The Man Who Saved the Union (88 page)

Words, however, counted for little at this point, and in South Carolina especially the violence escalated into the autumn. Hundreds of members of “rifle clubs” brandished and employed their weapons against Republicans. “
Our people are being shot down like dogs,” a correspondent from Aiken wrote Grant in late September. “The Democratic whites are going about bushwhacking the people of color for our political opinion and throwing their threats around saying that they will kill the last one of us before the day of the election.” A Republican who feared to sign his name wrote from Charleston: “
Guns and pistols are continually heard throughout the upper wards. I have reason to believe that myself and at least 50 Republicans are marked for the dagger or to be mobbed.… I consider every man’s life in danger who does not belong to the Democratic party.”

Governor Chamberlain appealed officially for help. “
Insurrection and domestic violence exist in various portions of this state,” he wrote Grant on October 11. “I am unable with any means at my command to suppress the same.”

Grant decided to brave the political storm and escalate from words to force. He published a proclamation ordering the rifle clubs and other fomenters of violence to disperse. The insurgents had three days to go home. He simultaneously directed William Sherman to gather all available troops of the Atlantic region and dispatch them to South Carolina at once.

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T
HE TROOPS QUELLED THE VIOLENCE AND ALLOWED AN ELECTION IN
South Carolina that was almost orderly. The Republicans felt sufficiently secure to deliver a slim majority to Hayes. Such, at any rate, was what the Republicans asserted. The Democrats alleged a miscount. They also alleged miscounts in the two other Southern states still controlled by Republicans,
Florida and
Louisiana, where the Hayes side similarly claimed majorities. The counting became crucial when the country as a whole returned a popular victory for Tilden and the tally of electors from the uncontested states tipped narrowly in Tilden’s favor. If Tilden could overturn the result in any of the three contested states, he would become Grant’s successor; Hayes needed all three to win the White House.

Grant sought to ensure a fair review of the ballots. Following reports of potential intimidation of review boards in Florida and Louisiana, he ordered Sherman to strengthen the army’s presence there. “
See that the proper and legal boards of canvassers are unmolested in the performance of their duties,” he said. “Should there be any grounds of suspicion of fraudulent counting on either side, it should be reported and denounced at once. No man worthy of the office of President would be willing to hold it if ‘counted in’ or placed there by any fraud. Either party can afford to be disappointed in the result, but the country cannot afford to have the result tainted by the suspicion of illegal or false returns.” The next day he decided to send Phil Sheridan back to New Orleans. “
There is such apprehension of violence in New Orleans during the canvassing of the vote of the state that I think you should go in person,” the president told Sheridan. He nonetheless warned against any overt intrusion into
politics like that which Sheridan had directed on his last visit to the city. “The military have nothing to do with the counting of the vote. Its province is to keep the peace and to protect the legal canvassing board in the performance of its duties.”

Grant’s move evoked the kinds of passionate responses he had come to expect. An Indiana Democrat and Union veteran vowed that all the loyal men of his state would support Grant as they had supported Lincoln. “
All they ask in this the second crisis of our country is, should it turn out that Governor Tilden has been legally elected President of the United States that he gets his seat as such. But on the other hand, should it be that Governor Hayes is the man, we will stand by you until
Hell freezes over
.” A pension agent from New Jersey applauded Grant’s bold stroke against election fraud. “
We have a government and mean to defend it. We are not Mexico nor South America, but Anglo Saxon Yankees, and (God willing) we don’t mean the republic to perish yet awhile.” Southerners and Democrats sent threats of new violence, some directed against Grant personally.
John Mosby, the former Confederate cavalryman, crossed over from Virginia to warn the president against assassination plots. Mosby’s sources were talking of a new insurrection and saying: “
The President must be the first man to be gotten out of the way.” A letter signed “Baltimore Secret Government” put a date on Grant’s demise: “
The course you have pursued does not meet the approbation of our members, and you are hereby ordered to resign the office of President by the 1st of January or you will be assassinated.”

A
mid the recounting and the threats, Grant reflected on his time in office. His eighth annual message took a different tone from the previous versions, admitting failures as often as claiming success. His Indian policy, he said, had ended armed conflict in most of the West but not in the region around the Black Hills. “
Hostilities there have grown out of the avarice of the white man, who has violated our treaty stipulations in his search for gold. The question might be asked why the government has not enforced obedience to the terms of the treaty prohibiting the occupation of the Black Hills region by whites. The answer is simple: The first immigrants to the Black Hills were removed by troops, but rumors of rich discoveries of gold took into that region increased numbers. Gold has actually been found in paying quantity, and an effort to remove the miners would only result in the desertion of the bulk of the troops that
might be sent there to remove them.” The government had been forced to defend the miners, with results visible in
Custer’s defeat and the continuing effort to find and capture
Crazy Horse and his warriors.

The Santo
Domingo question still rankled Grant, and his perception of a lost opportunity elicited his regret. He pondered what annexation might have meant for American politics and civil rights. “The emancipated race of the South would have found there a congenial home, where their civil rights would not be disputed and where their labor would be so much sought after that the poorest among them could have found the means to go. Thus in cases of great oppression and cruelty, such as has been practiced upon them in many places within the last eleven years, whole communities would have sought refuge in Santo Domingo. I do not suppose the whole race would have gone, nor is it desirable that they should go. Their labor is desirable—indispensable almost—where they now are. But the possession of this territory would have left the negro ‘master of the situation,’ by enabling him to demand his rights at home on pain of finding them elsewhere.” He added, at once wistfully and defensively, “I do not present these views now as a recommendation for a renewal of the subject of annexation, but I do refer to it to vindicate my previous action in regard to it.”

