This article covers the timeline of The Great Emancipator from 1865-1869, covering the end of the American Civil War in April and May 1865 until the end of the Lincoln administration in 1869.
1865: Reconstruction Begins[]
In May 1865, with the official end of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln began to refocus his energies on the the restructuring of government and civil society in the Southern states, which soon became known as Reconstruction. Lincoln had placed the remaining Southern states that were being occupied under federal military rule for the next nine months, hoping that this time period would allow himself and his fellow Republicans in Congress the chance to work out a lasting solution. On May 15, President Lincoln, his Cabinet, and Republican congressional leadership met in the White House to discuss a series of plans and goals for Reconstruction. The immediate issues that were drawn up: suffrage, land ownership, readmission of the Southern states, did not have obvious answers. Lincoln and his Cabinet, including Vice President Andrew Johnson, had drawn up a moderate program modeled on the state of Louisiana: 10% of the state's voting population had to swear an oath of allegiance to the United States in order to allow for re-admittance to the Union, suffrage was to then be allowed, and possibly extended to the South's Black population, but only for men with sufficient education or veteran status. Lincoln had hoped to leave the difficult issue of land ownership to a later series of meetings. Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the Radical Republicans in Congress, would not allow it to.
Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and leader of the Radical Republicans.
Stevens and the Radicals proposed more stringent requirements for re-admittance: 50% must swear allegiance, modeled after the failed Wade-Davis Bill from 1864, and a plan for universal Black suffrage to match that of Southern Whites. Stevens entered this meeting with his own goals, including the destruction of what he and his friends called the Slave Power that had controlled the South before the war. Additionally, Lincoln and Stevens came at the issue from ideologically different understandings of the need for "re-admission" as Lincoln considered the South the location of an insurgency that had not legally left the Union, while Stevens believed that each state's secession had made them essentially foreign bodies. Vice President Johnson personally admonished Stevens for his proposals, setting the stage for later conflict. President Lincoln was focused on brokering a compromise and establishing the necessary antecedents to reformed Southern government, and he stood firm on his initial proposals. At that point, Stevens and his fellow Radical Republicans threatened to walk out of this and further meetings unless the President showed a willingness to compromise. This became the first of many meetings of Republican leadership in the summer of 1865 until a final plan was crafted in September.
The Reconstruction Compromise, as it was crafted, agreed to a 25% allegiance standard for Southern re-admission to the Union, with suffrage to be given to Southern Blacks that met an educational standard or held veteran status, largely from Lincoln's demands. In return, Stevens exacted from Lincoln a promise for passage of congressional legislation protecting equality before the law for Black citizens. Stevens also ensured from Lincoln the lasting existence of the Freedmen's Bureau, which would oversee land distribution and educational opportunities for Blacks in the South. Federal military officials would remain in place to ensure that violence would be kept to a minimum. But Lincoln knew that with the Civil War over, that there was immense pressure to send America's fighting men home, making him reluctant to commit a large number of men to the occupation, or for a long period of time. Lincoln and Stevens would continue to work out a compromise on voting rights for Blacks for some time as Lincoln still sought to limit Black suffrage to only the educated and veterans, while some Radical Republicans continued to advocate for universal male suffrage for Blacks to accompany that of Whites. On this matter, Stevens and Lincoln were both reluctant to act, as removing the Three-Fifths Compromise and expanding voting rights for Blacks would mean that reconstructed Southern states would have larger congressional representation, and that Republicans ought to be in a position where new Black voters could be courted by their party before this to protect their majorities in Congress.
Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose insurgency became the inspiration for Southern violence for years after his death.
The remainder of 1865 was spent executing the Reconstruction Compromise through legislation. The Freedmen's Bureau located unused land, especially land left vacant by Southern plantation owners, and parceled it out to Southern Blacks. The Bureau also began the establishment of a network of schools, primarily for the use of Southern Blacks, although admittance for poor Whites was not restricted. Vice President Johnson was worried by what he saw as land redistribution that only aided Blacks and not Southern Whites, who he insisted had also suffered greatly at the hand of the Southern aristocracy from the Civil War, and disdained the use of federal assistance for these ends. Meanwhile, as the Republicans debated Reconstruction in Washington, Nathan Bedford Forrest's insurrection in northern Alabama finally came to an end in October when Forrest was killed in Alabama, months after the official end of the Civil War. But in evading federal forces for so long, Forrest became a martyr for the Southern cause. As federal troops now poured into the South to re-establish law and order, Southern bands began to form to launch a campaign of terror against Blacks. Lincoln prioritized the enforcement of federal law to counter these, but found a lack of strong legislation to back his actions. This led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1865 in December, well ahead of time. This accelerated timeline further distressed Johnson, who saw Southern resistance as a natural reaction to federal overreach.
1866: Reconstruction Expands[]
In 1866, with moderate Reconstruction well underway, the new Civil Rights Act gave federal forces more teeth when it came to enforcing political equality between Southern Whites and Blacks. The Freedmen's Bureau continued its mission to spread education and opportunity throughout the South, continuing to meet sporadic resistance throughout the land from a series of rapidly organizing groups that initially called themselves the "Knights of Bedford Forrest." These groups harassed Black farms and schools and attacked sympathetic Southern officials as they moved throughout the countryside, as federal troops made such actions in the cities unwise. In addition to this geographic limitation, the Knights also found their membership limited by the fact that most Southerners did not have the stomach for a second insurrection. By this point, Ulysses S. Grant had been appointed General of the Army of the United States and Lincoln asked him to oversee the military administration of Reconstruction. In April 1866, Lincoln asked Grant to commission a report detailing Reconstruction's progress in the South, as the first Southern states, Tennessee and Louisiana, were beginning the process of re-admission. Lincoln especially wanted to know the progress made on securing legal equality, which would play into whether Radical Republicans in Congress would approve re-admission based on voting considerations.
