"I know no method to secure the repeal of bad . . . laws so effective as their stringent execution"

I've been reading H.W. Brands's excellent biography of Ulysses S. Grant, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace, and ran across a brief description of Grant's first inaugural address.  I've long admired Grant, and his first address contains commonsense wisdom and honesty,  as well as advice that is so clearly relevant to the current situation that it needs no explication:

On all leading questions agitating the public mind I will always express my views to Congress and urge them according to my judgment, and when I think it advisable will exercise the constitutional privilege of interposing a veto to defeat measures which I oppose; but all laws will be faithfully executed, whether they meet my approval or not.  

I shall on all subjects have a policy to recommend, but none to enforce against the will of the people. Laws are to govern all alike - those opposed as well as those who favor them. I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

(Emphasis added.)

About the illustration, entitled The Great November Contest. Patriotism: versus Bummerism (1868):

The strongly racist character of the Democratic presidential campaign of 1868 is displayed full-blown in this elaborate attack on Reconstruction and Republican support of Negro rights. Horses with the heads of Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour and running mate Francis P. Blair, Jr., pull a fine, ornate carriage in a race with a rude wagon drawn by asses with the heads of Republican candidates Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax. The Democratic carriage pulls ahead in the race, heading toward a cheering crowd and a series of floral arches held by young maidens. The U.S. Capitol is visible beyond. In the carriage are four allegorical figures: Liberty, holding the Constitution and a banner which reads "Our Glorious Union D̀istinct, like the Billows, One, Like the Sea' This is a White Man's Government!"; Navigation, holding a miniature ship; Agriculture, holding sheaves of wheat and a scythe; and Labor, represented by a bearded man with a hammer and flywheel. In contrast to the Democratic vehicle, the Republican wagon has stalled before a pile of rocks and a cemetery strewn with bones representing "100,000,000 White Lives, the Price of Nigger Freedom!" Its wheels are blocked by a large stone "Killing Taxation" and a skeleton. Other stones represent "Ruined Commerce," "$30,000,000 stolen from the Treasury," and "Negro Supremacy." In the wagon are the grim reaper, Pennsylvania representative and abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, an unidentified man, a black woman, and an idle black man. Stevens: "Colfax pulls like the d----l but old tangleleg [i.e., Grant] aint worth a d----n! Push at the tailboard, Ben!" Massachusetts representative and former Civil War general Benjamin F. Butler, pushing the wagon from the rear, replies, "I am pushing, Thad! but we are stuck. Seymour is a mile ahead now." Silver spoons protrude from Butler's pocket. (For the origins of Butler's nickname "Silver Spoons," see "The Radical Party on a Heavy Grade," no. 1868-14.) The black woman reassures Stevens, "Don't worry you'sef, honey, or you'll peg out afore we get de paeket for Seymour's in de White House and we's good for Salt River [colloquialism for political disaster]." The black man asks, "War's dis wagon gwine wid dis member ob Congress. I'd jes like to know?" The unidentified man remarks, "The Democracy would not take me so I thought I'd come back & stick by you Uncle Thad, and we'll all go to H-ll together!" Death announces, "My friends 1,000,000 slaughtered soldiers block the wheels--you fooled them, and they now impede your progress!" At bottom right a group of bummers, a term referring to party hangers-on, carpetbaggers, and other disreputable characters, stand in line to buy tickets to Salt River. At left New York "Tribune" editor Horace Greeley invites abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher to play the thimblerig. Nearby a black couple in rags express their desire to return to their former master. At top right, next to the U.S. Capitol, a group of black youths in striped outfits dance and tumble about. In the lower right margin are prices and information regarding ordering copies of the print by mail. "Price 25 cents mailed. 5 for $1.00. 60 for $10.00, 100 for $16.00. Nothing sent C.O.D. Express charges paid by Parties ordering. Address: Bromley & Co. Box 4265. New York City.

Ulysses Grant Loses A Treasury Secretary

In his biography of Ulysses S. Grant, Josiah Bunting III reports that in 1869 newly-elected President Grant's first nomination for Treasury Secretary was retail magnate Alexander T. Stewart (think R.H. Macy, only bigger). The Senate, however, "discovered a relatively obscure statute, dated 1789, that forbade the treasury secretaryship to be filled by anyone in trade." Grant therefore had to make another selection.

This sounded odd to me, so I thought I'd check it out. Sure enough, there it was. The statute is not exactly obscure - it was the original Act to establish the Treasury Department, passed by the First Congress and signed into law by President Washington on September 2, 1789 - but no doubt the provision in question was.

