Grant

Radical Republicans, who wanted to see more done to address inequalities between whites and Blacks in the South, became more opposed to the policies of President Johnson. As a result, they opposed any effort to admit new Southern representatives to Congress or fully readmit Southern states to the Union. Meanwhile, racist violence increased in the South, where federal troops were the only protection Southern Blacks could depend on. White teachers working for the Freedmen’s Bureau were threatened and Black churches and schools were burned. Grant tried to address this situation by issuing General Orders Number 3, which forbade Blacks from being prosecuted for crimes that white citizens would not also be prosecuted for (568). Frederick Douglass and a delegation of Southern Blacks met President Johnson to advocate for a civil and voting rights bill that would negate the Southern states’ Black Codes, but they were received badly. President Johnson would ultimately veto the bill despite its broad support in Congress, accusing the bill of favoring Black interests over the white interests.

Grant declined to express his political opinions. He did start an investigation into riots in Memphis, Tennessee, which saw 48 Blacks killed (571). As a result of incidents like the riots, Grant strongly supported the continued presence of federal soldiers in the South. Meanwhile Radical Republicans passed the Fourteenth Amendment, “which engraved in the Constitution the principle of equal citizenship before the law regardless of race” (573). Despite the opposition of President Johnson and Southern states, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified by July of 1868. In these political conflicts, both President Johnson and the Radical Republicans tried courting Grant’s explicit support.

When another racist riot broke out in New Orleans, Grant suggested that New Orleans be put under martial law. Despite Grant’s continued political neutrality, Chernow argues that “Grant’s sympathies lay with the threatened black [sic] community and the need for a forceful military presence in the South” (576). Grant became further alienated from President Johnson, believing Johnson was trying to make it seem like Grant backed his policies. While on a political tour with Johnson, Grant was so upset by the experience he fell back into drinking and left the tour. The result of the tour made Johnson look worse and Grant look like an appealing future president in the public’s eyes. To guard against the risk of Grant showing his support for the Radical Republicans, Johnson ordered Grant to accompany a diplomatic mission to Mexico. Grant refused to comply on the basis he was a military officer being asked to assume a civil office. The conflict over the order made Grant’s opposition to President Johnson plain. Meanwhile, Grant identified increasingly with the Radical Republicans. He rebuked Southern state governments for resisting the Fourteenth Amendment and suggested putting Texas under martial law to stem racist violence. Also, Radical Republicans in Congress consulted Grant on a bill, the First Reconstruction Act. The legislation divided 10 Southern states into five military districts and required those states to recognize the Fourteenth Amendment and give voting rights to Black men. President Johnson tried to veto the bill, but Congress overrode him. Congress passed further bills to limit presidential power and give Grant further influence over Reconstruction policies and the military government of the South. By 1866, Confederate veterans formed a racist terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, which went after Black voters especially.

Johnson wanted to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, whom he resented for his policies toward the military government running the South. Grant stepped in and kept it from happening. This was the decisive moment that showed Grant siding with the Radical Republicans against Johnson. Instead, Johnson suspended Stanton, inviting Grant to serve as an interim secretary of war. Grant accepted to prevent someone who shared President Johnson’s reactionary views on Reconstruction from taking the office. Grant “regarded Reconstruction as the Civil War’s final phase and believed Johnson had cast his lot with the disloyal South” (596). In the meantime, the Radical Republicans began openly considering impeaching Johnson. Despite Grant’s tensions with Johnson, his political neutrality made him a much desired political candidate by both the Democratic and Republican parties. The possibility of Johnson’s impeachment only heightened the public demand for Grant to run for the presidency.