Some of his failures, he owned, came from inexperience. “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.” He grew more specific in acknowledging and trying to explain the scandals of his administration. “Mistakes have been made, as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections made of the assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various duties of administering the Government—in nearly every case selected without a personal acquaintance with the appointee, but upon recommendations of the representatives chosen directly by the people. It is impossible, where so many trusts are to be allotted, that the right parties 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.” Yet he didn’t absolve himself. “I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the
law, and for the very best interests of the whole people. Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.”

And they had been the result of the tremendous challenges the country faced at the time of his inauguration. “Less than four years before, the country had emerged from a conflict such as no other nation had ever survived,” Grant said. “Nearly one-half of the states had revolted against the government.” The conflict had ended with the
assassination of President Lincoln, who had carried the country through the war and hoped to lead it into peace. “The intervening time to my first inauguration was filled up with wranglings between
Congress and the new executive as to the best mode of reconstruction, or, to speak plainly, as to whether the control of the government should be thrown immediately into the hands of those who had so recently and persistently tried to destroy it, or whether the victors should continue to have an equal voice with them in this control.” This was the essence of Reconstruction: Should the South abide by the statutes and constitutional provisions that bound the rest of the country or should it be allowed to ignore the ones it disliked?

He had tried to apply a single rule of law to the whole country. He had succeeded in some instances, failed in others. Soon another man would take up the task. “With the present term of Congress my official life terminates. It is not probable that public affairs will ever again receive attention from me further than as a citizen of the republic, always taking a deep interest in the honor, integrity, and prosperity of the whole land.”

T
he return of Phil Sheridan inspired Louisiana Republicans to hope for a further extension of their time in power. Members of Congress had descended on Louisiana to observe the recounting for president there; even as they did so, Governor Kellogg wrote Grant warning that the contest to determine the next governor and state legislature was getting ugly. If the Democrats who were claiming victory were inaugurated, violence might ensue, he said, whereas the installation of the Republicans would preserve the peace. But the Republicans couldn’t be installed without federal troops.

Grant read Kellogg’s request with mounting exasperation. It was “
again the Louisiana trouble,” he told
Hamilton Fish. “They are always in trouble there and always wanting the United States to send troops. They want me to inaugurate their governor and legislature.” The president told Kellogg that the Louisianans must look to themselves; he would send no
troops to break the deadlock in the politics of the state. “
To do so would be to recognize one of two rival governments for the state executive and legislative at the very time when a committee of each house of Congress is in the state capital of Louisiana investigating all the facts connected with the late election.” The president allowed that if violence did indeed break out and a request for assistance came from a duly inaugurated governor, he would reconsider. Until then he would “leave constitutional authority and means to settle which is the rightful governor and which the legal legislature.”

A request of another sort came from Congress. The Democrats who controlled the House wanted to see the orders the president and his subordinates had issued to the military commanders in the Southern states before and during the elections. Grant complied by sending hundreds of pages of orders and supporting documents, along with a statement describing what he had done and why. “
These different kinds and sources of evidence have left no doubt whatever in my mind that intimidation has been used, and actual violence, to an extent requiring the aid of the United States government, where it was practicable to furnish such aid, in
South Carolina, in
Florida, and in Louisiana, as well as in
Mississippi, in
Alabama, and in
Georgia,” the president said. He explained what the soldiers had done and what they had not done. “The troops of the United States have been but sparingly used, and in no case so as to interfere with the free exercise of the right of suffrage.… No troops were stationed at 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 available as a posse for the officer whose duty it was to preserve the peace and prevent intimidation of voters.” Grant pointed out that the small size of the postwar army and the other demands on the troops, especially in the West, had limited the force he could bring to bear. He volunteered that if he had had more troops he would have sent them south; their lack had contributed to the effective nullification of the
Fifteenth Amendment in several states. As it was, his use of the army had been politically circumspect and entirely legal. “I have not employed troops on slight occasions nor in any case where it has not been necessary to the enforcement of the laws of the United States.”

In January 1877 the two parties in Congress crafted a bill creating a special commission to oversee the counting of the
electoral votes and thereby determine the next president. The commission consisted of
five Republican members of Congress, five Democrats and five Supreme Court justices. Grant gave the measure his seal of approval. “
The bill may not be perfect, and its provisions may not be such as would be best applicable to all future occasions, but it is calculated to meet the present condition of the question and of the country,” he said. “The country is agitated. It needs and it desires peace and quiet and harmony between all parties and all sections.… It wants to be assured that the result of the election will be accepted without resistance from the supporters of the disappointed candidate, and that its highest officer shall not hold his place with a questioned title of right.”

The peace and quiet Grant called for didn’t emerge at once. In fact, as inauguration day approached, tensions mounted. Zealots on the Democratic side muttered about a coup against the government in the event Tilden was denied the presidency. “
In my daily intercourse with men, which brings me largely with the rank and file,” a correspondent wrote Grant from Brooklyn, “I hear threats of an uprising in the great cities of New York and Brooklyn. I not only hear it in New York state but in New Jersey, and it is not confined to the lower classes alone but to the influential and men in good social standing.” A writer from New Jersey declared, “
There is 200,000 men in Jersey who are ready to sustain Tilden in his claim to the presidency of the United States.”