The Man Who Saved the Union (62 page)

Grant’s fear of Southern violence increased as the elections neared. Parts of the South had been restive for months. A riot in Memphis started after white police arrested a black man whose carriage had collided with that of a white man and some black Union veterans protested. The riot didn’t end until three days had passed, nearly fifty people had been killed (all but two of them black), many more had been injured and hundreds of homes and shops had been reduced to smoldering rubble. The violent spirit spread to New Orleans, where hundreds of blacks peacefully petitioning for the vote became the victims of what Sheridan called an “
absolute massacre” when angry whites, including police, assaulted the petitioners. Before Sheridan’s troops were able to stop the rampage, at least thirty-four blacks (and three white sympathizers) were killed and more than a hundred persons were wounded. An eyewitness told of seeing wagons hauling away the dead and wounded, with the bodies “
thrown in like sacks of corn.” Contemporary accounts and subsequent investigation indicated premeditation in the attack. “We are going to shoot down all these God damned niggers,” one policeman was quoted as having said.

Despite his concern at the bloodletting, Grant was reluctant to engage the army in domestic affairs unless absolutely necessary.
Andrew Johnson received word from the governor of
Maryland that riots could disrupt the elections in Baltimore; the president asked Grant to investigate and prepare to send in the troops. Grant inquired and concluded that though the politicking was intense, interposing the army would make things worse. “
So far there seems to be merely a very bitter contest for political ascendancy in the state,” he reported to Johnson. “Military interference would be interpreted as giving aid to one of the factions no matter how pure the intentions or how guarded and just the instructions. It is a contingency I hope never to see arise in this country whilst I occupy the position of General-in-Chief of the Army to have to send troops into a state
in full relations with the General Government
, on the eve of an election, to preserve the peace. If insurrection does come, the law provides the method of calling out forces to suppress it. No such condition seems to exist now.”

Johnson’s sources told a different story. “
There is ground to apprehend danger of an insurrection in the City of Baltimore, on or about the day of the election,” the attorney general,
Henry Stanbery, wrote Grant,
speaking for himself and the president. “I feel great solicitude that preparations be made to meet and promptly put down such insurrection if it should break out.”

Grant went to Baltimore personally. He discovered greater cause for concern than previously.
Cyrus Comstock, a staff officer traveling with him, wrote to George Meade: “
General Grant desires me to say that there is in Baltimore very high political feeling which may possibly result in collision and bloodshed. It is reported that ex-soldiers called ‘
Boys in Blue’ exist there, and threats have been made that similar organizations from Pennsylvania would pour into Baltimore if there should be in that city a serious collision between the two political parties. Such an invasion would inevitably cause serious bloodshed and might lead to the most deplorable circumstances.” Grant quietly summoned troops from New York to bolster those at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry.

In public, though, he downplayed the prospect of violence. Reporters followed him as he met with public officials and other interested parties, calming tempers and allaying concerns. “
General Grant is of the opinion that there will be no disturbance of a serious character in Baltimore,” a correspondent with whom he had spoken informed the readers of the
New York Times
.

Whether from Grant’s reinforcement of the garrison, from his soothing presence or from some other cause, the turmoil in Baltimore didn’t erupt into violence. The outcome of the elections nationwide was a disaster for Johnson nonetheless. The Republicans won huge majorities in both the House and Senate, claiming advantages of nearly three to one in the lower chamber and four to one in the upper.

T
he Republicans didn’t wait for the new Congress to be sworn in to capitalize on their triumph. On the first day of the post-election session, in December 1866, they struck against the president. They introduced a measure that would dissolve the Johnsonian Southern state governments (except in
Tennessee, where a rabidly anti-Johnson governor had rammed ratification of the
Fourteenth Amendment through the legislature. “
Give my respects to the dead dog of the White House,” he declared). In place of the state governments the Republican bill would reestablish military rule, returning the South to the status of an occupied territory. Some moderate Republicans initially balked at the measure as overly drastic, but continuing violence in the South led to its passage in March 1867,
over Johnson’s veto. The Reconstruction Act divided the South into five military districts, each under the command of an army general authorized to employ military force to ensure stability and order. It directed the occupied states to write new constitutions guaranteeing the vote to all adult males, black as well as white. And it effectively withheld congressional recognition of the new state governments until those states had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.

