 205, 206, 207, 222,
239, 247, 256, 297, 359, 360 n.,
381, 464, 505.
Sherman, John, G.'s sole de-
fender in Senate after Shiloh,
98; and the panic of 1873,
447, 448; and the resumption
of specie payments, 454, 455;
111, 234, 296, 339, 504, 505,
507, 511, 513, 537, 545 n.
Sherman, William T., quoted
on G.'s character, 2, 56 n.;
at West Point with G., 21;
his magnanimity, 74, 75;
quoted on C. F. Smith, 82; at
Shiloh, 86 ff. ; his advice to G.,
97, 98; his anger at attacks on
G., 102, 103; his part in G.'s
original plan for capture of
Vicksburg, 106, 107; his as-
sault repulsed, 108, 115
superseded by McClernand
108; his anger against Lin-
coln, 111, 112; quoted on Mc-
Clernand and G., 113, 114
opposes G.'s new plan of cam-
paign against Vicksburg, 118
119, but loyally helps to carry
it out, 119 ; gives G. full credit,
119; quoted on the campaign
121, 122; G.'s fine letter to
and his reply, 143, 144; urges
G. to remain in West, 144, 145
placed by G. in command of
new Division of the Mississip-
pi, 154; the march to the sea
160, 161, 172, 173, 182, 185
186; held at Atlanta, 173; en-
ters Atlanta, 177; outdazzles
G. in popular esteem, 186
congratulated by Lincoln,
186; cordial relations with
G., 186; marches North from
592
INDEX
Savannah, 187, to Goldsboro,
N.C., 191; his "impossible"
terms to Johnston, and their
sequel, 201; G.'s tact saves
him from humiliation, 201;
quoted on G.'s troubles in
Washington, 226, 227; or-
dered to Washington, and
why, 245, 246, 247; goes to
Mexico in G.'s place, 247;
quoted on G.'s qualifications
for presidency, 279; 54, 55,
70, 84, 96, 100, 115, 117, 132,
134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 155,
159, 170 »., 183, 193, 225,
245, 260, 262, 263, 264, 360 n.,
381, 423, 473.
Shiloh, battle of, 85-92.
Sickles, Daniel E., 523, 524.
Sigel, Franz, 160, 161.
Simmons, William A., appointed
Collector of Boston by But-
ler's influence, 438.
Slocum, Henry W., 160.
Smith, Charles F., Comman-
dant at West Point, 21; G.'s
admiration for, 24; com-
mands at Paducah, 70; tem-
porarily supersedes G. after
Donelson, 78-82; G.'s rela-
tions with, 82; his early death,
82; Sherman quoted on, 82;
62, 68, 73, 76, 83, 84, 98.
Smith, Kirby, 205.
Smith, R. M., 361 n.
Smith, Thomas Kilby, 13.
Smith, William F. ("Baldy"),
at Petersburg, 171 ; and But-
ler, 174, 175; why relieved
from duty by G., 174, 175;
claims that Butler black-
mailed G., 175; 135, 137.
Sniffen, Charles C, 482 n.,
518 n.
Solid South, the negro question
sole cause of, 456, 457.
South, G.'s mission to, 220-22;
general opinion in, of John-
son's accession, 222; State
governments reorganized in
1 L865), 230; threatening con-
ditions in (1866), 239, 240;
refuses to ratify 14th Amend-
ment, 241; in the election of
1868, 272; rule of carpet-
baggers and scalawacs in, 272,
273; critical conditions in,
when G. became President,
273; G.'s good-will toward,
357; conditions in. during his
administrations, 357 ff. ; report
of committee to investigate
affairs in, 372; predominance
of negro question in, 456, 457;
number of troops in, in 1872,
458 and n.
South Carolina, reorganized
state government in, 230; ne-
gro supremacy in, 360, 361 ;
habeas corpus suspended in,
374, 375; in the disputed elec-
tion of 1876, 502, 503 and n.\
472, 514.
Specie payments, resumption of,
urged by G., 452, and pro-
vided for by Congress, 454,
455.
Spoils system, denounced by
G., 399, 400.
Spotsylvania Court-House, 165.
Springfield Republican, 379, 412,
413.
Stalwart Republicans, and the
Third Term, 496, 497; out of
favor and out of sorts with
Hayes, 537; turn to G., 537;
their diplomacy, looking to a
third term, 53S; their daring
and resourceful leaders, 539,
540; preparing for the Con-
vention, 542, 543; led by
( 'onkling, 544, 545 n., 306 of
them stand by G. to the end,
546; support Garfield, 550.
Stanbery, Henry, Attorney-
General, 245.
