The Man Who Saved the Union (78 page)

He didn’t intend to force anything upon the Indians. “I say this only for you to think about and talk about to your people,” he told Red Cloud. “Whenever you are ready to avail yourself of this offer, then you can talk to us and we will do what I say. All the treaty obligations we have entered into we shall keep with you unless it is with your own consent that the change is made, or so long as you keep those obligations yourself.”

Grant made the same point to another Indian delegation. A Sioux chief known as The Grass told Grant that while his people were working hard on their reservation, they remained poor. “
The President inquired as to the nature of the land on which the tribe is located, and inquired if anything had been said to them about moving into the Indian country,” a reporter present at the meeting recounted afterward.
Benjamin Cowen, the assistant secretary of the interior, replied that it had. “The President then, addressing the Indians, said he would like to see them on fertile lands, where it would be easy for them to make a living, and when they should be willing to go on such lands the government would send them and teach them to build houses. Their young especially should be instructed. It was for them to think about it, and unless they wanted to go he did not want to make them. They could go back to their homes now, and talk the matter over this year to their people. If they would not agree to go he would not compel them.”

A third delegation was headed by the Sioux chief
Spotted Tail, who wore a silver medal given him by
Andrew Johnson, bearing the former president’s likeness. Spotted Tail’s band of Sioux had been asked to relocate their agency; he came to negotiate terms. Grant said that no one would force Spotted Tail to move but that, if he did, he and his people would receive the benefit in supplies and livestock of the $60,000 per year the government would save in transportation costs. Spotted Tail answered that he would take the offer back to his council and then give his reply. Before leaving the White House, he said he had something
more to tell the president. “
I hear that in a few months there will be an election for a new president,” Spotted Tail said. “I hope you may be successful. This would please me very much, for you have been very kind to my people.” Grant thanked him and responded, “However the election may result, I hope there will be no change in the
Indian policy.”

Or if there was a change in policy, he hoped it would be in the direction of greater sympathy toward the Indians. “
If the present policy toward the Indian can be improved in any way, I will always be ready to receive suggestions on the subject,” Grant told
George Stuart, a member of the Indian commission. “But if any change is made, it must be on the side of the civilization and Christianization of the Indian. I do not believe our Creator ever placed different races of men on this earth with the view of having the stronger exert all its energies in exterminating the weaker. If any change takes place in the Indian policy of the government while I hold my present office, it will be on the humanitarian side of the question.”

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S
POTTED
T
AIL GOT HIS WISH IN
G
RANT’S REELECTION
. A
ND
G
RANT
raised the Indian question in his annual message a month later. “
The policy which was adopted at the beginning of this Administration with regard to the management of the Indians has been as successful as its most ardent friends anticipated within so short a time,”
Grant declared. “It has reduced the expense of their management; decreased their forays upon the white settlements; tended to give the largest opportunity for the extension of the great railways through the public domain and the pushing of settlements into more remote districts of the country, and at the same time improved the condition of the Indians.”

Annual messages have always been occasions for presidential boasting, but Grant had greater reason to boast than many of his predecessors, having been returned to office by the largest popular majority to that date in American history (a margin that would not be surpassed until the twentieth century). He reflected on the reasons for the voters’ good feeling. A fire had recently scourged Boston, after the previous year’s devastating fire in Chicago; he acknowledged these tragedies and commiserated with their victims even as he noted their exceptional character. “Otherwise we have been free from pestilence, war, and calamities, which often overtake nations; and, as far as human judgment can penetrate the future, no cause seems to exist to threaten our present peace.” He was gratified to report that the tribunal established under the Treaty of Washington had awarded the United States $15.5 million to settle American claims against Britain. That settlement, Grant said, “leaves these two Governments without a shadow upon the friendly relations which it is my sincere hope may forever remain equally unclouded.” Grant reported that the
government continued to pay down the federal debt incurred during the Civil War. In the nearly four years of his administration the debt had been reduced by almost $400 million, from $2.6 billion at the beginning of his term, as a result of more efficient collection of revenues but mostly from a reduction of spending. “The preservation of our national credit is of the highest importance,” Grant said; the administration was on a course to render it rock solid.

Grant’s reflections took a more philosophical turn in his second inaugural address, delivered in early March 1873. “
Under Providence I have been called a second time to act as executive over this great nation,” he said. The responsibility was a heavy one. “It is my firm conviction that the civilized world is tending toward republicanism, or government by the people through their chosen representatives, and that our own great republic is destined to be the guiding star to all others.” The principal goal of his first administration had been accomplished. “The states lately at war with the general government are now happily rehabilitated, and no executive control is exercised in any one of them that would not be exercised in any other state under like circumstances.” The army had been reduced to a level below that of every substantial European power, and military expenditures had declined accordingly. Yet the nation remained secure. “Now that the telegraph is made available for communicating thought, together with rapid transit by steam, all parts of a continent are made contiguous for all purposes of government, and communication between the extreme limits of the country made easier than it was throughout the old thirteen states at the beginning of our national existence.” Grant, the warrior, looked to the day when continued progress would render war obsolete. “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.”

In Americans’ time, however, as opposed to God’s time, work remained. “The effects of the late civil strife have been to free the slave and make him a citizen,” Grant said. Americans could take pride in this. Yet the freedman had not achieved equality. “He is not possessed of the civil rights which citizenship should carry with it. This is wrong, and
should be corrected. To this correction I stand committed, so far as executive influence can avail.”

