Capitol Men (44 page)

When word of the scandal broke in March 1876, Belknap rushed to the White House and in tears gave the whole story to Grant, who on the spot accepted his resignation, thus allowing him to escape impeachment. Grant did this no doubt out of personal regard for Belknap (they had served together at Shiloh), but perhaps as well because Grant knew that his own brother Orvil and his brother-in-law, John Dent, profited handsomely from similar arrangements with post traders. Belknap also had much to fear from any further scrutiny of his affairs; he was rumored to have pocketed a kickback for awarding a contract to erect headstones in a soldiers' cemetery.

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives smelled blood over the quick acceptance of Belknap's resignation. Not willing to miss a political opportunity to rub the nation's face in the affair, the House went ahead and impeached Belknap, although he was acquitted by the Senate amid questions as to whether an impeachment of a man no longer in office was legitimate. Meanwhile, the case packed no end of melodrama. Press accounts feasted on the recurring evidence of the Belknaps' personal collapse—a cabinet officer weeping before his president; the ruin of the once-celebrated Puss, now unable to face her peers; Caleb Marsh's ill-conceived escape attempt to Canada, during which he "showed symptoms of mental agony bordering on insanity." If war heroes and glamorous Washington figures close to the president could be seduced by such petty and cynical greed, what did it say about others entrusted with authority? What did it say about America? "Considering the official rank of Mr. Belknap, and Mrs. Belknap's position in what is called 'Administration society,'" concluded
The Nation
, "the whole story is revolting."

The scandal led the periodical to stigmatize Grant as a man lacking in character and inept at statecraft and civic affairs. "Pierce and Buchanan, and Lincoln and Johnson all had their faults as administrators,"
The Nation
said, "but they were men who had grown up in office or in the forum, and who had sat at the feet of teachers in whom the original ideal of the Government was still strong ... The crisis came when an ignorant soldier, coarse in his tastes and blunt in his perceptions, fond of money and material enjoyment, and of low company, was put in the Presidential Chair."

One effect, among many, of Grant's diminished reputation was to stain his party's image further and deny him and his administration
some of the moral authority required to make hard decisions to defend his policies in the South. In the months ahead Southern Democrats would continue to exploit these weaknesses, denigrating Republicanism everywhere and portraying themselves as the necessary redeemers of what the
Vicksburg Monitor
termed "the albatross of Reconstruction."

If anyone might have managed to stem the tide of Straightoutism in South Carolina it was Daniel Chamberlain, a successful moderate Republican governor with a comparatively honest record, whose efforts at meeting conservatives halfway had been lauded by the state's leading newspapers. He had even impressed many residents recently with his solicitous attention to state pride, seeing to it that South Carolina was well represented at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and arranging for a hallowed local Revolutionary War unit, the Washington Light Infantry, to be honored at centennial events in Boston and at South Carolina's own Fort Moultrie.

However, the mood for redemption was strong, and Chamberlain's style had never sat well with natives. His precise, elegant manners and well-turned phrases tended to sail over the heads of his listeners; his speeches were "models of style and diction ... suited to cultivated audiences," one contemporary said, but were "delivered to people who ... enjoyed and understood only rant, shrieks, arm waving, foot stomps and funny stories about hogs ... and hound dogs." On a personal level, the sick headaches from which he suffered were just one indicator that Chamberlain was beginning to flag at the strenuous effort he'd been forced to make—a New Englander with a degree from Yale and a penchant for classical verse, attempting to govern the deepest secessionist state of the Confederacy. It was said that his wife, Alice, "a perfect type of high-born, high-bred, Anglo-Saxon loveliness, noble in bearing," was increasingly unhappy in the South. She cared little for her husband's white political allies and had even less interest in receiving socially his black Republican colleagues. Visiting the legislature one day, Mrs. Chamberlain was spotted by Robert Brown Elliott, who strode down from the speaker's chair in hopes of being introduced. At Elliott's approach, however, she shivered noticeably and stepped back, simply saying the word, "No!" Elliott, understandably offended, never forgave the insult.

Chamberlain's discomfort stemmed from the mood of the South, which had shifted underneath his feet as he held office. In 1874 a Democratic majority had returned to the U.S. House of Representatives and included several ex-Confederate generals, and by the end of 1875, with
Mississippi's redemption and (in early 1876) the forced resignation of its Republican governor, Adelbert Ames, only South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, of all the Southern states, remained in Republican hands. Whites in the region saw clearly that there was no reason to come to terms with the Republicans and Reconstruction governments in their midst; they could chase them out or wait them out; either way, home rule would be restored, and in the new order of things there was no need to make room for even reasonable, conciliatory carpetbaggers like Daniel Chamberlain.

As recently as June 28, 1876, the governor had been welcomed by the state's rifle clubs at a dinner for Palmetto Day, a holiday honoring South Carolina's triumph over British troops in the Revolutionary War; speeches were given, elaborate toasts exchanged, but this last momentary light of reconciliation soon flickered and died. When the Democrats convened six weeks later to choose candidates for the upcoming election, they imported a campaign "expert" from Mississippi to describe some of the techniques whites had used there the previous fall to restore home rule. This character likely was either James Z. George or Ethelbert Barksdale, the fathers of what had become known as the Mississippi Plan, a skillfully managed campaign of intimidation just strong enough to keep blacks from the polls but subtle enough to avert any real protest from the North. Among other steps, the expert suggested that South Carolinians impress black voters with "a spectacular uniform, and ... the parade of long processions of armed white men through the country."

