PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES

Benjamin Harrison

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Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 – March 13, 1901) was the twenty-third President of the United States, serving one term from 1889 to 1893. He had previously served as a senator from Indiana. His administration is best known for a series of legislation including the McKinley Tariff and federal spending that reached one billion dollars. Democrats attacked the "Billion Dollar Congress" and defeated the GOP in the 1890 mid-term elections, as well as defeating Harrison's bid for reelection in 1892. He is to date the only president from Indiana.

Early life and Civil War

A grandson of President William Henry Harrison and great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison, V, Benjamin was born on August 20, 1833, in North Bend, Hamilton County, Ohio as the second of eight children of John Scott Harrison (later a U.S. Congressman from Ohio) and Elizabeth Ramsey Irwin. He attended Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, where he was a member of the fraternity Phi Delta Theta (later in life, he joined Delta Chi) and graduated in 1852. He studied law in Cincinnati, Ohio, then moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1854. He was admitted to the bar and became reporter of the decisions of the Indiana Supreme Court.

"Come on boys!" General Benjamin Harrison in the Battle of Resaca, May, 1864.

On October 20, 1853, Harrison, 20, married Caroline Lavinia Scott, 21, in Oxford, Ohio. The wedding was performed by her father, Rev. John W. Scott. The Harrisons had two children, Russell Benjamin Harrison (August 12, 1854 - December 13, 1936) and Mary "Mamie" Scott Harrison McKee (April 3, 1858 - October 28, 1930). On June 13, 1861, they suffered the tragedy of a miscarriage.

Brig. Gen. Benjamin Harrison

Harrison served in the Union Army during the Civil War and was appointed Colonel of the 70th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment in August 1862. The unit performed reconnaissance duty and guarded railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee until Sherman's Atlanta Campaign in 1864. Harrison was brevetted as a brigadier general, and commanded a Brigade at Resaca, Cassville, New Hope Church, Lost Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain, Marietta, Peachtree Creek and Atlanta. Harrison was later transferred to the Army of the Cumberland and participated in the Siege of Nashville and the Grand Review in Washington D.C. before mustering out in 1865.

Politics

While in the field in October 1864, he was elected reporter of the Indiana State Supreme Court and served four years. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Governor of Indiana in 1876, being defeated by James D. Williams. He was appointed a member of the Mississippi River Commission, in 1879, and elected as a Republican to the United States Senate, where he served from March 4, 1881, to March 4, 1887. He was chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Transportation Routes to the Seaboard (47th Congress) and U.S. Senate Committee on Territories (48th and 49th Congresses).

Presidency 1889-1893

Inauguration of Benjamin Harrison, March 4, 1889.

Policies

The Raven
An 1890 Puck cartoon depicts Harrison at his desk wearing his grandfather's hat which is too big for his head, suggesting that he is not fit for the presidency. Atop a bust of William Henry Harrison, a raven with the head of Secretary of State James G. Blaine gawks down at the President, a reference to the famous Edgar Allan Poe poem "The Raven." Blaine and Harrison were both at odds over the recently proposed McKinley Tariff.

After beating John Sherman for the Republican presidential nomination, Harrison was elected President of the United States in 1888 in notoriously fraudulent balloting in New York and Indiana (See Blocks of Five). In the Presidential election, Harrison received nearly 100,000 fewer popular votes than incumbent President Grover Cleveland but carried the Electoral College 233 to 168. Although Harrison had made no political bargains, his supporters had given innumerable pledges upon his behalf. When Boss Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania heard that Harrison ascribed his narrow victory to Providence, Quay exclaimed that Harrison would never know "how close a number of men were compelled to approach...the penitentiary to make him President." He was inaugurated on March 4, 1889, and served through March 4, 1893. Harrison was also known as the "centennial president" because his inauguration was the 100th anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington.

For Harrison, Civil Service reform was a no-win situation. Congress was split so far apart on the issue that agreeing to any measure for one side would alienate the other. The issue became a popular political football of the time and was immortalized in a cartoon captioned "What can I do when both parties insist on kicking?" (featured below)

Political football "What can I do when both parties insist on kicking?"

Harrison was proud of the vigorous foreign policy which he helped shape. The first Pan-American Congress met in Washington, D.C. in 1889, establishing an information center which later became the Pan American Union. At the end of his administration, Harrison submitted to the Senate a treaty to annex Hawaii; to his disappointment, President Cleveland later withdrew it.

The most perplexing domestic problem Harrison faced was the tariff issue. The high tariff rates in effect had created a surplus of money in the Treasury. Low-tariff advocates argued that the surplus was hurting business. Republican leaders in Congress successfully met the challenge. Representative William McKinley and Senator Nelson W. Aldrich framed a still higher tariff bill; some rates were intentionally prohibitive.

Harrison tried to make the tariff more acceptable by writing in reciprocity provisions. To cope with the Treasury surplus, the tariff was removed from imported raw sugar; sugar growers within the United States were given two cents per pound bounty on their production.

In an attempt to battle trusts and monopolies, Harrison signed into effect the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in order to protect trade and commerce. This was the first Federal act of its kind.

President Harrison rowed ashore at Wall Street, April 29, 1889.

Long before the end of the Harrison Administration, the Treasury surplus had evaporated and prosperity seemed about to disappear. Congressional elections in 1890 went against the Republicans, and party leaders decided to abandon President Harrison, although he had cooperated with Congress on party legislation. Nevertheless, his party renominated him in 1892, but he was defeated by Cleveland. Just two weeks earlier, on October 25, 1892, Harrison's wife, Caroline died after a long battle with tuberculosis. Their daughter, Mary Harrison McKee, continued the duties of the First Lady.

Post-presidency

After he left office, Harrison returned to Indianapolis. He married a widow, Mary Scott Lord Dimmick on April 6, 1896 in New York City. She was also his deceased wife's niece. His two adult children Russell, 41 years old at the time, and Mary "Mamie", 38, did not attend the wedding because they disagreed. Their mother had only died three and a half years earlier. Benjamin and Mary had one child, Elizabeth (February 21, 1897 - December 26, 1955), who later married James Blaine Walker, a grandnephew of James G. Blaine. Their daughter, Jane Harrison Walker, later married Newell Garfield, the great-grandson of President James A. Garfield and his wife Lucretia Garfield and the grandson of James R. Garfield. Harrison went to the First Peace Conference at The Hague. He served as an attorney for the Republic of Venezuela in the boundary dispute between Venezuela and the United Kingdom in 1900. He also wrote a book entitled This Country of Ours about the federal government and the presidency.

Harrison developed the flu and a bad cold in February 1901. Despite treatment by steam vapor inhalation, Harrison's condition only worsened. Benjamin Harrison eventually died from influenza and pneumonia on Wednesday, March 13, 1901 and is interred in Crown Hill Cemetery. Incidentially, Crown Hill Cemetery also holds the remains of three United States Vice-Presidents: Charles W. Fairbanks, Thomas A. Hendricks, and Thomas R. Marshall.

Legacy

The Benjamin Harrison Law School in Indianapolis was named in his honor. In 1944, Indiana University acquired the school and renamed it Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis.

Benjamin Harrison stamp
At Miami University, Harrison Hall houses the political science department and the Harrison Scholarship is school's most prestigious academic award. [1]
In 1942, a United States Liberty ship named the SS Benjamin Harrison was launched. She was torpedoed and scuttled in 1943.
A U.S. Army post, Fort Benjamin Harrison, was established after Harrison's death in Indianapolis, but it was closed in the 1990s.
Harrison Hall, a co-educational dormitory at Purdue University, is named after President Harrison, who served on the Board of Trustees of Purdue University from July, 1895 to March, 1901.
The Benjamin Harrison Memorial Drawbridge over the James River in Virginia is one of the longest vertical lift bridges in the North America at 363 feet at its longest span.

Trivia

Benjamin Harrison is the only President who was the grandson of a past President (William Henry Harrison).
From the time when Harrison was born on August 20, 1833 until the death of Former U.S. President James Madison on June 28, 1836, there were a total of 19 Presidents of the United States (Former, Current, and Future) living; which as of 2007 is more than any other time period in U.S. history.
Benjamin Harrison might be the first President whose voice was recorded. This recording was originally made on a phonograph cylinder in 1889 and can be accessed below in the Media section. Some believe Rutherford B. Hayes was actually the first president, but the cylinder cannot be found.
Nicknames such as "Kid Gloves", "The Human Iceberg" and "Little Ben" were mocking titles given by his political rivals. "Little Ben" was also a name so-called by his Civil War regiment, the 70th Indiana Volunteers.
Harrison was the last President to wear a beard while in office but not the last to sport facial hair. Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft all had moustaches.
The 1968, Walt Disney musical film, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band was about the United States presidential election of 1888 between Harrison and rival, Grover Cleveland. In the film, the campaign song, "Oh, Benjamin Harrison" was modern and not really from that campaign. The song was written by the Sherman Brothers.
Harrison had electricity installed in the White House for the first time by Edison Electric Company, but he and his wife reportedly would not touch the light switches for fear of electrocution and would often go to sleep with the lights on.
In April 1891, Harrison became the first President to travel across the United States entirely by train.
On June 7, 1892, Harrison became the first President to ever attend a baseball game.
Harrison's roommate at Miami University, John Alexander Anderson, became a six-term U.S. Congressman from Kansas and the second President of Kansas State University. Harrison appointed him consul general in Cairo, Egypt.
In 1892, Harrison and Whitelaw Reid formed the only U.S. presidential ticket composed of candidates that were also alumni of the same university, Miami University. Like Harrison, Reid also had a building on Miami's campus named for him. Reid Hall was a dormitory until it was demolished in 2006 to make room for the new Richard T. Farmer School of Business.
Benjamin Harrison was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.
On January 28, 2007 Mrs. Emma Tillman died being the last U.S. citizen alive born during the Harrison administration.
Harrison had six states admitted to the Union during his administration, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho and Wyoming, the most of any administration since George Washington.

Grover Cleveland

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Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908), the twenty-second and twenty-fourth President of the United States, was the only President to serve non-consecutive terms (1885–1889 and 1893–1897). He was defeated for reelection in 1888 by Benjamin Harrison, against whom he ran again in 1892 and won a second term. He was the only Democrat elected to the Presidency in the era of Republican political domination between 1860 and 1912, after the American Civil War. His admirers praise him for his bedrock honesty, independence, integrity, and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism. As a leader of the Bourbon Democrats, he opposed imperialism, taxes, corruption, patronage, subsidies and inflationary policies.

Some of Cleveland's actions were controversial with political factions: his intervention in the Pullman Strike of 1894 in order to keep the railroads moving angered labor unions, and his support of the gold standard and opposition to free silver alienated the agrarian wing of the party. Furthermore, critics complained that he had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nation's economic disasters — depressions and strikes — in his second term. He lost control of his party to the agrarians and silverites in 1896.

Early life

An early, undated photograph of Grover Cleveland from the Cleveland Family Papers at the New Jersey Archives.

Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey to the Reverend Richard Cleveland and Anne Neal. He was the fifth of nine children, five sons and four daughters. He was named Stephen Grover in honor of the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell, where his father was pastor at the time. From 1841 to 1850, he lived in Fayetteville, New York^[1], but as the church frequently transferred its ministers, the family moved many times, mainly around central and southern New York State.

He became involved in Democratic politics at the age of 19 when he worked for the presidential campaign of James Buchanan. Following Buchanan's single term, the next Democrat elected president would be Cleveland himself, almost thirty years later. During the American Civil War, Cleveland hired a replacement to avoid Lincoln's draft order of 1863.

As a lawyer in Buffalo, New York, he became notable for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him. He was elected sheriff of Erie County, New York in 1870 and, while in that post, carried out at least two hangings of condemned criminals, refusing to delegate the unpleasant task to others. Political opponents would later hold this against him, calling him the "Buffalo Hangman." Cleveland stated that he wished to take the responsibility for the executions himself and not pass it along to subordinates.

Political career

In 1871 Grover Cleveland was elected Sheriff of Erie County, New York. At age 44, he emerged into a political prominence that carried him to the White House in three years. Running as a reformer, he was elected Mayor of Buffalo in 1881, with the slogan "Public Office is a Public Trust" as his trademark of office. One newspaper, in endorsing him, said it did so for three reasons: "1. He is honest. 2. He is honest. 3. He is honest." In 1882, he was elected Governor of New York, working closely with reform-minded Republican state legislator Theodore Roosevelt.

1884 campaign

Cleveland won the Presidency in the 1884 election with the unusual combination of support from both Democrats and reform-minded Republicans called "Mugwumps" who denounced his opponent, former Senator James G. Blaine of Maine, as corrupt.

The campaign was negative. To counter Cleveland's image of purity, his opponents reported that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child while he was a lawyer in Buffalo. The derisive phrase "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?", often chanted at Republican political rallies, rose as an unofficial campaign slogan for those who opposed him.

Cleveland admitted to paying child support in 1874 to Maria Crofts Halpin, the woman who claimed he fathered her child named Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Halpin was involved with several men at the time, including Cleveland's law partner and mentor, Oscar Folsom, for whom the child was named. (Cleveland may not have been the father and is believed to have assumed responsibility because he was the only bachelor among them.) After Cleveland's election as President, Democratic newspapers added a line to the chant used against Cleveland and made it: "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House! Ha Ha!"

The desire for reform, blunders on behalf of Blaine, and voters' demand for honesty turned the tide for Cleveland. Cleveland's victory made him the first Democrat elected president since James Buchanan, who was elected in 1856.

First term as President (1885-1889)

Politics

Cleveland's administration might be characterized by his saying: "I have only one thing to do, and that is to do right". Cleveland faced a Republican Senate and often resorted to using his veto powers. Cleveland himself insisted that, as President, his greatest accomplishment was blocking others' bad ideas. He vigorously pursued a policy barring special favors to any economic group. Vetoing a bill to appropriate $10,000 to distribute seed grain among drought-stricken farmers in Texas, he wrote: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character...." He also vetoed hundreds of private pension bills for American Civil War veterans. When Congress, pressured by the Grand Army of the Republic, passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland vetoed that, too. Cleveland used the veto far more often than any President up to that time. Once Cleveland told a friend that his principal duty and greatest service to the country was in preventing Congress from enacting bad bills. He also felt that if the constitution did not authorize it, he could not in good faith sign a bill into law.