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was an enemy of Grant and a strong supporter of President Johnson. He advised Johnson to make Grant seem attached to the Johnson administration in order to undermine Grant’s support from the Radical Republicans. In the South, states began to hold conventions to draw up new state constitutions. In much of the South, Blacks had proven to be ardent voters, choosing Black delegates to participate in the process. In South Carolina and Louisiana, Black men made up most delegates (600). Back in Washington, DC, the Senate voted to reinstate Stanton as Secretary of War. Grant dutifully resigned. This enraged President Johnson, who confronted Grant and later denounced him to the press. Next, Johnson fired Stanton. Congress reacted by voting for Johnson’s impeachment, mainly for not receiving the approval of the Senate before firing Stanton as required by the Tenure of Office Act. Johnson was acquitted by a single vote. The impeachment was voted down even by Republicans who feared the political precedent Johnson’s impeachment would set. However, the Radical Republicans did force a promise from Johnson that he would stop interfering with congressional policy on Reconstruction.

President Johnson refused to allow the federal government to act against the Ku Klux Klan. In spite of this, Grant tried to have the military government in the South act. The 1868 Republican Party convention in Chicago nominated Grant for president, even though Grant was not even in attendance. Grant accepted, since he was afraid that the Democratic Party was still influenced by Confederate sympathies. By the time of Grant’s nomination, the Republican Party’s platform included conservative economic views and “an unalterable commitment to black [sic] equality before the law and the right of freed people to participate in southern politics” (616). The Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee was Schuyler Colfax, a supporter of Lincoln and Black rights from Indiana. Grant decided his campaign slogan would be “Let us have peace” (616). Instead of Johnson, the Democrats decided their candidate for president would be Horatio Seymour, a former governor of New York and an outspoken critic of the Emancipation Proclamation. Their vice-presidential nominee was Francis Preston Blair Jr., a Union general from Missouri who nonetheless opposed Reconstruction.

Even as a presidential candidate, Grant’s real political leanings remained a mystery. Radical Republicans thought he would back their policy while moderate Republicans believed he might be on their side. Grant courted the support of the business elite while the Democrats ran on an anti-big business platform. The Democratic campaign also attacked Grant through stories of his alcoholism, his associations with the Radical Republicans, and Grant’s antisemitic General Orders No. 11. Grant strongly denounced his own actions against the Jewish population of the South. At the same time, Grant was supported by Black communities across the United States and by the activist and intellectual Frederick Douglass. Unfortunately, successful efforts to suppress the Republican and Black vote across the South through violence or intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan and others continued. Still, Grant won the popular and electoral vote, winning all the states except eight with 214 electoral votes to 80 (623).

Despite the prevalence of the spoils system in US politics at the time, the new President Grant refused to let people who flooded him with letters or the party bosses influence his choices for appointees. Grant assumed that he was already prepared to be president, so he did not carefully vet his chosen appointees or seek out advice. Chernow argues, “Only in hindsight did Grant fathom his own limitations upon taking office” (625). Still, Grant kept his modest persona, although he also suffered anxiety and depression. Despite Rawlins’s worsening illness, Grant appointed him to the military command of the Department of Arizona, out of hopes that the dry, hot weather might help him. Rawlins was bitterly disappointed, since he hoped to be made the secretary of war. Grant gave Sherman his old job as the general of the US army. Next, Grant made his “chief patron” (626), Elihu Washburne, secretary of state for five days, just so Washburne could claim to have been a member of the cabinet. This decision was ridiculed and “added to a general impression of Grant as a rank amateur” (627). The department store mogul Alexander T. Stewart, who had supported Grant’s campaign, was made secretary of the treasury. His attorney general was Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, a defender of Black rights. For secretary of the navy, Grant appointed Adolph E. Borie, who was a friend of Grant with no credentials for the office. Grant chose a Union general Jacob Dolson Cox as the secretary of the interior, even though he was an opponent of Black civil rights. In his inaugural speech, Grant stressed his political neutrality and his status as a political outsider while also noting his support for Black suffrage and for making Indigenous Americans integrate into urban civilization.