Encouraged by the advice, South Carolina's Martin W. Gary, a former Confederate general, prepared a thirty-three-point Democratic agenda for achieving victory at the polls in November; it featured guidelines for physically intimidating the opposition. It included specific instructions on how to maintain discipline in the rifle clubs, many of which were organized like regular military units, with orders, drills, and a system of rank that reprised positions of authority once held under arms in the Confederacy. The campaign would be sweeping in scope, aimed not to achieve parity with the Republicans but to wipe them out, ultimately placing a Democrat in every elective or appointed office in South Carolina. Point 12 advised that "every Democrat must feel honor bound to control the vote of at least one negro, by intimidation, purchase, keeping him away or as each individual may determine, how he may best accomplish it." Point 16 cautioned Democrats to "never threaten a man individually if he deserves to be threatened, the necessities of the
times require that he should die. A dead Radical is very harmless—a threatened Radical or one driven off by threats from the scene of his operations is often very troublesome, sometimes dangerous, always vindictive."

CONFEDERATE TROOPS IN RETREAT

Gary was the descendant of old Edgefield aristocracy, an attorney and cotton planter "devoted to his fine horses ... game chickens, and the ... merry music of the hunter's horn." He had a violent temper and was considered too unpredictable—some thought genuinely crazy—to be part of the Democratic brain trust. Nonetheless he was highly visible at events during the campaign of 1876, his head "as bald as a billiard ball" (he was known as "the Bald Eagle of the Confederacy"), an impulsive man who seemed in a perpetual state of agitation and who spoke in a rush of words. "He goes off in conversation like a skyrocket," explained a sympathetic biographer. "Five feet eleven in height, with an elegant, well-proportioned form, he bore himself with an air of distinction. His classic features, mobile and full of expression, were lighted by the searching grayish-blue eyes of the natural fighter, and more than one man was to quail before his fiery glance."

He was most renowned for a valorous utterance on the field of battle at Second Bull Run, where, during pitched fighting, a Yankee colonel had demanded the surrender of Gary's troops. "What, sir?" Gary famously exclaimed. "These are South Carolinians, and will never surrender!" The next day he led an attack that destroyed an entire federal unit. Placed in charge of the defense of Richmond in spring 1865, he was said to be the last officer to flee the Confederate capital before the Union advance into that city. It was characteristic of Gary that while Grant and
Lee were discussing surrender at Appomattox, he was dodging federal patrols and boasting of his will to fight on; it was a point of great pride that he had never actually surrendered to the Yankees, never formally conceded the cause—a resolve that informed his belligerence toward Reconstruction and his will to overthrow it.

The special talent of Gary and his Red Shirts, whose distinctive "uniform" had been christened at Hamburg, was their ability to intimidate black and white Republicans, frequently by unlawful means, while posing as the orderly legions of the righteous. Earlier Klan violence in South Carolina in 1870–71 had been instructive: Klan actions were too random and indiscriminate, merely punishing individuals without being linked to an orderly call for change. Without an overarching political agenda, night riding could frighten and alienate even would-be sympathizers and possibly trigger federal intervention. The Red Shirts improved on this model by amassing huge legions of "troops," charging them with the idea that they were the vanguard of a new dawn in the South and keeping a modicum of control over who rode in their ranks; young boys and known hoodlums were discouraged from taking part.

By August of 1876 somewhere between two hundred and three hundred rifle clubs had formed in South Carolina, with a total of nearly fifteen thousand members. They were most active in Edgefield, Laurens, Aiken, Barnwell, and Abbeville Counties, upcountry areas in the southwest part of the state. Armed to the teeth and riding in groups that ranged from fifteen to two hundred, they broke up or interfered with Republican rallies, sent deadly warnings to Republican leaders, published proclamations in newspapers, and placed the names of black Republicans in so-called "dead books"—individuals who would be reckoned with in good time. "They do not claim to be Americans," a
New York Times
correspondent wrote of the Red Shirts, "[but] proudly boast that they are South Carolinians, and they are fully prepared to follow Gen. Gary's terrible instructions. I do not exaggerate ... when I say that they are again animated by the same spirit of disorder and rebellion which brought on the civil war sixteen years ago. They are better organized than they were then, and they are better armed."

They also had brought forward an ideal candidate to lead the state's redemption, the former Confederate general Wade Hampton. A major landowner in both South Carolina and Mississippi, Hampton was the grandson and namesake of a renowned Revolutionary War figure who had also served in Congress. His father had been with Andrew Jackson
at the Battle of New Orleans. Fiercely loyal to South Carolina, he had never been an ardent secessionist, yet responded to the tocsin of battle by using his personal fortune to finance his own Confederate regiment, "Hampton's Legion," at whose head he won acclaim as a battlefield tactician, despite his lack of formal military training.

But Hampton's most winning trait was a cool demeanor borne of entitlement, a gentlemanly restraint that separated him from the more combustible Martin Gary or Mathew Butler. For all his wealth and aristocratic Southern ways, he was markedly democratic in his openness to people of all rank. At war's end, he had been gracious in accepting the fundamental results of the conflict, saying of the freedman, "As a slave, he was faithful to us; as a free man, let us treat him as a friend. Deal with him frankly, justly, kindly."

There was, however, nothing soft or effete about Hampton. In combat he was said to have been fearless, wading into the thick of battle and dispatching Union cavalrymen with a broadsword, apparently some sort of family heirloom. On the campaign trail he took delight in mocking the aides and reporters who tried to keep pace with him, since much of the travel was done on horseback. "He was a big, powerful, athletic man," remarked a contemporary, "carrying just enough extra flesh to become his 58 years. When in the saddle he looked as if he and the horse were one."