Centennial Crisis- the Disputed Election of 1876 Read online

  On election day—November 6, 1860—Lincoln was elected President with a majority of the electoral votes—all of them from northern states—but only a minority of the popular vote. Even before he was inaugurated the following March, the seven states of the Deep South seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. In April 1861, the Confederate shore batteries in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, opened fire on the small Union garrison at Fort Sumter on an island in the harbor. The garrison surrendered the following day, and Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion. The Civil War had begun.

  At the outbreak of the Civil War, thirty-nine-year-old Ulysses S. Grant had been a clerk in a leather store operated by two of his brothers in the Mississippi River town of Galena, Illinois. Grant had graduated from West Point with an undistinguished record, and served in the Mexican War and at Army posts in the United States until 1854, when he resigned his commission. For the next

  Justice Nathan Clifford, painted in 1967 from earlier portraits.

  seven years, he was a farmer, a real-estate agent, a candidate for county engineer, and a clerk in a customs house. In none of these occupations was he particularly successful.

  After Lincoln’s call for volunteers, Grant was appointed by Illinois Governor Richard Yates to be a colonel in one of the Illinois volunteer regiments. Grant led the forces which successfully captured first Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and then Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. He commanded Union forces at the Battle of Shiloh, and then successfully invested the southern fortress of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Vicksburg fell on July 4, 1863, thereby cutting the Confederacy in two from north to south.

  Grant was promoted to major general in the regular Army. After commanding Union troops at the Battle of Lookout Mountain, he was promoted to General in Chief of the Union forces. He devised a plan to employ all of his numerically superior troops against the enemy, correctly theorizing that if he could keep the losses even, the Union forces would prevail. Battling in Virginia from the spring of 1864 until Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April 1865, Grant was the Union hero of the Civil War.

  During the summer of 1864, there was considerable war-weariness in states such as Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana. The war had lasted longer than most anyone expected, and Union losses were heavy in battles such as the Wilderness and Cold Harbor. Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, mounted a stealthy but unsuccessful campaign to obtain the Republican presidential nomination himself. But Lincoln easily won renomination at the party convention in Baltimore in June. The Democrats met in Chicago in August and adopted a “peace plank” in their platform. This plank called for an immediate cease-fire and a negotiated peace. They nominated General George McClellan for President, whose first act after accepting the nomination was to repudiate the peace plank.

  Fate smiled on the Republicans as the election drew closer. In September, the city of Atlanta fell to General William T. Sherman after a long siege. Admiral David Farragut won the important naval battle of Mobile Bay. In November, Lincoln was reelected by a margin of more than two to one in the popular vote.

  Five days after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater. He was succeeded by Vice President Andrew Johnson, with whom Grant had nothing like the close relationship that he had developed with Lincoln. Grant was now Commander in Chief of a rapidly demobilizing army, and a popular hero.

  Johnson would try to carry out Lincoln’s conciliatory approach to the seceded states, but soon ran into conflict with the Radical Republicans who would dominate Congress after 1866. He successively vetoed civil rights bills and Reconstruction bills, only to have his vetoes overridden by Congress. He was finally impeached in 1868 after he removed his disloyal Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, from office. The trial in the Senate in the spring of 1868 lasted many weeks; Johnson was finally acquitted by a margin of one vote. The proceedings in the Senate were adjourned to allow the Republicans to attend their national convention in Chicago.

  At that convention, Grant’s was the only name placed in nomination for President, and he was unanimously chosen on the first ballot. Up until the Civil War, he had led a largely apolitical life. The only vote he cast for President was in 1856; he voted for Buchanan because, he said, “he knew Frémont.” He would now run against Horatio Seymour, the Governor of New York, who was chosen by the Democrats after twenty-one exhausting ballots.

  Seymour had publicly sympathized with draft rioters in New York during the war, and he was thought to have close ties to Wall Street bankers. This double burden was too much for him in a campaign against a war hero. Seymour carried only eight of the thirty-four states, and lost in the Electoral College by a margin of 214 to 80.

  At forty-six, Grant was then the youngest President ever elected. He entered the presidency beholden to none of the political interests which are usually involved in the nominating process. He therefore had no political debts to pay when it came to cabinet positions or other appointments. In some ways this was an advantage; in others it was not. The historian Paul L. Haworth, writing almost a century ago, observed:

  Prior to [Grant’s] nomination he had never held a civil office, and he did not really understand the workings of our political system. Starting out with the assumption that the Presidency was a sort of personal possession given him by the people to manage as he thought proper, he had, with the best intentions in the world, entirely ignored the party leaders in choosing his first cabinet.2

  The downside of Grant’s political naïveté was illustrated by his choices for the two most important cabinet offices— Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury. Grant nominated Elihu Washburne, an Illinois congressman from Galena, to be Secretary of State. Washburne was instrumental in obtaining a commission for Grant when he reentered the Army in 1861 but had no experience in foreign affairs. As it turned out, the permanent post he wanted was that of American minister to Paris (his wife was French), but he asked Grant as a favor to first appoint him Secretary of State. Grant obliged this bizarre request, Washburne resigned after a week in that office, and was duly appointed minister to Paris. Grant then nominated Hamilton Fish of New York to succeed Washburne. This choice commanded widespread public support, and Fish rendered highly competent service in that office for the entire eight years of Grant’s presidency.