Grant’s presidency came to a bad start when a rule was discovered, stating that no secretary of the treasury can be involved in commerce. After failing to have Congress pass a law making an exception for Alexander Stewart, Grant withdrew his nomination. Instead, Grant nominated Congressman George Boutwell of Massachusetts, who was backed by the Radical Republicans. As secretary of state, Grant preferred Hamilton Fish, a former New York governor. Overall, Chernow disputes the historical reputation of Grant’s cabinet as “a bunch of mediocrities” (635), arguing Grant’s cabinet was unpopular because Grant defied the spoils system. Still, Chernow adds that as president Grant was “too quick to hire people, then too quick to fire them” (636). Chernow also argues Grant was often naïve in his selection of political appointees, blind to how they could be motivated by their own self-interest. Grant also succumbed to nepotism, giving posts to friends of his father Jesse, his brother-in-law Michael John Cramer, Julia’s relatives, and his father-in-law Colonel Dent, who even lived in the White House.

Despite the nepotism, Chernow asserts Grant should also be acknowledged for appointing large numbers of Blacks, Indigenous Americans, and Jews to positions in the federal government and receiving the first Black public official to ever be invited to the White House (641). Grant also showed a sensitivity toward human rights in his foreign policy, protesting against Russian and Turkish persecution of Jews. Grant even deliberately appointed a Jewish man, Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, as the consul general to Romania, then a part of the Ottoman Empire, where Turkish officials had initiated several massacres of Jewish residents.

Outside foreign policy, Grant was struggling against the fact that the federal government had vastly expanded after the Civil War. The federal government now “taxed citizens directly, conscripted them into the army, oversaw a national currency, and managed a giant national debt” (644). Also Grant’s presidency oversaw the beginning of what historians would call the Gilded Age with the rise of an industrialized, consumer economy and corporations along with increasing levels of economic inequality and corruption. Further, especially after Johnson’s presidency, Congress was much more powerful than the presidency. One of Grant’s priorities was making Washington, DC, into a modern city, introducing new parks, sidewalks, and streetlights and finishing work on the Washington Monument. Julia refurbished the White House and, through her acceptance of many different guests, “helped to democratize the White House” (647). Grant himself personally tried to be generous to the poor, although he still liked to hobnob with the Gilded Age business elite. He was also still rumored to be an alcoholic, but he tried to avoid alcohol at official White House functions. Chernow argues that, as president, Grant would have been too surrounded by people to indulge in drinking binges (649). He even took walks around Washington, DC, without a personal bodyguard. At one point, he chastised a man for having his laborers work 10-hour days despite a law mandating that those working for the federal government could only work eight-hour shifts.

Chernow writes that President Grant’s “main mission was to settle unfinished business from the war by preserving the Union and safeguarding the freed slaves” (654). As part of this program, Grant granted civil rights to Black residents of Washington, DC, and sought to readmit Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi to the Union on the condition that they guaranteed Black rights. Also, Grant revived the Freedman’s Bureau, which had suffered from a lack of funding. At the same time, Grant named Ely Parker as commissioner of the “Bureau of Indian Affairs” (657), the first Indigenous American to hold the position. The Grant administration sought to end corruption among licensed government agents who handled trade with Indigenous American tribes by putting the “Bureau of Indian Affairs” (657) under the oversight of the Department of War and replacing the agents with Quakers, who were known for their honesty and positive relations with Indigenous Americans, as well as members of other religious groups including Catholics and Jews. Nonetheless, Grant supported efforts to militarily suppress Indigenous American resistance to the United States’ westward expansion. Further, Grant backed the push to Christianize, “civilize,” and assimilate Indigenous Americans. Chernow defends this as a “hopeful, idealistic path, paved with good intentions” (658), less harsh than the approaches taken by some past presidential administrations.

In foreign policy, Grant wanted to annex Santo Domingo (today the Dominican Republic), which had become independent from Spain and its neighbor, Haiti. Grant rationalized that Santo Domingo could provide a valuable naval base in the Caribbean and a colony for freed Blacks seeking to escape racism in the South. The president of Santo Domingo, Buenaventura Báez, even signed a treaty paving the way for annexation. However, Congress resisted accepting a future state that would be majority Catholic, Spanish-speaking, and non-white. For similar reasons, many American politicians, including Fish in Grant’s own cabinet, were against American expansion into Cuba, then still a Spanish colony. Meanwhile, Grant was devastated by the death of Rawlins, with Grant arriving too late to see him on his deathbed.