That provision was Section 8 of the Act, which provided in relevant part as follows:

And be it further enacted, That no person appointed to any office instituted by this act, shall directly or indirectly be concerned or interested in carrying on the business of trade or commerce, or be owner in whole or in part of any sea-vessel, or purchase by himself, or another in trust with him, any public lands or other public property, or be concerned in the purchase or disposal of any public securities of any State, or of the United States, or take or apply to his own use, any emolument or gain for negotiating or transacting any business in the said department, other than what shall be allowed by law . . ..

I haven't gone back and checked, but it's hard to believe that one or more Treasury Secretaries who served between 1789 and 1869 didn't do so in violation of this provision. Anyone know?

Rud Hayes, Laff Riot

Two good quotes from Rutherford B. Hayes:

On Salmon P. Chase:

Chase possessed noble gifts of intellect, great culture, and a noble presence. When this is said, all that is favorable has been said. He was cold, selfish, and unscrupulous.

On predictions by supporters that, if he ran for and won the Ohio governorship in 1875, he could be the Republican presidential nominee in 1876:

How wild! What a queer lot we are becoming! Nobody is out of the reach of that mania.

Did you know, by the way, that Hayes's friends called him "Rud"?

Both quotes (and "Rud") are from Michael F. Holt's excellent (so far!) book, By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876.

About the illustration:

A crude but charming comic send-up of 1876 Republican campaign strategy. Democratic candidate Samuel J. Tilden and an unidentified man stand fishing on the left bank of a river, their basket overflowing with their catch. On the opposite bank stand Rutherford B. Hayes and Republican incumbent Ulysses S. Grant, obviously less successful. Grant advises Hayes, "I guess that reform bait won't work this side. Better try an anti-Catholic worm." Since both the Democratic and Republican platforms in 1876 stressed reform, Hayes's campaign sought to stir up anti-Catholic prejudice against Tilden.

By One Vote

I am reading Michael F. Holt's book on the 1876 election, By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876. This is a period I know less about, and Prof. Holt is proving to be a superb guide. He provides an excellent overview of the tangled issues of corruption, high taxes, excessive spending, depression and monetary policy that combined to strangle Reconstruction in the mid-1870s.

In the opening chapters, Prof. Holt sets the stage by reviewing the "political revolt against [President Ulysses] Grant known as the 'Liberal Republican movement,'" reminding us that even pre-War radical Charles Sumner could be counted among its members.

Analyzing the 1872 election returns, Prof. Holt argues that Grant's landslide victory was founded on quicksand. First, "[a]lmost all of the increase in Grant's national [vote] total between 1868 and 1872 . . . came from former slave states, and most of those new Republican votes undoubtedly came from newly enfranchised freedmen." If those votes were lost, the Republican in the next election would no longer be assured a comfortable margin.

Second, and even more important in Prof. Holt's view, was the fact that Grant had benefited from a "marked decline in normal levels of Democratic voter turnout in most states." In 1872, the "Democrats had grudgingly endorsed Horace Greeley, the surprising choice of the Liberal Republican[s]." Democratic voters stayed away from the polls in droves rather than vote for the arch-Whig who had denounced them "as lawless, shiftless, drunken sots" for decades.

At the same time, Greeley's high-profile history hardly made him the idea Liberal Republican candidate when it came to issues such as tariff reduction and civil service reform. His strongest recommendation to them came from his endorsement of the "Liberals' demand for an end to federal intervention in the South, and a restoration of full political rights to those former Confederates still disqualified from holding office."

And yet even this stance proved a double-edged sword, for it left Greeley "vulnerable to vicious lampooning by Thomas Nast, the widely read political cartoonist for Harper's Weekly who had recently played a central role in toppling New York City's hugely corrupt Boss William M. Tweed from power."

Two of Nast's lampoons, both of which are reproduced in Prof. Holt's book, appear in this post. The first, entitled It Is Only a Truce to Regain Power (Playing Possum) depicts Greeley and Sumner (at the far right) "urging a freedman to reach across the bodies of murdered blacks to shake hands with two stock Democratic characters: a southern member of the Ku Klux Klan and an apelike Irish thug of the type who murdered blacks during the New York City draft riots of 1863."

The second, entitled Let Us Clasp Hands over the Bloody Chasm, "mocks Greeley's call for northerners and southerners to forget their sectional animosities," showing him "reaching in vain across the graveyard of Union prisoners at the notorious Andersonville prison camp."

Anna Ella Carroll

Although I had not heard of her, the Wikipedia entry for Anna Ella Carroll, mentioned in my last post, is very intriguing. A Maryland Whig and Know-Nothing (and Fillmore supporter in 1856!), she freed her slaves, opposed secession, supported Lincoln and allegedly forwarded intelligence of Confederate plans.