INDEX
593
Stanton, Edwin M., Secretary
of War, offers a "bribe" to
G., Hooker, and Rosecrans,
116; puts G. in command of
Division of the Mississippi,
133; and the terms offered
by Sherman to Johnston,
201; G.'s sentiments to-
ward, and relation with, 203;
his want of tact in dealing
with G., 217; his quarrel with
Johnson of slow develop-
ment, 231; relations with
Johnson badly strained, 239;
and the radicals in Congress,
242; his original attitude on
Tenure of Office Act, 250, 258;
his breach with Johnson com-
plete, 251 ; G. protests against
his removal, 252; refuses to
resign, 253; suspended, 254;
his letter to Johnson, 255; his
suspension not ratified by
Senate, 259 ; resumes his office,
259, 260; bars Thomas from
the Department, 269; his re-
moval admitted to have been
within the law, 269; 77, 96,
100, 119, 126, 128, 134, 172,
176, 179, 181, 183, 199 and n.,
227, 235, 236, 243, 245, 246,
247, 256, 260 n., 261, 262, 265,
267, 268, 277, 354, 492.
Stephens, Alexander H., at City
Point, 188; his Recollections
quoted, 189; Lincoln's inter-
view with, 189, 190.
Stevens, Thaddeus, opposes
Lincoln's plan of reconstruc-
tion, 210, 211; organizes op-
position to Johnson in House,
231; his character, 231; de-
nounced by Johnson, 236;
rushes Reconstruction bill
through the House, 248, 249;
215, 222, 269, 272.
Stewart, A. T., nominated for
Secretary of the Treasury,
proves to be ineligible, 276.
Stone, Charles P., 59.
Stone River, battle of, and its
ultimate result, 108.
Strong, Justice William, and the
second Legal Tender deci-
sion, 354-56; 492, 513, 515.
Stuart, J. E. B., beaten and
killed at Yellow Tavern, 178,
179.
Sumner, Charles, his views on
Reconstruction, 210, 211, 219,
220; quoted on Lincoln's April
11 speech, 212; organizes
opposition to Johnson in
Senate, 231; his character,
231, 232, 287-89; denounces
Johnson's policy, 233; his
interview with Johnson, 234;
denounced by Johnson, 236;
relations with G., 284, 285,
and with Fish, 285; his low
opinion of G., 285; and Lin-
coln, 285-87; leader of the
Senate, 287; Lodge quoted on,
288, 289; Schurz on, 289;
C. F. Adams on G. and, 289,
290; urges Motley for mission
to Great Britain, 291 ; his vio-
lent attack on the Johnson-
Clarendon Convention, 295,
296; Adams quoted on effect
of his speech, 295; assumes
to shape foreign policy of
Administration, 298, 299; his
influence leads Motley to
disregard Fish's instructions,
300, 301 ; insists on withdraw-
al of Great Britain from West-
ern hemisphere, 307, 308; de-
posed from Chairmanship of
Foreign Relations Committee,
309, 333, 385; G. seeks his
support in San Domingo
matter, 317 ff.; divergent re-
ports concerning their inter-
view, 318-20; G.'s anger, and
594
INDEX
the removal of Motley, 323-
25, 33 1 , 332 ; his wrath against
G., 326, 327; his "Naboth's
Vineyard" speech, 327, 328;
breaks with Fish over Motley
matter, 333; ignored by Ad-
ministration in all diplomatic
business, 333; has few real
friends in Senate, 333; un-
sparing in denunciation of G.,
333; G.'s "curious comment"
on, 334; blocks bill for general
amnesty, 377; his Civil Rights
bill, 378; charges G. with
nepotism, 391, 392; his speech
of May 31, 1872, 421, 422;
215, 222, 223, 276, 281, 282,
303, 337, 365, 380, 381, 382,
384, 385, 389, 398, 399, 412,
437, 438, 439, 551.
Supreme Court of the U.S., holds
Legal Tender Act unconstitu-
tional, 352-54; how divided on
the question, 353, 354; re-
verses itself after appointment
of Strong and Bradley, 354,
355; was the Court packed?
355, 356; denies constitu-
tionality of Enforcement
Acts, 373, 374; holds Civil
Rights bill unconstitutional,
463.
Swann, Thomas, Governor of
Maryland, 243.
Swayne, Justice Noah H., 354.
Sweeney, Peter B., 343.
Swett, Leonard, and G., 116.
Taft, William H., 492.
Tammany Hall, 371.
Tariff, the, Act of 1870, 395; acts
of 1872, 397, 398; in party
platforms of 1872, 419, 420;
G.'s views on, 530.
Tariff reform, agitation for,
394 ff.;G. quoted on, 395-97;
included in Missouri Liberal
Republican platform, 410, but
kept out of national platform
by Greeley, 415.
Taylor, Bayard, 498 n.
Taylor, Zachary, 27, 30.
Tennessee, 360.
Tenterden, C. S. A. Abbott,
Baron, 310.
Tenure of Office Act, passed
over Johnson's veto, 249 ; Stan-
ton's early views on, 250, 252 ;
relation of, to Stanton's case,
259, 261 ff.; 269.
Terry, Alfred A., 187, 365.
Texas, Senators and Represen-
tatives admitted to Congress
from, 363.
Thayer, William R., Life of John
Hay, 214.
Third Term, talk of, in 1876,
496, 497; G. opposed to, 497;
House passes resolution con-
demning, 497 n.; Stalwarts
plan for, in 1880, 537, 538;
deep-rooted feeling against, in
country, 539.
