The Man Who Saved the Union (89 page)

Grant doubted the authenticity of the threats but didn’t want to be unprepared. He directed William Sherman to write to Phil Sheridan, who had returned from Louisiana to his headquarters in Chicago. “
Wherever you can, collect your troops into as large garrisons as possible, convenient for moving,” Sherman told Sheridan. The president wished to have troops ready to bring to Washington. “He might want as many as 4000 men here, and that is impossible without drawing from you.”

While the electoral commission labored, Grant weighed the meaning of the alternative outcomes. “
While he most earnestly desired the declaration of Governor Hayes as president,”
Hamilton Fish recorded of a conversation with Grant, “he thought that should he come into power with his administration embarrassed with the question of the votes of two or three states he would be much crippled in power. On the other hand, if Tilden were elected he would be unable to satisfy the expectations of the South, and with the commitment of his party against the use of the military for any purpose of the government, he would be unable to collect the internal revenue in the South.… He thinks that Tilden will be unable to reduce the debt, probably not to pay the running expenses
of the government without an increase of taxation, and that four years of his administration will satisfy the country with the Democrats and make a better chance for the Republicans coming into power.” But more than anything Grant wanted the issue resolved without resort to force. “He expressed the greatest anxiety for a peaceful solution of the question.”

As the time ran down, Grant came to believe Hayes would win. “
Three weeks remain until I close my official career,” Grant wrote
Edwards Pierrepont in February. “Although so short a time, it appears to me interminable, my anxiety to be free from care is so great. As yet the question of who is to succeed me is not definitely settled, but the chances seem to be much in favor of the Republican candidate. But he must gain every point to succeed, while his opponent requires but one.” He no longer feared violence but he didn’t rule out obstruction. “I believe quiet will be preserved in any event, though it seems possible now that the Democrats in the House may prevent any count unless they get their candidate declared elected.”

The Democrats did obstruct for a while. The electoral commission, on which three Republican justices tipped the overall balance in favor of the Republicans, decided in a series of eight-to-seven votes that Hayes had won the disputed states. By the commission’s count Hayes carried the electoral college and the
election 185 to 184. Congress still had to consider the commission’s verdict, and though the Republican Senate endorsed it at once, the Democratic House delayed, hoping for something in exchange. Sources close to Hayes suggested that the governor would terminate Grant’s policy of using federal troops to safeguard elections in the South and otherwise enforce federal law there, and Hayes didn’t deny the suggestions. This tacit bargain broke the embargo and let Hayes have the presidency.

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T
HE
C
OMPROMISE OF
1877,
AS THE DEAL WAS CALLED, RANG DOWN
the curtain on Grant’s public service and on the extended crisis of American democracy. Almost since his graduation from
West Point in 1843, the fate of the Union had hung in the balance. The North and the South had battled over the annexation of Texas, which gave rise to the war with Mexico, which spawned the
Compromise of 1850, which polarized American politics and led to guerrilla war in Kansas, mayhem in the Senate and an attempt to start a slave rebellion in western Virginia. The 1860
election of Lincoln provoked the South to secede; secession triggered the bloodiest war in American history. After six hundred thousand deaths and the destruction of wide swaths of the South, the overt phase of the fighting ended at Appomattox, but the Union remained at risk until the terms of re-union were agreed upon. The South continued to resist federal authority, with the
Ku Klux Klan and other paramilitary groups being the most visible agents of the resistance. Not until troops of the Union army had again taken the field in the South was the resistance finally suppressed.

Ulysses Grant turned fifty-five the month after he and Julia relinquished the White House to Rutherford and
Lucy Hayes. He could reflect that his adult life had coincided with the Union’s long crisis, and though he was not a boastful man, he took pride in his role—first as general, then as president—in bringing the Union through its crisis intact. He would have been the first to admit that the task of reconstruction was incomplete. He could scatter the Klan but he couldn’t change the minds of all those who tolerated political terror. He could defend Southern
blacks but he couldn’t know that they would remain safe after he left office.