Cleveland lived up to his reputation of running an efficient government. He demanded his administration get rid of extravagances and abuses.

In 1885, Cleveland ordered a military campaign against the Southwestern Apache tribe under Chief Geronimo; in 1886 Geronimo was captured.

President Cleveland angered railroad investors by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by government grant, involving the return of 81,000,000 acres (328,000 km²) which is the approximately equivalent to the areas of N.Y., N.J., Pa., Dela., Md., and Va.,combined. The Department of the Interior charged that the rights of way for this land must be returned to the public because the railroads failed to extend their lines according to agreements. The lands were forfeited and became part of public domain.

He signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting Federal regulation of the railroads.

Foreign policy

Cleveland was a committed isolationist who had campaigned in opposition to expansion and imperialism. He reversed policy and withdrew the treaty for the annexation of Hawaii negotiated by Benjamin Harrison from the consideration of the Senate. Cleveland often quoted the advice of George Washington's Farewell Address in decrying alliances, and he slowed the pace of expansion that President Chester Arthur had begun. Cleveland refused to promote Arthur's Nicaragua canal treaty, calling it an "entangling alliance". Free trade deals (reciprocity treaties) with Mexico and several South American countries died because there was no Senate approval. Cleveland withdrew from Senate consideration the Berlin Conference treaty which guaranteed an open door for U.S. interests in Congo.^[2]

As Fareed Zakaria argued, "But while Cleveland retarded the speed and aggressiveness of U.S. foreign policy, the overall direction did not change."^[2] Historian Charles S. Campbell argues that the audiences who listened to Cleveland and Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard, Sr.'s moralistic lectures "readily detected through the high moral tone a sharp eye for the national interest."^[3] Cleveland supported Hawaiian free trade (reciprocity) and accepted an amendment that gave the United States a coaling and naval station in Pearl Harbor. Naval orders were placed with Democratic industrialists rather than Republican ones, but the military buildup actually quickened.^[2]

In his second term Cleveland stated that by 1892, the U.S. Navy had been used to promote American interests in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Argentina, Brazil, and Hawaii. Under Cleveland, the U.S. adopted a broad interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine that did not just simply forbid new European colonies but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere.^[4]

Crusade against protective tariff

In December 1887, Cleveland called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs:

The theory of our institutions guarantees to every citizen the full enjoyment of all the fruits of his industry and enterprise, with only such deduction as may be his share toward the careful and economical maintenance of the Government which protects him... the exaction of more than this is indefensible extortion and a culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice. This wrong inflicted upon those who bear the burden of national taxation, like other wrongs, multiplies a brood of evil consequences. The public Treasury... becomes a hoarding place for money needlessly withdrawn from trade and the people's use, thus crippling our national energies, suspending our country's development, preventing investment in productive enterprise, threatening financial disturbance, and inviting schemes of public plunder.

He failed to lower tariffs when the Mills bill failed, and made it the central issue of his losing 1888 campaign, as Republicans under William McKinley claimed a high tariff was needed to produce high wages, high profits, and fast economic expansion.

Personal life

Grover Cleveland was the second President married in office, and the only President married in the White House itself

On June 2, 1886, Cleveland married Frances Cornelia Folsom, the daughter of his former law partner, in the Blue Room in the White House. He was the second President to marry while in office, and the only President to have a wedding in the White House itself. This marriage was controversial because Cleveland was the executor of the Folsom estate and supervised Frances' upbringing. Folsom, at 21 years old, was the youngest First Lady in the history of the United States. Their children were Ruth Cleveland (1891-1904); Esther Cleveland (1893-1980); Marion Cleveland (1895-1977); Richard Folsom Cleveland (1897-1974); and Francis Grover Cleveland (1903-1995).

1888 campaign

Cleveland/Thurman campaign poster

Cleveland was defeated in the 1888 presidential election, in part due to fraud (See Blocks of Five). He actually led in the popular vote over Benjamin Harrison (48.6% to 47.8%), but Harrison won the Electoral College by a 233-168 margin, largely by squeaking out a barely-over-1% win in Cleveland's home state of New York; in fact, had Cleveland won his home state, he would have won the electoral vote by a count of 204-197 (201 votes then needed for victory). Note, though, that Cleveland earned 24 of his electoral votes in states that he won by less than 1% (Connecticut, Virginia, and West Virginia).

Cleveland thus became one of only four men to clearly win the popular vote but lose the presidency; there would not be another such election until Al Gore's narrow loss to George W. Bush in 2000. As Frances Cleveland and the ex-president left the White House, she assured the staff that they would return in four years.

1892 Campaign

The primary issues for Cleveland for the 1892 campaign were reducing the tariff and stopping free minting of silver which had depleted the gold reserves of the U.S. Treasury. Cleveland was elected again in 1892, thus becoming the only President in U.S. history to be elected to a second term which did not run in succession to the first.

Second term as President (1893-1897)

Politics

Shortly after Cleveland was inaugurated, the Panic of 1893 struck the stock market, and he soon faced an acute economic depression. He dealt directly with the Treasury crisis rather than with business failures, farm mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment. He obtained repeal of the mildly inflationary Sherman Silver Purchase Act. With the aid of J. P. Morgan and Wall Street, he maintained the Treasury's gold reserve.

Cleveland's humiliation by Gorman and the sugar trust; cartoon by W. A. Rogers

He fought to lower the tariff in 1893-1894. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act introduced by West Virginian Representative William L. Wilson and passed by the House would have made significant reforms. However, by the time the bill passed the Senate, guided by Democrat Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland, it had more than 600 amendments attached that nullified most of the reforms. The "Sugar Trust" in particular made changes that favored it at the expense of the consumer. It imposed an income tax of two percent to make up for revenue that would be lost by tariff reductions. Cleveland was devastated that his program had been ruined. He denounced the revised measure as a disgraceful product of "party perfidy and party dishonor," but still allowed it to become law without his signature, believing that it was better than nothing and was at the least an improvement over the McKinley tariff.

Cleveland refused to allow Eugene Debs to use the Pullman Strike to shut down most of the nation's passenger, freight and mail traffic in June 1894. He obtained an injunction in federal court, and when the strikers refused to obey it, he sent in federal troops to Chicago, Illinois and 20 other rail centers. "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago," he thundered, "that card will be delivered." Most governors supported Cleveland except Democrat John P. Altgeld of Illinois, who became his bitter foe in 1896.

Cleveland's agrarian and silverite enemies seized control of the Democratic party in 1896, repudiated his administration and the gold standard, and nominated William Jennings Bryan on a Silver Platform. Cleveland silently supported the National Democratic Party (United States) (or "Gold Democratic") third party ticket that promised to defend the gold standard, limit government, and oppose protectionism. The party won only 100,000 votes in the general election (just over 1 percent). Agrarians again nominated Bryan in 1900, but in 1904 the conservatives, with Cleveland's support, regained control of the Democratic Party and nominated Alton B. Parker.

Typewriters were new in 1893, and this cartoon shows Cleveland as unable to work the Democratic Party machine without jamming the keys (the key politicians in his party)

Foreign affairs

Invoking the Monroe Doctrine in 1895, Cleveland forced Britain to agree to arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela. His administration is credited with the modernization of the United States Navy that allowed the U.S. to decisively win the Spanish-American War in 1898, one year after he left office.

In 1893, Cleveland sent former Congressman James Henderson Blount to Hawaii to investigate the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the establishment of a provisional government. He initially supported Blount's scathing report which blamed the U.S. for the overthrow; called for the restoration of Liliuokalani; and withdrew from the Senate the treaty of annexation of Hawaii. When the deposed Queen refused to grant amnesty as a condition of her reinstatement, and said she would execute the current government in Honolulu, Cleveland referred the matter to Congress. The Senate then produced the Morgan Report, which completely contradicted Blount's findings and found the overthrow was a completely internal affair. Following the Turpie Resolution of May 31, 1894, which vowed a policy of non-interference in Hawaiian affairs, Cleveland dropped all support for reinstating the Queen, and further went on to officially recognize and maintain diplomatic relations with the Republic of Hawaii declared on July 4, 1894.

Women's rights

Cleveland was a stout opponent of the women's suffrage (voting) movement. In a 1905 article in The Ladies Home Journal, Cleveland wrote, "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence.

Cancer

After Cleveland began his second term in 1893, Doctor R.M. O'Reilly found an ulcerated sore a little less than one inch (24 mm) in diameter on the left lingual surface of Cleveland's hard palate. Initial biopsies were inconclusive; later the samples were proven to be a malignant cancer. Because of the financial depression of the country, Cleveland decided to have surgery performed on the tumor in secrecy to avoid further market panic. The surgery occurred on July 1, to give Cleveland time to make a full recovery in time for an August 7 address to Congress, which had recessed at the end of June.

Under the guise of a vacation cruise, Cleveland, accompanied by lead surgeon Dr. Joseph Bryant, left for New York. Bryant, joined by his assistants Dr. John F. Erdmann, Dr. W.W. Keen Jr., Dr. Ferdinand Hasbrouck (dentist and anesthesiologist), and Dr. Edward Janeway, operated aboard E. C. Benedict's yacht Oneida as it sailed off Long Island. The surgery was conducted through the President's mouth, to avoid any scars or other signs of surgery. The team, sedating Cleveland with nitrous oxide (laughing gas), removed his upper left jaw and portions of his hard palate. The size of the tumor and the extent of the operation left Cleveland's mouth severely disfigured. During another surgery, an orthodontist fitted Cleveland with a hard rubber prosthesis that corrected his speech and covered up the surgery.

A cover story about the removal of two bad teeth kept the suspicious press somewhat placated. Even when a newspaper story appeared giving details of the actual operation, the participating surgeons discounted the severity of what transpired during Cleveland's vacation. In 1917, one of the surgeons present on the Oneida (Dr. W.W. Keen, Jr.) wrote an article detailing the operation. The lump was preserved and is on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The final diagnosis was verrucous carcinoma and the president was cured by the surgical excision.

Later life and death

Oil painting of Grover Cleveland, painted in 1899 by Anders Zorn.

After leaving the White House, Cleveland lived in retirement at his estate, Westland Mansion, in Princeton, New Jersey. For a time he was a trustee of Princeton University, bringing him into opposition to the school's president, Woodrow Wilson. Conservative Democrats hoped to nominate him for another presidential term in 1904, but his age and health forced them to turn to other candidates. Cleveland consulted occasionally with President Theodore Roosevelt, with whom he had constructively worked while Governor of New York decades before.

The former president had been scheduled to be the Chairman and Master of Ceremonies for Robert Fulton Day on September 24, 1907 at the Jamestown Exposition at Sewell's Point on Hampton Roads, Virginia. However, ill-health forced him to cancel, and his role was filled by humorist Mark Twain.

Cleveland died in 1908 from a heart attack with his wife at his side. He is buried in the Princeton Cemetery of the Nassau Presbyterian Church.

Honors and memorials

Cleveland on the $1000 bill

Cleveland's portrait was on the U.S. $1000 bill from 1928 to 1946. He also appeared on a $1000 bill of 1907 and the first few issues of the $20 Federal Reserve notes from 1914.

Since he was both the 22nd and 24th President, he will be featured on two separate dollar coins to be released in 2012 as part of the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.

In 2006, Free New York, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research group, began raising funds to purchase the former Fairfield Library in Buffalo, New York and transform it into the Grover Cleveland Presidential Library & Museum

Chester A. Arthur

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Chester Alan Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886) was an American politician who served as the twenty-first President of the United States. Arthur was a member of the Republican Party and worked as a lawyer before becoming the twentieth vice president under James Garfield. While Garfield was mortally wounded by Charles Guiteau on July 2, 1881, he did not die until September 19, at which time Arthur was sworn in as president, serving until March 4, 1885.

Before entering politics, Arthur was a member of the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party and a political protégé of Roscoe Conkling, rising to Collector of Customs for the Port of New York. He was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant but was fired by the succeeding Rutherford B. Hayes under suspicion of bribery and corruption.

To the indignation of the Stalwarts, the onetime Collector of the Port of New York became, as President, a champion of civil service reform. Avoiding old political cronies and alienating his old mentor Conkling, public pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, forced an unwieldy Congress to heed the President. Arthur's primary achievement was the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. The passage of this legislation earned Arthur the moniker "The Father of Civil Service" and a very favorable reputation among historians.

Publisher Alexander K. McClure wrote, "No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired… more generally respected." Author Mark Twain, deeply cynical about politicians, conceded, "It would be hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration."

Early life and education

Chester A. Arthur
October 5, 1829 - November 18, 1886

Place of birth	Fairfield, Vermont
Place of death	New York, New York
Allegiance	New York State militia
Rank	Brigadier General, Quartermaster General
Commands	Quartermaster Service in the New York State
Battles/wars	Civil War
Other work	U.S. Vice President (1881), U.S. President (1881-1885)

Arthur was supposedly born in the town of Fairfield in Franklin County, Vermont (even though no birth record has ever been found in the US) on October 5, 1829, although he sometimes claimed to be born in 1830 (even his grave inscription says the latter). His parents were William Arthur and Malvina Stone. His father was an Irish immigrant who had initially migrated to Dunham, Québec, Canada where he and his wife bought a farm, located about 80 miles (129 km) north of the Vermont, US border. Arthur never publicly admitted to either country of his birth and there remains much speculation that he was born a British/Canadian subject and not an American. During his lifetime, political rivals circulated the rumor that he was born across the International Boundary in Canada, which if true would have barred him from serving as the President of the United States for failure to meet the eligibility requirements outlined in Article II Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution, providing that the President must be a natural born US citizen. Arthur never provided any credible proof of his origins and never admitted to anything.