Two Wall Street tycoons, Jay Gould and James Fisk Jr., worked to convince Grant to restrict sales of gold so that they could corner the market. They convinced Grant that raising the price of gold would result in exports becoming cheaper, helping profit American farmers. Wined and dined by Gould and Fisk, Grant acquiesced. As a result, “Many […] didn’t simply suspect that the Grant administration had turned a blind eye to the prince manipulation, but that it had cooperated with its perpetrators” (677). Eventually Grant realized he made a mistake and asked his assistant secretary of the treasury, Daniel Butterfield, who was accused of being involved in the price-fixing scheme, to resign. Nonetheless, it was too late and the Grant administration was heavily criticized. One of their main critics was Henry Adams, a grandson of President John Quincy Adams, whose witty attacks on Grant would influence future historians.

Another enemy of Grant was Senator Charles Sumner, a celebrated abolitionist politician. Sumner caused a diplomatic incident when he accused Britain of supporting the Confederacy by selling them warships. Further, Sumner demanded a payment of $2 billion to compensate for not just the ships destroyed by the British-made warship used by the Confederacy, the Alabama, but for indirect costs from the Civil War. Grant did see some progress in civil rights. Under his administration, the Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, which forbade states from denying voting rights on the basis of race. At this time, Blacks served in state and local political officers, and there were 600 Black legislators in the South (686). However, this trend and the Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution encouraged “southern demagogues” (686) who attacked Black suffrage. When it came to the Supreme Court, Grant expanded the court from eight to nine judges. He added two judges, Joseph P. Bradley and William Strong, one of whom was a southerner. However, both of them had strong pro-Reconstruction views.

Grant visited Senator Sumner personally to try to convince him to support the annexation of Santo Domingo. Sumner implied he would support annexation if Grant gave a job to his friend James M. Ashley, whom Grant had just fired as governor of the Montana Territory. However, a miscommunication between the two meant that Sumner would end up opposing annexation and sabotaging the treaty’s ratification in Congress, despite Grant believing Sumner had given his word. Grant refused to try to appease Sumner by getting a new appointment for Ashley. Sumner led opposition to the treaty in Congress over xenophobic reasons. The Senate voted against the treaty. Grant retaliated by firing John Lothrop Motley, a diplomat in Britain who was associated with Sumner, and forcing his attorney general Hoar, who was also an ally of Sumner, to resign.

Under the Grant administration, the Department of Justice was created, consolidating lawyers working for the federal government in one office. Their first main objective was to combat the Klu Klux Klan, which continued targeting Black citizens and white Republicans in the South. Part of the problem was that witnesses and juries were too afraid of the Klan. In 1870, Democrats swept into Congress, reducing Grant’s Republican majority. However, the election also saw six Black men from the South get elected to Congress. Grant became focused on combatting the Ku Klux Klan, despite opponents among the Democrats in Congress and some of the press who accused Grant of acting like a tyrant in his crusade against the Ku Klux Klan. With Grant’s support, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts, which were designed to protect Black voting rights in the South. The third Enforcement Act allowed the federal government to prosecute civil rights violations even without the consent of state governments and gave Grant broad powers to declare martial law and deploy federal soldiers. Right away, Grant deployed his attorney general Amos Akerman to oversee efforts using federal soldiers to uproot the Klan. One thousand one hundred and forty-three convictions of Klan members had been made (708). Although Ackerman was successful in helping break the Klu Klux Klan’s hold over the South, Grant later asked him to resign because he had earned the ire of railroad magnates for strictly enforcing regulations against them.