Grant found that regard for civil authority was lacking in the South due to the Civil War's effects and that while the cities were making rapid progress toward political equality, at least on the surface, that the work that the Freedmen's Bureau was doing in the countryside was being severely limited by a lack of equal federal enforcement. Grant thus recommended that Lincoln refocus federal enforcement efforts to rural areas, combined with wide infrastructure works that would give unemployed people of both races in the South economic opportunity. Lincoln, a disciple of Whig Henry Clay in his youth, agreed with Grant's call for internal improvements, and with Republican support passed legislation commissioning extensive federal infrastructure improvements, so long as they ensured equal opportunity for employment. These efforts also provided federal troops license to enforce federal legislation and to combat the Knights by following federally-employed infrastructure workers. In August, Tennessee became the first state to apply for re-admittance to the Union with 25% of its citizens pledging the Ironclad Oath, pushing the issue of voting rights to the forefront of congressional politics.
A Freedmen's School in the Deep South, with a Freedmen's Bureau teacher at the front.
The fight over voting rights threatened to destroy whatever goodwill had been built between Lincoln and Radical Republicans in Congress. Lincoln persisted in only allowing for limited suffrage, at least for the first six years of re-admittance, at which point suffrage could be re-expanded and property or education requirements gradually phased out. Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner, having grown fully confident of Black support for the Republican Party if it could be achieved, began to openly advocate for universal Black male suffrage, including with a constitutional amendment if necessary. Lincoln, however, foresaw poor political outcomes if the Republican Party became too deeply associated with Black equality in both the South and the North. Lincoln worked with Johnson to ensure bipartisan support for his more moderate position, securing the vote of enough moderate Republicans and Northern Democrats to pass the Reconstruction Act of 1866 in July, allowing Tennessee to be readmitted with limited suffrage for White, with Blacks only being allowed to vote if they were veterans or could prove a certain level of education. Johnson won the votes of Democrats by telling his colleagues that lack of support for the President's proposal would lead to a worse proposal being jammed through by Radical Republicans. Stevens and Sumner were furious, threatening to undermine future presidential Reconstruction efforts for Lincoln, but eventually reneged.
As Reconstruction efforts built and expanded, so too, however, did Southern resistance. While many were unwilling to support and manage a full insurrection, federal encroachment into the Southern inland made conflict inevitable. Bands of the Knights of Bedford Forrest and now so-called "White Leagues" organized to damage infrastructure advances made by federal employees and to occasionally raid federal supply routes. Grant, who remained in the South to observe and oversee Reconstruction efforts, saw how the Southern radicals emboldened others, and so targeted his forces at squashing rebels pockets where they remained. The effort became a small guerrilla war itself, focused primarily in the center of the old Confederacy along the Mississippi River and in northern Alabama, where radicals could easily slip away into nature and avoid federal authorities. Grant pressed President Lincoln for 2,000 more soldiers to quash the rebellion; Lincoln granted him 1,200 more. "The country doesn't have the stomach for it," the President wrote Grant. What Grant did not know was that Vice President Johnson had lobbied President Lincoln to ensure that fewer soldiers than had been asked for were sent. The branches of government were set on a collision course when in December of 1866, Louisiana became the second state to apply for re-admittance to the Union. Grant made known to Lincoln his opposition of such an event, as Louisiana, its rebellion largely stopped in 1862, was still home to radical insurgents in the north.
1867: Johnson's Departure[]
With 1867 dawning, the concerted effects of Reconstruction were beginning to show. Efforts to educate Southern Blacks were producing results, and federal law enforcement, especially in the cities, where both Southern and Northern Blacks were aiding in the organizing of Southern Blacks as a political force, primarily for the Republican Party. Frederick Douglass, visiting Atlanta in this time period, then a focal point of burgeoning Black politics in the South, spoke of the hope that soon that all Blacks would be granted the right to vote, the same as universal White suffrage that existed in the North. Grant and Douglass met in Atlanta to discuss Reconstruction, during which they agreed that education must be the focus of Reconstruction, in the North as well as the South, in order to ensure its lasting effects. This was also the first time, Douglass later claimed, that he had heard from Grant that he intended to run for the presidency in the coming presidential election in 1868. Grant had also been hearing word from Washington of Andrew Johnson's efforts to undermine Grant's leadership in the South. That March, Grant rode to Washington, initially to discuss the Louisiana matter with Lincoln. The discussion soon turned to education, with Grant encouraging Lincoln to pursue the expansion of the Morrill Land-Grant Act into the South, with deliberate efforts to ensure that Blacks would have equal access to the universities it created in the South.
Lincoln agreed that the Morrill Act should be expanded to the South, but proposed that separate colleges be created specifically for Blacks. Lincoln and Grant also discussed the expansion of the Homestead Act as a method to encourage new economic prosperity for Southern Blacks by encouraging those who could not find opportunity in the South to go westward in order to find it. Grant encouraged Lincoln with the news of how rapidly Southern Blacks were taking to the Freedmen Bureau's education and monetary opportunities, as well as the expansion of infrastructure in the South. The two make little progress, however, on the Louisiana matter, with Grant leaving, promising to have the Louisiana rebels quashed by the end of the year. Lincoln began to discuss matters of education and Westward expansion with his Cabinet, but the education policies presented met opposition from Vice President Johnson. Tensions began to brew in Cabinet meetings between President Lincoln and Johnson. Tensions peaked when Lincoln also began discussing efforts by Thaddeus Stevens to expand land redistribution for Black farmers, as well as a constitutional amendment to ensure Black political and voting rights in the South after the reconstruction of Southern states. Soon Lincoln began arguing for Grant's proposal of using education to integrate Whites and Blacks in the South, including with extensive public school systems in the South upon their reconstruction. As these proposals all began to take a palpable form, Johnson found himself increasingly isolated in Lincoln's Cabinet in his opposition.