In the same month the Republicans passed the Tenure of Office Act. The Republicans realized that Johnson could frustrate their legislative purposes by staffing federal positions with persons hostile to their policies. To limit Johnson’s chances of doing so, the Tenure of Office Act forbade the president from removing individuals whose appointments had required Senate confirmation, without Senate endorsement of the removal. Johnson deemed the measure unconstitutional and vetoed it. The Republicans again overrode his veto.

“O
ne of the most ridiculous veto messages that ever emanated from any president,” was how Grant characterized Johnson’s failed argument against the reconstruction law. Grant learned that
Jeremiah Black, attorney general under
James Buchanan, had drafted Johnson’s message. “It is a fitting end to all our controversy…,” Grant wrote
Elihu Washburne, “that the man who tried to prove at the beginning of our domestic difficulties that the nation had no constitutional power to save itself is now trying to prove that the nation has not now the power, after a victory, to demand security for the future.” Grant cautioned Washburne that this letter was for his eyes only. “Do not show what I have said on political matters to anyone. It is not proper that a subordinate should criticize the acts of his superiors in a public manner.”

Grant’s efforts to keep his politics private met with diminishing success. Each week made clearer that the army was a political instrument in
reconstruction and consequently that the commanding general of the army was a political figure. Grant’s troops represented federal authority in the South, but with the president and
Congress at loggerheads it was unclear
which
federal authority they represented. When the troops tried to protect freedmen against rioters, as Sheridan’s troops did in New Orleans, they pleased the Radicals in Congress, who considered such protection necessary and appropriate. But they angered the president, who deemed the Southern states masters again of their domains. Grant
appealed for guidance to his superiors, but
Edwin Stanton told him one thing and Johnson another.

In his quandary Grant adopted a more advanced position politically than he had ever imagined he would. He wrote to
Edward Ord at Little Rock urging him to exert what influence he could to get Arkansas to approve the Fourteenth Amendment. Ratification was inevitable eventually, he said, and Southern resistance would simply cause Congress to take harsher measures. “
Delay may cause further demands, but it is scarcely in the realm of possibility that less will be accepted.” He still acknowledged the wall that separated, or ought to separate, civilian affairs from those of the military. “It is not proper that officers of the Army should take part in political matters,” he told Ord. But he found a door in the wall through which, in the case at hand, a conscientious officer must step. “This is hardly to be classed as a party matter. It is one of National importance. All parties agree to the fact that we ought to be united and the status of every state definitely settled. They only differ as to the manner of doing this. It ought to be seen that no way will succeed unless agreed to by Congress.”

Significantly, Grant did not say “unless agreed to by the President.” He recognized where political power was coming to rest, at least for the moment, and in the escalating fight between the legislature and the executive he sided increasingly with the former. Yet he resisted any overt identification with the Republicans as Republicans. “
There is but little difference between the parties,” he wrote Sherman.

The Republicans, however, identified with
him
. So did Johnson, when he could. Grant lamented being the object of such political fascination. “No matter how close I keep my tongue, each try to interpret from the little let drop that I am with them,” he told Sherman. He said he sometimes wished he could relinquish command of the army and spend a year abroad. “But to leave now would look like throwing up a command in the face of the enemy.” To Elihu Washburne he wrote, “
I am not egotistical enough to suppose that my duties cannot be performed by others just as well as myself, but Congress has made it my duty to perform certain offices, and whilst there is an antagonism between the executive and legislative branches of the Government, I feel the same obligation to stand at my post that I did whilst there were rebel armies in the field to contend with.”