By the fall of 1870, Grant was eager to try to ratify the annex Santo Domingo again. To get around congressional opposition, Grant proposed instead appointing a commission to investigate annexation rather than trying to push the treaty through the Senate. Sumner still opposed any step toward annexation, calling it a “dance of blood” (713) that would lead to violence on the island. Despite Sumner’s passionate speeches denouncing it, the commission was approved by Congress. Grant’s intention was that the commission would, depending on its conclusion, either give the administration an excuse to get out of their agreements with Santo Domingo easily or give a green light to annexation. To Sumner’s accusations that the annexation of Santo Domingo would lead to the United States threatening Haiti, Frederick Douglass countered that annexation would help stop slavery in the Caribbean and that Sumner’s opposition threatened to tear apart the Republican Party. In the end, the commission came out in favor of annexation. However, congressional and public opposition had grown to the point that annexation was no longer possible.

On another foreign policy front, Grant was dealing with Britain. Sumner remained a thorn in Grant’s side, demanding Canadian annexation and that the British withdraw from their Caribbean colonies and the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina. However, he and Fish managed to reach beneficial agreements with Britain, which were finalized as the Treaty of Washington. Still, Grant had to give up his own hope that Canada would become independent from Britain and could be annexed into the United States.

Despite the Grant administration’s historic reputation for corruption, Chernow argues that Grant himself was “impeccably honest” (728). Chernow suggests the administration’s sullied reputation was because Grant was too trusting of his subordinates. Also, the Gilded Age was a time where corruption was especially tolerated as a result of multiple factors: The wartime growth of the government, the emergence of corporations, the development of political machines, the dominance of the Republican Party over national politics, and the chaotic process of western expansion. One problem was the spoils system. Grant wavered on civil service reforms that would have ended the spoils system, even losing a secretary of the interior, Jacob D. Cox, who resigned because Grant would not allow him to try to fight the problem. After Cox’s resignation damaged his administration’s reputation, Grant did create the first Civil Service Commission to look into the problem and initiate new civil service exams. Congress would not support Grant’s bid to create a fully professional civil service, however. Grant himself instead found that he needed the loyalty of people he did favors for in order to get anything done.

Over the course of Grant’s administration, the Radical Republicans gave way to the Stalwart Republicans, who focused more on the issue of business than on Reconstruction and wanted to preserve political machines and their own near-absolute power over their states. These Republicans often had Grant’s support. For example, Grant backed the senator Roscoe Conkling, who supported Grant’s nominee for New York customs collector and in return Grant made him “the supreme power in New York” (736). Ely Parker, commissioner of “Indian Affairs,” was forced to resign over accusations that he rewarded his friends with contracts. Grant also continued to allow business interests to expand westward at the expense of Indigenous American independence, a process Grant thought was inevitable. However, while Grant bestowed “millions of acres” (739) to settlers and railroad companies, he also signed a bill that established Yellowstone as the first national park in 1872.

Grant was still popular and many Republicans wanted to him to run for president for a second term in 1872. However, a growing number of Republicans, called the Liberal Republicans, were opposed to Grant and were hostile to Black rights while also favoring civil service reform, the dismantling of political machines, greater independence for the states, and the withdrawal of federal soldiers from the states. The Liberal Republicans rallied around their own candidate, the journalist Horace Greeley. Still, Grant was unanimously nominated as the Republican candidate for the presidency. In turn, the Democrats took the Liberal Republican’s platform and even their candidate, Greeley. This did pose a serious threat, since Republicans hostile to Reconstruction and unsympathetic to Black rights could defect to the Democrats. As for Grant, he remained popular among Black citizens, including Frederick Douglass who campaigned for Grant. At the same time, Grant had the support of early feminists like Susan B. Anthony, because Greeley was a known opponent of women’s right to vote. Anthony was even arrested for illegally voting for Grant. In the end, Grant won the election with 56% of the popular vote (751).

Right after the election, however, the administration was hit by a new scandal. One of the major railroad companies, Union Pacific Railroad, had used government funds to give their executives huge payments through a fake company named Crédit Mobilier. Several members of Congress were involved in the scam. Grant’s former and future vice presidents, Schuyler Colfax and Henry Wilson, were also implicated. Another scandal was that Congress had given itself a 50% raise, although the public outcry caused Congress to cancel the raise (753).

