#20 James Garfield (1831-1881)

“James A. Garfield soon disappeared from the public’s memory, and he remains one of America’s least remembered chief executives. ‘For who was Garfield, martyred man, and who had seen him in the streets of life?’ asked the novelist Thomas Wolfe. ‘Who could believe that his footballs ever sounded on a lonely pavement?’ But Garfield did exist—he was a son, a husband, and a father. He lived and breathed and laughed and cried and played a major role in American politics. He was the last of the nation’s ‘born in a log cabin’ presidents, a general during the Civil War, and the quintessential rags-to-riches, self-made American man” (Rutkow, p. 3).

I simply couldn’t remember this guy’s name! Recently, my Mom had casually asked me how many presidents had been killed by assassination and somewhere in my head I knew that the number was 4 (don’t ask me how). But when I went to name them off to her, I could count only three: Lincoln, McKinley, and Kennedy. But I swore there were four of them! Frowning I racked my brain to disgorge the final name but after a few seconds of really heavy mental lifting, I had nothing. Knowing that someday, someday, I would discover that name did not really ease the frustration but that is the best part about reading a bio for every single president—I’m going to get the information eventually.

And here it is, folks! The mystery is solved--#4 is James A Garfield. Aha! Of course I had to call my Mom immediately but it turned out to be one of those situations when you wake up in the middle of the night with the answer on your lips and nobody understands you at all. What I mean to say is my Mom had no clue what I was talking about, I guess, assuming that we had dropped this topic weeks ago. Of course, I was so excited, I didn’t help matters.

“Mom? It’s Garfield! No, I’m Vanya, but Garfield is the answer! Remember when we were talking about assassinations? (annoyance) Come on—you asked me how many presidents were assassinated. I don’t remember when—a couple weeks ago maybe? Don’t you remember? I was having trouble remembering the fourth president to be assassinated and it was driving me crazy. (resignation) Oh nevermind! It doesn’t matter. If it ever comes up in trivia, remember Garfield. No, I have enough money to buy groceries. Gotta go.”

Now that I’m rereading this, I’m a little embarrassed at how excited I was in the first place. It’s not like I’m a kick-ass historical detective or something here but I do like finding out answers to the little questions. It’s too bad that after my euphoria over discovering Garfield’s claim to fame, I then had to read on—and really, it’s too horrible. I’ve been sad over presidents before but my emotions reached a new low with Garfield and his end. Sigh. I guess you should just read on to see what I mean. (I read James A Garfield: American Presidents Series by Ira Rutkow, New York: Times Books, 2006.)


As stated above, James Abram Garfield really was born in a log cabin in Orange, Ohio on November 19, 1831. Only two years later, his father and three siblings would die of pneumonia, leaving Eliza to manage the farm and raise the rest of the children alone. James was clumsy and awkward growing up but he was also ambitious, disciplined and intelligent. He had minimal formal schooling but he was a voracious reader and learned a lot that way.

In October of 1848 aged 16, Garfield left home to become a “sailor” for pontoon boats in the Great Lakes. Unfortunately, Garfield did not know how to swim and nearly drowned several times. Eventually he enrolled himself in the Geauga Academy and then switched to the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in 1851. Finally, a year later, he went up to Williams College in Massachusetts to receive his degree. While there, he became involved in Republican politics and embraced abolitionism. He graduated in 1856 as the salutatorian.

Having really no money or prospects, Garfield went right into teaching and then became president of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute. In November 1858, he married Lucretia Randolph, a sweetheart from school days at Geauga and Western Reserve and they moved to a little cottage near the college.

Being very ambitious, Garfield knew he could not stay where he was as a president of a college. In 1859, then, he was elected to the Ohio Senate. “Three qualities immediately set Garfield apart from other senators: a prodigious capacity to grasp the minutiae of legislation, extraordinary speechmaking abilities, and a genuineness in forming friendships” (p. 11). He was also admitted to the bar, by simply reading a few legal books and taking an oral examination. He would never practice as a lawyer—it was simply a fall-back plan in case politics did not work out.

War interrupted and in 1861, Garfield became the lieutenant colonel of 42nd Ohio regiment. From there, they were sent down to Kentucky to take part in the Battle of Middle Creek. They won and Garfield was promoted to brigadier general. He had been wounded and found himself recovering in Washington DC where he made good use of his time networking. He was even elected to the US House of Representatives but since he was still in the military, he had to return to the front. In 1863, he was sent to the Army of the Cumberland in TN and became chief of staff under General Rosecrans. Garfield was severely disillusioned after the loss at the Battle of Chickamauga and left the army to take up his post in congress.

Back in Washington, he joined the group of radical republicans and was immediately placed on the Committee on Military Affairs. He was increasingly involved with the financial aspect of Congress, becoming involved in the Committee of Ways and Means, the Committee of Appropriations, and the Committee of Banking and Currency. “He promoted what might later be called the trickle-down theory of economic growth, whereby the government facilitates the expansion of business productivity on the assumption that all of society will eventually benefit” (p. 31).

In 1880, he was elected to the US Senate, but he was only able to serve a couple months before he was nominated as the Republican National presidential candidate. His nomination came as a complete surprise. The Republican Party had split with the Half-Breeds supporting James G Blaine for president and the Stalwarts backing Ulysses S Grant for a third term. No single candidate was able to receive a majority of votes until Garfield’s name was thrown into the mix. He won the nomination and then, running against the Democratic candidate, General Winfield Scott Hancock, won the presidency despite a truly dirty campaign. “Most observers agree that, in view of the nastiness of the campaign, Garfield’s victory could be regarded as a personal triumph. He had captured the presidency by keeping the party’s faithful focused and united while presenting a positive and modest image to American voters” (p. 62).

