#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.

#17 Andrew Johnson (1808-1875)

“Of all the presidents of the United States, Andrew Johnson stands out as unique—unique in having been the only one to be impeached, unique in not having attended school for a single day, unique in originating in such poverty that even those who doubt the ‘log cabin myth’ in the history of the presidency accord him a place of exception, and unique in returning to the Senate six years after leaving the White House” (Trefousse, p. 13).

I have to admit that Andrew Johnson is, unfortunately, one of those presidents that I remember. Actually, the word “remember” here is rather strong—I think that the word “recall” would work better since all that I recall about Andrew Johnson is that he is the only president to be impeached. So with that dubious distinction I began searching for a decent book on old Andrew and with only a scanty collection available, I chose Andrew Johnson: A Biography by Hans L. Trefousse (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989). It is a few years old, for sure, but it was either this book or a newer one that simply dealt with the impeachment alone and we all know that I need the whole shebang.

Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on December 29, 1808. He was the last of three children of a captain and a seamstress. When Andrew was only 3 years old, his father died while saving others from a frozen river which left the family adrift. Andrew was apprenticed to a tailor at a young age but soon ran away, finding himself in the frontier wilds of Greeneville, Tennessee.

On May 17, 1827, Johnson married Eliza McCardle and soon after that his tailor business grew quite quickly. “Business flourished, for Johnson knew how to make money, with thriving investments in real estate as well as in business” (p. 30). Everyone agreed that Johnson was an excellent business man and with the time he saved having employees run the business, he began educating himself by reading everything he could get his hands on. His reputation grew; soon he was alderman and then mayor of the city of Greeneville.

1835 saw Johnson’s first foray into the wider political world when he was elected to the Tennessee state legislature. He became a Democrat and supported the Van Buren and Polk administrations on the national stage. He became steadily wealthier, acquiring more property and slaves. He then won a seat to the US Senate upon his own interpretation of Democratic policies. “These included an unremitting advocacy of the rights of the poor, the laboring people, the mechanics, as they were called, against what he considered an overbearing aristocracy; extreme economy in government, and opposition to protective tariffs” (p. 53).

“Always conscious of his humble background and his lack of formal education, he became ever more aggressively proud of his origins and rarely failed to assert the superiority of the common people from whom he had sprung” (p. 59). While in the Senate, Johnson would write and foster the Homestead Bill, which he would passionately propel forward against enormous odds. The Homestead Bill aimed to give land out West to the poor, not only to support the growing population in gainful employment but to help the United States establish control over areas that it owned in name only. Many politicians were against this bill since it practically gave away land and mainly to poor people!

But the people back home loved him. Around 1843, Johnson was voted back to Washington but this time into the US House of Representatives where he followed a strict course urging extreme economy in the government and increased support for the Homestead Bill. He was re-elected each time until he left congress to become Governor of the state of Tennessee in 1853. “His populist appeals, his wheeling and dealing, and his knowledge of his home section had succeeded in sufficiently increasing the Democratic vote in East Tennessee to capture the state” (p. 88).

“While carrying on these activities, Johnson never forgot the main advantage of the governorship, the opportunity to advertise himself and his opinions” (p. 93-4). Why would he need to advertise himself? Well he wanted to be president in 1860 and used this particular political platform to enhance his name with a more national renown. Amazingly, in 1857, he was back in the US Senate and his ambitions of being president soon became increasingly well know. He even had his followers propose his name at the 1860 Democratic convention but when the convention fell apart and split, he removed his name from the lists.

Although Johnson was very southern in his leanings, favoring slavery and states’ rights, he did not approve of secession when it finally came. “The ordeal of the Union was a real crisis for him, not merely because he was genuinely devoted to its preservation—Andrew Jackson was his model—but also because his position at home was becoming increasingly difficult” (p. 128). Johnson did everything in his power to keep Tennessee in the Union and although he failed and was almost killed over it, his love of the Union promoted his name to the North in a way that his stint as governor never could achieve. In an electric speech to the Senate, Johnson stood by the Union while his state left it and in so doing, he lost everything in Tennessee. “As the only senator from a seceding state to have remained loyal, he enjoyed a unique position, so that Lincoln listened attentively to his please for aid for his persecuted fellow citizens in East Tennessee” (p. 143). The Senate immediately placed him on the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War.

