Status Updates From Grant

“Once Reconstruction collapsed, it left southern blacks for eighty years at the mercy of Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tactics designed to segregate them from whites and deny them the vote…Grant deserves an honored place in American history, second only to Lincoln, for what he did for the freed slaves.”

“Americans today know little about the terrorism that engulfed the South during Grant’s presidency. It has been suppressed by a strange national amnesia. The Klan’s ruthless reign is a dark, buried chapter in American history...Despite Grant’s best efforts at Appomattox, the breach of the Civil War never healed but became deeply embedded in American political culture.”

“ Thanks to the diplomatic skills of Hamilton Fish, Grant had racked up a remarkably good record in foreign affairs. During his presidency, there was no war, no military swagger, no saber rattling, and he stayed true to his motto: Let us have peace.”

“ Grant’s maladroit response to scandal reflected the lack of sophistication in a man who had been a stranger to politics before the war. He could recognize evil in his enemies, but not in those who posed as his friends. Many Americans understood this, and, through the many vicissitudes of his administration, retained respect and affection for Grant.”

“ THE LAST THING Grant needed after the Whiskey Ring scandal was more cabinet wrongdoing, but the bloodletting had not yet ceased. The tenure of Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano had been shadowed by controversy.”

“…[Grant] was saying that terror tactics perpetrated by southern whites had nullified the outcome of the rebellion. All those hundreds of thousands dead, the millions maimed…all that suffering, all that tumult, on some level, had been for naught. Slavery had been abolished, but it had been replaced by a caste-ridden form of second-class citizenship for southern blacks, and that counted as a national shame.”

“ The methods of the Whiskey Ring were fairly straightforward. Distillers would falsify figures of the amount of liquor brewed and treasury agents would then certify those bogus returns. The upshot was that in major brewing centers taxpayers were cheated of millions of dollars in government revenues.”

we’re so back

“It was a turning point in Reconstruction..White Democrats had demonstrated that without the protection of federal troops, they could resurrect the prewar power structure. The Vicksburg vote showed the fundamental weakness of a political revolution that had relied heavily on force applied by outsiders in Washington—something that couldn’t be maintained indefinitely.”

“ The newly resurrected Democrats launched a congressional investigation into Justice Department spending that imposed steep cuts in enforcing Reconstruction. The three Enforcement Acts that had given muscle to the anti-Klan battle clashed with growing southern resistance, bolstered by northern neglect.”

“THE MIDTERM ELECTION RESULTS in autumn 1874 proved nothing short of calamitous for the Republican Party…The main reason for the electoral landslide was the economic slump, which left voters in a surly mood, and Grant’s refusal to countenance a dose of inflation to conquer it. The aura of corruption around the White House had also contributed to a sense of an administration adrift.”

“ Though Grant always viewed the inflation bill veto as a proud accomplishment, ushering in a new age of sound money, he braced for fierce attacks. Surprisingly enough, his veto was sufficiently popular, even in parts of the West, that opponents fell short of the votes needed to override it…. The veto restored Grant’s image as a simple, decent, straightforward president, every inch his own man.”

“…Grant had taken pride in being a scrupulous custodian of the nation’s finances, cutting taxes, reducing expenditures, saving money on interest payments, and working toward restoring gold as the currency basis. The Panic of 1873 gave fresh urgency to the question of what to do about the circulation of greenbacks, which had helped the North to finance the Civil War and taken the country off the gold standard.”

“Industrial leaders banded together to cut production and stabilize prices, leading to monopolistic practices in many industries and spawning a corresponding concentration in labor. Many workers joined unions that engaged in railway, textile, and coal strikes and flirted with radical movements…Grant had to deal with a constellation of political forces unknown to earlier presidents in a simpler, agrarian America.”

“Far from being transitory, the crisis was deep and intractable and persisted for more than five brutal years. It would be termed “the Great Depression” until eclipsed by the 1930s downturn. Much of the industrial landscape lay in ruins: half the nation’s railroads went into receivership and half its iron furnaces shut down…crop and land prices plunged.”

“ Not since 1837 had such a spasm of fear flashed through Wall Street. In this heyday of laissez-faire economics, citizens didn’t automatically expect the president to manage the economy or cushion downturns. Economic fluctuations were regarded almost like vagaries of weather.”

“Gold prices dove, stocks collapsed, and a general panic seized the city…Grant found himself with a front-row seat for the foremost bankruptcy…On the morning of September 18, as Grant got ready to leave for Washington, Cooke pocketed several ominous telegrams, giving Grant no hint of their contents. It turned out that Jay Cooke & Company, unable to sell Northern Pacific bonds, had gone bust.”

“…the boom that had powered the postwar economy appeared intact…Only in retrospect would it be clear that the boom had been built on a flimsy scaffolding of speculation and that excessively generous credit had overextended the nation’s railways. On September 8, Wall Street banks started to fold in a cascading series of closures that sparked chaos in the financial district.”