Grant

by Ron Chernow

Despite such pressures, Grant made extraordinary strides in naming blacks, Jews, and Native Americans to federal positions—a forgotten chapter of American history.

Grant appointed Ebenezer D. Bassett as minister to Haiti, making him the first African American diplomat in American history.

Two years later, Grant expanded this precedent by naming James Milton Turner as minister to Liberia.

Grant’s efforts transcended high-profile appointments as he named a record number of ordinary blacks to positions during his first term in office.37 During the 1872 presidential campaign, Frederick Douglass toted up black employees sprinkled throughout the federal bureaucracy, citing customs collectors, internal revenue assessors, postmasters, clerks, and messengers, and was simply staggered by their numbers: “In one Department at Washington I found 249, and many more holding important positions in its service in different parts of the country.”38 Grant integrated the executive mansion, appointing Albert Hawkins as his stable chief and coachman; he also cared for a Grant menagerie that included dogs, gamecocks, and a raucous parrot. For his personal servants, Grant picked George W. “Bill” Barnes and John Henry Whitlow. The able Barnes had been a runaway slave who showed up when Grant was in Cairo in 1861 and had turned himself into an indispensable valet.

Mortified at memories of General Orders No. 11, Grant compiled an outstanding record of incorporating Jews into his administration, one that far outstripped his predecessors’. The lawyer Simon Wolf estimated that Grant appointed more than fifty Jewish citizens at his request alone, including consuls, district attorneys, and deputy postmasters, with Wolf himself becoming recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. When Grant made Edward S. Salomon governor of the Washington Territory, it was the first time an American Jew had occupied a gubernatorial post. (When Salomon proved corrupt, Grant handled his case leniently, letting him resign.) Elated at this appointment, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise said it showed “that President Grant has revoked General Grant’s notorious order No. 11.”39

In discussing this Romanian bloodletting with Simon Wolf, Grant declared that “respect for human rights” was the “first duty” of any head of state and that blacks and Jews should be elevated to a rank of “equality with the most enlightened.” Grant showed surprising passion on the subject, saying “the story of the sufferings of the Hebrews of Roumania profoundly touches every sensibility of our nature.”43

Grant had imported an army chef whose idea of fine cuisine consisted of heavy slabs of roast beef and cheese piled high atop apple pie. Julia fired him and hired an Italian steward named Valentino Melah, who still plied groaning guests with up to thirty-five dishes in an evening, with a new wine introduced at every third course;