This was a bleak period for Andrew Johnson for he was not able to return to Tennessee and yet, that is where his family and all of their property and money was located. “Worried about his family and friends, disappointed at the generals’ hesitation, he was determined to do his utmost to bring about the liberation of East Tennessee and the speedy suppression of the rebellion” (p. 148). Thus even though he did not want to take on a new job, he allowed Lincoln to appoint him military governor over the state of Tennessee, becoming also a brigadier general.

Taking up residence in Nashville again, Johnson had a motto that he would stand by for years. “Traitors must be punished and treason crushed” (p. 155). He was down on secession and the South and yet because of his hard ideals, he found himself in conflict with every US Army commander in Tennessee. He continued to press Lincoln and the US government for more help in Tennessee and he worked hard to prevent Confederate Armies encroaching in his territory.

With the election of 1864 right around the corner, Lincoln decided to change the name of the Republican Party to the Union party so that he would not estrange anyone of any political party who was against the war effort. At the Union party presidential convention, Lincoln was unanimously backed by the party but Hannibal Hamlin, the sitting vice president, was dropped. Hamlin was from Maine and did not carry very much political clout during the war, so the Union Party endorsed Andrew Johnson instead. He was added as vice president for the 1864 presidential election.

Lincoln won another term but in April of 1865, only one week after the fall of the South and only month after his inauguration, he was killed and Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States. “Good Friday of 1865 has always been considered a day of bad omen in American history; how ominous it was, however, no one realized at the time. The assassination of the president was serious enough; the accession of his successor had more fateful consequences than anyone could have foretold” (p. 193).

Reconstruction was the major issue affecting his presidency and Johnson already had his own ideas of how this would be accomplished—this was basically to get the southern states back into the Union as quickly as possible. Presidential Reconstruction then would encompass just that, which made nobody happy, along with no black suffrage (remember Johnson agreed with the South about slavery and its uses). “The result was a disaster. The legislatures [of the Southern states] elected by the enfranchised voters tended to be dominated by arch-conservatives and secessionists. Imbued with reverence for the lost cause, they became notorious for passing black codes so stringent as to constitute a virtual reestablishment of slavery under another name” (p. 230). In essence, Johnson missed a golden opportunity to promote a promising racial policy and allowed the states, under strict states’ rights, to control it instead.

Congress was appalled—after all, what was the point of winning war if the Southern states could simply nonchalantly reenter the Union at will—and they became increasingly fractious with the president. First he vetoed the Freedman’s Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill. Countering this, Congress overrode the president’s veto passing the Civil Rights Bill into law. Then Johnson vetoed Colorado statehood and was aggressively against the proposed 14th amendment, which Congress also passed over him. Then Congress repealed the Confiscation Act and then passed the Tenure of Office Act, tying the president’s hands in case he wanted to get rid of any cabinet members. Then they took Reconstruction away from the president and passed the Military Reconstruction Act which effectively began congressional Reconstruction and military rule over the seceded states.

Johnson though did not get along with his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, a holdover from the Lincoln administration, and wanted to get rid of him in favor of Grant but this caused an insane debacle including Congress and the Tenure of Office Act. In the end, Congress was so upset that they brought up impeachment charges against him on January 7, 1867. “Announcing that he was impeaching ‘Andrew Johnson, Vice President and Acting President of the United States,’ of high crimes and misdemeanors, Ashley charged Johnson with the usurpation of power and violation of law by corruptly using the appointing, pardoning, and veto powers, by disposing corruptly of the property of the United States, and by interfering in elections” (p. 283). The trial began on March 3, 1868 and Andrew Johnson was eventually acquitted by just one vote.

Unfortunately Johnson no longer had a political party backing him, which became obvious as the Republican and Democratic conventions nominated other people to run for president in 1868. Johnson, who had been elected through the Union Party, parted ways with them over his Reconstruction ideas and the Democrats did not want to touch him after the impeachment trial. Instead, Ulysses S Grant became another Republican president after running against Democrat, Horatio Seymour, while Johnson degenerated into a truly powerless lame duck president. “He [Johnson] had been unable to win the presidential nomination; he had been incapable of influencing the outcome of the campaign; he was unable to stop the further progress of congressional Reconstruction, at least for the time being, and he could not even rid himself of subordinates he suspected of peculation” (p. 344).