Arthur spent some of his childhood years living in Perry, New York. One of Arthur's boyhood friends remembers Arthur's political abilities emerging at an early age:

When Chester was a boy, you might see him in the village street after a shower, watching the boys building a mud dam across the rivulet in the roadway. Pretty soon, he would be ordering this one to bring stones, another sticks, and others sod and mud to finish the dam; and they would all do his bidding without question. But he took good care not to get any of the dirt on his hands. (New York Evening Post, April 2, 1900)

Chester Arthur's Presidency was predicted by James Russel Webster originally of Perry, New York and then later of Waterloo, New York. A detailed account of this is written here in a self written memorial for James Russel Webster ^[1]. An excerpt from Webster's memorial;

Chester Alan Arthur (c. 1859)

"He first attended the Baptist church in Perry, the pastor there being "Elder Arthur," father of Chester A. Arthur. The latter was then a little boy, and Mr. Webster, once calling at his house, put upon his head of the lad, remarked, "this little boy may yet be President of the United States." Years after, calling at the White House, he related the circumstances to President Arthur, who replied that he well remembered the incident although the name of the man who thus predicted his future had long since passed from his memory; then standing up he added. "You may place your hand upon my head again."

Arthur attended public schools and later attended Union College in Schenectady, New York. There he became a member of Psi Upsilon, North America's fifth oldest college fraternity, and graduated in 1848.

Pre-political career

Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur

Arthur became principal of North Pownal Academy in North Pownal, Vermont in 1851. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1854. Arthur commenced practice in New York City, where he supported equal rights for blacks who objected to the racial segregation of city transportation. He also took an active part in the reorganization of the state militia.

Arthur married Ellen "Nell" Lewis Herndon^[2] on October 25, 1859. She was the only child of Elizabeth Hansbrough and Captain William Lewis Herndon USN. She was a favorite niece of Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, USN of the United States Naval Observatory where her father had worked.

In 1860, Chester Arthur and "Nell" had a son, William Lewis Herndon Arthur, who was named after Ellen's father. This son died at age two of a brain disease. Another son, Chester Alan Arthur II, was born in 1864, and a girl, named Ellen Hansbrough Herndon after her mother, in 1871. Ellen "Nell" Arthur died of pneumonia on January 12, 1880, at the early age of 42, only twenty months before Arthur became President. While in the White House, Arthur would not give anyone the place that would have been his wife's. He asked his sister Mary, the wife of writer John E. McElroy, to assume certain social duties and help care for his daughter. President Arthur also had a memorial to his beloved "Nell"—a stained glass window was installed in St. John's Episcopal Church within view of his office and had the church light it at night so he could look at it. The memorial remains to this day.

During the American Civil War, Arthur served as acting quartermaster general of the state in 1861 and was widely praised for his service. He was later commissioned as inspector general, and appointed quartermaster general with the rank of brigadier general and served until 1862. After the war, he resumed the practice of law in New York City. With the help of Arthur's patron and political boss Roscoe Conkling, Arthur was appointed by President Ulysses Grant as Collector of the Port of New York from 1871 to 1878.

This was an extremely lucrative and powerful position at the time, and several of Arthur's predecessors had run afoul of the law while serving as collector. Honorable in his personal life and his public career, Arthur sided with the Stalwarts in the Republican Party, which firmly believed in the spoils system even as it was coming under vehement attack from reformers. He insisted upon honest administration of the Customs House but nevertheless staffed it with more employees than it really needed, retaining some for their loyalty as party workers rather than for their skill as public servants.

The 1880 election and vice presidency

uccessor, Rutherford Hayes, attempted to reform the Customs House. He ousted Arthur, who resumed the practice of law in New York City. Conkling and his followers tried to win back power by the nomination of Grant for a third term at the 1880 Republican National Convention, but without success. Grant and James G. Blaine deadlocked, and after 36 ballots, the convention turned to dark horse James A. Garfield, a long time Congressman and General in the Civil War.

Knowing the election would be close, Garfield's people began asking a number of Stalwarts if they would accept the second spot. Levi P. Morton, on Conkling's advice, refused, but Arthur accepted, telling his furious leader, "This is a higher honor than I have ever dreamt of attaining. I shall accept!" ^[3] Conkling and his Stalwart supporters reluctantly accepted the nomination of Arthur as vice president.

Arthur worked hard raising money for his and Garfield's election, but it was still a close contest, with the Garfield-Arthur ticket receiving a nationwide plurality of less than ten thousand votes.

After the election, Conkling began making demands of Garfield as to appointments, and the Vice President-elect supported his longtime patron against his new boss. According to Ira Rutkow's recent biography of Garfield, the new President quickly grew to hate Arthur, and wouldn't even let him into the White House.

On the threshold of office, what have we to expect of him?
In an 1881 Puck cartoon, Vice President Arthur faces the presidential cabinet after President James A. Garfield was fatally wounded by assassin Charles J. Guiteau. On the wall hang three portraits of (left to right) Andrew Johnson, Millard Fillmore and John Tyler, three other presidents who succeeded to the presidency. A fourth frame hangs next to Johnson with no picture and a question mark underneath meant for Arthur's portrait.

After a nasty political battle between Garfield and Conkling which resulted in the latter's resigation, Arthur went back to New York City to wait out the time before Congress resumed in December. Then, on July 2, 1881, President Garfield was shot in the back by Charles J. Guiteau, who shouted: "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts... Arthur is president now!!" Arthur, who knew nothing of this in advance, was mortified. (Madmen and Geniuses, Barzman, 1974)

The eighty day crisis

Arthur was cautious; he knew that there were a great number of people who thought that he had something to do with the attempted murder of the President, and didn't want anything to do with succession until it was actually necessary; in fact, he went into seclusion, largely confining himself to his house in New York City and avoiding public appearances. Thus, for two months and 18 days, the country drifted, leaderless, hanging on every reported detail of Garfield's health without much attention to the business of government. On September 19, Garfield died and Arthur succeeded to the Presidency.

Presidency 1881-1885

Assumption of office

Arthur being administered the oath of office as President by Judge John R. Brady at his home in New York City after President Garfield's death, September 20, 1881.

President Arthur took the oath of office twice. The first time was just past midnight at his Lexington Avenue residence on September 20th by New York Supreme Court justice John R. Brady; the second time was upon his return to Washington two days later.

Policies

Arthur was aware of the factions and rivalries of the Republican Party, as well as the controversies of cronyism versus civil service reform. Entering the presidency under suspicion of conspiring to assassinate his predecessor, Arthur believed that the only way to garner the nation's approval — and to heal the breaches in American politics that had killed a President — was to be independent from both factions. Arthur determined to go his own way once in the White House.

He became a man of fashion in his manner of dress and in his associates; he was often seen with the elite of Washington, D.C., New York, and Newport. To the indignation of the Stalwarts, the onetime Collector of the Port of New York became, as President, a champion of civil service reform. Avoiding old political cronies and alienating his old mentor Conkling, public pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, forced an unwieldy Congress to heed the President.

In 1883, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission which stopped big businesses from giving out rebates and pooling with other companies, forbade levying political assessments against officeholders, and provided for a "classified system" that made certain government positions obtainable only through competitive written examinations. The system protected employees against removal for political reasons.

Chester A. Arthur official White House portrait

Acting independently of party dogma, Arthur also tried to lower tariff rates so the government would not be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue. Congress raised about as many rates as it trimmed, but Arthur signed the Tariff Act of 1883 anyway. Aggrieved Westerners and Southerners looked to the Democratic Party for redress, and the tariff began to emerge as a major political issue between the two parties.

The Arthur Administration enacted the first general Federal immigration law. Arthur approved a measure in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals, and the mentally ill. Congress also suspended Chinese immigration for ten years with the Chinese Exclusion Act, later making the restriction permanent.

In 1884, the International Meridian Conference was held in Washington at President Arthur's behest. This established the Greenwich Meridian which is still in use today.

President Arthur demonstrated that he was above not only factions within the Republican Party, but possibly the party itself. Perhaps, in part, he felt able to do this because of the well-kept secret he had known since a year after he succeeded to the Presidency, that he was suffering from Bright's Disease, a fatal kidney disease. This accounted for his failure to aggressively seek the Republican nomination for President in 1884. Nevertheless, Arthur was the last incumbent President to submit his name for renomination and fail to obtain it. Arthur sought a full term as President in 1884, but lost the Republican party's presidential nomination to former Speaker of the House and Secretary of State James G. Blaine of Maine. Blaine, however, lost the election to Democrat Grover Cleveland of New York.

Social and personal life

Arthur is remembered as one of the most society-conscious presidents, earning the nickname "the Gentleman Boss" for his style of dress and courtly manner. Professors Marina Margaret Heiss at the University of Viriginia lists Arthur as an example of an INTJ personality.^[4]

Upon taking office, Arthur did not move into the White House immediately. He insisted upon its redecoration and had 24 wagonloads of furniture, some including pieces dating back to John Adams' term, carted away and sold at public auction. Former president Rutherford B. Hayes bought two wagonloads of furniture which today are at his home Spiegel Grove. Arthur then commissioned Louis Comfort Tiffany to replace them with new pieces. A famous designer now best-known for his stained glass, Tiffany was among the foremost designers of the day.^[5]

Arthur was a fisherman who belonged to the Restigouche Salmon Club and once reportedly caught an 80-pound bass off the coast of Rhode Island.

Widely popular by the end of his presidency, four young women (ignorant of Arthur's pronouncement that he would never marry again) proposed to him on the day he left office. He was sometimes called "Elegant Arthur" for his commitment to fashionable attire and was said to have "looked like a president." He reportedly kept 80 pairs of pants in his wardrobe and changed pants several times a day. He was called "Chet" by family and friends, and by his middle name, with the stress on the second syllable ("Al-AN").

Post presidency

Arthur's grave at Albany Rural Cemetery.

Arthur served as President through March 4, 1885. Upon leaving office, he returned to New York City, where he died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at 5:10 a.m. on Thursday, November 18, 1886, at the age of 57. Arthur suffered from Bright's disease, and his death was most likely related to a history of hypertension.

His post presidency was the second shortest, longer only than that of James Polk (excluding presidents who died in office).

Chester was buried next to Ellen in the Arthur family plot in the Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York, in a large sarcophagus on a large corner plot that contains the graves of many of his family members and ancestors.

James A. Garfield

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James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831–September 19, 1881) was a major general in the United States Army, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the twentieth President of the United States. He was the second U.S. President to be assassinated — Abraham Lincoln was the first. Garfield had the second shortest presidency in U.S. history, after William Henry Harrison's. In office for six months and fifteen days, President Garfield, a Republican, actually served for less than four months before being fatally shot on July 2, 1881

Early life

Garfield at age 16

Garfield was born in Orange Township, now Moreland Hills, Ohio. His father died in 1833, when James Abram was two years old; he was brought up and cared for by his mother, a brother, and an uncle.^[1] In Orange Township, Garfield attended school, a predecessor of the Orange City Schools. From 1851 to 1854, he attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later named Hiram College) in Hiram, Ohio. He then transferred to Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he was a brother of Delta Upsilon fraternity. He graduated in 1856 as an outstanding student who enjoyed all subjects except chemistry. Garfield ruled out becoming a preacher and considered a job as principal of a high school in Poestenkill, New York.^[2] After losing that job to another applicant, he taught at the Eclectic Institute. Garfield was an instructor in classical languages for the 1856–1857 academic year, and was made principal of the Institute from 1857 to 1860.

On November 11, 1858, he married Lucretia Rudolph. They had seven children (five sons and two daughters): Eliza Arbella Garfield (1860–63); Harry Augustus Garfield (1863–1942); James Rudolph Garfield (1865–1950); Mary Garfield (1867–1947); Irvin M. Garfield (1870–1951); Abram Garfield (1872–1958); and Edward Garfield (1874–76). One son, James R. Garfield, followed him into politics and became Secretary of the Interior under President Theodore Roosevelt.

Birthplace of James Garfield

Garfield decided that the academic life was not for him and studied law privately. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1860. Even before admission to the bar, he entered politics. He was elected an Ohio state senator in 1859, serving until 1861. He was a Republican all his political life.

Military career

James Abram Garfield
November 19, 1831 - September 19, 1881
General James A. Garfield
Place of birth	Moreland Hills, Ohio
Place of death	Long Branch, New Jersey
Allegiance	United States of America
Years of service	1861 - 1863
Rank	Major General
Commands	42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry 20th Brigade, 6th Division, Army of the Ohio
Battles/wars	American Civil War Battle of Shiloh Siege of Corinth *Battle of Chickamauga
Other work	U.S. Representative from Ohio, 20th President of the United States

With the start of the Civil War, Garfield enlisted in the Union Army, and was assigned to command the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. General Don Carlos Buell assigned Colonel Garfield the task of driving Confederate forces out of eastern Kentucky in November 1861, giving him the 18th Brigade for the campaign. In December, he departed Catlettsburg, Kentucky, with the 40th and 42nd Ohio and the 14th and 22nd Kentucky infantry regiments, as well as the 2nd (West) Virginia Cavalry and McLoughlin's Squadron of Cavalry. The march was uneventful until Union forces reached Paintsville, Kentucky, where Garfield's cavalry engaged the Confederate cavalry at Jenny's Creek on January 6, 1862. The Confederates, under Brig. Gen. Humphrey Marshall, withdrew to the forks of Middle Creek, two miles (3 km) from Prestonsburg, Kentucky, on the road to Virginia. Garfield attacked on January 9. At the end of the day's fighting, the Confederates withdrew from the field, but Garfield did not pursue them. He ordered a withdrawal to Prestonsburg so he could resupply his men. His victory brought him early recognition and a promotion to the rank of brigadier general on January 11.

Garfield served as a brigade commander under Buell at the Battle of Shiloh and under Thomas J. Wood in the subsequent Siege of Corinth. His health deteriorated and he was inactive until autumn, when he served on the commission investigating the conduct of Fitz John Porter. In the spring of 1863, Garfield returned to the field as Chief of Staff for William S. Rosecrans, commander of the Army of the Cumberland.

Later political career

Ohio".

In 1863, he re-entered politics, being elected to the United States House of Representatives for the 38th Congress. Garfield was promoted to major general after the Battle of Chickamauga, shortly after he had been elected. He left the army and returned to Ohio to take his seat in Congress. He succeeded in gaining re-election every two years up through 1878. In the House during the Civil War and the following Reconstruction era, he was one of the most hawkish Republicans. In 1872, he was one of many congressman involved in the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal. Garfield denied the charges against him and it did not put too much of a strain on his political career since the actual impact of the scandal was difficult to determine. In 1876, when James G. Blaine moved from the House to the United States Senate, Garfield became the Republican floor leader of the House.

