18: Ulysses S. Grant
When did he ever turn back? He could no more turn back than time. --Walt Whitman
Warning shot: Georgia
General Grant surveys the field of combat. The enemy has not made his move, but it's easy to guess what he's thinking. It's why Ulysses has so often been able to take the offensive. He considers the enemy defenses, observes the topography. He mentally checks his supply lines.
He didn't want this job. But he took it because he thought he was uniquely qualified to get it done. Now, at the start, he knows it will be a long war, a war of attrition, a war of unbearable sacrifice. He's used to such things. The last war was the same.
That was a war of blood. This war is for peace. "Let us have peace," he declared at his inauguration. But peace, as Walt Whitman said, will be "more difficult than the war itself." Grant wants to bring renegade states back into the Union, as long as they enfranchise African Americans. The problem is, white supremacists for the last few years have been killing on average one African American a day. In the fall of 1868, as he was running for president, white Democrats killed 1081 people, most of them black.
It's an organized terror. The newly formed Ku Klux Klan burns black schools and churches, and murders black Americans to keep them from voting. Georgia kicks black legislators out of the state congress. Grant re-establishes military supervision there. He creates the Justice Department, so that federal attorneys can prosecute Klan members. He insists Georgia reseat elected officials.
Shortly after his election, he is given a new weapon: the Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote for all men, without racial restrictions. He insists that states ratify it in order to be readmitted to the Union. He does not foresee how creative white supremacists will get in denying black people the vote.
Outcome: a win, for now.
Distracting skirmish: Santo Domingo
The island is an attractive one. Part of it is the black republic of Haiti. Grant wants to make the other part, Santo Domingo, a new U.S. state. He fixates on it, as he always has military objectives.
His enemy is changing shape. He's no longer fighting slavery, but racism. "The present difficulty in bringing all parts of the United States together," he writes, "grows out of the prejudice to color. The prejudice is a senseless one, but it exists." He thinks Santo Domingo might be a solution. If African Americans have a welcoming state where they can sell their labor, they will go there and prove their worth. Then, he says, "the Southern people would learn the crime of Ku Kluxism, because they would see how necessary the black man is to their own prosperity."
Congress is unconvinced. When he acts unilaterally, they are furious. The fight drags on, but his initial assault was too hasty. Santo Domingo eventually becomes the Dominican Republic.
Outcome: no ground gained.
Pitched battle: North Carolina
Violence spreads across the state. Black and white Republicans are murdered. "We must have equal laws and equal protection for all men in all sections of the country," fumes the National Republican. "Is the whole fabric of reconstruction to be pulled down, and a state of chronic rebellion to be inaugurated from henceforth?"
Governor Holden calls up the militia. But the militia are part of the problem. Eventually, he asks Grant for federal troops to quell the violence. Grant sends in federal forces to keep the peace. But Governor Holden goes too far and begins arresting political enemies. He is impeached.
Outcome: a loss, caused in part by friendly fire
Pitched battle: South Carolina
The Klan is running amok. Black citizens are being dragged from their homes and murdered. Attempts at justice are foiled when the Klan assassinates witnesses. South Carolina's governor pleads for federal back-up to oppose the "reign of terror."
Grant has a new weapon, the Ku Klux Act passed by Congress, permitting the federal government to take serious action to protect voting rights. Grant suspends habeas corpus in South Carolina. Klansmen are arrested by federal troops and jailed while awaiting prosecution, to prevent the killing of witnesses. Federal grand juries begin issuing thousands of indictments. Some murderers are convicted.
Democrats call him "Kaiser Grant." But by 1872, the Klan is on the run.
Outcome: a hard-fought win
Pitched battle: Louisiana
He is willing to lose battles, so long as he's winning the war. But this war is different. It grows two new heads for every one he cuts off. Now, in Louisiana, citizens are being butchered for voting Republican. Legions of Klan imitators spring up, like the White League, which squares off against the state's largely black militia. On Easter Sunday, 1873, a white mob attacks and massacres around a hundred black men encamped in the Colfax courthouse. Grant sends in federal troops.
Democratic militias take over the City Hall and the statehouse in New Orleans, determined to eliminate democratically elected Republicans they falsely call "usurpers." They expel the governor. Grant sends 5000 troops and three gunboats to re-establish order in Louisiana. Death threats for the president and his wife pour in.
Outcome: a pyrrhic victory.
Slowing offensive
He has always been able to gauge the mood of the troops, to tell when they can be pushed and when they cannot. The North is wearying of the violence. They can't stop it, so they'd prefer to stop talking about it. People--including some in his own Cabinet want to get on with the matter at hand: making money.
Wars often stimulate industry and technology. America has emerged from the Civil War with a stronger federal government and a continent linked by telegraphs and trains. Opportunities for profit are everywhere, for those who can work the system. Pausing to reckon with the legacy of slavery might get in the way of making money. "We have reconstructed, and reconstructed, and we are asked to reconstruct again," whines an Illinois congressman. "We are governing the South too much."
The only way to guarantee African Americans' rights of citizenship is for the federal government to intervene. Yet the more Grant intervenes, the more he is criticized, even by his own party. "Treat the negro as a citizen and a voter," he insists, "and soon parties will be divided, not on the color line, but on principle." No one, South or North, wants to hear this.
For this he fought a brutal war of brother against brother. For this he sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives. For this he conquered his most implacable foe, his own thirst for alcohol: to be thwarted in the final assault by a simple lack of will among those he leads.
Post mortem
A general always re-fights his wars in his head. When he leaves office, Grant knows he has failed. Reconstruction has failed. He can't help but rethink his battle plan. "In giving the South negro suffrage, we have given the old slave-holders forty votes in the electoral college," he declares. "They keep those votes, but disenfranchise the negroes. That is one of the gravest mistakes in the policy of reconstruction."
Late in life he writes his memoirs. Two volumes, over 1200 pages, of compelling, forthright prose. He focuses entirely on his military career, on the Mexican War and the Civil War, one war he didn't believe in and one war he did. He makes no mention of his presidency, of Reconstruction. He writes of two wars that he fought and won. The third war he leaves in silence.
Great piece, Ginger.