Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant

Garry Boulard

Description

An exploration of the enduring historic feud between two presidents, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant, with the Civil War, slavery, race relations, and impeachment politics serving as the backdrop.
In the spring of 1865, after the end of the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, two men bestrode the national government as giants: Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant.
How these two men viewed what a post-war America should look like would determine
policy and politics for generations to come, impacting the lives of millions of people, North
and South, black and white.
While both Johnson and Grant initially shared similar views regarding the necessity of
bringing the South back into the Union fold as expeditiously as possible, their differences,
particularly regarding the fate of millions of recently-freed African Americans, would soon
reveal an unbridgeable chasm.
Add to the mix that Johnson, having served at every level of government in a career
spanning four decades, very much liked being President and wanted to be elected in his own
right in 1868, at the same time that a massive move was underway to make Grant the next
president during that same election, and conflict and resentment between the two men
became inevitable.
In fact, competition between Johnson and Grant would soon evolved into a battle of personal
destruction, one lasting well beyond their White House years and representing one of the
most all-consuming and obsessive struggles between two presidents in U.S. history.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Presidency
• History
• Conflict

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663244628
• Langue: English

Extrait

Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant
THEIR EPIC BATTLE
 
 
 
 
GARRY BOULARD
 
 
 

 
 
ANDREW JOHNSON AND ULYSSES S. GRANT
THEIR EPIC BATTLE
 
Copyright © 2022 Garry Boulard.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
 
 
iUniverse
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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4461-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4462-8 (e)
 