54

T
HE STRUGGLE ESCALATED
. A
FTER
J
OHNSON ATTEMPTED TO SABOTAGE
enforcement of the Reconstruction Act, the Republicans launched an impeachment effort. The House Judiciary Committee called Grant as a witness. Members asked if he had advised the president regarding reconstruction. He answered that he had. They asked what policies he had recommended for the South. “
I was not in favor of anything or opposed to anything particularly,” he said unhelpfully. “I was simply in favor of having a government there. That was all I wanted. I did not pretend to give my judgment as to what it should be. I was perfectly willing to leave that to the civil department.” Grant was on public record as having supported speedy reconstruction; committee members inquired if he had expressed a similar opinion to the president in private? “I may have done so, and it is probable that I did,” Grant said. “I do not recollect particularly. I know I conversed with the president very frequently.” But there was less to the discussions than might appear, he added. “I do not suppose that there were any persons engaged in that consultation who thought of what was being done at that time as being lasting—any longer than until Congress would meet and either ratify that or establish some other form of government. I know it never crossed my mind that what was being done was anything more than temporary.”

The impeachment rumblings grew louder with the spring, then diminished when Congress recessed for the summer.
Johnson took the opportunity of the legislators’ absence to demand Stanton’s resignation. The secretary of war refused, as Johnson expected. Johnson suspended him.

Grant wished he hadn’t. He warned the president against “
the great danger to the welfare of the country” in defying Congress. He acknowledged that Johnson was within the letter of the law, which allowed for the suspension of officeholders while Congress was in recess. But the president’s action contravened the spirit of the law. “It certainly was the intention of the legislative branch of the government to place cabinet ministers beyond the power of executive removal,” Grant told Johnson. “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, who the country felt great confidence in.” Johnson’s legal advisers sought loopholes in the law, but such an approach missed the point, Grant said. “The meaning of the law may be explained away by an astute lawyer, but common sense, and the mass of loyal people, will give to it the effect intended by its framers.” Grant knew he was being forward in expressing himself so freely. But his sense of duty required nothing less. “Allow me to say as a friend, desiring 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 rebellion) will quietly submit to, to see the very man of all others who they have expressed confidence in removed.… I know I am right in this matter.”

His disapproval of Johnson’s course didn’t prevent Grant from accepting Johnson’s appointment of him as acting successor to Stanton. He refused to consider becoming the actual secretary of war, believing Johnson wrong constitutionally and politically. But he believed he owed it to the army and the country to fill the post until the controversy could be resolved.

He entered his new post on good terms with his predecessor. “
In notifying you of my acceptance,” he told Stanton, “I cannot let the opportunity pass without expressing to you my appreciation of the zeal, patriotism, firmness and ability with which you have ever discharged the duties of Secretary of War.” He initially concluded this sentence with the clause: “and also the regret I now feel at seeing you withdraw from them.” But he crossed it out, apparently wanting to remain officially noncommittal as to Stanton’s removal.

He thought he might have more influence with Johnson than Stanton had. The president obviously wanted some of Grant’s popularity to rub off on him, and he presumably would hesitate to adopt policies Grant thought ill advised. Grant tested his influence just days after taking over
the War Department. Phil Sheridan enforced the federal writ too harshly for many Texans, who appealed to the president for Sheridan’s removal. Johnson told Grant to reassign Sheridan but invited him to comment on the reassignment before he sent the order out. Grant urged Johnson to think again. “
It is unmistakably the expressed wish of the country that General Sheridan should not be removed from his present command,” Grant said, without specifying how he had ascertained the country’s will. “This is a republic where the will of the people is the law of the land. I beg that their voice may be heard.” The country, especially the South, was watching. “General Sheridan has performed his civil duties faithfully and intelligently. His removal will only be regarded as an effort to defeat the laws of Congress. It will be interpreted by the unreconstructed element in the South, those who did all they could to break up this government by arms, and now wish to be the only element consulted as to the method of restoring order, as a triumph. It will embolden them to renewed opposition to the will of the loyal masses, believing they have the Executive with them.”