John Thesis #5

By John Page

 

Yet Grant also felt that if those who had to fight would be in charge of maintaining the peace then they would do all they could to protect the peace. Grant had seen the horror of war and knew that any conflict would be bloody and felt that civilians would be more willing to use force as they had never seen its real effects.

Grant had consistently advocated the transfer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the War Department in his capacity as General of the Army, believing, with General Sherman, that “army officers, as a rule, [were] better qualified to deal with Indians than the average political appointees.” Time and again during his tenure at the head of the US Army, Grant urged transfer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs as an essential prerequisite for the reformation of the Indian system and, by extension, for peace with Western tribes. Writing to his successor as Secretary of War, John M. Schofield, Grant made clear his firm advocacy of transfer:[1]

 

The reason for a preference for military control was in part connected to how the Union was dealing with the South. In both parts of the country, the situation was military control of the regions. This was felt to allow for a more concerted effort with a minimal amount of political arguments and also be more flexible in response to changing circumstances on the ground. As can be expected from American history, there was a very negative reaction to this. Many people both in and out of the government felt that the administration was overreaching its power.[2] The idea of the military managing domestic issues is always a controversial one.

Sims argues that the reason that the transfer of power failed was that a massacre of innocent Native American caused a backlash against the argument that the military was more competent in this matter then civilians.[3] This caused Grant to lose creditability to many people as his judgment seemed in doubt.  Sims argues that even with best of intentions Grant’s idealized plan was doomed to fail as American society was not going in the direction that was favorable to Native Americans.[4]

Ultimately, however, Grant’s conception of the “Indian problem” and the measures required to reform Indian affairs was as culturally limited as previous (and subsequent) efforts. Of course good faith was not sufficient. Wendell Phillips was widely ridiculed for his suggestion that the government “abandon the railroad and give the Great Plains back to the Indians,” but perhaps nothing short of this would have constituted substantive justice. Those most professedly interested in the welfare of Native Americans were those most immersed in the colonial project, concerned with individualizing and “Americanizing” the Indian. It was fundamentally a project of reformation rather than preservation.[5]

Another conflict that Grant had to deal with throughout his entire presidency was the struggle of racial equality in the South but also equality throughout the whole nation. How was Grant’s leadership of first the Union Army and later the nation a factor in how African Americans were treated during this time? There was a general, if small, improvement in the overall conditions of African-Americans while Grant was in charge. Still many of the rights that they had gained were taken away or negated by white supremacist later on. For example, being able to vote is pointless if you may not live if you cast a vote. So was this trend of rights in principle but not in fact Grant’s doing or his fault or was it something that he couldn’t have stopped and would have happened anyway no matter who was in charge and what polices were in place?

One of the biggest sources of controversy during this time was the policy of Reconstruction. The program of trying to reconstruct the South was seen by many southerners as an infringement upon their rights as Americans, and there was a strong white backlash against any attempts at social change.[6] The struggle became a contest of wills between the die-hard “redeemers” of the South and the “radical” republicans of the North. The rising tensions made it harder for Grant to govern as a peacemaker as the division of the war was still an ongoing issue within the nation.

As fights over Reconstruction grew worse, other factors emerged.  The rise of white supremacist terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan brought a level of violence to the region that sapped the North of the will to fight back. These groups claimed they were trying to “redeem” the South’s government from Northern whites and African-American control.[7] The Klan did this by constantly attacking freedmen and white Republican sympathizers. While at first these attacks raised anger in the north (the bloody shirt for example), popular northern republican support for the Union efforts at Reconstruction had overall disappeared by the end of Grant’s presidency.[8]  Within the North, there was a shift in how people viewed the situation of military occupation of the South from a duty to a burden. A large portion of the North’s people were getting tired of maintaining a large standing army and the resulting militarization of society.[9]

While Grant, along with many others, tried to ensure army control over the South to protect the rights of African Americans, he eventually gave up and embraced the idea of focusing on a reconciliation that was white-centered and tried to remove African-Americans from the national focus entirely.[10] It was easier to make the nation seem to be at peace and unified if one simply ignored what was not good in the nation. This attitude emerged as the people of the North were sick of military rule and worrying about the seemingly never ending problems of the South.[11]

Large scale interventions into the South to protect the freed slaves’ civil rights were becoming unpopular as they seemed to be leading to permanent military rule over large parts of the white population. [12] Any attempts to use more direct approaches resulted in deadlocks and fears of a military tyranny amongst the Democrats. The North, as a whole, wanted to move on to the next chapter of American history and leave problems of race behind and focus on economic growth. The diehard “redeemers” had worn down the Republican’s will to reshape the South into a more just society.[13] It seemed like the antebellum mentality of two regions remained. A truce, of sorts, had been agreed upon. This combined with a shift to wanting white reconciliation instead of racial justice weakened Grant’s position further.[14]  Grant’s attempt to govern as president failed as a result of his idea of the proper role of the president in government.

Grant’s weaknesses as a president led later historians to see him as a failure. What he was not able to do seem of greater importance then what he did do. Although the way historians write about Grant often reflects how they view the whole period that he lived in and not just Grant personally. By looking at the historiography of Grant, we can trace how historians’ views of him changed and perhaps see why it devolved the way it did from the hero worship of the 1860s to his later ranking as a poor or weak president.

The problems with governing that Grant had while president were philosophical ones, not ones of skill. His idea was that the president was more of a manager as opposed to a general leading an army. This was a common model for the time. He felt that a president should delegate as much power as possible. This hurt him as the tides of popular opinion shifted and his preferred method of being president left him in a position of weakness. Many people throughout the United States wanted to simply stop worrying about Reconstruction and focus on building up the economy. [15] They wanted the war to be over and focus instead on building the economy.

[1]Ibid,246

[2] Idid

[3], Ibid, 250

[4] Ibid, 261

[5]David, 261

[6] Ballard, 420

[7] Explaining how the Confederacy was unable to recruit more men even in the face of greater northern numbers Grant explains that “A. S. Johnston had made efforts to reinforce in the same quarter, before the battle of Shiloh, but in a different way. He had Negroes sent out to him to take the place of teamsters, company cooks and laborers in every capacity, so as to put all his white men into the ranks. The people, while willing to send their sons to the field, were not willing to part with their Negroes. It is only fair to state that they probably wanted their blacks to raise supplies for the army and for the families left at home.” Grant, 599

[8] Waugh 108

[9] Ibid, 151

[10] Ibid,150

[11] Ibid, 149. This situation calls to mind that of Vietnam or Afghanistan in the draining of popular will in the face of seemingly endless terrorism

[12] Ibid, 108

[13]Ibid, 148

[14] Ibid 138, 148-149

[15] Abbot, 122