The
Indians likewise deserved America’s continued humane attention. The policies begun during the first term, designed “to bring the aborigines of the country under the benign influences of education and civilization,” must be continued and extended. “It is either this or war of extermination. Wars of extermination, engaged in by people pursuing commerce and all industrial pursuits, are expensive even against the weakest people, and are demoralizing and wicked. Our superiority of strength and advantages of civilization should make us lenient toward the Indian. The wrong inflicted upon him should be taken into account and the balance placed to his credit. The moral view of the question should be considered and the question asked, Can not the Indian be made a useful and productive member of society by proper teaching and treatment? If the effort is made in good faith, we will stand better before the civilized nations of the earth and in our own consciences for having made it.”

“These things are not to be accomplished by one individual,” Grant concluded. “But they will receive my support and such recommendations to Congress as will in my judgment best serve to carry them into effect. I beg your support and encouragement.”

R
eturning to the White House from the inauguration ceremony, Grant penned a note to
Schuyler Colfax. “
Will you do me the favor to come over and dine?” he asked the now former vice president. “We will have no company except our own family and some of our friends who came on to the inauguration. The dinner is early and will give you time to meet an early train for Baltimore.” Grant added, in passing: “Allow me to say that I sympathize with you in the recent Congressional investigations, that I have watched them closely, and that I am as satisfied now as I have ever been of your integrity.”

The investigations Grant referred to had begun the previous December, prompted by reports of a scandal in the spending of funds for the construction of the Pacific railroad. Investigations had been a staple of congressional life since the beginning of the Civil War. Congress investigated Lincoln’s conduct of the war; it investigated reconstruction policy; it investigated the
gold conspiracy; it investigated the
Ku Klux Klan. Nor
were scandals involving the disbursement of funds anything new. Beginning in 1871 the New York press and subsequently
New York state officials revealed enormous overspending by the New York City Democratic ring of
William Tweed, with millions in public money being diverted to Tweed and his
Tammany Hall cronies. Tweed was arrested; he would be tried and convicted.

The Tweed scandal soured much of the public on politics and government, but the good news, from the standpoint of Grant and the Republicans, was that it was a Democratic scandal. Not so the Pacific railroad scandal, which surfaced in the autumn of 1872 under breathless headlines in the
New York Sun
: “The King of Frauds … Colossal Bribery … Congressmen Who Have Robbed the People … How Some Men Get Fortunes … Princely Gifts by the Chairmen of Committees in Congress.” The Pacific railroad had been a Republican project, initiated by a Republican Congress and a Republican president and nurtured by Republican appointed officials. As the story unfolded, the malfeasances fell into two broad categories: misappropriation of public funds and bribery of federal officials. The dodgy money was routed through a company called
Crédit Mobilier, to which the Union Pacific board subcontracted the construction of its portion of the Pacific road. The scandal was that Union Pacific, underwritten by federal funds, paid too much to Crédit Mobilier, with the latter’s directors and owners siphoning the excess into their pockets, and that to cover their tracks, the Crédit Mobilier conspirators sold shares of the company to members of Congress who benefited from the bilking.

The conspiracy held together past the completion of the construction of the Pacific road, but after the
Sun
story appeared, with names of legislators said to be in on the deal, Congress was obliged to investigate. Schuyler Colfax was one of the names on the
Sun
’s list; other prominent figures included
James Garfield and
Henry Wilson, Grant’s new vice president. The investigation became the highlight of the political season in Washington, with reporters and visitors crowding into the investigation rooms and then rushing out to share what they had heard. The star witness was
Oakes Ames, a retired congressman from Massachusetts who had been instrumental in persuading the legislature to underwrite the railroad. Ames produced a memorandum book that listed the members of Congress who had purchased shares of Crédit Mobilier.

Most of those on the list claimed to have done nothing wrong. Members of Congress had various business interests and some of those
interests were affected by federal legislation; this connection didn’t make them crooks, they said. Neither could anyone demonstrate that Crédit Mobilier or Union Pacific had received anything substantial in exchange for spreading the wealth. Nearly every member shown to have purchased shares was a committed supporter of the Pacific railroad; the appropriations bill and other gestures of federal backing had their votes already. If bribery consisted in changing congressional minds—or congressional votes—it was unclear that any such wrongdoing had occurred.

Yet something shifty had happened. Several of those on the list at first denied involvement, only to have their involvement demonstrated beyond deniability. The eventual verdict of the committee was that bribes had been offered but no one had taken them. Oakes Ames, conveniently no longer a member of Congress, was saddled with the guilt. Ames had committed despicable offenses, the committee said, but the other members were either unaware of his designs or had simply purchased Crédit Mobilier stock as a profitable investment.

The judgment strained credulity. “
Good government has received a deadly stab in the shameful result,” the
New York Herald
declared. The
New York Times
lamented the “
pitiful and shameful condition” of congressional ethics and asserted: “To refuse to censure the holders of that stock is to say that the Congressional standard of morals is not high enough to condemn it.”

None of this had anything to do with Grant, who had been far from the scene and far from the minds of Oakes Ames and his collaborators, if any. But like the Tweed affair, from which Grant had been even farther, it strengthened a suspicion in many Americans that government had become a racket.

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