At the start of his second term, Grant had to deal with a crisis in Louisiana, a state known for its political corruption. The recent gubernatorial election was disputed between the Democrat candidate, John McEnery, and the Republican, William Pitt Kellogg. Grant decided to go to New Orleans, his first time visiting the South as president. After federal courts decided Kellogg won the election, violence broke out between supporters of a white Democrat, Columbus Nash, and a Black Republican, William Ward. The violence culminated in “the worst slaughter perpetrated against blacks [sic] during Reconstruction” (759). A violent organization, the White League, rose up and attacked both Blacks and white Republicans and fought with Black militias. With federal troops, Grant restored order and ensured Kellogg was recognized as the legitimate governor.

Grant sought to appoint his attorney general, George Williams, as a Supreme Court justice. However, Williams was widely seen as corrupt, especially for using government funds for his and his wife’s personal expenses. Grant withdrew Williams’ nomination and instead picked a nominee suggested by the Senate, Morrison R. Waite. In his personal life, Grant’s father Jesse died in June of 1873. His mother Hannah went to live in New York with her daughter Virginia. She never visited Grant in the White House. Grant’s son Fred went to West Point, but he was involved in the racist bullying of a classmate. Instead of the military which Grant did not feel Fred was qualified for, Grant and Julia pushed Fred into a job as a civil engineer. Grant’s other son, Buck, graduated from Harvard and Columbia Law School. His youngest son, Jesse, became a student at Cornell University and later became a lawyer. His daughter, Nellie Grant, married an English man named Algernon Sartoris despite Grant’s objections and moved with him to England. It became an unhappy marriage when Algernon turned out to be an alcoholic womanizer.

By Grant’s second term, the American economy was booming, but there was also increased inequality and instability. In September of 1873, the economy collapsed with banks closing and stocks plummeting. It was the worst market crash since 1837 (777). At the time, it was thought there was little the federal government could or should do to deal with such downturns. Grant did authorize several measures, including injecting cash into the economy. Even so, the damage was severe, with half of the country’s railroads going into receivership (777) and hurting employment and industrial development. Banks called for Grant to restore the gold standard, in which the value of currency is tied to the quantity of gold. Congress passed the Ferry Bill, which increased paper currency and bank note circulation to $400 million. However, at the urging of bankers and business leaders, Grant vetoed the bill, on the reasoning that it would cause inflation. Grant’s veto “solidified the Republican Party’s growing reputation as a bastion of sound money, free markets, and economic conservatism” (781). Also, Grant returned the United States to the gold standard. Unfortunately, Grant’s actions to fix the depression proved unpopular, and the Republicans lost their majority in the House of Representatives and barely held on to the Senate.

The public mood in the North also turned against Reconstruction. A popular book, James Shepherd Pike’s The Prostrate State: South Carolina Under Negro Government, negatively portrayed white Republican and Black legislators. Meanwhile, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives signed off on investigations into corruption in the Grant administration. Also, Democrats began taking control in the Southern state governments, driving away Black legislators. Court decisions challenging the constitutionality of policies like the Enforcement Acts effectively brought an end to Reconstruction (786). In Mississippi, where nearly half of the state representatives were Black (787), there was essentially a violent coup against the state government. Violence also again broke out against the state government in Louisiana. Lacking public support to try to forcefully reimpose order, a compromise had to be reached that left Governor Kellogg in power in Louisiana but left the Democrats as a majority in the Louisiana house of representatives. The Republicans in Congress did manage to pass one more civil rights law, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which forbade segregation and some other forms of discrimination in public spaces and services. However, Democratic governors refused to enforce it, and the law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1883.