In 1876, Garfield was a Republican member of the Electoral Commission that awarded 22 hotly-contested electoral votes to Rutherford B. Hayes in his contest for the Presidency against Samuel J. Tilden. That year, he also purchased the property in Mentor that reporters later dubbed Lawnfield, and from which he would go on to conduct the first successful front porch campaign for the Presidency. The home is now maintained by the National Park Service as the James A. Garfield National Historic Site.

Election of 1880

Main article: 1880 Republican National Convention

Main article: United States presidential election, 1880

In 1880, Garfield's life underwent tremendous change with the publication of the Morey letter, and the end of Democratic U.S. Senator Allen Granberry Thurman's term. The Ohio legislature, which had recently again come under Republican control, chose Garfield to fill Thurman's seat. However, at the Republican National Convention Garfield gained support for the party's Presidential nomination, and on the 36th ballot Garfield was nominated, with virtually all of Blaine's and John Sherman's delegates breaking ranks to vote for the dark horse nominee. Ironically, the U.S. Senate seat to which Garfield had been chosen ultimately went to Sherman, whose Presidential candidacy Garfield had gone to the convention to support.

In the general election, Garfield defeated the Democratic candidate Winfield Scott Hancock, another distinguished former Union Army general, by 214 electoral votes to 155. (The popular vote had a plurality of 9,464 votes out of more than nine million cast; see U.S. presidential election, 1880.) He became the only man ever to be elected to the Presidency straight from the House of Representatives. Garfield took office on March 4, 1881.

Between his election and his inauguration, Garfield was occupied with constructing a cabinet that would balance all Republican factions. Blaine was rewarded with the State Department. William Windom of Minnesota was named secretary of the Treasury. The Navy Department was headed by William H. Hunt of Louisiana; the War Department by Robert Todd Lincoln; and the Interior Department by Iowa's Samuel J. Kirkwood. Wayne MacVeagh of Pennsylvania was asked to be Attorney General, and New York was represented by Postmaster General Thomas Lemuel James. This last appointment infuriated Garfield's Stalwart rival Roscoe Conkling, who demanded nothing less for his faction and his state than the Treasury Department. He was so insulted that he, in effect, declared war on the administration.

This unedifying squabble would consume the energies of the brief Garfield presidency. It overshadowed promising activities such as Blaine's efforts to build closer ties with Latin America, Postmaster General James's investigation of the "star route" postal frauds, and Windom's successful refinancing of the federal debt.

The feud with Conkling reached a climax when the President, at Blaine's instigation, nominated Conkling's enemy, Judge William H. Robertson, to be collector of the port of New York. Conkling raised the time-honored principle of senatorial courtesy in attempting to defeat the nomination but to no avail. Finally he and his junior colleague, Thomas C. Platt, resigned their Senate seats to seek vindication, but they found only further humiliation. Garfield's victory was complete. He had routed his foes, weakened the principle of senatorial courtesy, and revitalized the presidential office.^[3]

Supreme Court appointments

Thomas Stanley Matthews – 1881

Assassination

President Garfield and family

Garfield had little time to savor his triumph. He was shot by Charles Julius Guiteau, disgruntled by failed efforts to secure a federal post, on July 2, 1881, at 9:30 a.m., less than four months after taking office. The President had been walking through the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad (a predecessor of the Pennsylvania Railroad) Washington, D.C., on his way to his alma mater, Williams College, where he was scheduled to deliver a speech, accompanied by Secretary of State James G. Blaine, Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln and two of his sons, James and Harry. The station was located on the southwest corner of present day Sixth Street Northwest and Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., a site that is now occupied by the National Gallery of Art. As he was being arrested after the shooting, Guiteau excitedly said, "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! I did it and I want to be arrested! Arthur is President now," which briefly led to unfounded suspicions that Arthur or his supporters had put Guiteau up to the crime. (The Stalwarts strongly opposed Garfield's Half-Breeds; like many Vice Presidents, Arthur was chosen for political advantage, to placate his faction, rather than for skills or loyalty to his running-mate.) Guiteau was upset because of the rejection of his repeated attempts to be appointed as the United States consul in Paris—a position for which he had absolutely no qualifications. Garfield's assassination was instrumental to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act on January 16, 1883.

President Garfield with James G. Blaine after being shot by Charles Guiteau, as depicted in a period engraving from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper^[4]^[5]

One bullet grazed Garfield's arm; the second bullet lodged in his spine and could not be found, although scientists today think that the bullet was near his lung. Alexander Graham Bell devised a metal detector specifically for the purpose of finding the bullet, but the metal bed frame Garfield was lying on made the instrument malfunction. Because metal bed frames were relatively rare, the cause of the instrument's deviation was unknown at the time. Garfield became increasingly ill over a period of several weeks due to infection, which caused his heart to weaken. He remained bedridden in the White House with fevers and extreme pains. In early September, the ailing President was moved to the Jersey Shore in the vain hope that the fresh air and quiet there might aid his recovery. He died of a massive heart attack or a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm, following blood poisoning and bronchial pneumonia, at 10:35 p.m. on Monday, September 19, 1881, in the Elberon section of Long Branch, New Jersey. The wounded president died exactly two months before his 50th birthday. During the eighty days between his shooting and death, his only official act was to sign an extradition paper.

Most historians and medical experts now believe that Garfield probably would have survived his wound had the doctors attending him been more capable.^[6] Several inserted their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, and one doctor punctured Garfield's liver in doing so. This alone would not have brought about death as the liver is one of the few organs in the human body that can regenerate itself. However, this physician probably introduced Streptococcus bacteria into the President's body and that caused blood poisoning for which at that time there were no antibiotics.

President Garfield's casket lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda.

Guiteau was found guilty of assassinating Garfield, despite his lawyers raising an insanity defense. He insisted that incompetent medical care had really killed the President. Although historians generally agree that poor medical care was a contributing factor, it was not a legal defense. Guiteau was sentenced to death, and was executed by hanging on June 30, 1882, in Washington, D.C.

Garfield was buried, with great and solemn ceremony, in a mausoleum in Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio. The monument is decorated with five terra cotta bas relief panels by sculptor Caspar Buberl, depicting various stages in Garfield's life. In 1887, the James A. Garfield Monument was dedicated in Washington, D.C.

At the time of his death, Garfield was survived by his mother. He is one of only three presidents to have predeceased their mothers.^{[citation needed]}

Trivia

Garfield and fellow Ohio President Rutherford B. Hayes both served on the first board of trustees of Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) following the school's move from Hudson, Ohio to Cleveland.^{[citation needed]}
Garfield was a minister and an elder for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), making him the first—and to date, only—member of the clergy to serve as President. ^[7] He is also claimed as a member of the Church of Christ, as the different branches did not split until the 20th century. Garfield preached his first sermon in Poestenkill, New York.^[8] When Garfield relinquished his Eldership, it is said that he stated, "I resign the highest office in the land to become President of the United States."^{[citation needed]}

Garfield Monument at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio.
Garfield was a member of the Delta Upsilon International Fraternity.^[9]
Garfield is the only person in US history to be a Representative, Senator-elect, and President-elect at the same time. To date, he is the only Representative to be directly elected President of the United States.
In 1876, Garfield discovered a novel proof of the Pythagorean Theorem using a trapezoid while serving as a member of the House of Representatives.^[10]
Garfield was the first ambidextrous president. It was said that one could ask him a question in English and he could simultaneously write the answer in Latin with one hand, and Ancient Greek with the other.^[11]
In the famous drawing of Guiteau shooting Garfield, it is believed that the color of their suits at the time was reversed. ^{[citation needed]}
The assassination is also mentioned in the Johnny Cash tune, "Mister Garfield (Has Been Shot Down)" according to the album sleeve written by J. Elliot, released in 1965 by Columbia Records, and re-recorded for the 1972 album America - A 200 Year Salute in Story And Song, as well in the song "Charles Guiteau" by Kelly Harrell & the Virginia String Band as included in the Anthology of American Folk Music.
In the 1992 film Unforgiven, set in 1881, the character English Bob mocks his (American) fellow travelers for the murder of President Garfield, comparing the republican system of government unfavorably with the monarchical. "If you were to try to assassinate a king, sir, the, how shall I say it, the majesty of royalty would cause you to miss. But, a President, I mean, why not shoot a President?"
Garfield was assassinated only months after Czar Alexander II of Russia was assassinated.
Robert Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, was a witness to Garfield's assassination.^[12]
Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins includes the story of Charles J. Guiteau and his assassination of Garfield and features a song, "The Ballad of Guiteau."

Garfield Monument in Washington, D.C.
Part of Charles Guiteau's preserved brain is on display at the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.^[13] Guiteau's bones and more of his brain, along with Garfield's backbone and a couple ribs, are kept at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. on the grounds of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.^[14]
Garfield was a direct descendant of Mayflower passenger John Billington through his son Francis, another Mayflower passenger.^[15] John Billington was convicted of murder at Plymouth Mass. 1630.^[16]
Garfield juggled Indian clubs to build his muscles.^[17]
James Garfield was featured on series 1882 $5 National Currency notes,^{[citation needed]} and the series 1886 $20 Gold Certificate.^[18] Both of these currency notes are considered to be of moderate rarity, and are quite valuable to collectors.
Garfield has a street in Brooklyn a suburb in Wellington, New Zealand named after him - Garfield Street. ^{[citation needed]}
Garfield was related to Owen Tudor, and both were descendents of Rhys ap Tewdwr.^[19]^{[verification needed]}
The Spaghetti Western The Price of Power (1969) features Van Johnson as Garfield, and his assassination figures prominently in the film's plot; however, the setting of the assassination is relocated to Dallas, and the killing itself is clearly modeled after the Kennedy Assassination of 1963.

Rutherford B. Hayes

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Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was an American politician, lawyer, military leader and the nineteenth President of the United States (1877–1881). Hayes was elected President by one electoral vote after the highly disputed election of 1876, when he lost the popular vote to his opponent, Samuel Tilden.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was an American politician, lawyer, military leader and the nineteenth President of the United States (1877–1881). Hayes was elected President by one electoral vote after the highly disputed election of 1876, when he lost the popular vote to his opponent, Samuel Tilden.

Early life

Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on October 4, 1822. His parents were Rutherford Hayes (January 4, 1787 Brattleboro, Vermont–July 20, 1822 Delaware, Ohio) and Sophia Birchard (April 15, 1792 Wilmington, Vermont–October 30, 1866 Columbus, Ohio). His father died three months before his birth and an uncle, Sardis Birchard, lived with the family and served as Hayes's guardian. Birchard was close to him throughout his life and became a father figure to him.

Hayes attended the common schools and the Methodist Academy in Norwalk. He graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio in August 1842 at the top of his class and after briefly reading the law in Columbus graduated in 2 years from Harvard Law School in January 1845. He was admitted to the bar on May 10, 1845, and commenced practice in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont). After dissolving the partnership in Fremont in 1849, he moved to Cincinnati and resumed the practice of law.

Rutherford and Lucy Hayes on their wedding day, December 30, 1852.

On December 30, 1852, Hayes married Lucy Ware Webb. In 1856, he was nominated for but declined a municipal judgeship, but in 1858 accepted appointment as Cincinnati city solicitor by the city council and won election outright to that position in 1859, losing a reelection bid in 1860.

Military service

Upon moving to Cincinnati Hayes had become a member of a prominent social organization, the Cincinnati Literary Club, whose members included Salmon P. Chase and Edward Noyes among others, and upon outbreak of the Civil War the Literary Club formed a military company. Appointed a Major in the Twenty-third Ohio Regiment by Ohio Governor William Dennison, he originally served as regimental judge-advocate but then was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and proved competent enough at field command that by August 1862 he had been promoted to Colonel and soon after received command of his original regiment after being wounded in action.

Breveted to Brigadier General in December 1862, he commanded the First Brigade of the Kanawha Division of the Army of West Virginia and turned back several raids. In 1864, Hayes showed particular gallantry in spearheading a frontal assault and temporarily taking command from George Crook at the savage Battle of Cloyd's Mountain and continued with Crook on to Charleston. Hayes continued commanding his Brigade during the Valley Campaigns of 1864, participating in such major battles as the Battle of Opequon, the Battle of Fisher's Hill, and the Battle of Cedar Creek. At the end of the Shenandoah campaign, Hayes was promoted to Brigadier General in October 1864 and breveted Major General. Hayes had been wounded three more times and had four horses shot from under him during his campaigning.^[1]

Rutherford Birchard Hayes
October 4, 1822 - January 17, 1893
General Rutherford B. Hayes
Place of birth	Delaware, Ohio, U.S.
Place of death	Fremont, Ohio, U.S.
Allegiance	United States of America
Years of service	1861 - 1865
Rank	Brevet Major General
Battles/wars	American Civil War *Valley Campaigns of 1864
Other work	U.S. Representative from Ohio, 29th and 32nd Governor of Ohio, 19th President of the United States

Political service

Hayes began political life as a Whig but in 1853 joined the Free Soil party as a delegate nominating Salmon P. Chase for Governor of Ohio.

While still in the Shenandoah in 1864, Hayes received the Republican nomination to Congress from Cincinnati. Hayes refused to campaign, stating "I have other business just now. Any man who would leave the army at this time to electioneer for Congress ought to be scalped." Despite this, Hayes was elected and served in the Thirty-ninth and again to the Fortieth Congresses and served from March 4, 1865, to July 20, 1867, when he resigned, having been nominated for Governor of Ohio. Through the powerful voice of his friend and Civil War subordinate James M. Comly's Ohio State Journal (one of the state's most influential newspapers), Hayes won the election and served as governor from 1868 to 1872. He was an unsuccessful candidate in 1872 for election to the Forty-third Congress, and had planned to retire from public life but was drafted by the Republican convention in 1875 to run for governor again and served from January 1876 to March 2, 1877. Hayes received national notice for leading a Republican sweep of a previously Democratic Ohio government.