 
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 09/13/2022
For Nick Porraro — Friend Extraordin aire
Contents
Chapter One
A Middling-Sized Ordinary Man and the Noblest Roman of Them All
Chapter Two
A Request in the Form of an Order
Chapter Three
A Man Making Speeches on the Way to His Funeral
Chapter Four
Authorized and Empowered
Chapter Five
Lear Roaring at the Storm
Chapter Six
“He is Such an Infernal Liar”
Chapter Seven
The Gate of the Citadel
Chapter Eight
“I Am Sick Again”
Chapter Nine
A Stratocracy
Chapter Ten
Pure and Upright Motives
Endnotes
Chapter One
A Middling-Sized Ordinary Man and the Noblest Roman of Them All
O N THE BRIGHT AND slightly warm morning of May 23, 1865, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States for only six weeks, arrived by coach from a private home on Massachusetts Avenue, before skipping up the steps to a large wooden reviewing stand colorfully decorated with American flags and bunting, facing out onto Pennsylvania Avenue.
At 56 years of age, standing at 5, feet, 10 inches, with a tan complexion and piecing black eyes, Johnson was an enigma to most of his fellow Americans.
President upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Johnson had received a measure of fame for the fierce manner in which he had stood up to the Confederates during the Civil War in his home state of Tennessee. While other anti-secessionists in the U.S. Senate had plenty bad to say about the Confederacy, Johnson, who had also been a member of the upper chamber for five years, actually did something about it.
Appointed as Military Governor by Lincoln once Union forces had retaken the Volunteer State in early 1862, Johnson was daily in danger, his life repeatedly threatened by Confederate sympathizers who regarded him as a traitor to the South. Valiantly, he re-established a government administration in the state, busted up newspapers and even banking institutions he fingered as Confederate hotbeds of support, and refused to leave the capital city of Nashville even while Confederate forces were on the verge of invading.
“I am not a military man,” Johnson remarked as Nashville residents fled the city and those who stayed did so by hiding in their homes and shops behind boarded up windows, “but anyone who talks of surrender I will shoot.” 1
Johnson, judged the Baltimore American in 1864, was a particular kind of patriot, one who “stood in the defense of right when all around him were faithless in their trust.” 2
If he was widely admired in the North for his Civil War bravery, a bravery that the manipulative War Secretary Edwin Stanton said placed him “in a position of personal toil and danger, perhaps more hazardous than was encountered by any other citizen or military officer of the United States,” Johnson was also somewhat mistrusted for the vituperative spirit he displayed upon the final fall of the Confederacy. 3
Unlike Lincoln, who emphasized themes of reconciliation and forgiveness, Johnson wanted revenge. Asked what should become of Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the now-failed Confederacy, Johnson was adamant. “I would arrest them, I would try them, I would convict them, and I would hang them,” he proclaimed. 4
Johnson’s desire to punish the Confederate elite for a war he regarded as both illegal and immoral was strong enough to startle even Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, who had devoted his career to ending slavery, and now, too, wanted the South to have to pay for seceding. But even so, after listening to Johnson, just weeks after he had become president, spell out exactly how he planned to teach the Confederate elites a lesson, Sumner couldn’t help but wonder: “How many are to be executed in each state?” 5
Johnson was on this morning about to witness an extraordinary spectacle, the beginning of a parade of more than 200,000 Union soldiers, members of both the massive Army of the Potomac and the Army of the Tennessee, as well as the Army of Georgia, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue over the course of the next two days in lines stretching from curb to curb and attracting tens of thousands of onlookers, white and black, young and old, who waved flags, threw bouquets of flowers, and cheered deliriously for hours on end.
Like so many other epic events of the war, the Grand Review was almost happenstance, gotten up and organized just days before in response to special orders issued out of the offices of the Adjutant General on May 18 stating that on both mornings of the parade, the soldiers would pass “around the Capitol to Pennsylvania Avenue, thence up the avenue to the Aqueduct Bridge, and across to their camp.”
“The troops will be without knapsacks, marching at company front, closed in mass, and at route step, except between Fifteenth street and New York Avenue and Seventeenth street, where the cadence step will be observed.” 6
Despite the precise instructions for the review, it was inevitable that a certain spirit of spontaneity would invade the proceedings, as Benjamin Brown French, Commissioner of Public Buildings, happily noted, observing “horses and mules loaded down with bags, guns, mining tools, and what seemed to be the debris of the whole army,” passing by towards the end of the first day’s proceedings.
The animals were not ridden by soldiers, noted Brown, but rather caretakers, stragglers, ex-slaves, and children “of all sizes, colors and complexions, all of whom seemed to be in high spirits and enjoying themselves hugely.” 7
An additional unexpected entertainment occurred during the first day of the review when the horse belonging to 24-year-old Major General George Armstrong Custer suddenly broke off in a panic, spooked by a wreath of flowers that an admiring woman heaved in Custer’s direction. The powerful stallion galloped off with Custer holding the wreath in one hand and the riding reins in the other. The run-away horse prompted frightened screams from some onlookers that quickly turned to cheers when Custer, his shoulder-length blondish red hair waving in the breeze, gallantly regained control of the animal, inspiring, noted a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, “round upon round of hearty applause” with the “reviewing officers joining in.” 8
Johnson was hugely enjoying the show, looking out at the taunt, trained, and victorious soldiers marching in their units in a splendid orgy, as historian Shelby Foote would put it, of “engineers with ponderous equipment, artillerists riding caissons trailed by big-mouth guns.” 9
Commanders, as they neared the White House reviewing stand, saluted the new president, of whom they had read so much in the nation’s press. In response, Johnson, dressed conservatively and typically fastidiously in a black frock coat, repeatedly stood to return the soldiers’ salute, other times simply and happily waving at them.
The intercourse was proper and decorous, but the response was entirely different when the soldiers next caught sight of the man sitting next to Johnson: Ulysses S. Grant, General-in-Chief of the United States Army, and at the age of 43, undoubtedly the most admired man in the country. Upon visiting New York where he was mobbed by a crowd of several thousand men and women, Grant, thought the New York Tribune, “with the single exception of Abraham Lincoln, has probably won more human hearts than any other breathing individual.” 10
He was repeatedly given gifts by his admirers, including boxes of cigars, swords, certificates of tributes, and even, from Philadelphia, a house on Chestnut Street, and a second dwelling in the town of Galena, Illinois, where he once lived. Solid and muscular, Grant stood 5 feet, 7 inches tall, with blue eyes, wavy brown hair, and a trimmed beard lightly flecked with gray. Although for years sloppily dressed, his attire, like Johnson’s, was now entirely presentable, with his suits and uniforms designed by Brooks Brothers of New York.
Johnson and Grant in May of 1865 were not only the two most important public figures in America, they were also, with the exceptions of the secretaries of War and State, the most consequential. They also represented an idea: that the top rungs of power and influence in America were open to even it’s poorest citizens.
In Johnson’s case, this meant a laborious rise from the suffocating poverty of his youth. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1808, Johnson was only 3 years old when his father died, forcing his mother to eventually agr