In the summer of 1874, news leaked out of a major scandal being investigated by Grant’s current treasury secretary, Benjamin Bristow. Whiskey distillers in St. Louis and other major cities had been bribing Department of Treasury and Internal Revenue officials in order to avoid paying taxes, a conspiracy called the Whiskey Ring. One of the people caught up in the investigation was a personal friend of Grant’s and his secretary, General Orville Babcock. Grant refused to force Babcock to resign, despite the evidence. Chernow writes that “Grant clung with a childlike devotion to complete faith in his innocence” (803). Further investigations implicated Grant’s brother Orvil and his brother-in-law Fred Dent. Babcock was acquitted, but Grant soon received solid proof that Babcock was involved in the gold price fixing scheme devised by Jim Fisk and Jay Gould. His faith in this friend destroyed, Grant finally fired Babcock. Bristow later resigned, blaming Grant for the corruption in his administration. At the same time, Grant suspected Bristow was sabotaging his administration so he could position himself as a presidential candidate for the Liberal Republicans. Chernow concludes that Grant was innocent of corruption himself, but he chose his confidants badly.

Still, Grant remained popular, largely because of his reputation from the Civil War. Grant even considered running for president a third time, breaking with the unofficial two-term limit that had been the norm in American politics. Julia strongly wanted Grant to do so, enjoying the social prestige that came from being First Lady. However, Grant decided against a third term. When it came to religion, Grant “remained an observant Methodist” (810). With the question of religion and politics, however, he was a supporter of the principle of separation of church and state, opposing religious influence in public education and state funds going to any religious group.

Racial and political violence continued in the South, especially Mississippi where a white supremacist group, the White Liners, attacked a barbecue held by a local Republican party. Grant’s new attorney general, Edwards Pierrepoint, advised Grant not to send federal troops on the justification of “states’ rights” (813). Even faced with the change of public opinion against Reconstruction, Grant eventually decided against immediate intervention. The Republican governor of Mississippi, Adelbert Ames, resigned in disgust before he could be impeached by the Democrats. With Republicans driven out of their home counties by the threat of violence, the Democrats took over the state government in the next election.

Like the Whiskey Ring, allegations flew that there was an “Indian Ring” of government officials extorting Indigenous Americans, including the Secretary of the Interior, Columbus Delano. Grant’s brother Orvil had been given control over four Indigenous trading posts “at a time when such trading licenses were virtual presses to print money” (819). Orvil was also accused in the press of taking bribes. The only silver lining was that Grant appeared innocent of Orvil’s misdeeds. Another scandal involved Secretary of War William W. Belknap, who had been taking bribes and resigned. Grant refused to believe in his guilt and reluctantly agreed to a criminal indictment of Belknap, Although Belknap was acquitted, he was widely believed to be guilty.

Grant became the first president to visit Indigenous territories. In response to the fact that settlers were taking over Sioux lands in modern-day South Dakota due to reports of gold, Grant purchased the Black Hills, which were considered sacred territory by the Sioux. Grant wanted to respect any treaty rights granted to the Sioux, but he also wanted to open up their territory to mining and development. To that end, he pressured the Sioux to migrate south and to have their children educated in English-language schools, a “suicide pact for their culture” (831). Grant learned of corruption at the Red Cloud Agency, which handled Indigenous American affairs. As a result, Delano was forced to resign. When the Sioux did not follow the government’s unrealistic timeline for their relocation, Grant authorized military force. This led to the famous death of George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn against the Lakota leader Sitting Bull. Grant pushed ahead with his plans for Sioux lands: “Thus Ulysses S. Grant, an advocate of a Peace Policy toward the Indians, found himself, willy-nilly, on the side of those raping their lands and violating a sacred treaty commitment” (836).

For the 1876 election, the Republican candidate was Rutherford B. Hayes. Grant stayed silent about the election except by coming out in support of the rights of Black voters. The Supreme Court’s decisions continued to weaken Reconstruction legislation and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution. Violence continued in the South, with Black communities being massacred and Black political officials being assassinated. When elections in the South were coming under question, Grant did send troops to prevent the threat of election tampering in Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana and established a bipartisan Electoral Commission to oversee election results from contested states. In the end, another outbreak of civil war was avoided and Rutherford Hayes was declared the next president. In a compromise to preserve the Republican Party in the South, Hayes promised Southern Democrats that he would recognize the new Democratic state governments even if they came to power through violence and voter intimidation, that he would withdraw federal soldiers, and that he would restore “home rule” (849) to the South. In this way, the end of Grant’s presidency also represented the complete end of Reconstruction.