  The President chose Alexander Stewart, a leading New York retailer, as Secretary of the Treasury, but senators pointed to a statute, first drafted by Alexander Hamilton, which forbade any person carrying on a business or trade to hold that office. Grant requested that the Senate exempt Stewart, but Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Roscoe Conkling of New York both refused the request. Grant then acceded to Stewart’s request that his name be withdrawn, and next selected Congressman George Boutwell of Massachusetts for the Treasury post.

  Told that Pennsylvania, a populous and reliably Republican state, should be represented in his cabinet, Grant nominated Adolphe Borie of Philadelphia to be Secretary of the Navy. Borie’s only connection with nautical matters was that he had retired from a successful career in the East India trade, but Grant had enjoyed his company while being entertained at Borie’s Delaware estate.

  The President chose Jacob D. Cox, ex-Governor of Ohio, as Secretary of the Interior, John Creswell of Maryland to be Postmaster General, and Ebenezer R. Hoar of Massachusetts to be Attorney General. All were recognized as able men and did not disappoint in their respective offices. Grant picked his longtime aide and military confidant General John Rawlins to be Secretary of War. Rawlins, however, was fatally ill with tuberculosis, and died within a few months.

  GRANT collaborated with Fish to secure a major diplomatic triumph in the Treaty of Washington, approved in May 1871. It provided for arbitration of United States claims against Great Britain resulting from the construction of Confederate warships in a British shipyard.

  During the war, three Confederate warships—the
Alabama, the Florida, and the Shenandoah—had been built in the Laird Shipyards in Liverpool. They wreaked havoc on Union shipping not only in the Atlantic Ocean but also in the Indian Ocean. The Alabama alone sank sixty-four vessels. The United States maintained that the British government was liable for the damage these warships inflicted on Union shipping. An attempt by Seward in the last days of the Johnson administration to settle the claims was overwhelmingly rejected by the Senate because it was thought prejudicial to the best interests of the United States.

  In February 1871, the British government became more favorably inclined to settlement and sent five commissioners to join their American counterparts in Washington to draft a treaty. Secretary Fish was chairman of the American group, while the very able Englishman Lord Ripon chaired the British delegation. For two months, they worked diligently to come up with the mutually acceptable Treaty of Washington. It dealt with other issues outstanding between the two countries as well as the Alabama claims. With respect to the latter, it provided for submission to binding arbitration by a five-member tribunal to meet in Geneva, Switzerland. One member was to be appointed by Queen Victoria, one by President Grant, one by the King of Italy, one by the Emperor of Brazil, and the fifth by the President of the Swiss Confederation.

  The treaty was a major milestone in relations between the United States and Great Britain, foreshadowing friendly relations for the indefinite future. The tribunal awarded the United States $15.5 million in damages for the depredations committed by the British warships. The proceedings brought to prominence an unknown lawyer from Toledo, Ohio—Morrison R. Waite— who was one of the attorneys representing the United States before the tribunal. Two years later, Grant would appoint him Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

  Grant also actively supported civil rights legislation. Members of the Ku Klux Klan in southern states were coming out in force, intimidating and terrorizing Republican voters, many of whom were black. Congress had passed two relatively mild Enforcement Acts under the authority of the Civil War Amendments to the Constitution. But Klan violence and intimidation continued in the election of 1870. When Congress convened in March 1871, Grant requested legislation aimed directly at the Klan. Some of the Republicans in Congress as well as Democrats opposed the measure, saying that it would bring the federal government into an area traditionally reserved for the states. Federal supervision of local affairs in the South was losing its appeal in the North. But Grant was insistent and threw the full weight of his office behind the bill, which would become known as the Ku Klux Act. The bill made it a crime to conspire to prevent persons from voting, holding office, or otherwise enjoying equal protection of the laws. It became law in April 1871 and was remarkably effective, at least for the time, in curbing Klan violence in the South.

  Grant had other early successes; the first law he signed after becoming President was entitled “An Act to Strengthen the Public Credit.” It pledged the government to pay its bondholders in gold and to redeem greenbacks “at the earliest practical period.” Secretary Boutwell began selling gold at weekly auctions, and the amount of gold sold at these auctions had a significant influence on the price of the metal on the New York market. The more gold sold, the more difficult it would be to “corner” the market. This worked well as long as no outsider knew in advance the amount of gold the Treasury would sell each week. Boutwell was close-mouthed, and publicly announced his orders at the same time he telegraphed them to the assistant treasurer in New York who actually conducted the auction.