Patronage was immediately a problem for Garfield. “In 1881, government jobs seekers enjoyed open access to the executive mansion, and it was not uncommon that they attempted to speak one-on-one with the president to plead their case” (p. 71). Many office seekers were sent away unhappy and unappreciated. But there were other problems on the horizon for Garfield. The first was his hatred of Chester A Arthur, his vice president. Garfield very clearly leaned toward the Half-Breed side of the Republican Party and when he was nominated for the presidency, everyone decided it would be a good idea to pair him with a Stalwart supporter, in this case, Chester Arthur. After the election, Garfield and Arthur could not have been farther apart, politically, and by the summer of 1881, they were not speaking at all. The second problem was the advent of a mother of a scandal which would implicate numerous Washington bigwigs and tons of government postal employees. Called the Star Route Scandal, some government officials decided to charge the government extra to deliver the mail in out-of-the-way places. Garfield cracked down hard on this type of thing.

One of the really great things that Garfield accomplished in office was his reselling of some government bonds that helped pay off some of the debt from the war. It was in a rather good mood that on the morning of July 2, 1881, Garfield and Blaine, the Secretary of State, headed to the train station. Garfield and some of the other cabinet members were going to take a tour of New England. Unfortunately, at the train station, Garfield walked right into an insane, frustrated office seeker, Charles Guiteau, who shot Garfield in the back. Guiteau was a “mentally unstable, penny-ante scalawag, who stole from everyone he knew. He was the child of a deceased schizophrenic mother and a religion-obsessed, know-it-all father” (p. 71-2).

Garfield lay bleeding onto the floor of the train station while people ran around in panic. “Turning Garfield on his side to examine the bullet hole, Townshend [a health officer for the District of Columbia] became the first of what would be numerous individuals to place their unwashed fingers and unclean instruments directly into the president’s wound” (p. 85). Soon several other medical men had joined Townsend, including Doctor Bliss, Garfield’s future physician, and each of them stuck their fingers into the wound to try and ascertain the path of the bullet. Bliss, a Civil War surgeon, soon took over and decided that the bullet had hit the president’s liver and he would not live long.

They finally were able to move the president back to the White House where Bliss maintained a strict regimen of dosing his patient with large quantities of quinine and morphine. Garfield routinely vomited after meals and his temperature began to spike each night above 100 degrees but Bliss and the other doctors believed it to be for the best. “For Bliss and his minions, ancient remedies, old-world philosophies, and a stubborn resistance to scientific progress characterized their every deed and word” (p. 92).

Over the next 80 days, Garfield was kept in near isolation under the orders of Dr. Bliss. He continued to lose weight because of the vomiting and he contracted blood poisoning, abscesses and pneumonia. When he finally died on September 19, 1881, he was more than a hundred pounds thinner, he had tons of abscesses filled with pus all over his body and, after a hasty autopsy, it was discovered that the bullet wound was non-lethal. “Lamb performed the dissection, which revealed that the ball had entered Garfield’s body three and a half inches to the right of the spine, fractured the eleventh and twelfth ribs, passed through thoracic and lumbar vertebrae—without injuring the spinal cord—and lodged deep in the tissues of the president’s left back, apparently a nonlethal injury” (p. 128). Chester A Arthur was sworn in as the next President of the United States.

#19: Rutherford B Hayes Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Rutherford B Hayes
1. During the war, a young second lieutenant and future president, William McKinley, served under Hayes and they became good friends. Hayes eventually appointed McKinley to quartermaster.
2. Hayes had a hand in established what is now known as Ohio State University. “As Ari Hoogenboom [a biographer] has emphasized, the legislature followed his suggestion to establish the Agricultural and Mechanical College, the predecessor of Ohio State University, of which he considered himself a founder” (p. 51).
3. Hayes was the first person to serve three terms as governor of Ohio.
4. With Lucy’s help, Hayes did a good job of modernizing the White House, including the installation of more modern plumbing and a telephone!
5. Lucy was quite famous as a first lady with her own nickname, Lemonade Lucy. The reason for this? No alcohol allowed at the White House. “Immediately after a dinner for a son of the Russian tsar where wine punch was served, Lucy’s ban on alcohol, later winning her the name ‘Lemonade Lucy,’ went into effect as part of the White House cuisine, much to the gratification of temperance advocates” (p. 99).
6. For the first time in history at the White House, on December 30, 1877, Rutherford and Lucy held a giant celebration in honor of their silver anniversary.
7. Amazingly, President Hayes is venerated in Paraguay where he has a holiday, a province, a town, a museum and a soccer team all named in his honor. “In November 1878, arbitrating a dispute between Argentina and Paraguay, the administration awarded the territory between Pilcomayo and the Verde River to Paraguay, so that a whole department of that country was called Presidente Hayes and its capital named after him” (p. 108). The reason the Paraguayans love Hayes so much? The arbitration effectivly gave them 60% of their land.
8. Rutherford Hayes was the first president to go on a tour of the Pacific states.

Well there’s no doubt—Rutherford was pretty vanilla on the presidential scale. He seemed like a good man who was just ambitious enough to want the presidency and then not ambitious enough to keep it for longer than he needed to. In fact, since I’ve read through nearly 20 presidents by now, I find it very odd, and also very impressive, that Hayes was adamantly against having a second term. Other presidents obviously served only one term but Hayes was downright excited to be done with the whole thing. I think that makes Hayes very smart, in my book.