Andrew Johnson's portrait, made just months before his resignation from the Vice Presidency.
Vice President Johnson began to discuss the idea of resigning his office with Democratic Party leaders in Washington, and began making plans to do so, saying that Lincoln was moving too far in the Radical direction on Reconstruction. Grant returned to Louisiana with General William Tecumseh Sherman, who he put in charge of finishing off the insurrection in northern Louisiana. Sherman did so, but with great harshness toward the local population, which Sherman correctly suspected were favorable towards the insurgents. This produced a divide among Northern observers, providing Johnson with the perfect moment for his resignation, which he did so on the politically potent date of July 4, 1867. No precedent yet existed for replacing Johnson in the office of Vice President, and Lincoln did not want the unpopular President pro tempore of the Senate, Senator Benjamin Wade, to be next in line for the presidency. Instead, Lincoln asked that he be allowed to nominate a new Vice President to fill the remainder of Johnson's term, upon the approval of the Senate. Wade agreed, and Lincoln ended up nominating House Speaker Schuyler Colfax, a man of moderate standing, to fill Johnson's place, with the understanding that Colfax would return to his congressional office upon the end of his term in 1869.
Johnson, now a private citizen, returned to his native Tennessee, which was on track to soon be readmitted to the Union, which it did on August 1, 1867. State elections were to be held that Autumn to fill the state's legislature, congressional delegation, and then its two Senate seats, one of which Johnson planned on pursuing before pursuing the Presidency in 1868. Johnson began to stump for Democrats in the state, decrying the physical and cultural violence being pursued by Grant and Sherman in Louisiana, and to some degree by Lincoln and the Radical Republicans in Washington. Despite Johnson's opposition, and without his tempering voice in his Cabinet, led Lincoln to pursue his proposed policies that expanded land redistribution, especially from Southern officers and officeholders from the Civil War, while making public his plans to expand the Morrill Act to the South. This and Johnson's public speaking, which soon expanded beyond Tennessee and to the rest of the South, whipped up public opposition to Reconstruction in the South. Tennessee elected a congressional delegation and a state legislature that leaned Democrat, and soon Johnson was elected to serve as the state's Senator in Washington. This public opposition soon turned into public violence as White mobs began to pursue Black leaders in the streets, only quelled by the sight of federal troops. Public rage encouraged Lincoln to refocus his efforts on westward expansion, leading to the passage of the Homestead Act of 1867, with the Freedman's Bureau focused on encouraging Blacks to relocate west if they could not find opportunity or avoid violence in the South.
In November, Grant officially declared the insurrection in Louisiana to be defeated, opening up the path for the state to be readmitted before the next presidential election. Thousands of Blacks began to migrate westward, provided rations, transportation, and protection by the Freedmen's Bureau, and in many cases carrying the racial tensions of the South with them, too. As 1867 drew to a close, racial tensions in the South continued to rise, further complicated by the coming presidential election. Lincoln knew that he could not pursue Black colleges in the South or integration in the North, lest he incur a backlash that would lose Republicans the 1868 elections. Lincoln agreed to subside on the issue, and focused the last year-and-a-half of his presidency on matters other than Reconstruction. Instead, Lincoln pursued education by expanding the Morrill Act in the North and West instead of the South, expanding infrastructure across the nation, railroads especially. Lincoln set his sights on the continued construction of a transcontinental railroad, encouraging the completion of such a structure by the end of his term. Johnson, meanwhile, continued to whip up support for a new Democratic platform before the 1868 election that included acceleration of Reconstruction, the rapid return of federal troops to their homes, and a refusal of any constitutional amendments which would ensure voting and legal equality permanently. Grant was quoted as saying, around Christmas of 1867, "someone's gotta shut that son-of-a-bitch from Tennessee up, and if that job's got to be mine, then by God, I'll do it."
1868: Grant vs Johnson[]
Reconstruction continued, with federal troops moving to quell anti-Black violence, and Grant began making moves toward his running for President in 1868. Grant sought support from Radical Republicans on his record of being able to quash insurrections in the South as Commanding General of the United States Army, but it was not Radicals who opposed Grant's candidacy. Moderate Republicans, and the party's leadership especially, did not like that Grant was so closely associated with "Negro equality" as they saw it. Grant understood this, and took steps to distance himself from Sherman's handling of the Louisiana insurrection, while moderating his tone on Reconstruction. Grant began advocating not for the expansion of what Reconstruction had wrought, including in education, but instead for the maintenance of Reconstruction's current progress, and for equality before the law and order as it exists in the South. This now amounted to a conservative position, within the Republican Party at least, all but securing Grant the Republican nomination headed into the 1868 Republican National Convention in Chicago. Andrew Johnson, meanwhile, encountered no major opposition to his securing of the Democratic nomination at that year's convention in New York City.
Ulysses S. Grant, 1868 Republican presidential nominee and Commanding General of the United States Army.