Most interesting probably to Civil War buffs, in 1861 Carroll allegedly investigated and advocated the use of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers as an invasion route into Tennessee, the basis for Grant's Forts Henry and Donelson campaign, and later in the War advised Lincoln on colonization and emancipation. I don't vouch for the Wikipedia description of her role, but here it is:

In the fall of 1861, Carroll traveled to St. Louis to work with secret agent, Judge Lemuel Dale Evans, who had been appointed by Secretary of State William H. Seward, to assess the feasibility of an invasion of Texas. Carroll worked on her second war powers paper at the Mercantile Library where she sleuthed out information from the head librarian who was Confederate General Joe Johnston’s brother. She took military matters into her own hands when she initiated an interview with a riverboat pilot Capt. Charles M. Scott about the feasibility of the planned Union Mississippi River expedition. Scott informed her that he and other pilots thought the advance ill conceived due to the fact that there were many defensible points on the Mississippi River that could be reinforced and it could take years just to open it up to navigation. Carroll then questioned Scott about the feasibility of the use of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers for a Union invasion. Scott provided Carroll technical navigation details. Based on this information Carroll wrote a memorandum that she sent to Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott and Attorney General Edward Bates in late November 1861, advocating that the combined army-navy forces change their invasion route from the Mississippi to the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Scott took the plan to Lincoln who deemed the plan viable, although no actual documentary evidence of this meeting exists. Evidence indicates that on the advice of Senator Benjamin F. Wade, chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Lincoln appointed Edwin Stanton secretary of war in January 1862 to implement the Tennessee River plan. Lincoln scholar Doris Kearns Goodwin, on the other hand, argues in her Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, that Lincoln chose Stanton to replace the crooked Simon Cameron on the advice of Secretary of State William Henry Seward and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, surprising the entire Cabinet with his selection, having consulted no one but Seward and Chase, the latter of whom claimed full credit for the choice of Stanton.

Meanwhile in St. Louis, Major General Henry W. Halleck was planning the same movement without Lincoln’s knowledge. Upon learning that Confederates were possibly sending reinforcements west from Virginia, Halleck ordered Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant and Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote to immediately move on Fort Henry and Fort Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers in a telegram dated January 30. Scott was dispatched to the Midwest to mobilize reinforcements for Halleck on the night of January 29. On February 6, Fort Henry fell to Foote’s gunboats and on February 13, Fort Donelson fell to Grant’s and Foote’s combined forces. These comprised the first two “real victories” of the Civil War for the Union as Gen. William Sherman wrote later. Thus Carroll’s submission was critical to providing needed reinforcements for Grant and to gaining Stanton the appointment as secretary of war. At the time Carroll’s role in the effort was kept secret, and immediately following the war, she herself gave credit for the plan to Capt. Charles Scott in a letter printed in a leading Washington newspaper, but years later Assistant Secretary of War Scott and Senator Wade testified to it before Congress.

During the remainder of the war, Carroll worked with Lincoln on issues pertaining to colonization and emancipation. She and Aaron Columbus Burr lobbied him to establish a colony of freedmen in British Honduras, today Belize. Although Carroll had freed her own slaves, she lobbied Lincoln against issuing the Emancipation Proclamation fearing that support of Southern Unionists would be lost and resistance to the Union would be stiffened. But, she wrote that Lincoln did have the constitutional right to free the states as a temporary war measure under his power as commander-in-chief, since the proclamation would help cripple the organized forces of the rebellion. Yet the measure was not a transfer of title and would have to be suspended once the war emergency ended. To free the slaves required a constitutional amendment.

Wikipedia further asserts that the empty chair at the right of the painting at the top of this post, First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation by Francis Bicknell Carpenter (1864) is "believed by some to be an allusion to Carroll."

George Meets David?

I'm playing with a new camera this evening, so I'll keep it short.

For you McClellan lovers (hi, Dimitri!) -- and Bush haters (hi, everyone else!) -- here's an article guaranteed to raise your blood pressure, by Mackubin Thomas Owens, one of my favorite military writers: Our Generals Almost Cost Us Iraq. Here's a taste:

In late 2006, President Bush, like President Lincoln in 1862, adopted a new approach to the war. He replaced the uniformed and civilian leaders who were adherents of the failed operational approach with others who shared his commitment to victory rather than "playing for a tie." In Gen. David Petraeus, Mr. Bush found his Ulysses Grant, to execute an operational approach based on sound counterinsurgency doctrine. This new approach has brought the U.S. to the brink of victory.

Have a nice day.