Trefousse did a good job of giving the readers a sense of who Hayes was and what made him tick. Hayes was a socially conscious man who was concerned with civil rights, civil service reform, universal education, and temperance and, at least it seemed to me, he was in politics for the good it could do for others rather than himself. Like all people, Hayes had his own foibles but after the Grant administration, I think that the United States needed a man like Hayes. Upright, serene, and sure—he was a welcome hand at the tiller when we needed him most (I’m speaking primarily about the end of the Reconstruction.) During the Hayes administration, the White House was a polite and

What is ironic is that Hayes was a very uncontroversial figure himself and yet he had one of the most controversial starts to a presidency—thanks to the Bargain of 1877. I wonder what would have happened had Tilden taken the title but I really think that despite all the accusations at the time, the right man did win out.

#19: Rutherford B Hayes (1822-1893)

“He was one of the best-educated men to occupy the White House, was honest, evenhanded, and humane. Taking over the scandal-besmirched presidency from General Grant, he reestablished the good reputation of the country’s first office and was rewarded with the Republican success of 1880. This was his real achievement” (Trefousse, 129).

Okay, this may mean that I am, perhaps, one of the oddest people in the United States but I actually do remember Rutherford B Hayes. Not well, mind you, but well enough. Maybe it’s due to the fact that the election of 2000 was as screwed up as the election of 1876 or my American History AP class was just that good or I just have one of the superbest memories of the 21st century—I guess we’ll never know. Regardless, here I am sitting on the information that Rutherford B Hayes won a highly contested election resulting in the Compromise of 1877. And see? I remembered the date too! Awesome.

Anywho, since I already have such a fabulous grasp on Hayesian politics I guess I can just skip this one biography. Ha! No such luck, I’m afraid. I can’t remember anything more about this guy so it’s back to the library for me. Actually, the library didn’t have any adult books on Rutheford, the nerve, so I had to venture back onto Amazon. I bought the book, Rutherford B. Hayes: American Presidents Series by Hans L. Trefousse(New York: Times Books, 2002), and upon receiving it in the mail, put it right onto a bookshelf till it was needed. Do you believe in coincidences? Well when I resurrected Rutherford’s bio off the shelf I noticed that this book was written by none other than my old pal from Andrew Johnson days, Hans L. Trefousse! Isn’t that interesting? I guess it really is a small world in the realm of historical academia. Let’s see how old Hans works his magic with a very different gentleman from that of Johnson.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born on October 4, 1822 in Delaware, OH. Unfortunately, he was born the same year that his father died of fever and thus, his mother, having inherited some land, had to take care of Rutherford, his sister and a younger brother (who eventually died in a skating accident) by herself. Nicknamed “Rud,” Rutherford was a sandy-haired, blue-eyed boy, and was often sickly. In 1836, he was sent to Norwalk Seminary, a prep school in Connecticut and then in 1838 he moved on to Kenyon College in OH. There he showed Whig tendencies and graduated as the valedictorian in 1842.

He decided that he wanted to be a lawyer so he enrolled the next year at Harvard Law School, even though this was before the time that lawyers needed a special degree. He graduated in 1845 and was immediately admitted to the bar, leaving him free to settle in the small town of Fremont, OH. Not caring to conduct business in such a tiny location, Rutherford soon moved himself and his practice to Cincinnati.

It was around 1847 that Rutherford met the young, Lucy Ware Webb, while she was attending Ohio Wesleyan College. They married in 1850 and eventually had 8 children, although only 5 lived. Rutherford continued to make his name as a very good defense attorney and abolitionist lawyer. He was passionately against slavery and would frequently take on fugitive slave cases. In 1858 he was elected as the city’s solicitor and in 1860, the presidential election year, Hayes served as vice chairman of the Republican Executive Committee of Hamilton County. Slowly he was moving up in the world.

With the advent of the Civil War, Hayes volunteered and was made a major. “Toward the end of July, the regiment was ordered to move into what was soon to become West Virginia, to guard the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, secure the Kanawha Valley, and support the Unionists in the area” (p. 23). He was soon promoted to lieutenant colonel and then after Antietam, where he was wounded, he was made a full colonel. His regiment was then placed under Sheridan and Hayes made brigadier general which culminated in 1865 to being made brevet major general.

Also in 1865, with the war ending, Hayes, as a military hero, was voted to represent Ohio in the US House of Representatives. He served in congress during Reconstruction and he had very definitive ideas of where the Southern states stood after the war. “Like many other Republicans he believed that the Southern states had forfeited their rights and ought to be reconstructed by Congress, but unlike [Thaddeus] Stevens did not feel that they were conquered provinces and were thus no longer covered by the Constitution” (p. 41). This thinking brought Hayes into early conflict with President Johnson. “Voting to override the veto , Hayes thereafter strongly opposed Johnson, who, he felt, had fallen completely under the influence of former rebels” (p. 42).

He only served two years as a congressman before he resigned to run for governor of Ohio and won. In 1868 he also was an elector to the Republican National Convention where he voted and nominated Grant for president. In 1871, he resigned as governor and the very next year he lost an election to congress. During this forced retirement, Hayes got into real estate and was given the Assistant Treasurer position for the state.

He was voted in to an unprecedented third term as governor where he spent most of his time increasing educational awareness and other causes. “In his final message, on January 2, 1877, he was able to take credit for the reduction of the state’s debt, the establishment of various welfare institutions, and the geological survey” (p. 63). Before this final message however in 1876, Hayes had been nominated for president on the Republican National ticket. He was paired opposite Samuel Tilden, Democrat, and no one could tell which candidate would win, both being relatively unknown. It initially looked like Tilden would take the popular vote but it then came to everyone’s attention that votes had been mishandled in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. The disputed election went to the House of Representatives but the Constitution was mum on this particular development, so Congress ended up voting a 15-man commission to decide the matter. Hayes won.

Although Hayes was the 19th President of the United States, the country was still divided over the results, while the Democrats fairly howling with rage and calling the president “Rutherfraud.” The “Bargain of 1876” was struck when Hayes declared that he would end all Reconstruction in the South by removing the military presence there.