Election of 1876

Main article: United States presidential election, 1876

Presidential electoral votes by state

A dark horse nominee (James G. Blaine had led the previous six ballots) by his convention, Hayes became president after the tumultuous, scandal-ridden years of the Grant administration. He had a reputation for honesty dating back to his Civil War years. Hayes was quite famous for his ability not to offend anyone. Henry Adams, a prominent political journalist and Washington insider, asserted that Hayes was "a third rate nonentity, whose only recommendation is that he is obnoxious to no one." Nevertheless, his opponent in the presidential election, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, was the favorite to win the presidential election and, in fact, won the popular vote by about 250,000 votes (with about 8.5 million voters in total).

Hayes/Wheeler campaign poster

Four states' electoral college votes were contested. In order to win, the candidates had to muster 185 votes: Tilden was short just one, with 184 votes, Hayes had 165, with 20 votes representing the four states which were contested. To make matters worse, three of these states (Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina) were in the South, which was still under military occupation (the fourth was Oregon). Additionally, historians note, the election was not fair because of the improper fraud and intimidation perpetrated from both sides. A popular phrase of the day called it an election without "a free ballot and a fair count." For the next four years, Democrats would refer to Hayes as "Rutherfraud B. Hayes" for his allegedly illegitimate election, as he had lost the popular vote by roughly 250,000 votes.

To peacefully decide the results of the election, the two houses of Congress set up the Electoral Commission to investigate and decide upon the actual winner. The commission constituted 15 members: five from the House, five from the Senate and five from the Supreme Court. Additionally, the Commission was bi-partisan consisting of 7 Democrats, 7 Republicans and a "swing" vote in Joseph P. Bradley, a Supreme Court Justice. Bradley, however, was a Republican at heart and thus the ruling followed party lines: 8 to 7 voted for Hayes winning in all of the contested 20 electoral votes.

Key Ohio Republicans like James A. Garfield and the Democrats, however, agreed at a Washington hotel on the Wormley House Agreement. Southern Democrats were given assurances, in the Compromise of 1877, that if Hayes became president, he would pull federal troops out of the South and end Reconstruction. An agreement was made between them and the Republicans: if Hayes's cabinet consisted of at least one Southerner and he withdrew all Union troops from the South, then he would become President.

Presidency 1877–1881

Inauguration of Rutherford B. Hayes, March 5, 1877.

Because March 4, 1877 was a Sunday, Hayes took the oath of office in the Red Room of the White House on March 3. This ceremony was held in secret, because the previous year's election had been so bitterly divisive that outgoing President Grant feared an insurrection by Tilden's supporters and wanted to ensure that any Democratic attempt to hijack the public inauguration ceremony would be for naught (since Hayes had already been sworn in privately). Hayes took the oath again publicly on March 5 on the East Portico of the United States Capitol, and served until March 4, 1881.

Domestic policy

Hayes kicking Chester A. Arthur out of the New York Customs House.

When Congress sent him the bills complete with amendments overturning civil rights enforcement, Hayes vetoed them four times before finally signing one that satisfied his requirement for black rights. However, his subsequent attempts to reconcile with his Southern Democrat opposition by handing them prestigious civil service appointments both alienated fellow Republicans and undermined his own previous attempts at civil service reform.

Hayes' most controversial domestic act apart from ending Reconstruction came with his response to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, in which employees of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad walked off the job and were joined across the country by thousands of workers in their own and sympathetic industries. When the labor disputes exploded into riots in several cities, Hayes called in federal troops, who, for the first time in U.S. history, fired on the striking workers, killing over 70. Although the troops did ultimately restore the peace, both the working class and the industrialists were displeased with their intervention. Workers feared that the Federal government had turned permanently against them, while industrialists feared that such brutal action would spark revolution, along the lines of the European Revolutions of 1848.

Left
An 1881 Puck cartoon show James A. Garfield, Hayes' successor in the presidency, finding a baby at his front door with a tag marked "Civil Service Reform, compliments of R.B. Hayes". Hayes is seen in the background dressed like a woman and holding a bag marked "R.B. Hayes' savings, Fremont, Ohio".

Foreign policy

In 1878, Hayes was asked by Argentina to act as arbitrator following the War of the Triple Alliance between Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay against Paraguay. The Argentines hoped that Hayes would give the Gran Chaco region to them; however, he decided in favor of the Paraguayans. His decision made him a hero in Paraguay, and a city (Villa Hayes) and a department (Presidente Hayes) were named in his honor. He also intended to build the U.S. controlled Panama Canal, though he wasn't the one who actually did it.

But for the most part, Hayes was not very involved in foreign policy. The bulk of his problems during his presidency were small and domestically related.

Post-Presidency

The Hayes' home called Spiegel Grove in Fremont, Ohio.

Rutherford and Lucy Hayes' grave at Spiegel Grove.

Hayes did not seek re-election in 1880, keeping his pledge that he would not run for a second term. He had, in his inaugural address, proposed a one-term limit for the presidency combined with an increase in the term length to six years.

Hayes served on the Board of Trustees of the Ohio State University, the school he helped found during his time as governor of Ohio, from the end of his Presidency until his death.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes died of complications of a heart attack in Fremont, Sandusky County, Ohio, at 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday January 17, 1893. His last words were "I know that I'm going where Lucy is." Interment was in Riverwood Cemetery. Following the gift of his home to the state of Ohio for the Spiegel Grove State Park, he was reinterred there in 1915.

Family

Hayes was the youngest of four children, however two of them - Lorenzo Hayes (1815–1825) and Sarah Sophia Hayes (1817–1821) - died young. Hayes was close to his one remaining sibling, Fanny Arabella Hayes (1820–1856), as can be seen in this diary entry:

July, 1856. —My dear only sister, my beloved Fanny, is dead! The dearest friend of childhood, the affectionate adviser, the confidante of all my life, the one I loved best, is gone; alas! never again to be seen on earth.

With Lucy Ware Webb, Hayes had the following children:

Birchard Austin Hayes (1853-1926)
James Webb Cook Hayes (1856-1934)
Rutherford Platt Hayes (1858-1927)
Joseph Thompson Hayes (1861-1863)
George Crook Hayes (1864-1866)
Fanny Hayes (1867-1950)
Scott Russell Hayes (1871-1923)
Manning Force Hayes (1873-1874)

Trivia

Hayes postage stamp

Facts about Rutherford B. Hayes from the archives of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center Library^[2]

Hayes was the first president to take the oath of office in the White House.
Hayes was the only president whose election was decided by a congressional commission.
Hayes was the first president to travel to the U.S. West Coast during his term as president.
Hayes was the first president to have a telephone in the White House.
Hayes was the first president to have a typewriter in the White House.
Though other presidents served in the United States Civil War, Hayes was the only one to have been wounded. He was wounded four times.
Hayes began the "Easter Egg Roll" for children on the White House Lawn in 1878.
Lucy Webb Hayes was the first wife of a president to graduate from college,
Lucy Webb Hayes was the first wife of a president to be called "First Lady."
Hayes is considered to be an incarnation of the Ascended Master El Morya by the new religious movement The Summit Lighthouse.
Hayes' best known quotation, "He serves his party best who serves his country best," is from his 1877 Inaugural Address.
Hayes was the last U.S. President born before the Monroe Doctrine came into effect.
Hayes is also reputed to be the first President to have had his voice recorded by Thomas Edison in 1877 with his newly-invented phonograph. Unfortunately, the tin it was recorded on has been lost. As the recording cannot be located, some say that it never existed, and that therefore the first President to have his voice recorded was Benjamin Harrison in the 1890s.
Hayes had no say over the nomination of his running mate for Vice President. When party bosses at the 1876 Republican Convention decided to give the spot to the little-known New York representative William A. Wheeler, Hayes only heard about it next morning and reportedly said, "I am ashamed to say, Who is Wheeler?"
Hayes lends his name to the math and physics building at Kenyon College, where he graduated in 1842.
Hayes also lends his name to the College of the Arts building at the Ohio State University, which he helped found as Governor of Ohio. Hayes Hall, built in 1893, is the oldest building still standing on the Ohio State campus.
Hayes' Civil War horse was named Whitey. He is buried at Spiegel Grove with a gravemarker reading "Old Whitey A Hero of Nineteen Battles 1861-1865."
The USS Spiegel Grove, launched in 1955, was named after his home Spiegel Grove. It was sunk intentionally off Key Largo to form an artificial reef in 2002.
While Hayes was President, dancing, card-playing and alcoholic beverages were banned from the White House. This rule was also enforced during James K. Polk's presidency. In the 20th century, published histories incorrectly attributed the ban on alcohol to First Lady Lucy Hayes and dubbed her "Lemonade Lucy." This nickname was never used during Lucy's lifetime.

Ulysses S. Grant

2007-11-07T10:02:00.001-08:00

Ulysses S. Grant,^[2] born Hiram Ulysses Grant (April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885), was an American general and the eighteenth President of the United States (1869–1877). He achieved international fame as the leading Union general in the American Civil War.

Grant first reached national prominence by taking Forts Henry and Donelson in 1862 in the first Union victories of the war. The following year, his brilliant campaign ending in the surrender of Vicksburg secured Union control of the Mississippi and -- with the simultaneous Union victory at Gettysburg -- turned the tide of the war in the North's favor. Named commander-in-chief of the Union forces in 1864, he implemented a coordinated strategy of simultaneous attacks aimed at destroying the South's ability to carry on the war. In 1865, after conducting a costly war of attrition in the East, he accepted the surrender of his Confederate opponent Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House. Grant has been described by J.F.C. Fuller as "the greatest general of his age and one of the greatest strategists of any age." His Vicksburg Campaign in particular has been scrutinized by military specialists around the world.

In 1868, Grant was elected president as a Republican. Grant was the first president to serve for two full terms since Andrew Jackson forty years before. He led Radical Reconstruction and built a powerful patronage-based Republican party in the South, with the adroit use of the army. He took a hard line that reduced violence by groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Although Grant was personally honest, he not only tolerated financial and political corruption among top aides but also protected them once exposed.

Presidential experts typically rank Grant in the lowest quartile of U.S. presidents, primarily for his tolerance of corruption. In recent years, however, his reputation as president has improved somewhat among scholars impressed by his support for civil rights for African Americans.^[3] Unsuccessful in winning a third term in 1880, bankrupted by bad investments, and terminally ill with throat cancer, Grant wrote his Memoirs, which was enormously successful among veterans, the public, and the critics.

Birth and early years

Ulysses Grant Birthplace, Point Pleasant, Ohio

Ulysses S. Grant Boyhood Home, Georgetown, Ohio

Grant was born in a small log cabin in Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio, 25 miles (40 km) east of Cincinnati on the Ohio River. He was the eldest of the six children of Jesse Root Grant (1794–1873) and Hannah Simpson Grant (1798–1883). His father, a tanner, and his mother were born in Pennsylvania. In the fall of 1823, they moved to the village of Georgetown in Brown County, Ohio.

Family

On August 22, 1848, Grant married Julia Boggs Dent (1826–1902), the daughter of a slave owner. They had four children: Frederick Dent Grant, Ulysses S. (Buck) Grant, Jr., Ellen (Nellie) Wrenshall Grant, and Jesse Root Grant.

Military career

Ulysses S. Grant

Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, portrait by Mathew Brady
Allegiance	United States Army
Years of service	1839-1854, 1861-1868
Rank	General of the Army (four star)
Battles/wars	Mexican-American War, American Civil War

At the age of 17, Grant entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, after securing a nomination through his U.S. Congressman, Thomas L. Hamer. Hamer erroneously nominated him as "Ulysses S. Grant of Ohio,"^[4] knowing Grant's mother's maiden name was Simpson and forgetting that Grant was referred to in his youth as "H. Ulysses Grant" or "Lyss." Grant wrote his name in the entrance register as "Ulysses Hiram Grant" (concerned that he would otherwise become known by his initials, H.U.G.), but the school administration refused to accept any name other than the nominated form.^[5] Upon graduation, Grant adopted the form of his new name with middle initial only.^[6] He graduated from West Point in 1843, ranking 21st in a class of 39. At the academy, he established a reputation as a fearless and expert horseman. Although this made him seem a natural for cavalry, he was assigned to duty as a regimental quartermaster, managing supplies and equipment.

Ulysses S. Grant in 1843, in his West Point uniform

Grant at the capture of Mexico City, painting by Emanuel Leutze.

Mexican-American War

Lieutenant Grant served in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) under Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, where, despite his assignment as a quartermaster, he got close enough to the front lines to see action, taking part in the battles of Resaca de la Palma, Palo Alto, Monterrey (where he volunteered to carry a dispatch on horseback through a sniper-lined street), and Veracruz. Once Grant saw his friend, Fred Dent, lying in the middle of the battlefield; he had been shot in the leg. Grant ran furiously into the open to rescue Dent; as they were making their way to safety, a Mexican was sneaking up behind Grant, but the Mexican was shot by a fellow U.S soldier. Grant was twice brevetted for bravery: at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. He was a remarkably close observer of the war, learning to judge the actions of colonels and generals. In the 1880s he wrote that the war was unjust, accepting the theory that it was designed to gain land open to slavery.