Ulysses Grant: Evolution of a Name

On April 27, 1822, Hannah Grant, nee Simpson, the wife of Jesse Grant, gave birth to a baby boy. The boy remained nameless for almost a month.

Members of the Simpson family proposed a number of alternatives, including Albert (after Albert Gallatin) and Theodore. John Simpson, Hannah's father and Jesse's father-in-law, proposed "Hiram, because it is such a handsome name." Sarah Simpson, Hannah's mother and Jesse's mother-in law, offered Ulysses: she had just finished "reading Fenelon's Telemachus and thrilled to its dramatic description of Greek heroes." Eager to please his in-laws, Jesse named the boy Hiram Ulysses. Jesse called the boy "my Ulysses," and the boy was generally known by that name.

It was Jesse -- not Ulysses -- who determined to try to get his boy admitted to West Point. On February 19, 1839, Hiram wrote a letter to his Congressman, Thomas L. Hamer, asking him to nominate Ulysses. Hamer did so, and on May 15, 1839 Ulysses left home for the first time.

He did so, however, with a new name: Ulysses Hiram Grant:

To identify his trunk, he and his cousins hammered in his initials, but it took only a moment to see that "H.U.G." would not do. Ulysses was not going to be the butt of any more jokes if he could help it. From now on he would be Ulysses Hiram Grant.

Two weeks later Ulysses had yet another new name. When he arrived at West Point on May 29, 1839, he was informed that there was no appointment for "Ulysses Hiram Grant." The appointment was for one "Ulysses S. Grant." If Mr. Grant was not Ulysses S. Grant, he could go home.

The mixup apparently originated with Congressman Hamer:

Apparently Congressman Hamer, in his rush to make out the papers of nomination, had mistakenly affixed an S (Hannah's maiden name was Simpson) to serve as a middle initial after the name by which the boy went -- Ulysses.

Faced with the choice of accepting the new name or going home, "Grant, who had never had much use for Hiram anyway, agreed to yet another name change."

The new initials "U.S." Grant promptly produced the nickname "Sam:"

As cadets scanned the list of the incoming candidates, their eyes fell on "U.S. Grant." Well, who was that? United States Grant? Uncle Sam Grant? . . . Grant explained what had happened, but it was no use. He was now Ulysses S. Grant. Before long his friends started calling him Sam, just as Sherman went by Cump; another cadet, James Longstreet of South Carolina, was known as Pete.

All quotes are from Brooks D. Simpson's Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph Over Adversity, 1822-1865.

Did Ulysses Grant Own Julia's Slaves?

Over at the American Presidents Blog, Jennie W. posted an entry stating that Julia Dent Grant, the wife of Ulysses Grant, owned several slaves, who were not freed until 1865 when Missouri abolished slavery. The post asserted that Ulysses, as Julia’s husband, was the true owner of and had the right to free the slaves, and had failed to do so.

As an admirer of General and President Grant, I decided to look into this. It didn’t sound right – or at least I hoped so.

There are, indeed, a number of sites that state that Julia owned slaves. For example, the official website for the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site at White Haven (the Missouri plantation owned by Julia’s father, “Colonel” Frederick Dent) states that “[d]uring Grant’s management of the farm he worked side by side with Dan, one of the slaves given to Julia at birth,” presumably by her father.

However, it turns out that there is reason to question this. Julia’s father, Colonel Dent, lived until 1873. It certainly seemed possible that, if Julia acquired her slaves as a “gift” from her father, that gift amounted to an informal loan of or right to use the slaves, rather than a formal transfer of title. Question 5.8 of a “Civil War FAQ” points up precisely this possibility. Lest you think I’m hiding anything, here is the entire paragraph relating to Grant (most of which concerns the single slave that Grant owned and freed in 1859):

“2. In 1858, while attempting to make a go in civilian life as a farmer near St. Louis, MO, U.S. Grant acquired a slave named William Jones, probably from his father-in-law, although the record is not entirely clear. In March, 1859, Grant gave Jones his freedom despite the fact that Grant desperately needed the money he might have recovered by selling him. Grant's wife, Julia, had the use of four slaves as personal servants; the record is unclear as to who held legal title to them (it could well have been Julia's father). In her own memoirs, Julia states that these were freed at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation.

"Sources: _Captain Sam Grant_, by Lloyd Lewis; _The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant_, by Julia Grant; _Let Us Have Peace, etc._ by Brooks D. Simpson.”

(Emphasis added).

I do not vouch for the FAQ and cannot tell you for sure whether Julia really owned -- i.e., held title to -- her slaves. I can tell you that the issue appears to remain an open one.

In the picture above, the front row consists of Ulysses, Julia and Colonel Dent.