As president, Hayes went immediately to work ending Reconstruction and promoting civil rights, civil service reform, and universal education. However, his early presidential years were marked by controversy. He had problems with his cabinet, with patronage appointments, with the way he ended Reconstruction and his adherence to the need of civil service reform. At that time office seekers simply stalked the president in the White House but Hayes wished to have civil service offices given by merit and wanted to institute an exam that would preclude promotion. There were also railroad strikes (which the government had to put down) and immigration policies. “All in all, the first two years of the Hayes administration were more successful than could have expected after the disputed election. As the Atlantic Monthly pointed out, interference in stated elections had been abandoned, financial obligations vindicated, burdens of taxation had been lifted, and national credit secured” (p. 109).

He worked hard the next few years as well but he was quite happy to leave the presidency after just one term. Hayes was adamant about not being re-nominated and was quite satisfied with the election of James Garfield. He was satisfied with the job he had done but was not anxious to have the job any longer. “I am now in my last year of the Presidency,” Hayes wrote “and look forward to its close as a schoolboy longs for the coming vacation” (p. 119).

This time his retirement was real. He became the director of the First National Bank of Fremont while taking the time to enlarge his own home, Spiegel Grove. He remained very active in several military and educational associations and he continued to travel. He was interested and active in promoting educational opportunities and civil rights for the rest of his life. In June 1889, his wife, Lucy, died of stroke, leaving Hayes bereft. He would follow her several years later, on January 7, 1893, when he died of a heart attack.

Presidential Birthdays

Presidential Birthdays
I thought it would be interesting (for me and you) to celebrate each Presidential Birthday. Thus, I am including a giant list in my PRP. So in honor of Rutherford B. Hayes (who was born on Monday, along with my brother) and Chester A Arthur, here are all the President’s birthdays by month. Yay!
January
1/7/1800 Millard Fillmore Cayuga County, NY
1/9/1913 Richard Nixon Yorba Linda, CA
1/29/1843 William McKinley Niles, OH
1/30/1882 Franklin D. Roosevelt Hyde Park, NY
February
2/6/1911 Ronald Reagan Tampico, IL
2/9/1773 William Henry Harrison Charles City County, VA
2/12/1809 Abraham Lincoln Hardin County, KY
2/22/1732 George Washington Pope’s Creek, VA
March
3/15/1767 Andrew Jackson Waxhaw, NC
3/16/1751 James Madison Port Conway, VA
3/18/1837 Grover Cleveland Caldwell, NJ
3/29/1790 John Tyler Charles City County, VA
April
4/13/1743 Thomas Jefferson Goochland County, VA
4/23/1791 James Buchanan Cove Gap, PA
4/27/1822 Ulysses S Grant Point Pleasant, OH
4/28/1758 James Monroe Westmoreland County, VA
May
5/8/1884 Harry Truman Lamar, MO
5/29/1917 John F Kennedy Brookline, MA
June
6/12/1924 George H.W. Bush Milton, MA
July
4/4/1872 Calvin Coolidge Plymouth, VT
4/6/1946 George W Bush New Haven, CT
4/11/1767 John Quincy Adams Braintree, MA
4/14/1913 Gerald Ford Omaha, NE
August
8/4/1961 Barack Obama Honolulu, Hawaii
8/10/1874 Herbert Hoover West Branch, IA
8/19/1946 William (Bill) Clinton Hope, AR
8/20/1833 Benjamin Harrison North Bend, OH
8/27/1908 Lyndon B Johnson Stonwall, TX
September
9/15/1857 William H Taft Cincinnati, OH
October
10/1/1924 Jimmy Carter Plains, GA
10/4/1822 Rutherford B Hayes Delaware, OH
10/5/1829 Chester A Arthur Fairfield, VT
10/14/1890 Dwight Eisenhower Denison, TX
10/27/1858 Theodore Roosevelt New York, NY
10/30/1735 John Adams Braintree, MA
November
11/2/1795 James K Polk Mecklenburg County, NC
11/2/1865 Warren Harding Corsica, OH
11/19/1831 James Garfield Moreland Hills, OH
11/23/1804 Franklin Pierce Hillsborough, NH
11/24/1784 Zachary Taylor Orange County, VA
December
12/5/1782 Martin Van Buren Kinderhook, NY
12/28/1856 Woodrow Wilson Staunton, VA
12/29/1808 Andrew Johnson Raleigh, NC

#18: Ulysses S Grant Part 2

“If Washington had been the father of his country, Ulysses Grant was its savior” (Bunting, 2004, p. 84).