Thomas, George H., at West
Point with G., 21; takes Mill
Springs, 71; the "Rock of
Chickamauga," 130, 131, 132;
refuses to supersede Rosecrans,
133; relations with G., 134;
his delay in attacking Hood at
Nashville, 182 ff. ; underrated
by G., 183 ; G. urges him to at-
tack, 183, 184; orders Scho-
field to take over his command,
and suspends the order, 184;
Logan under orders to super-
sede him when he destroys
Hood's army at Nashville,
185; is made major-general,
185; 69, 77, 95, 135, 137, 138,
139, 155, 160, 181, 225.
Thomas Lorenzo, ordered by
Johnson to take possession of
Stanton's office, but is barred
out, 269; 259.
Thompson, Jacob, 377.
INDEX
595
Thornton, Sir Edward, on Joint
High Commission, 309; 303.
Thurman, Allen G., 370, 373,
511, 513.
Tilden, Samuel J., Democratic
candidate for President in
1876, 499; Watterson quoted
on, 499 n. ; dispute over elec-
tion, 500 ff. ; should he have
been declared elected? 516,
517; 511, 512, 519 n., 520.
Tilton, Theodore, 412.
Tod, David, 8.
Tod, George, 8.
Triumvirate, the, in Third Term
movement, 540.
Trobriand, P. R. de, 470, 471 ,472.
Trumbull, Lyman, 234, 384, 389,
412, 413, 414, 416, 505, 506.
Tweed, William M., 343, 528.
Tyner, James N., Postmaster-
General, 487.
Underwood, Judge, 203, 204.
Union Pacific Railroad, and the
Credit Mobilier, 431 ff.
Van Buren, Martin, 535.
Van Dorn, Earl, 63, 105, 106, 108.
Vanderbilt, William H., his loan
to G., 559, 560.
Vicksburg, value of, to Con-
federacy, 105; well-nigh im-
pregnable, 105, 106; first cam-
paign for reduction of, 106,
107; Sherman's assault on, re-
pulsed, 108; final campaign
against, 117, 118; fall of, 119.
Viele, Ernest L., 22.
Virginia, Senators and Repre-
sentatives admitted to Con-
gress from, 363; 359, 360.
Virginius case, the, 523-25.
"Visiting Statesmen" in Louis-
iana, 505, 506.
Wade, Benjamin F., 213, 222,
254, 328.
Waite, Morrison R., appointed
Chief Justice, 495; 310, 328,
483, 516.
Wallace, Lew, 73, 77, 85, 86, 87,
89, 505.
Wallace, William, killed at
Shiloh, 89; 85.
Ward, Ferdinand, responsible
for G.'s financial disaster,
556 ff., 560.
Warmoth, Henry C. (Louisiana),
466, 467.
Warren, G. K., 174.
Washburne, Elihu B., instru-
mental in securing G.'s first
commission as bridadier-gen-
eral, 58, 59 ; first suggests that
G. be made lieutenant-general,
141; appointed Secretary of
State, 275; 71, 100, 101, 276,
280, 282, 425, 432, 540, 541,
542, 548.
Washington, George, G.'s Ad-
ministration ranks second to
his, 532.
Washington (capital), thrown
into panic by Early's raid, 172.
Washington, Treaty of, 309,
310, 530.
Watterson, Henry, quoted,
499 n., 515 n.; 413, 506.
Watts, Mr., an Oregon elector,
507.
Wayne, Justice James M., 354.
Welles, Gideon, his Diary
quoted, 233, 255, 265.
Wells, David A., 412, 414, 418.
Wells, J. Madison (Louisiana),
251, 505, 506.
Welsh, William, 404.
Wheeler, William A., 472.
Whiskey Ring, the, 476 ff.
White, Andrew D., quoted, 313,
329, 330.
White, Horace, Life of Lyman
Trumbull quoted, 413, 414;
on nomination of Greeley,
417; 412.
596
INDEX
White Leagues, 357, 361, 469.
Williams, George H. on Joint
High Commission, 309; At-
torney-General, 467; declines
Chief Justiceship, 493, 494.
Wilmington, No. Carolina, 187.
Wilson, Bluford, 480.
Wilson, Henry, nominated for
Vice-President, 421; 222, 365,
424, 425, 433.
Wilson, James F., 280, 281.
Wilson, James H., Life of C. A
Dana, quoted, 124; 56 n., 125,
128, 174, 191,221.
Wilson, Jeremiah M., 433.
Windom, William, 542.
Wood, Charles, his loan to G.,
559.
Wood, Mr., 138, 139.
Worth, William J., quoted, 28.
Yates, Richard, Governor of
Illinois, employs G. in ad-
jutant-general's office, 45, 46;
makes G. Colonel of 21st
Illinois, 49, 50; 58.
Young, John Russell, Around
the World with General Grant
quoted, 128, 129, 170 n., 301,
458, 459, 498 n.; 536, 543.
Zollicoffer, Felix K., 69.
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