1868 brought a renewed calm to the South, as Lincoln had ordered almost all federal soldiers in the South not overseeing public works projects in the countryside to return to the cities and towns. This served to dissipate much of the violence in the major cities and towns, or at least relocate it to the countryside. That Summer at the Republican National Convention, Grant arrived from Atlanta by train to a triumphant crowd at Crosby's Opera House, where the convention was being held. Grant met the night before the convention, May 19, with party leadership to discuss campaign strategy. Grant had wished to have this campaign surrogates argue for all of the good that Reconstruction had done and to fight to continue to allow re-admission to the Union on the established basis instead of Johnson's sped up schedule. The party elders, however, were hesitant to focus the campaign on a divisive issue such as Reconstruction and racial equality. Senator Lyman Trumbull, the leading moderate Republican in the Senate, argued that such a campaign would surely lose his home state of Illinois, and likely the rest of the Midwest with it. Grant eventually agreed to focus the campaign on expanding infrastructure and integrating Western states instead of on Reconstruction. The next day the Convention selected Trumbull to run as Grant's Vice President.
Johnson, however, had no such gripes with campaigning on Reconstruction. After officially receiving his party's nomination in July, Johnson's surrogates across the nation campaigned on the idea that Lincoln had reached too far beyond the constitutional powers of the presidency in Reconstruction, and that he was trying to create too much change too fast. While Johnson did not actively campaign, as was the tradition at the time, he published a speech on July 23, in which he said that equality should not be a question of the federal government, but for the states. His message of overreach and states rights resonated in the North, and in the South Johnson's message took on a much darker shade. Knights of Bedford Forrest and White Leagues continued to raise hell, egged on by White backlash to the political organization of Southern Blacks, and hoping to intimidate those that could vote in the 1868 election. By the Summer of 1868, Tennessee and Louisiana had been readmitted to the Union, and more states followed as Georgia, Florida, and the Carolina's officially did so as well, with many others on their way. This allowed Southern White forces to focus their efforts on Louisiana and Tennessee. Lincoln did what he could to prevent the South from slipping into anarchy, but found his hands tied by the implications his actions would have for the coming election.
As Autumn began, it became clear to Grant and his Republican colleagues that while the party's Northern supporters were sure to vote for Grant, that his campaign was failing to reach moderate Democrats. Meanwhile, the political upheaval in the South worsened, and began to worry Northerners that a second civil war was on the horizon. In late August, Grant met with Republican leadership yet again, and they agreed to change the tone of the campaign. On September 8, Grant gave a speech in Chicago, later to be called the Iron Hull Speech, in which he advocated for an even stronger federal hand in Reconstruction. Grant argued that the nation was like a ship, now just recently repaired, but with holes leaking and causing it to sink, and to prevent this from happening that the federal government needed to go further and act as an iron hull, keeping the country afloat. To do so, Grant advocated for stronger federal laws to cull White violence in the South, a hastening of infrastructure improvements in the South to make it as accessible as the North, and the fulfillment of his proposal to Lincoln that public education be spread across the South in order to bring the populace together. Grant supporters began to end their speeches with a common phrase: "Elect the General, and keep the ship aright."
The final month of the campaign saw increased violence in the South, forcing Lincoln's hand on the matter. Three thousand more federal soldiers were drawn up and sent to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1866 in the cities and to prevent Southern agitators from refusing Blacks the right to vote. Grant said that these measures were necessary to keep the South in line, and his new hard-line approach on Reconstruction won him even more ardent support from Republicans in the North, as well as War Democrats who wanted to see the South punished for its sin in the Civil War. Grant also won the avid support of Southern Blacks, with Frederick Douglass personally campaigning with the likes of P. B. S. Pinchback in New Orleans and William Brownlow in Nashville. Douglass also made sure to work with his Northern supporters to rally the Black, now largely expanded, throughout the North.
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Frederick Douglass, a prominent Black leader in the Reconstruction period, and ally of Ulysses S. Grant.
In spite of the violence, Blacks continued to organize politically in the South, even though Grant felt his changes in Johnson's home state of Tennessee were slim, and Sherman's campaign made him sure that Louisiana wouldn't swing for him either. Grant and Johnson both knew that the race, which had initially heavily favored Johnson, was now tightening. Johnson's supporters in the North, Representative George Pendleton chief among them, began to tinge their speeches with harsher rhetoric. "If Grant is allowed to 'reconstruct' Southern government and to enslave the White man there, then what is to stop his tyrannical hand from doing the same in Ohio?" Pendleton asked an audience on October 19. Lincoln privately said to his valet, William Slade, that he worried that all presidential elections in the future would continue to divide the nation as the present one seemed to be.
On Election Day in 1868, six million American turned out to vote, a major increase from pre-Civil War numbers. It would take weeks for the final results to be tallied, and they continued to show a close race as they came in. Johnson found that his message was doing surprisingly well with Catholics and immigrants in the North, as well as with the Peace Democrats that he had expected to win there. Grant found his support in the South was stronger than he expected, especially in the major cities where Blacks had organized very effectively in order to counter high turnout among Southern Whites. The election finally drew to a close two weeks after election day, on which day the race was called for Grant. General Grant had dominated among the North and Western states, with Johnson only narrowly winning New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware, as well as Ohio, but with Grant winning large swaths of the rest of the North. Tennessee went for Johnson, as was expected, but with a narrower margin that originally thought, while Louisiana, in a surprise to the nation, cast its lot with Grant. "Well I'll be damned," said Grant, when he learned of the results, "perhaps if I whip the rest of the South like Louisiana, they'll vote for my re-election, too." The popular vote tally was somewhat close, 53-47%, but Grant's margin in the electoral college was 162 to 81, a two-to-one margin that stunned Andrew Johnson.