Cool Stuff about Ulysses S. Grant
1. I wonder if you noticed this or not but I called Grant, Hiram Ulysses, to start his bio. That’s because he was christened Hiram Ulysses. His name was changed when he went to West Point because the congressman recommending him got it wrong to begin with, dubbing him Ulysses Simpson Grant. West Point, then left it as Ulysses S and the rest is history. Since Grant was so quiet and unassuming, he decided to just stick with the change of name rather than go through the trouble of changing it back.
2. Grant. Loved. Horses. He had a sort of horse-whisperer quality about him, allowing him to ride anything. Hence the livery stable he had as a kid. Later on he would surprise his peers as an acclaimed horseman. “He was known and admired as the best horseman at West Point, and later the finest horseman in the army” (p. 18).
3. Grant’s nickname at West Point was “Sam.” Everyone at school thought his name stood for “Uncle Sam.”
4. In Mexico, Grant once took a treacherous ride alone in search of more ammunition for his regiment. “Here his supreme skill as a rider probably saved his life and made possible the relief of his unit: Grant braved direct fire from the streets of Monterrey, riding like a movie cowboy, hanging by stirrups and cantle, keeping the horse’s massive body between himself and the enemy” (p. 24).
5. Grant is commonly thought to only have voted once in his entire life. “Grant had in fact voted in 1856—the only election in which he is known to have voted: he cast his ballot for the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan. About the Republican nominee, John C. Fremont, Grant would only say, ‘I knew Fremont’” (p. 33).
6. After Shiloh in 1862, Grant very seriously considered resigning from the army and would have without the council of William Tecumseh Sherman. “Halleck, however, removed Grant from command, assigned him the meaningless job of second in command (duties unprescribed), and redoubled his criticism, always behind Grant’s back, to army colleagues. Had it not been for the intervention of his friend Sherman, who found him despondent and about to leave the army on furlough, Grant would have departed this strange predicament at once” (p. 47). Can you imagine how the course of the Civil War might have been different had Grant retired instead?
7. After the Battle of Chattanooga, a bill passed through Congress to reinstate the rank of lieutenant general which was then conferred upon Grant. Do you know the last man to hold the rank of lieutenant general? That’s right—George Washington.
8. Grant spearheaded the movement to pass the 15th Amendment through Congress; thus giving black Americans the right to vote.
9. Grant created the Department of Justice to deal with Reconstruction problems. With all the racial issues in the South, Grant could not allow the army to be called out with each disturbance so he put the Department of Justice under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General and saw to it that they made sure the laws were being enacted in the South.
10. It was during the Grant administration that the Ku Klux Klan had their heyday. The Klan used violence, terrorism, and intimidation against black Americans in the South to disrupt voting and other events. “It struck through the South, doing its work mainly at night, its instruments comprising kidnapping, murder, arson, beatings, and the terror induced by not knowing when, or where, it would strike next (black churches were particularly favored targets), together with the certain knowledge that local law enforcement, when not actually conniving in such activities, would itself be sufficiently intimidated to do nothing” (p. 113). Grant pushed through the Ku Klux Klan bill in 1871 threatening to send the troops to settle Klan-related disturbances.
11. Really quick—I have to give a little Shout Out to my boy, Lew Wallace, whom I ran across in this Grant bio! Lew Wallace was a general in the Union Army and at one point in Tennessee, fought under Grant. But the best part is when Wallace went on later to write that awesome book, Ben-Hur. Sigh.

This was a pretty good biography about Grant. Although it was not the most exciting or best written biography I’ve read (I’m thinking Martin Van Buren, here, people!), I enjoyed the way that the author uses a lot of modern-day comparisons to help us understand what happened back in that day. For instance, Bunting draws the comparison between the Guilded Age (Grant’s administration) and the Roaring Twenties in America or the Regency period in England. Both time periods excelled in the arts and were a sort of backlash against years of war. Interesting. I love when the dots are connected.

Grant and I also see eye-to-eye on one particular thing: the right to vote. I am a huge proponent of voting and am disappointed in our national turnouts for current elections. As a proud citizen of the United States of America, I was given the right to vote by my forebears who fought and died for it. Thus, I believe that getting up off your (and my) lazy ass and voting for whom we think should govern our great nation should be a gimme. Grant agrees with me here. In his first inaugural address he mentions how vital it is for the nation and freed men to have this right. “It set forth those things important to Grant: the healing commonality of all American citizens—their membership in the restored American nation, a membership not to be defined by race or region, and in which the defining act of citizenship must be voting” (p. 89). Voting is important, people! I would like to see everyone get out there on Election Day to do your American duty. Seriously.

I am sorry that, in the public mind, Grant will forever be linked to the myriad dishonesties that enveloped the Reconstruction era because I really believe that he was a good man and a good president. After his trip around the world, Grant’s contemporary reputation grew almost back to what it was around Appomattox but I’m afraid that this surge did not help his overall reputation in the long run.

I have to say that I was a little shocked at all the scandals during the Grant administration. Bunting, throughout the book, depicted a Grant that was forthright and incorruptible, in a way, and yet his second term as president is literally littered with dishonesty and corruption. I was confused as to how this could have happened but then I had to remember that being a successful general and being a successful president are two totally different things. To be fair, none of the scandals involved Grant personally, aiding the idea that Grant was, personally, honest and aboveboard. However, I believe that he was notoriously lax when it came to his associates’ morals and a little too easy-going to stop any funny business from happening.

#18 Ulysses S Grant (1822-1885)

“Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?” Instead of a truly inspired image of our 18th president, my infantile brain popped out that age-old question. Jeez. Even though I read about Grant, the general, in the Lincoln bio, I really don’t know all that much about him. I have a very hazy recollection from American History AP that Grant, due to some scandals, helps fill the ranks of Worst President Ever. Don’t you just love that word? Scandals. Oh my. What could dour, taciturn Grant have gotten into that would catapult his fame from the war right down the hole of oblivion? Let’s find out.

In an effort to discover the truth of these so-called scandals, I delved into Ulysses S. Grant by Josiah Bunting III of the American Presidents Series (New York: Times Books, 2004). There were bigger books on Grant but I have to say that I was just plain worn out—worn out, I tell you—from reading those tomes on Lincoln and Davis. Not to mention, Johnson’s bio was also heftyish, so reading this 180-pager was quite refreshing.

Hiram Ulysses Grant was born on March, 27, 1822 in Point Pleasant, Ohio. “Hannah and Jesse would have six children, three girls and three boys, but Ulysses—the first—remained the apple of his father’s for the first thirty years of his life, and, after a gap of several years, thereafter” (p. 10). He was the favorite son and so naturally, since he must reflect on his father in a positive way, Grant was given all the rudiments of polite society. “He was taught at the local subscription school; in adolescence he was sent off for one-year terms at two nearby boarding schools, the latter to prepare him for possible attendance at West Point” (p. 10). When he was around 14, he started his own livery service due to an extreme love of horses.

