Grant

by Ron Chernow

understood the extreme need for self-respect at moments of failure.

The erstwhile leather goods clerk from Galena now had more than one million men under his command. A new American military power had come into being that could compete with almost any European army.

six Union commanders before him had failed, with the same men and matériel, whereas Grant had succeeded.

A fine raconteur, Grant narrated for the cabinet his hot pursuit of Lee and described the dramatic finish at Appomattox.

raconteur

the first in American history to be assassinated:

The lust for Power in political Minds is the strongest passion of Life, and impels Ambitious Men (Richard III) to deeds of Infamy.”

With Johnston’s surrender, the Civil War effectively ended, but isolated pockets of resistance remained in Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, and Arkansas.

Mary Surratt, who ran a boardinghouse where Booth colluded with other conspirators, went down in historical annals as the first woman ever executed by the federal government.

Grant came to think that Seward had sacrificed his principles to retain his influence under President Johnson.

Admitting to a poor memory for speeches, though not for faces, Grant declared that public speaking was “a terrible trial for me.”

the Thirteenth Amendment, which banned slavery, went into effect.

Grant opposed land redistribution, which had excited so much hope among freedmen, saying “the late slave seems to be imbued with the idea that the property of his late master should by right belong to him.”

militant Republicans would produce some of the most powerful legislation in American history to accord equal rights to African Americans.

carpetbaggers, tens of thousands of young northerners who flocked southward to earn money and aid freed people.

southern blacks could count on protection only from federal troops.

General Orders No. 3, which protected “colored persons from prosecutions” in any southern state “charged with offenses for which white persons are not prosecuted or punished in the same manner and degree.”

Grant shut down the Richmond Examiner for stridently disloyal editorials,

Grant instructed southern commanders that the “persistent publication of articles calculated to keep up a hostility of feeling between the people of different sections of the country cannot be tolerated.”

It was typical of Grant to respond profoundly to death with inner grief but no outward show of emotion.

landmark legislation defined citizenship rights in a new manner that made the federal government, not the states, the guarantor of basic liberties.

Bill of rights grants liberties

Congress dealt a resounding defeat to Johnson by overriding his veto.

robed, hooded figures beat and murdered blacks.

In the face of a recalcitrant president, Grant was rapidly emerging as the foremost protector of persecuted southern blacks.

the Fourteenth Amendment,

denied states the right to deprive “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.”

Radical Republicans began to wonder darkly whether they would need to impeach the president.

Grant found President Johnson and his policies increasingly intolerable.

States were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and grant voting rights to black men. Betraying his ingrained racial prejudice, Johnson vetoed the act.

The First Reconstruction Act represented an extraordinary effort to invest former slaves with full citizenship rights,

In mid-1866, Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, founded a club called the Ku Klux Klan, its arcane name derived from the Greek word kuklos, for band or circle.

recruiting Nathan Bedford Forrest as a leader.

Before long, former privates in the Confederate army were taking orders from their old officers in the Klan.

Klansmen donned outlandish hoods to terrorize their former slaves into believing they represented the ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers.

Lee wouldn’t have surrendered had he believed “he was going to be tried for treason and hanged.”

When Johnson vetoed the bill, Congress promptly overrode it.

Grant, still haunted by his prewar fear of poverty, analyzed the presidency through the lens of financial security.

House Judiciary Committee, by a 5 to 4 vote, called for Johnson’s impeachment.

the president intended to “prevent the reorganization of the southern states upon the plan of Congress.”

He accused Congress of burdening southern states with black voting rights even though blacks had demonstrated little capacity for government and “wherever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.”

enduring caricature of Reconstruction as a period of misrule by inept black politicians.

That yesterday’s slave laborer was today’s state legislator horrified many white southerners

Far from viewing carpetbaggers as greedy, predatory figures, Grant pictured them going with “brain in their heads, money in their pockets, strength and energy in their limbs” to “make the South bloom like the rose.”

the remains of John Wilkes, now buried under the Old Arsenal Penitentiary,

Grant made his way to the White House on Saturday, January 11, to alert Johnson to his concerns. Exactly what happened at that meeting would divide Grant and Johnson—and future historians—forever after.

the press divided along predictably partisan lines.

Johnson had unleashed the political equivalent of an act of war against Congress. Retaliating against the president’s violation of the Tenure of Office Act, the House introduced a resolution to impeach Andrew Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors. Three days later, the resolution passed by an overwhelming 126 to 47 vote, with every Republican aligned against the president.

Eleven impeachment articles were filed against Johnson, all but two revolving around Stanton’s firing.

refusal to implement Reconstruction laws

bête noire,

During the war he had learned that it was better to let power seek him rather than to pursue it;