Johnson conceded the race to Grant, and vowed to continue to fight for Tennessee in the Senate. Grant and Johnson discussed the future of Reconstruction the the following day, with Grant saying that he would keep his promise to accelerate the pace of Reconstruction. Grant met with Lincoln and Stevens, agreeing that securing the Black vote in the South would prove a vital part of the Republican Party's future. Johnson and the Democratic Party elders were taken aback by the party's failure to secure many electoral votes in the Midwest outside of Ohio, and agreed to place their hopes for the future on the Reconstructed South. Celebrations of Grant's victory permeated the North and the South, with Frederick Douglass calling it a sure sign that the nation was headed in the right direction. Douglass said privately that he hoped that Grant's election and the continuing of Reconstruction would allow more Southern Blacks to run for office in the near future.
1869: The Grant Transition[]
While Grant had hoped that his electoral victory would bring about another period of calm in the South, it was not to be so. Southern radicals continued a campaign of violence against Blacks, especially those who had been known to vote or publicly organize Black voters. Grant knew that these groups would provide the first major challenge to his nascent administration, but continued to lay plans for other projects like a series of foreign troubles that were brewing amidst the transition. The Alabama Claims became a central issue for Grant's new Secretary of State, John Bigelow, who wished to press the United Kingdom for damage to American ships wrought by Confederate raiders that had been built in Great Britain. Other issues like the political situation in the Dominican Republic also began to simmer, while renewed conflicts with Native Americans on the Western frontier began anew, especially as more Southern Whites and Blacks began to encroach on their land. Outgoing Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch met with his appointed successor, George S. Boutwell, to discuss the removal of silver's status as legal tender in the United States and turning the country to the gold standard. All of these issue began to weigh on Grant's mind as he was inaugurated on March 4, 1869.
Grant wanted to rapidly begin dealing with the issues of violence and legal equality in the South, but was persuaded by Vice President Trumbull to instead focus on education, an issue which had broader appeal. Grant worked with Congress to pass a second version of the Morrill Land-Grant Act in May, which made specific provisions for the establishment of separate, all-Black colleges and universities with federal support; the all-Black provision added to ensure moderate Republican backing. Republicans made a deal with Democrats, accepting that they would not push through what became known as the Harlan Bill, named for the Republican chairman of the newly-created Senate Education Committee. The bill would have established federally-mandated public primary schools throughout the South on the condition that they be opened to children of all races. Republicans agreed not to force the bill through, as long as the Democrats did not prohibit Southern states from establishing public school systems on their own.
As 1869 went on, five more Southern states applied for re-admission to the Union: Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. This left just Arkansas, South and North Carolina, and Texas as the only Southern states not yet meeting federal Reconstruction standards. Grant, meanwhile, was preoccupied with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, whose completion in May highlighted Grant's proposal for continued expansion of railroad infrastructure in the South. Former President Lincoln, whose administration ended just short of the railroad's completion, took the event as a moment to speak publicly about his hopes for renewed national unity under the Grant administration. The South offered little support for this. While Tennessee and Louisiana were already readmitted to the Union, violent White Leagues continued to cause havoc in the South, prompting Grant to broker a compromise with Southern political leaders: if they agreed to aid in defeating these insurgents, Grant would agree to speed up their readmission process. Southern leaders eagerly accepted his offer, but Republicans in Congress were less enthusiastic. They had hoped to push through a law barring ex-Confederate officers or government officials from serving in reconstructed legislatures. Grant agreed with the idea behind this provision, but preferred hastening the end of Reconstruction to the likely violence that such a law would produce.
In the end, Republicans in Congress did not give Grant much of a choice on the matter. They passed the Reconstruction Act of 1869 in September, barring Confederate officers and government officials from serving in Southern legislatures. Massive protests broke out across the South, and the number of people in White Leagues began to swell. To counteract this, Grant saw the passage of the Enforcement Act of 1869 in November, which granted the federal government the ability to treat Southern insurgents more harshly. After this, Grant found mixed support among Southern leaders to go ahead with their agreement, leading him to consider that only Virginia and Georgia were prepared for readmission under the new provisions of Reconstruction. To encourage them to continue, Grant offered to expand federal infrastructure repairs to damaged cities in these states like Richmond and Savannah. This carrot-and-stick approach worked, and soon leaders in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida were again ready to make a deal with Grant.
1870: Grant's Compromise[]
In 1870, the remaining Southern states began to apply for readmission to the Union. With nine states now in some form of application, Radical Republicans in Congress, now led in the House by John Logan after Stevens' death, saw an opportunity to finish the South's punishment. Logan openly advocated for constitutional amendments that would ensure both equality before the law and voting rights for all regardless of race, hoping to enshrine these principles in the Constitution before the Southern states could re-enter the Union, after which they would likely contest existing federal law. Above all, Logan and his ally Benjamin Butler announced in late 1869 that they wished to pass these provisions in 1870 before the publication of the new census, hoping to avoid a floodgate of new Southern representatives that may tarnish such proposals. Grant opposed such a measure, aware that Republicans were becoming the party of presidential overreach, and that passing such divisive measures ahead of the 1870 midterm election and without Southerners threatening to remove such rights in the first place would lead to Republican's defeat in the coming election. Logan and Butler got Grant's friend Frederick Douglass to lobby him to support their measure. Grant agreed to relent, but only on the subject of equality before the law.