On May 29, 1839, Grant received his appointment to West Point. He was a very quiet young man, around 5’1” and only 117 lbs and it was really no wonder that he did not shine at West Point but was merely a mediocre student. “Minor disciplinary scrapes and misadventures and a manifest indifference to military rigmarole, to drum-and-trumpet militarism, shines, creases, barked commands, and posturing—such things kept him from advancing as a cadet” (p. 17). Upon graduation in 1843, Grant was assigned to the infantry at Jefferson Barracks, MO.

While there, he frequently visited a fellow officer named Frederick Dent, who lived in the area, and slowly found himself falling in love with Fred’s sister, Julia. Julia’s father was not hot about his daughter marrying a military man but he allowed them to get in engaged in 1846 with the understanding that they would marry after the Mexican War.

In 1844, Grant formed part of the Army of Observation under Gen. Zachary Taylor that was sent to Louisiana after Texas was annexed by the United States. “Grant’s service in the Army of Observation gave him much pleasure; he was beginning to find elements of soldiering congenial to his temperament, as certain young men with no expectation of liking it often do” (p. 21). From there they were ordered to Corpus Christi where the Mexicans fired upon them, thus starting the Mexican War. In June, Grant took part in the Battle of Palo Alto, where he temporarily commanded a company before being promoted to quartermaster. “Necessity, Jacob Bronowski wrote, is the mother not of invention but of improvisation, and nothing could more mercilessly and continuously try Grant’s skills at improvisation than the demands of feeding, moving, and supplying an infantry regiment on campaign in a difficult enemy country” (p. 23-24). Grant fought at Monterrey under Taylor and also in Vera Cruz under Scott.

After the war ended, Grant headed straight to Julia Dent and married her on August 22, 1848. After that he was transferred, still as a quartermaster, to Sackets Harbor, NY and from thence he was ordered to Fort Vancouver on the west coast. Since the trip from one coast to the other was fraught with so much peril, Julia stayed home while Grant sailed down to Panama, rode overland to the Pacific and then sailed up to Fort Vancouver. He was desperately unhappy there. He missed his wife and did not have a lot to do which led him to drink heavily. “It is during these days that Grant’s reputation as a man with an alcohol problem was established, and in the tiny peacetime army, in which all officers knew or knew about all others, word of his drinking spread easily” (p. 31). He was promoted to captain but in April 1854, he resigned from the army over an inebriated episode.

Grant then went on to hold a host of random jobs which never seemed to work out for him. He tried farming in Missouri and working at a custom house, then real estate and rent collection, but all for nothing. Finally, beaten, he moved to Galena, IL to work in his father’s leather store (his father was a tanner by trade). Thankfully, for Grant, the Civil War began. He would not enlist outright so he was forced into entering the army again by being appointed colonel of the 21st Regiment of Illinois volunteers in June 1861. Very shortly, he was promoted to brigadier general and sent to the Missouri/Kentucky area where he distinguished himself as a leader. “They had seen their general in action and had faith in him; he was without apparent fear; he was coolly efficient, imperturbable—and resourceful. He knew what to do, and much of what he had done he did where they could see it” (p. 42).

It was under Grant that the first major Union victories were achieved at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in February 1862. It was the victory at Fort Donelson that would eventually give Grant his new nickname, “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. “Yours of this date proposing Armistice and appointment of Commissioners to settle terms of Capitulation is just received. No terms except immediate and unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works. I am, sir, very respectfully, Your obt. svt. U.S. Grant, Brig. Gen.” (p. 44). These victories were followed up by a devastating and dubiously won battle at Shiloh where the casualties were the highest ever. “But if the public was slow to grasp the strategic consequence of Shiloh, it understood the magnitude of Union losses, and, inevitably, it fastened on Grant’s apparent callousness, his prodigal willingness to sacrifice soldiers for no demonstrable purpose” (p. 47). Grant was labeled a “butcher” and almost thrown out of the Army. As it was he was taken away from immediate command and left on the back burner.

Grant was not initially against slavery, per se, but as the war dragged on, he came to believe, like Lincoln, that they needed to fight for something more important than simply secession. Grant told Bismarck, years later, “In the beginning [we fought for the Union] but as soon as slavery fired upon the flag it was felt, we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union” (p. 49). It was with renewed vigor that Grant was again put back into command after the Emancipation Proclamation and he moved to take control of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. Vicksburg was the last bastion of Confederate power over the Mississippi and Grant began its siege in April 1863 by going around the back way and hemming the Confederate Army within the gates. On July 4, 1863, the city fell and Grant was promoted to command the entire Western Theater of the war.

In October 1863 he had arrived in Tennessee. Rosecrans, the Union general, had been beaten by the Confederates at Chickamauga but with Grant and Sherman bringing reinforcements the Union was able to win the Battle of Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain. Grant’s continued successes allowed Lincoln to bring him to Washington to become General-in-Chief of the entire army. He would also focus now on the Eastern Theater of war and how to beat Robert E Lee. “Those who saw him for the first time didn’t exactly know what to make of him—this stumpy, awkward, bashful man—but his triumphs in the West, his reputation as a fighter not a talker, recalled to citizens his modesty and self-possession, his aura of silent abstraction” (p. 54).

“Grant’s mission was to achieve military victory over Southern armies, to inflict defeats that would, first, make it impossible for them to reinforce one another, and second, force their surrender” (p. 56). Grant came up with a plan to end the war. He had Sherman take Atlanta and then move onto the sea, he had Sheridan destroy the Shenandoah Valley, and he took the Army of the Potomac south to Richmond. May through June of 1864 saw some of the bloodiest battles of all time: the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, but still Grant moved forward. In April of 1865, the Army of the Potomac surrounded Richmond, forcing the government to flee and forcing Lee to surrender.