  Two well-known “robber barons” of the era, Jay Gould and “Jubilee Jim” Fisk determined on a plan to corner the gold market. But to do so they needed someone on the inside of the administration to advise them of the government’s decisions as to the amount of gold to be sold. They chose Abel R. Corbin, who had recently married Grant’s younger sister. The Corbins lived in a fine five-story brownstone in Manhattan, and Gould and Fisk gained access to Grant through Corbin. The Grants were entertained at the theater and on the yacht of the speculators, who urged on the President the desirability for the country of raising the price of gold. Grant was noncommittal, but being seen publicly in their company gave these men a certain cachet.

  In September 1869, Gould and Fisk began buying large amounts of gold and thereby driving up its price. If they were to succeed in their plan to corner the market, the Treasury had to lessen or totally suspend the sale of gold. Grant, about to leave Washington for a vacation in Bedford, Pennsylvania, wrote to Boutwell, telling him to continue the policy of selling gold. He entrusted this letter, however, to Corbin to deliver to the assistant treasurer in New York, who was to give it to Boutwell when the latter came to the city. Corbin apparently thought that the sealed envelope was an instruction to suspend the gold sale, and so advised Gould.

  At the latter’s request, Corbin wrote his brother-in-law a long letter giving ostensibly neutral reasons for suspending gold sales by the Treasury. He sent the letter by courier to the vacationing Grant. Grant read the letter after finishing a game of croquet and advised the courier that there would be no reply. The courier went to the nearest telegraph office and wrote out a message saying “Letter delivered all right.” But the message transmitted was slightly but significantly altered: “Letter delivered. All right.”

  Encouraged by this misleading response, the conspirators continued to bid up the price of gold. The result was to dry up available foreign exchange and sharply diminish both imports and exports. Early in the day on Friday, September 24—Black Friday—the price of gold reached $150 on the New York market, with the conspirators purchasing each offer of the precious metal. Boutwell, after conferring with Grant, wired instructions to the assistant treasurer in New York to sell $4 million worth of gold. This news on the open wire dramatically pricked the gold bubble. Within minutes, the price dropped to $133. But the adverse consequences to the economy, particularly to agriculture, would be felt for a long time. And the Black Friday panic which resulted from these market manipulations did not reflect favorably on the new President.

  Grant in no way cooperated with the conspirators, and had nothing to gain from their success. But his public appearances as guests of such people as Gould and Fisk gave the impression that they might be privy to the government’s plans about gold sales. Grant was not the first and certainly not the last President to enjoy hobnobbing with very wealthy individuals, but he should have had the good judgment to avoid these particular men.

  Grant’s first venture into foreign affairs proved equally unsuccessful. Senior naval officers were anxious to get at least a coaling station somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. President Johnson urged the annexation of both the Dominican Republic and Haiti, but a resolution authorizing the annexation was decisively defeated in the House of Representatives in the waning days of his administration. Grant devoted considerable time and effort to work out an agreement with the rulers of the Dominican Republic providing for annexation of that nation and its admission as a state. But the treaty he submitted to the Senate to accomplish that purpose was defeated by a vote of 28 to 28, two-thirds majority being required for passage. Not only was the treaty defeated, but Grant earned the lasting hostility of the aging and imperious chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Charles Sumner.

  This contretemps over Santo Domingo also alienated other Republican senators, including Carl Schurz of Missouri. Schurz was a German immigrant who had come to this country with his new wife in 1852. This was a time of vastly increased immigration from the German states following the failed uprisings of 1848. Schurz was a political activist by nature and was an early and successful ethnic politician. After settling in Watertown, Wisconsin, he became active in Republican politics. Schurz was valuable to the party because he could speak to German-American gatherings in German as well as English. In 1860, he crisscrossed the country campaigning for Lincoln.

  Grant was very sensitive to criticism, and as men like Sumner and Schurz deserted him, he fell back o
n the quite uncritical senators of his party who were bosses of political machines in their states: Roscoe Conkling in New York, Simon Cameron in Pennsylvania, Oliver Morton in Indiana. Men such as these would not harp on Grant’s failings as long as he gave them ironclad control over the federal patronage in their states. And these alliances further antagonized the Reform, or Liberal, element in the Republican Party.

  Following the great growth of the federal government during and after the Civil War there came a demand for reform of the civil service. While Andrew Johnson was President, the Radical Republicans championed this idea as a way of limiting Johnson’s power to make appointments. But when their man Grant succeeded Johnson, Republicans began having second thoughts about the need for competitive examinations and the abandonment of a patronage system of appointments. Grant nonetheless urged Congress to create a Civil Service Commission which would promulgate rules and regulations to reform the Civil Service. Congress did enact such a law, but the outcome in the Senate was touch and go—a motion to kill the bill failed by only one vote.

  Grant appointed George William Curtis, a longtime champion of civil service reform, to chair the Commission. It made its report a year later, saying that examinations should be required for promotion within a department, and political assessments on federal jobholders should be outlawed. Grant requested enabling legislation to give these rules the force of law, but Congress balked. It not only refused to enact such legislation but it let the appropriation for the Civil Service Commission lapse. Grant took this as a disapproval of reform by Congress and did not raise the matter again. Not until 1883, when Congress passed the Pendleton Act in the administration of Chester A. Arthur, would the first major step toward civil service reform take place.