Between wars

After the Mexican-American war ended in 1848, Grant remained in the army and was moved to several different posts. He was sent to Fort Vancouver in the Washington Territory in 1853, where he served as quartermaster of the 4th U.S. Infantry regiment. His wife, eight months pregnant with their second child, could not accompany him because his salary could not support a family on the frontier. In 1854, Grant was promoted to captain (one of only 50 still on active duty) and assigned to command Company F, 4th Infantry, at Fort Humboldt, California. However, he still could not afford to bring his family out West. He tried some business ventures, but they failed. Grant resigned from the Army with little advance notice on July 31, 1854, offering no explanation for his abrupt decision. Rumors persisted in the Army for years that his commanding officer, Bvt. Lt. Col. Robert C. Buchanan, found him drunk on duty as a pay officer and offered him the choice between resignation or court-martial.^[7] Some biographers discount the rumors and suggest Grant's resignation, and his drinking, were both prompted by profound depression. According to this view, Buchanan hated Grant and concocted the drunkenness story years later to protect Buchanan's action in removing the man who became one of the most famous generals in history. The War Department stated, "Nothing stands against his good name."^[8] He wrote in his memoirs about the war against Mexico: "I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation". [1]

A civilian at age 32, Grant struggled through seven lean years. From 1854 to 1858 he labored on a family farm near St. Louis, Missouri, using slaves owned by his father-in-law, but it did not prosper. Grant owned one slave (whom he set free in 1859); his wife owned four slaves (two women servants and their two small boys).^[9] In 1858-59 he was a bill collector in St. Louis. Failing at everything, in humiliation he asked his father for a job, and in 1860 was made an assistant in the leather shop owned by his father and run by his younger brother in Galena, Illinois. Grant & Perkins sold harnesses, saddles, and other leather goods and purchased hides from farmers in the prosperous Galena area.^[10]

Although Grant was essentially apolitical, his father-in-law was a prominent Democrat in St. Louis (a fact that lost Grant the good job of county engineer in 1859). In 1856 he voted for Democrat James Buchanan for president to avert secession and because "I knew Frémont" (the Republican candidate). In 1860, he favored Democrat Stephen A. Douglas but did not vote. In 1864, he allowed his political sponsor, Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, to use his private letters as campaign literature for Abraham Lincoln^[11] and the Union Party, which combined both Republicans and War Democrats. He refused to announce his political affiliation until 1868, when he finally declared himself a Republican.^[12]

Civil War

Western Theater: 1861–63

The home of President Grant while he lived in Galena, Illinois.

Shortly after Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 volunteers. Grant helped recruit a company of volunteers and accompanied it to Springfield, the capital of Illinois. Grant accepted a position offered by Illinois Governor Richard Yates to recruit and train volunteers, which he accomplished with efficiency. Grant pressed for a field command; Yates appointed him colonel of the undisciplined and rebellious 21st Illinois Infantry in June 1861.

Grant was deployed to Missouri to protect the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. Under pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne Jackson, Missouri had declared it was an armed neutral in the conflict and would attack troops from either side entering the state. By the first of August the Union army had forcibly removed Jackson and Missouri was controlled by Union forces, who had to deal with numerous southern sympathizers.

In August, Grant was appointed brigadier general of volunteers by Lincoln, who had been lobbied by Congressman Elihu Washburne. At the end of August, Grant was selected by Western Theater commander Major General John C. Frémont to command the critical District of Southeast Missouri.

Battles of Belmont, Henry, and Donelson

Grant's first important strategic act of the war was to take the initiative to seize the Ohio River town of Paducah, Kentucky, immediately after the Confederates violated the state's neutrality by occupying Columbus, Kentucky. He fought his first battle, an indecisive action against Confederate Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow, at Belmont, Missouri, in November 1861. Three months later, aided by Andrew H. Foote's Navy gunboats, he captured two major Confederate fortresses, Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. At Donelson, his army was hit by a surprise Confederate attack (once again by Pillow) while he was temporarily absent. Displaying the cool determination that would characterize his leadership in future battles, he organized counterattacks that carried the day. Both General Floyd and Pillow, the two senior Confederate commanders fled. The Confederate commander, Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, an old friend of Grant's and senior commander with Floyd and Pillow fleeing, yielded to Grant's hard conditions of "no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender." Buckner's surrender of over 12,000 men made Grant a national figure almost overnight, and he was nicknamed "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. The captures of the two forts with over 12,000 prisoners were the first major Union victories of the war, gaining him national recognition. Desperate for generals who could fight and win, Lincoln promoted him to major general of volunteers.

Although Grant's new-found fame did not seem to affect his temperament, it did have an impact on his personal life. At one point during the Civil War, a picture of Grant with a cigar in his mouth was published. He was then inundated with cigars from well wishers. Before that he had smoked only sporadically, but he could not give them all away, so he took up smoking them, a habit which may have contributed to the development of throat cancer later in his life; one story after the war claimed that he smoked over 10,000 in five years.

Despite his significant victories (or perhaps because of them), Grant fell out of favor with his superior, Major General Henry W. Halleck. Halleck had a particular distaste for drunks and, believing Grant was an alcoholic, was biased against him from the beginning. After Grant visited Nashville, Tennessee, where he met with Halleck's rival, Don Carlos Buell, Halleck used the visit as an excuse to relieve Grant of field command on March 2. Personal intervention from President Lincoln caused Halleck to restore Grant, who rejoined his army on March 17.

Shiloh

General Grant at Cold Harbor, photographed by Mathew Brady in 1864

In early April 1862, Grant was surprised by Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard at the Battle of Shiloh. The sheer violence of the Confederate attack sent the Union forces reeling. Nevertheless, Grant refused to retreat. With grim determination, he stabilized his line. Then, on the second day, with the help of timely reinforcements, Grant counterattacked and turned a serious reverse into a victory.

The victory at Shiloh came at a high price; with over 23,000 casualties, it was the bloodiest battle in the history of the United States up to that time. Halleck responded to the surprise and the disorganized nature of the fighting by taking command of the army in the field himself on April 30, relegating Grant to the powerless position of second-in-command for the campaign in Corinth, Mississippi. Despondent over this reversal, Grant decided to resign. The intervention of his subordinate and good friend, William T. Sherman, caused him to remain. When Halleck was promoted to general-in-chief of the Union Army, Grant resumed his position as commander of the Army of West Tennessee (later more famously named the Army of the Tennessee) on June 10. He commanded the army for the battles of Corinth and Iuka that fall.

Vicksburg

In an attempt to capture the Mississippi River fortress of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Grant spent the winter of 1862–1863 conducting a series of operations to gain access to the city through the region's bayous. These attempts failed.

However, his strategy to take Vicksburg in 1863 is considered one of the most masterful in military history. Grant marched his troops down the west bank of the Mississippi and crossed the river by using U.S. Navy ships that had run the guns at Vicksburg. There, he moved inland and—in a daring move that defied conventional military principles—cut loose from most of his supply lines.^[13] Operating in enemy territory, Grant moved swiftly, never giving the Confederates, under the command of John C. Pemberton, an opportunity to concentrate their forces against him. Grant's army went eastward, captured the city of Jackson, Mississippi, and severed the rail line to Vicksburg.

Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant

Knowing that the Confederates could no longer send reinforcements to the Vicksburg garrison, Grant turned west and won the Battle of Champion Hill. The Confederates retreated inside their fortifications at Vicksburg, and Grant promptly surrounded the city. Finding that assaults against the impregnable breastworks were futile, he settled in for a six-week siege. Cut off and with no possibility of relief, Pemberton surrendered to Grant on July 4, 1863. It was a devastating defeat for the Southern cause, effectively splitting the Confederacy in two, and, in conjunction with the Union victory at Gettysburg the previous day, is widely considered the turning point of the war. For this victory, President Lincoln promoted Grant to the rank of major general in the regular army, effective July 4.

A distinguished British historian has written that "we must go back to the campaigns of Napoleon to find equally brilliant results accomplished in the same space of time with such a small loss." Lincoln said after the capture of Vicksburg and after the lost opportunity after Gettysburg, "Grant is my man and I am his the rest of the War."

Chattanooga

After the Battle of Chickamauga Union general William S. Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Confederate Braxton Bragg followed to Lookout Mountain, surrounding the Federals on three sides. On October 17, Grant was placed in command of the Military Division of Mississippi, which included Chattanooga. He immediately relieved Rosecrans and replaced him with George H. Thomas. Devising a plan known as the "Cracker Line", Thomas's chief engineer, William F. "Baldy" Smith opened a new supply route to Chattanooga, helping to better supply the Army of the Cumberland.

Upon reprovisioning and reinforcing, the morale of Union troops lifted. In late November, they went on the offensive. The Battle of Chattanooga started out with Sherman's failed attack on the Confederate right. He not only attacked the wrong mountain but committed his troops piecemeal, allowing them to be defeated by one Confederate division. In response, Grant ordered Thomas to launch a demonstration on the center, which could draw defenders away from Sherman. Thomas waited until he was certain that Hooker, with reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac, was engaged on the Confederate left before he launched the Army of the Cumberland at the center of the Confederate line. Hooker's men broke the Confederate left, while Thomas's men made an unexpected but spectacular charge straight up Missionary Ridge and broke the fortified center of the Confederate line. Grant was initially angry at Thomas that his orders for a demonstration were exceeded, but the assaulting wave sent the Confederates into a head-long retreat, opening the way for the Union to invade Atlanta, Georgia, and the heart of the Confederacy. Grant reportedly said afterward, "Damn, I had nothing to do with this battle," according to Hooker.

Grant's willingness to fight and ability to win impressed President Lincoln, who appointed him lieutenant general in the regular army—a rank not awarded since George Washington (or Winfield Scott's brevet appointment), recently re-authorized by the U.S. Congress with Grant in mind—on March 2, 1864. On March 12, Grant became general-in-chief of all the armies of the United States.

General-in-Chief and strategy for victory

In March 1864, Grant put Major General William T. Sherman in immediate command of all forces in the West and moved his headquarters to Virginia where he turned his attention to the long-frustrated Union effort to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia; his secondary objective was to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, but Grant knew that the latter would happen automatically once the former was accomplished. He devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the heart of the Confederacy from multiple directions: Grant, George G. Meade, and Benjamin Franklin Butler against Lee near Richmond; Franz Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley; Sherman to invade Georgia, defeat Joseph E. Johnston, and capture Atlanta; George Crook and William W. Averell to operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia; and Nathaniel Banks to capture Mobile, Alabama. Grant was the first general to attempt such a coordinated strategy in the war and the first to understand the concepts of total war, in which the destruction of an enemy's economic infrastructure that supplied its armies was as important as tactical victories on the battlefield.

[edit] Overland Campaign, Petersburg, and Appomattox

The Overland Campaign was the military thrust needed by the Union to defeat the Confederacy. It pitted Grant against the great commander Robert E. Lee in an epic contest. It began on May 4, 1864, when the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River, marching into an area of scrubby undergrowth and second growth trees known as the Wilderness. It was such difficult terrain that the Army of Northern Virginia was able to use it to prevent Grant from fully exploiting his numerical advantage.

The Battle of the Wilderness was a stubborn, bloody two-day fight, resulting in advantage to neither side, but with heavy casualties on both. After similar battles in Virginia against Lee, all of Grant's predecessors had retreated from the field. Grant ignored the setback and ordered an advance around Lee's flank to the southeast, which lifted the morale of his army. Grant's strategy was not just to win individual battles, it was to fight constant battles in order to wear down and destroy Lee's army.

Poster of "Grant from West Point to Appomattox."

Sigel's Shenandoah campaign and Butler's James River campaign both failed. Lee was able to reinforce with troops used to defend against these assaults.

The campaign continued, but Lee, anticipating Grant's move, beat him to Spotsylvania, Virginia, where, on May 8, the fighting resumed. The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House lasted 14 days. On May 11, Grant wrote a famous dispatch containing the line "I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all summer". These words summed up his attitude about the fighting, and the next day, May 12, he ordered a massive assault by Hancock's 2nd Corps that broke a portion of Lee's line, captured 30 artillery pieces, took 4,000 prisoners, and broke forever the famous Stonewall Division. In spite of mounting Union casualties, the contest's dynamics changed in Grant's favor. Most of Lee's great victories in earlier years had been won on the offensive, employing surprise movements and fierce assaults. Now, he was forced to continually fight on the defensive without a chance to regroup or replenish against an opponent that was well supplied and had superior numbers. The next major battle, however, demonstrated the power of a well-prepared defense. Cold Harbor was one of Grant's most controversial battles, in which he launched on June 3 a massive three-corps assault without adequate reconnaissance on a well-fortified defensive line, resulting in horrific casualties (3,000–7,000 killed, wounded, and missing in the first 40 minutes, although modern estimates have determined that the total was likely less than half of the famous figure of 7,000 that has been used in books for decades; as many as 12,000 for the day, far outnumbering the Confederate losses). Grant said of the battle in his memoirs "I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made. I might say the same thing of the assault of the 22nd of May, 1863, at Vicksburg. At Cold Harbor no advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained." But Grant moved on and kept up the pressure. He stole a march on Lee, slipping his troops across the James River.

Arriving at Petersburg, Virginia, first, Grant should have captured the rail junction city, but he failed because of the overly cautious actions of his subordinate William Smith. Over the next three days, a number of Union assaults to take the city were launched. But all failed, and finally on June 18, Lee's veterans arrived. Faced with fully manned trenches in his front, Grant was left with no alternative but to settle down to a siege.

As the summer drew on and with Grant's and Sherman's armies stalled, respectively in Virginia and Georgia, politics took center stage. There was a presidential election in the fall, and the citizens of the North had difficulty seeing any progress in the war effort. To make matters worse for Abraham Lincoln, Lee detached a small army under the command of Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early, hoping it would force Grant to disengage forces to pursue him. Early invaded north through the Shenandoah Valley and reached the outskirts of Washington, D.C.. Although unable to take the city, Early embarrassed the Administration simply by threatening its inhabitants, making Abraham Lincoln's re-election prospects even bleaker.

In early September, the efforts of Grant's coordinated strategy finally bore fruit. First, Sherman took Atlanta. Then, Grant dispatched Philip Sheridan to the Shenandoah Valley to deal with Early. It became clear to the people of the North that the war was being won, and Lincoln was re-elected by a wide margin. Later in November, Sherman began his March to the Sea. Sheridan and Sherman both followed Grant's strategy of total war by destroying the economic infrastructures of the Valley and a large swath of Georgia and the Carolinas.

At the beginning of April 1865, Grant's relentless pressure finally forced Lee to evacuate Richmond, and after a nine-day retreat, Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. There, Grant offered generous terms that did much to ease the tensions between the armies and preserve some semblance of Southern pride, which would be needed to reconcile the warring sides. Within a few weeks, the American Civil War was effectively over; minor actions would continue until Kirby Smith surrendered his forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department on June 2, 1865.

Immediately after Lee's surrender, Grant had the sad honor of serving as a pallbearer at the funeral of his greatest champion, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln had been quoted after the massive losses at Shiloh as saying, "I can't spare this man. He fights." It was a two-sentence description that completely caught the essence of Ulysses S. Grant.