On Good Friday, April 15, 1865, the Grants were scheduled to see a play with the Lincolns, but Julia Grant intensely disliked Mary Lincoln and asked Grant to cancel. Instead they were headed to NJ when they found that the president had been killed. In the aftermath, President Johnson asked Grant to take a tour of the South to report on the situation. When he returned Grant set out on a tour of the North with Johnson but he became increasingly disgusted with the way Johnson was acting and absented himself from most events. “What he was seeing in Johnson had begun to stir a resistant strain in him; the president’s wild harangues, his venomous denunciations of radical Republican opponents, his expressed hatred of blacks now outraged Grant’s sense of probity” (p. 78). His relationship with Johnson continued to fail over issues with the Tenure of Office Act, the Freedman’s Bureau and the War Department.

In 1868, Grant was nominated as the Republican candidate for the presidency. I have to put Grant’s acceptance speech in here because it’s classic and very indicative of who Grant really was. “Gentlemen, being entirely unaccustomed to public speaking and without the desire to cultivate the power, it is impossible for me to find appropriate language to thank you for the demonstration. All I can say is, that to whatever position I may be called by your will, I shall endeavor to discharge its duties with fidelity and honesty of purpose. Of my rectitude in the performance of public duties you will have to judge for yourselves by the record before you” (p. 82-83). Ulysses S. Grant became the 18th President of the United States.

In the foreign policy arena, Grant needed to deal with Cuba trying to gain independence from Spain, Santo Domingo trying to be annexed by the U.S. and England trying to remain friendly with the United States with the Washington Treaty. However, the domestic issues with Reconstruction were still the prime focus of all political attention in the US at this time. “Reconstruction denotes an unhappy time in American history. It is a label loosely applied to the decade after Appomattox, whose principal political preoccupation was the full reintegration of the states of the former Confederacy into the Union, and, prerequisite and concomitant both, the attainment of full unfettered American citizenship, its privileges and its duties, by black Americans” (p. 107).

Grant also was upset with the way Americans had treated Indians over the years and tried to rectify the situation. “The new ‘policy’ envisaged the domestication of the Indians, through settlements on reservations: as farmers, artisans, educable workers who would themselves serve local Indian communities. Schools would be available to all Indian children; the Christian gospel would be preached. The Indian was to be treated with solicitude and fairness” (p. 119). However, as good as this sounded, gold was soon discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota and when General Custer and his troops were destroyed at Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, popular sentiment turned even more firmly away from helping the Indians.

In 1872, Grant was re-elected but this term would be plagued by financial issues and scandals. The Panic of 1873 hit the country due to the failure of Jay Cooke’s banking house in Washington and a severe depression followed. “Over the next two years eighteen thousand businesses failed; a quarter of the country’s railroads went under; unemployment touched 14 percent” (p. 140).

The first scandal that hit the presidency was in 1869 when Jay Gould and Jim Fisk tried to corner the gold market. These actions shouldn’t have affected Grant in any way except for the fact that Gould and Fisk used Corbin, Grant’s brother-in-law, as a go-between. The plan did not work but it served notice that Grant could be quite lax when it came to some things. But the best known scandal of the Grant regime was definitely the Credit Mobilier scandal where officials from the Union Pacific Railway created a dummy company to construct the railroads so that they could be paid twice. Unfortunately numerous members of both houses of Congress owned stock in the company and were aware of its dubious origins. Then there were the Sandborn contracts scandal, the Back Pay Grab scandal, the Indian trading scandal, and the Whiskey Ring scandal.

Grant refused a third term and instead took a much needed trip around the world with this wife, Julia. “The great trip took the Grants through Europe, the Middle East, India, China, Russia and Japan. They met many of the great personages of the age (Queen Victoria, Otto von Bismarck, the emperor of China), and they moved tirelessly through galleries and museums, cathedrals, shrines, and venues man-made and natural, some of elicited novel, perhaps, sly judgments. Of Venice, for example, General Grant was reported to have said that it was a handsome city, except for the streets, which needed to be drained” (p. 148).

After this tour, Grant was almost nominated for a third term but nothing came of it because people had still not forgotten all the corruption of the Grant administration. Grant ended up losing all his money in a failed scheme of his son’s so in his retirement, he began writing his Memoirs for ready cash. Being also a great fan of cigars, Grant contracted throat cancer and died of it on July 23, 1885 at the age of 63.