Yet the great public question of his lifetime had been answered. The Union was secure. Secession was a dead letter, mentioned only in the past tense. Slavery, the root of the sectional crisis, was a memory. American democracy required continual work, but the Union, democracy’s receptacle, would hold.

“A
fter an unusually stormy passage for any season of the year, and continuous seasickness generally among the passengers after the second day out, we reached Liverpool,” Grant wrote in June 1877. “Jesse and I proved to be among the few good sailors. Neither of us felt a moment of quamishness during the voyage.”

What he felt instead was relief. During his last months in office, amid the fight over the Hayes-Tilden election, the continuing demands by Southern Republicans for troops and the incessant assaults by Democrats, he had maintained his composure and sustained his spirits by thoughts of a foreign journey that would carry him far from the roils of American politics. He had lived longer in the White House than he had lived anywhere since childhood, and although a home base could be reassuring, it could also be confining. He remembered the freedom of the military campaign, the joy of life in tent and on horseback; and while he couldn’t reproduce his wartime existence, he could recapitulate something of its peripatetic nature. “
I have no plans laid either as to where we will go or how long remain absent,” he said of his journey. “We will not return, however, until the party”—himself, Julia and Jesse—“becomes homesick, which may be in six months and may not be for two years.” The trip would be funded by a rare—for Grant—good investment: mining stocks of Nevada’s
Comstock Lode, which were producing handsome dividends. And it would keep him clear of American politics, which weren’t likely to get any kinder or less complicated.

From Washington he and Julia had traveled to New York to stay with
Hamilton Fish and his wife. Grant dodged questions about Hayes’s first appointments and early performance; he denied reports that he was writing a book about his life and career. “
There are books enough already,” he told a reporter. “Anybody can write a book. I could myself, for that matter, perhaps. But I assure you I haven’t had the least thought about
such a thing.” On departing the Fish home he thanked his host for the hospitality but mostly for the service he had provided during eight years as secretary of state. Vexing questions that might have led to war had confronted the country, he said. “
Through your statesmanship more than through any individual, these questions have been peaceably settled and in a manner highly creditable to the nation and without wounding the sensibilities of other nations.” Grant appreciated no less the secretary’s personal friendship and loyalty. “Our relations have at all times been so pleasant that I shall carry the remembrance of them through life.”

Fish joined William Sherman and other notables in bidding Grant bon voyage at the Philadelphia waterfront. Grant was praised and thanked for his service in war and peace. He was visibly moved. “
I feel overcome at the sentiments to which I have listened, and to which I feel altogether inadequate to respond,” he said. “I don’t think that the compliments ought all be paid to me or any one man in either of the positions which I was called upon to fill. That which I accomplished—which I was able to accomplish—I owe to the assistance of able lieutenants.… I believe some of these lieutenants could have filled my place, maybe better than I did.” From the large crowd came shouts of “No!” Grant turned to Sherman. “I believe that my friend Sherman could have taken my place as a soldier.” Cheers from the crowd for Sherman and Grant both. “And I believe, finally, that if our country ever comes into trial again, young men will spring up equal to the occasion, and if one fails, there will be another to take his place.” Tremendous cheers and much waving of handkerchiefs.

H
e thought the departure from America would liberate him from making speeches, which had grown easier over time yet never comfortable. But he discovered that his words were in greater demand in Europe than they had been at home. His very person was in greater demand. “
What was my surprise to find nearly all shipping in port decorated to the last flag,” he wrote of his landing at Liverpool. “And from the mainmast of each ship the flag of the Union was most conspicuous. The docks were lined with as many of the population as could find standing room, and the streets to the hotel where it was understood my party would stop were packed.” Liverpool hosted a lavish lunch for the American hero; the mayors of other English cities insisted he write them into his schedule. A special train with the finest Pullman cars was placed at his disposal.
It carried him first to London, where a round of receptions and dinners dizzied him and delighted Julia. They were guests of the current
duke of Wellington, the heir of the Iron Duke of Waterloo.
William Gladstone, the former (and future) prime minister, paid call at a soiree hosted by the American minister (and former attorney general),
Edwards Pierrepont. “I doubt whether London has ever seen a private house so elaborately or so tastefully decorated,” Grant said of the minister’s residence. Grant thanked the hosts and guests and briefly asserted the necessity and virtue of Anglo-American friendship.