After Grant’s inauguration day, Johnson took his time going home to Greeneville, TN. He found life at home, after so many years in Washington, pretty flat. It was, perhaps, inevitable that Johnson did not stay away from politics and soon was campaigning for the next Senate election in 1869. He lost, then had a very bad bout with cholera but he recovered. In 1875, Andrew Johnson returned to Washington again as a Senator but only months later, on July 31, 1875, he died of a heart attack/stroke at his daughter’s house. “The White House and government departments were draped in black; all business in Washington was suspended on the day of the funeral, and the armed services were ordered to perform the customary ceremonies” (p. 377).

Interregnum: Jefferson Davis Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Jefferson Davis
1. As a young boy of seven and on his way to boarding school, Davis ran across a national hero—Andrew Jackson, before he was president. Davis and others stayed at the Hermitage for several weeks and Jackson’s demeanor greatly impressed the young boy. “Youthful Jefferson Davis came face to face with an authentic hero. The boy had certainly heard about the general, the victor at New Orleans and the vanquisher of the Indians, who had a larger-than-life image in the Southwest…More than seven decades later, Davis wrote, ‘in me he inspired reverence and affection that has remained with me through my whole life’” (p. 16).
2. Davis was a troublemaker at West Point and was even arrested for the Christmas eggnog riot of 1826! Even though alcohol was illegal, Davis and a few others were instructed to obtain it for the Christmas morning festivities. Let’s just say he succeeded. “Early on Christmas morning the participants planned to mix and drink eggnog in two designated rooms on the upper floors of North Barracks” (p. 37). Everything happened as planned, except that they were found out and an inebriated Davis was put under arrest. Thankfully he was arrested before the riot and it is popularly believed that this saved his West Point career.
3. In 1838, James Smithson, an Englishman, left the US government over $500,000 in his will and Jefferson Davis sat on the committee that would eventually create the Smithsonian Institution. “Placed on the seven-man committee, Jefferson Davis became an ardent proponent of using the money for establishing the institution, which to his mind would benefit science and encourage ‘the diffusion of every kind of helpful knowledge’” (p. 117). Polk signed it into law.
4. After the Mexican War, Polk offered Davis a brigadier general position in the army, “His decision made, Polk on May 19 [1847] wrote Davis praising his performance in Mexico and tendering him a commission as a brigadier general in the United States Army to command a brigade of volunteers” (p. 158). Davis eventually turned down this appointment as he preferred a political, rather than military, path instead.
5. On Christmas Day 1847, Davis got into a physical altercation with his fellow Senator, Henry Foote. It began with a disagreement about popular sovereignty and then degenerated into a fist fight, which almost resulted in a duel. They were never friendly after that.
6. Davis was at Zachary Taylor’s deathbed and Taylor’s final words were directed to him. "I am about to die. I expect the summons soon. I have endeavored to discharge all my official duties faithfully. I regret nothing, but am sorry that I am about to leave my friends."
7. As Pierce’s Secretary of War, Davis decided that it was time to learn current military information from other armies around the world. With this aim, he sent several men to Europe to seek newer military knowledge and bring it back to the United States. “In his best-known enterprise designed to draw on European examples and expertise, in 1855 Davis dispatched three officers across the Atlantic on what on scholar terms ‘the most ambitious military mission of the antebellum era’” (p. 255).
8. Davis, also as Secretary, wanted to create a Camel Corp. “Upon becoming secretary of war, he obtained congressional authorization to purchase and employ camels, and in 1855 sent an expedition to the Middle East to buy and bring back the beasts…The record makes clear that Davis had two goals for his camel force: basic transportation and direct military involvement against Indians, when camels could carry light cannon and infantry as well as substitute for cavalry horses. He believed camels would give American troops, and thereby American settlers, an advantage against both the topography and the Indians in the vast arid area stretching westward from central Texas” (p. 259). It was a good idea and the camels did succeed in this way but the advent of railroads effectively abrogated this effort.
9. As President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis instituted the first National Conscription Law in American history. “Then he proposed legislation declaring that all persons between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five legitimately eligible for military service ‘shall be held to be in the military service of the Confederate States’” (p. 384).
10. In retirement, Davis was visited by many people who still respected and admired him as the frontrunner of a fallen ideal. One such visitor was the famed playwright Oscar Wilde. “On a lecture tour in the United States in 1882, Wilde pronounced Davis the American he most wanted to see. When he appeared at Beauvoir, he captivated Varina and Winnie, though Davis found his demeanor and dandyish dress offputting. Wilde left him an unrequested, signed photograph” (p. 635).
11. Sadly, Jefferson Davis outlived all four of his sons.