The Southern states, upon learning of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, began mobilizing to oppose such a measure in Congress should they be seated in time to defeat it. With the Southern states advocating for rapid readmission and Republicans in Congress advocating for rapid passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, now expanded to include securing Blacks born in the United States their citizenship, Grant found himself caught between a rock and a hard place. On one side he wanted to ensure national reconciliation, and had hoped to transition away from Reconstruction as an issue by the end of his first term. On the other end, Grant had seen the progress that the Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction had had on the South, but knew that the region still had a long way to go before they were willing to accept Blacks as political equals. In the end, Grant managed a compromise between the various political leaders. Grant and the Republicans would secure the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, but Grant promised to continue the rapid pace of readmission and to remove or replace the Freedmen's Bureau and its federal soldiers as soon as this accelerated admissions process was completed. Grant set September 1, 1871 as the target date for readmission to be completed by.
Congress acted rapidly to secure the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Summer of 1870, seeing it through with the Republican Party's gradually dwindling majority. It would take some time for state legislature to approve the amendment, but Republicans still controlled enough of them to ensure this as well. Grant, meanwhile, began preparing for what would succeed the Freedmen's Bureau, as he knew that he could not simply do away with all of the schools and other services that the Bureau had provided. Congressional Republicans, on the other hand, had already turned their gaze elsewhere, again towards securing voting and educational rights in the South. But it seems that they had finally overplayed their hands. The 1870 midterms delivered a sharp rebuke to Republican congressional leadership. After ten years of uninterrupted federal control, Democrats, openly campaigning on Republican overreach, had put serious dents in Republican's control of the House of Representatives, and turned control of the Senate over to the Democrats, albeit by a very slim majority. Grant admonished Republican congressional leadership for their risky politicking that now placed their plan for Reconstruction in a precarious position. Luckily they had passed the Fourteenth Amendment ahead of the midterms, but Democratic control of the Senate now neutered Grant's other plans.
1871: Domestic Matters[]
1871 saw the beginning of the end for Reconstruction. Over the course of the year, each remaining state in the South gradually returned to the Union, having finally won the support of Congress in establishing a "republican form of government" once more. Grant, hoping that Southern violence and resistance had finally been sufficiently quelled, turned his attention elsewhere. Treasury Secretary Boutwell had spent the early part of his administration modernizing and cleaning up the Treasury Department, while also focusing on reducing the national debt. Boutwell had secured the passage of the Public Credit Act back in 1869, and progressively began to use it to pay off the national debt and to set the country on course for the gold standard by 1879. The country had come close to a recession several times due to Boutwell's constant selling and buying back of gold and bonds, which began causing deflation. This angered farmers ahead of the 1870 midterms, becoming a contributing factor to Democratic wins in the Senate, but no major economic recessions had yet been triggered. That ball finally dropped in late 1870 and early 1871, as fluctuations in the gold market had caused protestations from Wall Street, leading Grant to order Boutwell to cease these gold fluctuations. Boutwell did so, leading to an event known as Black Friday in January 1871 in which gold prices collapsed as Boutwell stopped sold a final store of federal gold.
The result was a mild national recession as the drop in gold prices struck Wall Street. Boutwell, despite his success in reducing the national debt, incurred an investigation by Representative James Garfield, but came perilously close to being fired by Grant for what became known as the Gold Crisis. Grant then turned to Indian affairs in the American West, as Lincoln's homestead policies had led to a rapid expansion of the country's Western frontier population, including both Whites and Blacks, who carried tensions with them. Grant had inherited a chaotic situation as America's Indian policy was then governed by around 370 separate treaties. Grant instituted some major changes, appointing Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian and member of Grant's wartime staff, as the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1869. The next year, Grant established the Board of Indian Commissioners to root out corruption in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and in 1871 moved the government off of the treaty system and into a system that treated Native Americans as wards of the state and began relocating them to reservations.
The same year, Grant oversaw the Senate's narrow approval of the Treaty of Washington, which finally settled the Alabama Claims with the United Kingdom, before finding the Senate less friendly on his policy toward the Dominican Republic. Grant had sent his secretary, Orville Babcock, to the Dominican Republic to draw up a treaty of annexation over the Republic. Grant faced wide disapproval in the Senate as Senator Charles Sumner personally opposed the measure, while Democrats opposed what they saw as an imperialist measure. Grant had argued that expanding commerce and providing African-Americans with a refuge separate from the Western frontier would be for the nation's good, but connections between the drawers of the treaty and land speculators seemed to sink the matter for the time being. Grant, in need of legislative success in the lead-up to the 1872 presidential election, reoriented to ensuring the peaceful transition of the country toward ending Reconstruction. By September 1, the remaining Southern states had successfully applied for readmission to the Union, aided by sympathetic Democrats in the Senate. Grant fulfilled his end of the bargain by authorizing the removal of 90% of Freedmen's Bureau agents and federal soldiers over the next four months. The removal of soldiers proved especially popular, as it signaled a final end to the violence of the Civil War.
The success, however, was not to last. Soon, Southern states began passing provisions narrowing the rights of Southern Blacks, called Black Codes, usually as soon as Freedmen's Bureau agents left the states. Grant had not yet had time to secure a viable successor to the Freedmen's Bureau, which soon found its schools and offices ransacked by Southern Whites. Seeing that the rights of Southern Blacks were being narrowed, and knowing that whatever voting rights that Southern Blacks had would soon disappear, Grant turned to Congress for help, but Republicans' diminished majorities made such efforts useless. Grant watched helplessly as the South descended into violence once more, as Blacks rallied and refused to give up their political rights, usually to find themselves jailed by the renewed Southern legal system. Grant turned to the elections of 1872 to provide a lasting solution.