#17 Andrew Johnson Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Andrew Johnson
1. He only lost one election in a forty year span. In 1829, “The tailor was defeated, the only time he was to lose an election until after the Civil War” (p. 40).
2. Before the Civil War, Johnson was a staunch Unionist, which earned him some enemies in his own state. At one point, he was almost lynched, ironically, in Lynchburg, TN. “When the train reached Lynchburg, an infuriated crowd, egged on by a Tennessee secessionist, invaded the car in which he was sitting, and one ruffian pulled his nose. He drew his pistol to defend himself, but the railroad officials calmed the mob so that he was permitted to ride on” (p. 140).
3. In an age when candidates for office did not campaign outright, Johnson did. “Although it was not customary for candidates to campaign actively, Johnson violated the rule, not only in Tennessee, but also elsewhere” (p. 182).
4. Johnson was drunk at Lincoln’s second inaugural! He had left for Washington from Tennessee at the last minute and was feeling quite unwell once he got there. Unfortunately on the morning of the inauguration, he had several shots of whiskey which he hoped would steady him but instead made him very inebriated. “Hamlin made a few remarks, and then Johnson, unsteady because of his condition, began his speech. The noise in the visitors’ gallery made his remarks barely audible, but as he proceeded, it became evident that he was drunk. Glorying in his rise from the masses, he pointed out that all who were sitting before him owed their positions to the people. He turned toward the cabinet. ‘I will say to you, Mr. Secretary Seward, and to you, Mr. Secretary Stanton, and to you, Mr. Secretary—(to a gentleman near by [Forney], sotto voice, Who is the Secretary of the Navy? The person addressed replied in a whisper, Mr. Welles)—and to you, Secretary Welles, I would say, you all derive your power from the people.’ Before he ended his harangue, he stressed the fact that Tennessee was a state in the Union and had never been out. Hamlin finally nudged him to stop, and the ordeal was over. The audience was horrified…Matters were not helped by Johnson’s performance when taking the oath. His hand on the Bible, he turned and held the book up, saying in a loud and theatrical voice, ‘I kiss this book in the face of my nation of the United States’” (p. 190-91). There would never be another such episode for Johnson but unfortunately, he was remembered as a drunkard. Years later, Johnson would lose one of his sons to alcoholism and suicide.
5. During the beleaguered strife with congress, Johnson was prone to being riled up by hecklers and would not think about what he was saying in return. In the midst of one such speech, Johnson even compared himself to Jesus. “Generally recounting his rise from the tailor’s bench to the presidency, he compared himself to Jesus Christ and explained that like the Savior, he, too, liked to pardon repentant sinners” (p. 263).
6. I always thought that Alaska was purchased under the Lincoln administration but it was under Andrew Johnson’s instead. “In the meantime, the administration was able to achieve a definite success, the purchase of Russian America, which Sumner renamed Alaska” (p. 288).
7. Charles Dickens met Andrew Johnson and greatly admired him. “Charles Dickens, who also met the president during his 1867-68 trip to America, agreed. ‘I was very much impressed with the President’s face and manner,’ was his comment. ‘It is, in its way, one of the most remarkable faces I have ever seen. Not imaginative, but very powerful in its firmness (or perhaps obstinacy), strength of will, and steadiness of purpose.’ Dickens was also struck by Johnson’s obviously composed manners as well as his excellently tailored clothes” (p. 347).
8. Johnson, through his ambitious secretary of state, also bought Midway Island. “Seward also acquired Midway Island in the Pacific, although some of his other expansionist schemes, such as the purchase of bases in the Caribbean and of the Danish West Indies, failed” (p. 348).

The author, Hans, really did a wonderful job of not biasing us as to what he personally felt or did not feel about Andrew Johnson. He just gives it to us plainly that this is who Johnson was, what he stood for, and these were the decisions that he made. There is probably no more controversial president, after all he was the only one to be impeached, and yet, I found him a sad study.

It’s true—Andrew Johnson had probably one of the poorest origins of any of our presidents and yet, he rose above it in a truly American-Dream sort of way. His overwhelming ambitions and acute business sense naturally propelled him into the political arena and it is no wonder that he excelled there. I find it rather funny that many people disliked him and yet he won election after election. He must have been one of those people that once you meet them you either like them a lot or dislike them a lot and nothing is ever going to change that feeling. The common people of his state loved his bombastic speeches which were quite graphic and highfalutin, however, his fellow politicians were enamored neither of his personality nor his political ideals. Johnson had a very cut and dried approach to politics and to what his state required in Washington. For instance, he was absolutely obsessed with governmental economy and so fought the Smithsonian tooth and nail, believing it was a grave extravagance. I also thought it was interesting that before he was president he was one of the wiliest politicians in antebellum America and yet, once in office, acted foolishly and obstinately.

Should he have been impeached? Probably not. In the United States, our system of electing presidents ever four years is wonderful and I believe that one of the main reasons that Johnson was eventually acquitted was due to the fact that his term was about to expire anyways. I believe Johnson’s immediate presidential problems stemmed from the fact that he played fast and loose with everyone’s expectations after Lincoln’s assassination. Messing with people’s expectations is not cool and can do some serious damage to your cause, right? Johnson, even though he was an acclaimed states’ rights and pro-slavery man, managed to assure just about everyone that he would uphold Lincoln’s Reconstruction program and that everything would be the same. Everyone went away sighing with relief when all of a sudden, Johnson’s true self emerged and all his old pro-southern, pro-slavery leanings emerged in force. After the rude awakening, Johnson did nothing to assuage his opponents, merely insisting getting his way for his policies to the exclusion of all else. So it’s really no wonder that the bulk of Congress took exception to the president’s idea of Reconstruction and even hauled him before the entire world on very thin impeachment charges.

And despite all that, Johnson wanted to be reelected! He really thought that he could nab the Democratic nomination but what he did not understand is that he really had no party at all. It made me think of John Tyler, the party-less president numero uno, to see Johnson stepping on each party’s toes one after the other. Technically he was elected as a Union Party candidate but he ruined his relationship with the Republicans with his Reconstruction policies. Then the impeachment trial and all the other problems proved to the Democrats that Johnson probably wasn’t safe to touch right then. Thus a president without a party only seems to end one way—in retirement.

What made me sad about Johnson was that he was almost doomed from the start. His personality was abrasive in that special way that should have kept him from the presidency to begin with. Not to mention, he became president after one of our all-time best presidents ever! Lincoln, in contrast to Johnson, was political suavity itself and although he seemed amenable to each politician’s suggestions, he always made his own way and ended up winning the war. It is a fact that Lincoln’s idea for Reconstruction was much, much different from Johnson’s and this juxtaposition was too hard for anyone to handle at the time. Poor Johnson believed that he was the hero of this piece, upholding the Constitution and bringing the Union back as it should be. Although I do not believe that he did anything really wrong—anything that would necessitate impeachment charges, per se—he could rationally be blamed for not heeding the mood of the people or taking the time to diplomatically work his policies out through Congress. Sheesh.