I found this book about Jefferson Davis truly interesting and at the same time, I found myself, almost against my will, enjoying this guy. I have a feeling that if I had known old Jeff Davis, we would have been good friends, you know? This book was extremely readable and even though the author apparently likes Davis, he does not allow his personal feelings to keep him from giving the CSA president a fair trial. Cooper lays out there for all to see Davis’ shortcomings and faults and lets us judge accordingly. On the whole, though, I found Jefferson Davis an upstanding human being and a rare opponent for my friend Abraham Lincoln. In fact, if things had worked out differently, I think that Abe and Jeff would have gotten along quite swimmingly.

It was also nice to take a peek into the Southern sympathies before, during and after the Civil War and what life was like for them during this period. I, personally, do not agree with secession but I can see the reasoning behind it. To the Southern frame of mind, the Civil War was not really about slavery at all but the Constitutional right of certain freedoms for all Americans. While the North declared that all men were created equal, the South stated that the freedoms of the Constitution of the United States allowed them the freedom to keep slaves. And really where does the line of freedom begin and end? I know that as Americans we give up certain freedoms to have a central government and the protection that it affords. But do our Constitutional freedoms cover subjection of an entire race? The South seemed to believe that it did and they were prepared to fight for that belief. Jefferson Davis, as a strict constructionist of the Constitution, thought that abolitionists were perverting the Constitution while trying to deny the South the right to bring slaves into other “free” states. So you can make the case that in the beginning of the war the South fought for basic freedoms and not the institution of slavery or even states rights. I think that Abraham Lincoln, political genius that he was, used slavery as a very clever maneuver to ennoble the fight between the states and as nothing else.

I also thought it was quite fascinating to get the whole story of the Confederate States of America. Jeff Davis was in it from the start and so we have a lot of information regarding all the problems, issues and benefits of being a Confederate State. I thought it rather funny that the minute the Confederate States set up a government they made one to look exactly like the United States of America, complete with similar cabinet positions, elections, and congresses. They also wrote a mirror Constitution but with a more pronounced slave code and set up a government that would basically run in the same manner as the United States government. You would think that this would have aided them in establishing a new nation but the inherent problems in their system would not go away.

I really believe that there was no possible way for the South to win the Civil War. No possible way. And the reason for this thought is from the basic premise of the CSA itself—the states are separate but equal entities and thus it defies the idea of centralized government. To me, this sounds ridiculous when trying to make a cohesive government between equal entities. The fact is the states were almost more important that the CSA government put together and so Jefferson Davis faced a myriad of issues in power struggles between the various governors. The Georgia governor at one point decided not to send its militia to the Army of Northern Virginia, stating that its men should be used in defense of its own soil. At another point, the governor of North Carolina actively worked with the North to find a peaceful solution to the mass homicide going on in the country. Not only had that but the South also had the devil of a time trying to find good generals. I believe that one of the main reasons that the war lasted so long was due to the fact that Lincoln couldn’t find a good general to fight Lee in the East and Davis couldn’t find a good general to fight Grant and Sherman in the West. Much of CSA history in this book dealt with the ineptitude and double-dealing from the generals that wreaked havoc on the war effort in the West and eventually aided the South in losing the whole thing. Take into consideration the lack of interest from foreign countries to recognize the South, the severe money and inflation problems, the shortage of manpower, the crippling effect of slavery, and the sheer scarcity of resources and I think you can get a good idea of the problems besetting the fledgling CSA and the reasons why it did not make it.