1872: Strike Up the Band[]
With the 1872 elections close, Grant planned a series of speeches around the country in the Spring of 1872, soon to be called his Strike Up the Band Tour. Playing to what he termed "each American's patriotic fervor," Grant arrived to towns and cities with great patriotic fervor, before making speeches advocating for the necessity of returning control of Congress to Republicans in the coming election. "No sooner had we granted the states of the South their return to the Union, than they stabbed their Negro population in the back and resumed the violence that we had hoped we were past," Grant said in Springfield, Illinois, former President Lincoln's hometown. Lincoln himself, now age 63, but heavily aged by the stress of his presidency, joined Grant in making regional speeches, arguing that a robust Republican majority and the re-election of President Grant were necessary to ensure the true end of Reconstruction and Southern acceptance of rule of law. This soon became the centerpiece of the election, as Grant ran for re-election that year on the motto "Let us have peace and justice, at long last." As Grant spoke and Republicans campaigned, the Democrats saw opportunity.
Democratic leaders had hoped that Democratic gains in 1870, rather than being just a backlash to Republican overreach and Secretary Boutwell's Treasury policies, represented the coming repudiation of Republican leadership. The Democrats nominated Governor Benjamin Brown of Missouri, himself a former Republican, hoping to secure enough Southern votes and turn enough Northern or Midwestern states to their side to finally return the White House to their party. Brown campaigned on the slogan "Peace and Good Will," and tried to present a neutral position on Reconstruction, while focusing the campaign on state's rights and preventing the passage of a proposed Fifteenth Amendment, which would have secured voting rights for Blacks across the nation.
Another issue that made its way into the election was that of corruption. Scandal rocked the New York Custom's House in 1871 after a scandal broke their over bribery and graft. To counter this, Grant appointed a Civil Service Commission, authorized by Congress, to root out corruption in the Custom's House and similar organizations. Grant appointed George William Curtis the same year to oversee the Commission, but Curtis' strong Liberal Republican leanings led to his proposals being rejected by Senate Democrats. While this proved politically viable in 1871, by 1872 this had allowed Republicans to argue that Democrats had prevented anti-corruption measures from passing Congress. Grant also found his re-election campaign threatened by more conservative Republicans, themselves opposed to what they called "Grantism," meaning strong federal power, and demanded that Grant find a satisfactory running mate to ameliorate their worries. Grant did so, and instead of running for re-election with Vice President Trumbull, the Republican National Convention nominated Senator Carl Schurz, himself from Brown's home state of Missouri, as Grant's new running mate.
The new ticket proved inspired as Schurz was able to whip up Republican support in border states like his native Missouri and Kentucky. Finally, Grant and Schurz managed to pull off another electoral college sweep as Grant won a similar popular vote margin as he had done four years earlier, but with an electoral vote count of 250 to Brown's 102. Brown had secured the votes from almost every Southern state, including his own Missouri, but lost Kentucky and Delaware to Grant, who swept the North, Midwest, and Pacific Coast states. The greater coup was that Republicans were returned to the majority in the Senate, and expanded upon their majority in the House of Representatives. In a speech Grant gave shortly after his victory, he expressed his hope that Southern Democrats would be willing to come to agreement with his administration on Black political and civil rights. Grant also began to advocate for the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, now seeing it as essential to securing the voting rights of Blacks in the South and across the nation. Democrats, stunned at the whipping handed them once again, understood that they would do well to agree to work with Grant to ensure that they did not have the wrath of Radical Republicans incurred upon them again.
1873: Cleaning Up the Mess[]
In 1873, Reconstruction was entering its eighth year, and Grant was aware of the toll that the violence was taking both in the South and in the North. Grant decided to halt progress on the proposed Fifteenth Amendment, and instead to search for a permanent replacement for the now-disbanded Freedmen's Bureau. Grant responded by expanding the recently-established Department of Justice to include a division called the Office of Freedmen's Rights. Attorney General Amos T. Akerman appointed George Henry Williams, then a Senator from Oregon and the state's former Chief Justice, to head the Office, with the specific duty of ensuring the implementation of the Fourteenth Amendment and previous civil rights and Reconstruction legislation. The Office largely replaced the separate courts that had given freed Blacks in the South the relatively fair shake given by the Freedmen's Bureau courts, at least in comparison to the overwhelmingly unfair courts in the Southern states. Williams also made it his mission to prosecute members of the White Leagues and Knights of Bedford Forrest, especially those that targeted schools. Williams' office grew in size and stature over the remainder of Grant's presidency thanks to avid support from Republicans in Congress.
1873 would prove another chaotic year for the economy, as that year Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1873, which finally brought about Treasury Secretary Boutwell's goal of ending legal bimetallism. The Coinage Act produced further deflation, especially affecting farm owners who called it "The Crime of 1873." Soon, however, the economic effects rippled out, leading to the collapse of the brokerage firm Cooke & Company, which swept through the country in what became known as the Panic of 1873. The effects were especially hard on the booming railroad industry, which saw one in four companies collapse in 1873 or 1874. Congress tried to ease these woes by passing what became known as the Inflation Bill to increase the number of greenbacks in circulation, but this was met with ardent opposition from East Coast financiers. Grant vetoed the bill when it eventually passed Congress, at which point conservative opposition managed to finally defeat it. Two years later, in 1875, Grant would eventually sign the Specie Payment Resumption Act, which would allow gradually reduced the number of greenbacks in circulation and allowed silver to progressively return as a form of payment through 1879.
