Why was President Grant easily reelected to second term, when there were so many problems faced in his first term? Why did the Liberal Republican Party become a third party? Was it truly liberal? Why did the Union Army fight several battles in Louisiana after the Civil War? How did […]
Ulysses S Grant won the presidential race handily. Although he won only 53% of the popular vote, he won the electoral college vote by a landslide, 214-80. “Bolstered by black and white carpetbagger votes, all southern states, with the notable exception of Georgia and Louisiana, where Klan violence was rife, tumbled into the Republican column. White violence had also diminished Republican turnout in Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina.”
Grant’s acceptance speech was curt, as usual. “The responsibilities of the position I feel, but accept them without fear, if I can have the same support which has been given to me thus far.”
Former General Grant too often made decisions without asking for advice from more politically astute advisors, behaving like a general fearful of leaks tipping off enemy forces. His success as a general made him too complacent. Many years later, in hindsight, Grant expressed his regrets. “I entered the White House as President without any previous experience either in civil or political life. I thought I could run the government of the United States as I did the staff of my army. It was my mistake, and it led me into other mistakes.” […]
When the new Congress convened, the House Judiciary Committee voted by a 5 to 4 vote to impeach President Johnson. When the Senate overwhelmingly voted to restore Stanton as Secretary of War, Grant vacated his interim position. In the upcoming political struggle, as Chernow relates, “The worse things looked for Andrew Johnson, the brighter was the political future for Grant. In early February, the New York Republican Convention endorsed Grant for President.”
During the Senate trial, Grant argued privately with Congressmen on the need to convict Johnson, but he thought it would be inappropriate for him to appear during the Senate trial. Chernow puts it best: “During the war, Grant had learned that it was better to let power seek him rather than to pursue it; a good general waited to be summoned by his superiors.”
In the end, Johnson was acquitted by one vote. Seven Republicans in total voted to acquit, as they did not think that Johnson’s actions were not the high crimes and misdemeanors that the Constitution declared were needed for impeachment. Ulysses S Grant would handily win the 1868 Presidential election, and Grant’s Presidency will be featured in a future reflection. […]
JFK had gone over the cruel math over and over again, the math was clear, he could only win the Presidency with the electoral votes of Texas, Johnson’s home state, but without them, he would lose. Besides, he respected LBJ’s effectiveness as Senate majority leader, and his work ethic, as his office lights shone like a lonely beacon deep into the nights. Many historians rank LBJ as one of the most effective legislative leaders of the century.
But there was hesitancy within the liberal Kennedy circle of Massachusetts, there was exploratory probing by Robert Kennedy, JFK’s younger brother, who was serving as Attorney General. Would the Deep South LBJ consider instead becoming the chairman of the Democratic Party? LBJ was firm, he had been offered the Vice-Presidency, and he would not quietly back down. As our authors recall: “Mistrust, suspicion, and a scarcely concealed hatred continued between these two men from that day forward.” […]
Jimmy Carter reflects on his youth, his years in the Navy serving in the nuclear submarine program, his years as Governor of Georgia, and his years before, during, and after his Presidency. […]
The most compelling story in the Atlantic Juneteenth collection is “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. He is one of the Black Lives Matter banned authors, banned for making sensitive white children ashamed of their past history, ashamed that slavery was indeed the cause of the Civil War, ashamed of the brutal history of Jim Crow and KKK violence during Reconstruction and Redemption targeted at blacks. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ works were deleted from the AP Black History Studies course in a futile attempt to make it acceptable to Red State schools. If they wanted to change the emphasis to the AP Lost Cause White History Studies course, they would have better luck. […]
Is this Republican blackmail constitutional? Most scholars and the Justice Department do not think so, although there are some conservative scholars who disagree. And there is no Supreme Court precedent for this question. President Biden has publicly stated that the Fourteenth Amendment question is on the table. […]
We will tell the stories of General Longstreet and the Union Major Merrill. General James Longstreet, a former Confederate general who had become a pariah in the South when he changed his party affiliation to Lincoln’s Republican Party, tried to prevent the insurrection in New Orleans. For his second posting during Reconstruction, Major Merrill attempted to reverse the insurrection of parishes on the outskirts of New Orleans. […]
Major Merrill says that he knew that the “Ku Klux Klan is much greater in numbers than is commonly supposed, and that a large number of the most respectable people in the county are more or less intimately connected with it. The debauched sentiment of the old slave-holding communities sees no great offense in whipping a negro for being a radical. The old sentiment is rife, where differences of opinion are settled by killing the man who dares to disagree with them.” […]
Professor Gallagher opens his book on the Union War, “The loyal American citizenry fought a war that also killed slavery. In a conflict that stretched across four years and claimed more than 800,000 US casualties, the nation experienced huge swings of civilian and military morale before crushing Confederate resistance. Union always remained the paramount goal, a fact clearly expressed by Abraham Lincoln in speeches and other statements designed to garner the widest popular support for the war effort.” […]
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