The Grants met Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert at Windsor Castle. British royals had never encountered a former president—no former president had ever taken such a tour—and no one knew the protocol. Pierrepont suggested as model a previous visit by Louis Napoleon, the erstwhile emperor of France. Louis, like Grant, had been elected. The keeper of the queen’s dignity was skeptical. “
Once an emperor, always an emperor,” he said. Pierrepont rejoined, “Once a president, always a president.” The protocol chief pondered, then yielded. Grant was introduced as “President Grant.”

The cheering rarely stopped. “
He has been the recipient here of popular ovations like those which you witnessed at the close of the war,”
Adam Badeau, now consul in London, wrote
Elihu Washburne, who had survived his illness to become American minister in Paris. “In Liverpool and Manchester the demonstrations were most enthusiastic and en route to London the train was stopped again for mayors to present addresses etc. When he enters a theater the play stops, and the people rise and cheer. Here in London he takes precedence in society of ambassadors and dukes; the ministers all called on him first, and the Prince of Wales came into his box at the Oaks to make his acquaintance.”

Grant himself was struck by the magnitude and what he took to be the meaning of the enthusiasm. “
My reception has been remarkable in two respects,” he wrote
Hamilton Fish. “First, by invitations from all authorities connected with the government from the Queen down to the mayors and city councils of almost every city in the United Kingdom; and second, by the hearty responses of the citizens of all the cities I have visited, or at which trains upon which I have been traveling have stopped even for a few minutes. It has been very much as it was in the United States in ’65, directly after the war. I take this as indicative of a present very good feeling towards the United States.” In some cases the good feeling seemed to cloak a guilty conscience. “Many persons say to
me quietly that they personally were our good friends in the day of our country’s trial, but they witness now many who were the reverse then that outdo their neighbors in respect and kindness of feeling for us now.”

At every event Grant was called upon to speak. He tried to hide behind his reputation as the American sphinx, the man of deeds rather than words. His success varied. “
Yesterday and the day before I received no less than six addresses from corporations, merchant exchange, working men etc., to all of which I had to reply, without the slightest idea beforehand what I was to hear or what I should say,” he wrote his son Buck. “It being very well understood that I am no speaker makes the task much easier than it otherwise would be, but even as it is I would rather be kicked—in a friendly way—than to make these replies.”

He mixed philosophy with politics in his remarks, which were always heartfelt. “
My reception has been far beyond anything that I could have expected to have been accorded to me,” he told a throng in Liverpool. “A soldier must die, and when a president’s term of office expires he is but a dead soldier. But I have received an attention and a reception that would have done honor to any living person.” Acknowledging the cooperative spirit that had informed the Treaty of Washington, he declared that Americans and Britons shared a great deal. “We are of one kindred, one blood, one language, and one civilization.” Americans were the younger people, Britons the older and more experienced, but each could learn from the other.

A league of workingmen saluted him for the victory he had won for free labor. “
There is no reception that I have met which I am prouder of than this one,” he responded. “Whatever there is of greatness in the United States, or indeed in any other country, is due to the labor performed, and to the laborer who is the author of all greatness and wealth.” He diverged from Republican party orthodoxy in embracing the free-trade principles of his hosts. “
There is one subject that has been referred to here that I don’t know that I should refer to,” he told a Birmingham audience, “and that is the great advantage that would accrue to the United States if
free trade could only be established.” He remarked that the British had protected their manufactures in the early stages of the industrialization process but had dropped the protection when their industries matured. The United States had come later to industrialization than Britain but had now reached the stage where if it similarly dropped protection it would emerge as “one of the greatest free trading nations on the face of the earth.” What this would mean for Anglo-American trade
competition Grant didn’t say; he contented himself with a joint prediction: “When we both get to be free traders I think it is probable all other nations had better stand aside and not contend with us at all.”