As Republicans worked to fix the economy, the nation's eyes were once again forced on to the subject of corruption. A shakeup in the New York City took place as William "Boss" Tweed was arrested and his corrupt Tammany Hall system attacked by the state's Democratic Committee Chairman Samuel J. Tilden. The reigning New York Collector and several elements of Roscoe Conkling's political machine were also brought under attention and fired. For the time being, the corruption did not seem to lead above the state level, but Tilden became a national hero for his efforts to fight such corruption.
Meanwhile, tensions in the South were raised again, as the encroachment of the Freedmen's Office roiled Southern lawmakers, who had hoped that the end of federal military rule would provide them with the political independence to resume their narrowing of the rights of Southern Blacks. The Civil Rights Act and similar legislation had defined civil rights for freed people, which the Freedmen's Office was vociferously enforcing, but there was little legislation specifically protecting political rights like voting and organization. This allowed Southern legislatures to slowly deprive those Blacks who had the right to vote of that right, while also gradually expanding the right to vote for White Southerners. Grant was slow to act on this, aware of his colleagues' view of his overreach on these matters, and hoped that Williams' Office would be capable of handling these issues. However, Williams met with President Grant and informed him that soon there would be virtually no Blacks in the South with the right to vote. Further encouraged by congressional Republicans who were aware of the effects this might have on their majorities, the Fifteenth Amendment was resurrected for a vote.
1874: A Step Too Far[]
In January and February of 1874, Congress debated the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which would have solidified national voting rights for Blacks across the country. However, the process of passing the amendment in Congress was not easy. Some like Senator Charles Sumner, did not believe that the amendment went far enough in that it made no mentions of poll taxes or literacy tests. However, many representatives were wary of including literacy tests, as these were also common in the North to restrict European immigrant voting and in the West to restrict Chinese immigrant voting. While Congress debated, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, prominent women suffragists, sent a letter to Congress asking that they include a provision to allow women to vote in the amendment as well. Eventually, the form that did pass Congress included a specific restriction on poll taxes, but not on literacy tests, while making no mention of women's suffrage. Republicans then fought hard over the course of the Summer to ensure the passage of the amendment in state legislatures, aware of the numerical difficult that the inclusion of Southern states would present. However, Grant met personally with Southern leaders, promising a complete federal repayment of remaining Confederate war debts for any state that agreed to ratify the amendment. In the end, Louisiana and Georgia became the only two to do so, and the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified.
Later in the Summer, the issue of Dominican annexation was resurrected. The previous year, a Spanish cruiser captured an American merchant ship called the Virginius, which was carrying war materials to the ongoing Cuban insurrection. The Spanish executed eight Americans onboard the ship, leading some to call for war against Spain. Spanish President Emilio Castelar y Ripoll apologized and promised to repay the families of the dead Americans, while Grant responded by increasing the Navy's presence in the Caribbean. Orville Babcock resurrected his treaty agreeing to the annexation of the Dominican Republic, which would have given the United States a foothold in the Caribbean. This time Grant made the impulsive decision to go through with the annexation, and hoped for congressional approval after the fact. The Dominican Republic was undergoing a period of immense turmoil as President Baez was being targeted by a rebellion. Grant was convinced that unless the United States acted to annex the country, that a European power, likely Spain, would swoop in and do so itself, in violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Grant had also hoped that by establishing a Navy port on the island, that the United States would be able to protect a future canal through Nicaragua.
Grant again presented the treaty of annexation to the Congress, including with a report that said that annexation would greatly favor the United States' commercial interests. Republicans were deeply split on the issue along Liberal and Conservative lines. Senator Charles Sumner, who had opposed the earlier incarnation of the treaty, had since passed away, and now Simon Cameron was the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Cameron had strong ties to the Liberal wing of the party, and eventually helped to move the treaty to the Senate floor, but many Senators will still not willing to accept what they saw as the foundations of an American Empire. Over the course of several months, the treaty was renegotiated and whittled down to providing for strong commercial and trade rights for the United States and provided the United States a naval base at Samana and with significant naval access to the port of Santo Domingo. Baez eventually agreed to this watered down version of the treaty, which narrowly passed the Senate in September. However, despite some Democratic support due to the expanded commercial rights largely benefiting the South, the Democrats also made sure to use it as further proof of the imperial federal government that had developed under President Grant. Despite the treaty's ratification, the Republican Party remained deeply split on the issue, setting the party up for failure in the coming midterm elections.
All the signs of a poor Republican showing in the 1874 election were apparent. The flagging economy was recovering at a dismal pace, Grant had gone a step too far with the passage of the Dominican treaty, and the corruption that Democrats like Tilden had attacked had made its way to Washington. John Sanborn had been hired as an independent tax collector on a 50 percent commission, known then as moiety. However, through a combination of intrusive methods for tax collection and personal profiteering, Sanborn became the target of congressional scrutiny, leading to his firing and the passage of the Anti-Moiety Act in Congress to prevent further such crimes. This legislation didn't prevent a tumultuous 1874 election as Northern Democrats made major gains by moving to a more moderate position on issues related to Reconstruction and by hammering the White House for corruption, ineffective economic policies, and executive overreach. Democrats won back control of the House of Representatives and narrowed Republican control of the Senate to a single vote majority. Southern Democrats were emboldened by this news, but soon found strange bedfellows in their new Northern allies in Congress, many of whom were supportive of state's rights, but not supportive of weakening federal Reconstruction legislation or in reducing the power of the Freedmen's Office.