Grant's fighting style was what one fellow general called "that of a bulldog". The term accurately captures his tenacity, but it oversimplifies his considerable strategic and tactical capabilities. Although a master of combat by out-maneuvering his opponent (such as at Vicksburg and in the Overland Campaign against Lee), Grant was not afraid to order direct assaults, often when the Confederates were themselves launching offensives against him. Such tactics often resulted in heavy casualties for Grant's men, but they wore down the Confederate forces proportionately more and inflicted irreplaceable losses. Many in the North denounced Grant as a "butcher" in 1864, an accusation made both by Northern civilians appalled at the staggering number of casualties suffered by Union armies for what appeared to be negligible gains, and by Copperheads, Northern Democrats who either favored the Confederacy or simply wanted an end to the war, even at the cost of recognizing Southern independence. Grant persevered, refusing to withdraw as had his predecessors, and Lincoln, despite public outrage and pressure within the government, stuck by Grant, refusing to replace him. Although Grant lost battles in 1864, he won all his campaigns.

Historian Michael Korda explained his strategic genius:^[14]

“

Grant understood topography, the importance of supply lines, the instant judgment of the balance between his own strengths and the enemy's weaknesses, and above all the need to keep his armies moving forward, despite casualties, even when things had gone wrong—that and the simple importance of inflicting greater losses on the enemy than he can sustain, day after day, until he breaks. Grant the boy never retraced his steps. Grant the man did not retreat—he advanced. Generals who do that win wars.

”

After the war, on July 25, 1866, Congress authorized the newly created rank of General of the Army of the United States, the equivalent of a full (four-star) general in the modern U.S. Army.^[15] Grant was appointed as such by President Andrew Johnson on the same day.

Reconstruction: Grant and Johnson

As commanding general of the army, Grant had a difficult relationship with President Johnson. Although he accompanied Johnson on a national stumping tour during the 1866 elections, he did not appear to be a supporter of Johnson's moderate policies toward the South. Johnson tried to use Grant to defeat the Radical Republicans by making Grant the Secretary of War in place of Edwin M. Stanton, whom he could not remove without the approval of Congress under the Tenure of Office Act. Grant refused but kept his military command. That made him a hero to the Radicals, who gave him the Republican nomination for president in 1868. He was chosen as the Republican presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in Chicago in May 1868, with no real opposition. In his letter of acceptance to the party, Grant concluded with "Let us have peace," which became the Republican campaign slogan. In the general election that year, he won against former New York governor Horatio Seymour with a lead of 300,000 out of a total of 5,716,082 votes cast but by a commanding 214 Electoral College votes to 80. He ran about 100,000 votes ahead of the Republican ticket, suggesting an unusually powerful appeal to veterans. When he entered the White House, he was politically inexperienced and, at age 46, the youngest man yet elected president.

Presidency 1869–1877

The first president from Ohio, Grant was the 18th President of the United States and served two terms from March 4, 1869, to March 4, 1877. In the 1872 election he won by a landslide against the breakaway Liberal Republican party that nominated Horace Greeley.

Reconstruction

Grant presided over the last half of Reconstruction, watching as the Democrats (called Redeemers) took the control of every state away from his Republican coalition. When urgent telegrams from state leaders begged for help, Grant and his attorney general replied that "the whole public is tired of these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South," saying that state militias should handle the problems, not the Army. He supported amnesty for Confederate leaders and protection for the civil rights of African-Americans. He favored a limited number of troops to be stationed in the South—sufficient numbers to protect rights of Southern blacks, suppress the violent tactics of the Ku Klux Klan, and prop up Republican governors, but not so many as to create resentment in the general population. In 1869 and 1871, Grant signed bills promoting voting rights and prosecuting Klan leaders. The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, establishing voting rights, was ratified in 1870. Recent historians have emphasized Grant's commitment to protecting Unionists and freedmen in the South until 1876. Grant's commitment to black civil rights was demonstrated by his address to Congress in 1875 and by his attempt to use the annexation of Santo Domingo as leverage to force white supremacists to accept blacks as part of the Southern political polity.

Grant confronted an apathetic Northern public, violent KKK organizations in the South, and a factional Republican party. He was charged with bringing order and equality to the South without being armed with the emergency powers that Lincoln and Johnson employed.

Grant signed a bill into law that created Yellowstone National Park (America's first National Park) on March 1, 1872.^[16] Grant also signed into law making Christmas a federal holiday in 1870.^[17]

Panic of 1873

The Panic of 1873 hit the country hard during his presidency, and he never attempted decisive action, one way or the other, to alleviate distress. The first law that he signed, in March 1869, established the value of the greenback currency issued during the Civil War, pledging to redeem the bills in gold. In 1874, he vetoed a bill to increase the amount of a legal tender currency, which defused the currency crisis on Wall Street but did little to help the economy as a whole. The depression led to Democratic victories in the 1874 off-year elections, as that party took control of the House for the first time since 1856.

By 1875 the Grant administration was in disarray and on the defensive on all fronts other than foreign policy. With the Democrats in control of the House, Grant was unable to pass legislation. The House discovered gross corruption in the Interior, War, and Navy Departments; they did much to discredit the Department of Justice, forced the resignation of Robert Schenck, the Minister to Britain, and cast suspicion upon Blaine's conduct while Speaker.^[18] Historian Allan Nevins concludes:^[19]

“

Various administrations have closed in gloom and weakness ... but no other has closed in such paralysis and discredit as (in all domestic fields) did Grant's. The President was without policies or popular support. He was compelled to remake his Cabinet under a grueling fire from reformers and investigators; half its members were utterly inexperienced, several others discredited, one was even disgraced. The personnel of the departments was largely demoralized. The party that autumn appealed for votes on the implicit ground that the next Administration would be totally unlike the one in office. In its centennial year, a year of deepest economic depression, the nation drifted almost rudderless.

”

In 1876, Grant helped to calm the nation over the Hayes-Tilden election controversy; he made clear he would not tolerate any march on Washington, such as that proposed by Tilden supporter Henry Watterson.

Foreign affairs

Grant/Wilson campaign poster

In foreign affairs, a notable achievement of the Grant administration was the 1871 Treaty of Washington, negotiated by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. It settled American claims against Britain concerning the wartime activities of the British-built Confederate raider CSS Alabama. He also proposed to annex the independent, largely black nation of Santo Domingo. Not only did he believe that the island would be of use to the navy tactically, but he sought to use it as a bargaining chip. By providing a safe haven for the freedmen, Grant believed that the exodus of black labor would force Southern whites to realize the necessity of such a significant workforce and accept their civil rights. At the same time he hoped that U.S. ownership of the island would urge nearby Cuba to abandon slavery. The Senate refused to ratify it because of (Foreign Relations Committee Chairman) Senator Charles Sumner's strong opposition. Grant helped depose Sumner from the chairmanship, and Sumner supported Horace Greeley and the Liberal Republicans in 1872. Another notable foreign policy action under Grant was the settlement of the Liberian-Grebo War of 1876 through the dispatchment of the USS Alaska to Liberia where US envoy James Milton Turner negotiated the incorporation of Grebo people into Liberian society and the ousting of foreign traders from Liberia. [2]

Scandals

The first scandal to taint the Grant administration was Black Friday, a gold-speculation financial crisis in September 1869, set up by Wall Street manipulators Jay Gould and James Fisk. They tried to corner the gold market and tricked Grant into preventing his treasury secretary from stopping the fraud.

The most famous scandal was the Whiskey Ring of 1875, exposed by Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow, in which over 3 million dollars in taxes were stolen from the federal government with the aid of high government officials. Orville E. Babcock, the private secretary to the President, was indicted as a member of the ring but escaped conviction because of a presidential pardon. Grant's earlier statement, "Let no guilty man escape" rang hollow. Secretary of War William W. Belknap was discovered to have taken bribes in exchange for the sale of Native American trading posts. Grant's acceptance of the resignation of Belknap allowed Belknap, after he was impeached by Congress for his actions, to escape conviction, since he was no longer a government official.

Other scandals included the Sanborn Incident involving Treasury Secretary William Adams Richardson and his assistant John D. Sanborn. Another was a problem with U.S. Attorney Cyrus I. Scofield. The Crédit Mobilier of America scandal also ruined the political career of his first vice president, Schuyler Colfax, who was replaced on the Republican ticket in the 1872 election with Henry Wilson, who was also involved in the scandal.

President Grant with his wife, Julia, and son, Jesse, in 1872.

Although Grant himself did not profit from corruption among his subordinates, he did not take a firm stance against malefactors and failed to react strongly even after their guilt was established. When critics complained, he vigorously attacked them. He was weak in his selection of subordinates, favoring colleagues from the war over those with more practical political experience. He alienated party leaders by giving many posts to his friends and political contributors rather than supporting the party's needs. His failure to establish working political alliances in Congress allowed the scandals to spin out of control. At the conclusion of his second term, Grant wrote to Congress that "Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent."

Anti-Semitism

Grant's legacy has been marred by charges of anti-Semitism. The most frequently cited example is the infamous General Order No. 11, issued by Grant's headquarters in Oxford, Mississippi, on December 17, 1862, during the early Vicksburg Campaign. The order stated in part:

“

The Jews, as a class, violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, and also Department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department (comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky).

”

The order was almost immediately rescinded by President Lincoln. Grant maintained that he was unaware that a staff officer issued it in his name. Grant's father Jesse Grant was involved; General James H. Wilson later explained, "There was a mean nasty streak in old Jesse Grant. He was close and greedy. He came down into Tennessee with a Jew trader that he wanted his son to help, and with whom he was going to share the profits. Grant refused to issue a permit and sent the Jew flying, prohibiting Jews from entering the line." Grant, Wilson felt, could not strike back directly at the "lot of relatives who were always trying to use him" and perhaps struck instead at what he maliciously saw as their counterpart — opportunistic traders who were Jewish.^[20] Although it was portrayed as being outside the normal inclinations and character of Grant, it has been suggested by Bertram Korn that the order was part of a consistent pattern. "This was not the first discriminatory order [Grant] had signed [...] he was firmly convinced of the Jews' guilt and was eager to use any means of ridding himself of them."^[21]

The issue of anti-Semitism was raised during the 1868 presidential campaign, and Grant consulted with several Jewish community leaders, all of whom said they were convinced that Order 11 was an anomaly, and he was not an anti-Semite. He maintained good relations with the community throughout his administration, on both political and social levels

overnment agencies instituted

Department of Justice (1870)
Office of the Solicitor General (1870)
"Advisory Board on Civil Service" (1871); after it expired in 1873, it became the role model for the "Civil Service Commission" instituted in 1883 by President Chester A. Arthur, a Grant faithful. (Today it is known as the Office of Personnel Management.)
Office of the Surgeon General (1871)
Army Weather Bureau (currently known as the National Weather Service) (1870)

Ulysses S. Grant in his postbellum.

Post Presidency

World Tour

After the end of his second term in the White House, Grant spent two years traveling the world with his wife. He visited Ireland, Scotland, and England; the crowds were huge. The Grants dined with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle and with Prince Bismarck in Germany. They also visited Russia, Egypt, the Holy Land, Siam, and Burma. In Japan, they were cordially received by Emperor Meiji and Empress Shōken at the Imperial Palace. Today in the Shibakoen section of Tokyo, a tree still stands that Grant planted during his stay.

In 1879, the Meiji government of Japan announced the annexation of the Ryukyu Islands. China objected, and Grant was asked to arbitrate the matter. He decided that Japan's claim to the islands was stronger and ruled in Japan's favor.

That same year, Grant was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Wisconsin Medical School.

Third Term attempt in 1880

In 1879, the "Stalwart" faction of the Republican Party led by Senator Roscoe Conkling sought to nominate Grant for a third term as president. He counted on strong support from the business men, the old soldiers, and the Methodist church. Publicly Grant said nothing, but privately he wanted the job and encouraged his men.^[22] His popularity was fading however, and while he received more than 300 votes in each of the 36 ballots of the 1880 convention, the nomination went to James A. Garfield. Grant campaigned for Garfield, who won by a very narrow margin. Grant supported his Stalwart ally Conkling against Garfield in the terrific battle over patronage in spring 1881 that culminated in Garfield's assassination.

Bankruptcy

Grant writing his memoirs.

In 1881, Grant purchased a house in New York City and placed almost all of his financial assets into an investment banking partnership with Ferdinand Ward, as suggested by Grant's son Buck (Ulysses, Jr.), who was having success on Wall Street. Ward swindled Grant (and other investors who had been encouraged by Grant) in 1884, bankrupted the company, Grant & Ward, and fled.

Last days

Grant appears on the U.S. $50 bill.

Grant learned at the same time that he was suffering from throat cancer. Grant and his family were left destitute; at the time retired U.S. Presidents were not given pensions, and Grant had forfeited his military pension when he assumed the office of President. It was not until 1958 that Congress, feeling it inappropriate that a former president or his wife might be poverty-stricken, passed a bill granting a pension to such individuals, a practice that continues to this day. Grant first wrote several articles on his Civil War campaigns for The Century Magazine, which were warmly received. Mark Twain offered Grant a generous contract for the publication of his memoirs, including 75% of the book's sales as royalties.

Terminally ill, Grant finished the book just a few days before his death. The Memoirs sold over 300,000 copies, earning the Grant family over $450,000. Twain promoted the book as "the most remarkable work of its kind since the Commentaries of Julius Caesar," and Grant's memoirs are also regarded by such writers as Matthew Arnold and Gertrude Stein as among the finest ever written.

Ulysses S. Grant died at 8:06 a.m. on Thursday, July 23, 1885, at the age of 63 in Mount McGregor, Saratoga County, New York. His last word was a request, "Water." His body lies in New York City's Riverside Park, beside that of his wife, in Grant's Tomb, the largest mausoleum in North America.

Statue of Grant astride his favorite mount, "Cincinnati", at Vicksburg, Mississippi

In memoriam

In World War II, the British Army produced an armored vehicle known as the Grant tank (an upgrade of the American M3 "Lee").

Grant's portrait appears on the U.S. fifty-dollar bill.

The Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., honors Grant.

Grant Park in Chicago honors Grant.

Grant Avenue, a nine block long, north-south street in the Bronx, New York, is named after Grant. It is parallel and adjacent to Sherman Avenue.

Dupont Street, the main thoroughfare in San Francisco's Chinatown, was renamed Grant Avenue in his honor. The famous dragon gate at the entrance to the district is at the corner of Grant and Bush Street.

Grant, depicted riding a horse, is honored by a statue at the intersection of Bedford Avenue, Rogers Avenue and Dean Street in the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y.

There is a U.S. Grant Bridge over the Ohio River at Portsmouth, Ohio.

There is a U.S. Grant Memorial Highway (US 52) in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Counties in twelve U.S. states are named after Grant: Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin and Grant Parish, Louisiana.

Grammy-award winning diva, Beyonce performed for the veteran on top of his grave.

Ancestry

Grant was a descendant of Mayflower passenger Richard Warren.

Anecdotes from Grant's life

Grant Memorial Statue in Grant Park, Galena, Illinois. Julia Grant remarked that it was the best likeness of her husband, as his hands were thrust into his pockets.

As a young man, Grant's father, Jesse, taught him the trade of tanning. Jesse Grant had been taught how to tan by Owen Brown, the father of known abolitionist John Brown.^[23]
Grant was known to visit the Willard Hotel to escape the stress of the White House. A long-standing story is that he referred to the people who approached him in the lobby as "those darn lobbyists," implying that he was the source for the term lobbyist. This story is unlikely to be true since there are examples of the term being used in U.S. and British magazines and newspapers before Grant's presidency.^[24]
While in California, Grant tried selling ice to San Francisco, but failed when it melted in the warm weather aboard the ship.^[25]
In 1883, Grant was elected the eighth president of the National Rifle Association.
Grant suffered from tone-deafness. He disliked music intensely and would go out of his way to avoid having to hear any other than patriotic songs. He was once reported to have said, "I know only two tunes, one is 'Yankee Doodle' and the other isn't."
Grant's wife, First Lady Julia Grant, was cross-eyed. When it was suggested to her that she have an operation to have it corrected, President Grant replied that he liked her that way.^[26]
Grant's favorite brand of bourbon whiskey was Old Crow.
Grant enjoyed eating cucumbers soaked in vinegar for breakfast.^[27]

Popular culture references

An apocryphal story about Grant's drinking has the general's critics going to President Lincoln, charging the military man with being a drunk. Lincoln is supposed to have replied, "I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals."

A similar story was told of General James Wolfe during the French and Indian Wars. When King George II was told that Wolfe was a "mad dog", he is said to have replied, "Then I'd wish he'd bite the other generals."

The question "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?" was used by Groucho Marx in his radio and TV quiz show, the correct answer to which resulted in a consolation prize to contestants who had won no money. Some contestants thought it was a trick question. Grant's grandson, Ulysses S. Grant IV (a professor of geology at the University of California, Los Angeles) appeared on the program on March 12, 1953.
- This was also featured on an episode of the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls, in which in a dream sequence Dorothy competes on Jeopardy against a scholar and her roommate Rose. When asked the question, Dorothy replies Ulysses and is wrong, while Rose replies Cary Grant and is correct.
In the film Wild Wild West, President Grant is a minor character that must deal with the Loveless Alliance.

Andrew Johnson

2007-11-07T09:52:00.000-08:00

Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was the seventeenth President of the United States (1865–1869), succeeding to the presidency upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Johnson was a U.S. Senator from Greeneville, Tennessee at the time of the secession of the southern states. He was the only Southern Senator not to quit his post upon secession, and became the most prominent War Democrat from the South. In 1862 Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of Tennessee, where he proved energetic and effective in fighting the rebellion. Johnson was nominated for the Vice President slot in 1864 on the National Union Party ticket. He was elected along with Abraham Lincoln in November 1864, and he became president upon Lincoln's assassination on April 15, 1865. As president he took charge of Presidential Reconstruction — the first phase of Reconstruction — which lasted until the Radical Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1866 elections. His conciliatory policies towards the South, his hurry to reincorporate the former Confederates back into the union, and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with the Radical Republicans. The Radicals in the House of Representatives impeached him in 1868, and he was acquitted by a single vote in the Senate, that of Edmund G. Ross. He was the first U.S. President to be impeached.

Early life

Andrew Johnson's boyhood home in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Johnson was born on December 29, 1808, in Raleigh, North Carolina, to Jacob Johnson and Mary McDonough. Andrew Johnson grew up in poverty. When Johnson was three, his father died. At the age of 10 he was apprenticed to a tailor, but at age 16 he and his brother ran away to Greeneville, Tennessee, where he found work as a tailor. ^[2] Johnson married Eliza McCardle Johnson at the age of 19. He never attended any type of school; he credited his wife, Eliza McCardle Johnson with teaching him to read and write.

Early political career

Johnson served as an alderman in Greeneville from 1828 to 1830 and mayor of Greeneville from 1830 to 1833. As a Democrat he was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives.

Political ascendancy

Johnson was elected governor of Tennessee, serving from 1853 to 1857, and was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and served from October 8, 1857 to March 4, 1862. He was chairman of the Committee to Audit and Control the Contingent Expense (Thirty-sixth Congress). Before Tennessee voted on secession, Johnson toured the state speaking in opposition to the act, which he said was unconstitutional. Johnson was an aggressive stump speaker and often responded to hecklers, even if those hecklers were in the senate. At the time of secession of the Confederacy, Johnson was the only Senator from the seceded states to continue participation in Congress.

In 1862 Lincoln appointed Johnson military governor of Tennessee, where he proved energetic and effective in fighting the rebellion. According to tradition and local lore, on Aug. 8, 1863, Johnson freed his personal slaves.^[3] He vigorously suppressed the Confederates and later spoke out for black suffrage, arguing, "The better class of them will go to work and sustain themselves, and that class ought to be allowed to vote, on the ground that a loyal negro is more worthy than a disloyal white man." ^[4]

Vice Presidency

Pre-Civil War photo of Andrew Johnson.

As a leading War Democrat and pro-Union southerner, Johnson was an ideal candidate for the Republicans in 1864 as they enlarged their base to include War Democrats and changed the party name to the National Union Party. He was elected Vice President of the United States and was inaugurated March 4, 1865. At the ceremony, Johnson, who had been drinking (he explained later) to offset the pain of typhoid fever, gave a rambling speech and appeared intoxicated to many. In early 1865, Johnson talked harshly of hanging traitors like Jefferson Davis, which endeared him to the Radicals. ^[5]

Lincoln assassination

On the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC by John Wilkes Booth. Booth's original plan included targeting Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward, in an attempt to topple the United States government. Johnson was unguarded and alone in his room at the Kirkwood Hotel in Washington, but his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, never acted. ^[6]

Presidency 1865–1869

Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States on April 15, 1865, upon the death of Lincoln that morning. He was the first Vice President to succeed to the U.S. Presidency upon the assassination of a President and the sixth Vice president to become a President.

Johnson had an ambiguous party status. He attempted to build up a party of loyalists under the National Union label, but he did not identify with either of the two main parties while President—though he did try for the Democratic nomination in 1868. Asked in 1868 why he did not become a Democrat, he said "It is true I am asked why don't I join the Democratic party. Why don't they join me...if I have administered the office of president so well?"^[7]

Foreign policy

Eliza McCardle Johnson

Johnson forced the French out of Mexico by sending a combat army to the border and issuing an ultimatum. The French withdrew in 1867, and their puppet government quickly collapsed. Secretary of State Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia on April 9, 1867 for $7.2 Million. Critics sneered at "Seward's Folly" and "Seward's Icebox" and "Icebergia." Seward also negotiated to purchase the Danish West Indies, but the Senate refused to approve the purchase in 1867 (it eventually took place in 1917). The Senate likewise rejected Seward's arrangement with the United Kingdom to arbitrate the Alabama Claims.

The U.S. experienced tense relations with the United Kingdom and its colonial government in Canada in the aftermath of the war. Lingering resentment over a perception of British sympathy towards the Confederacy resulted in Johnson initially turning a blind eye towards a series of armed incursions by Irish-American civil war veterans into British territory in Canada, named the Fenian Raids. Eventually Johnson ordered the Fenians disarmed and barred from crossing the border, but his initially hesitant reaction to the crisis helped motivate the movement toward Canadian Confederation.

Reconstruction

At first Johnson talked harshly, telling an Indiana delegation in late April, 1865, "Treason must be made odious... traitors must be punished and impoverished... their social power must be destroyed." But then he struck another note: "I say, as to the leaders, punishment. I also say leniency, reconciliation and amnesty to the thousands whom they have misled and deceived." ^[8] His class-based resentment of the rich appeared in a May, 1865 statement to W.H. Holden, the man he appointed governor of North Carolina, "I intend to confiscate the lands of these rich men whom I have excluded from pardon by my proclamation, and divide the proceeds thereof among the families of the wool hat boys, the Confederate soldiers, whom these men forced into battle to protect their property in slaves."^[9]Johnson in practice was not at all harsh toward the Confederate leaders. He allowed the Southern states to hold elections in 1865 in which prominent ex-Confederates were elected to the U.S. Congress; however, Congress did not seat them. Congress and Johnson argued in an increasingly public way about Reconstruction and the manner in which the Southern secessionist states would be readmitted to the Union. Johnson favored a very quick restoration, similar to the plan of leniency that Lincoln advocated before his death.

Break with the Republicans: 1866

Johnson-appointed governments all passed Black Codes that gave the Freedmen second class status. In response to the Black Codes and worrisome signs of Southern recalcitrance, the Radical Republicans blocked the re-admission of the ex-rebellious states to the Congress in fall 1865. Congress also renewed the Freedman's Bureau, but Johnson vetoed it. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, leader of the moderate Republicans, took affront at the Black Codes. Trumbull proposed the first Civil Rights bill.

Although strongly urged by moderates in Congress to sign the Civil Rights bill, Johnson broke decisively with them by vetoing it on March 27. His veto message objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the Freedmen at a time when eleven out of thirty-six States were unrepresented and attempted to fix by Federal law "a perfect equality of the white and black races in every State of the Union." Johnson said it was an invasion by Federal authority of the rights of the States; it had no warrant in the Constitution and was contrary to all precedents. It was a "stride toward centralization and the concentration of all legislative power in the national government." ^[10] Johnson, in a letter to Governor Thomas C. Fletcher of Missouri, wrote, "This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men." ^[11]

The Democratic party, proclaiming itself the party of white men, north and south, aligned with Johnson. ^[12] However the Republicans in Congress overrode his veto (the Senate by the vote of 33:15, the House by 182:41) and the Civil Rights bill became law.

The last moderate proposal was the Fourteenth Amendment, also authored by moderate Trumbull. It was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution, but it went much further. It extended citizenship to everyone born in the United States (except Indians on reservations), penalized states that did not give the vote to Freedmen, and most importantly, created new federal civil rights that could be protected by federal courts. It guaranteed the Federal war debt (and promised the Confederate debt would never be paid). Johnson used his influence to block the amendment in the states, as three-fourths of the states were required for ratification. (The Amendment was later ratified.) The moderate effort to compromise with Johnson had failed and an all-out political war broke out between the Republicans (both Radical and moderate) on one side, and on the other Johnson and his allies in the Democratic party in the North, and the conservative groupings in the South. The decisive battle was the election of 1866. Johnson campaigned vigorously but was widely ridiculed.^[13] The Republicans won by a landslide (the Southern states were not allowed to vote), and took full control of Reconstruction. Johnson was almost powerless.

Historian James Ford Rhodes has explained Johnson's inability to engage in serious negotiations:^[14]

As Senator Charles Sumner shrewdly said, "the President himself is his own worst counselor, as he is his own worst defender." Johnson acted in accordance with his nature. He had intellectual force but it worked in a groove. Obstinate rather than firm it undoubtedly seemed to him that following counsel and making concessions were a display of weakness. At all events from his December message to the veto of the Civil Rights Bill he yielded not a jot to Congress. The moderate senators and representatives (who constituted a majority of the Union party) asked him for only a slight compromise; their action was really an entreaty that he would unite with them to preserve Congress and the country from the policy of the radicals. The two projects which Johnson had most at heart were the speedy admission of the Southern senators and representatives to Congress and the relegation of the question of Negro suffrage to the States themselves. Himself shrinking from the imposition on these communities of the franchise for the colored people, his unyielding position in regard to matters involving no vital principle did much to bring it about. His quarrel with Congress prevented the readmission into the Union on generous terms of the members of the late Confederacy; and for the quarrel and its unhappy results Johnson's lack of imagination and his inordinate sensitiveness to political gadflies were largely responsible: it was not a contest in which fundamentals were involved. He sacrificed two important objects to petty considerations. His pride of opinion, his desire to beat, blinded him to the real welfare of the South and of the whole country.

[edit] Impeachment

[edit] First attempt

Theodore R. Davis' illustration of Johnson's impeachment trial in the United States Senate, published in Harper's Weekly.

There were two attempts to remove President Andrew Johnson from office. The first occurred in the fall of 1867. On November 21st of that year, the House Judiciary committee produced a bill of impeachment that was basically a vast collection of complaints against him. After a furious debate, there was a formal vote in the House of Representatives on December 5th, which failed 108-57. ^[15]

Second attempt

Johnson notified Congress that he had removed Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War and was replacing him in the interim with Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas. Johnson had wanted to replace Stanton with former General Ulysses S. Grant, who refused to accept the position. This violated the Tenure of Office Act, a law enacted by Congress in March, 1867 over Johnson's veto, specifically designed to protect Stanton. Johnson had vetoed the act, claiming it was unconstitutional. The act said, "...every person holding any civil office, to which he has been appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate ... shall be entitled to hold such office until a successor shall have been in like manner appointed and duly qualified," thus removing the President's previous unlimited power to remove any of his Cabinet members at will. Years later in the case Myers v. United States in 1926, the Supreme Court ruled that such laws were indeed unconstitutional.

The 1868 Impeachment Resolution

The Senate and House entered into debate. Thomas attempted to move into the war office, for which Stanton had Thomas arrested. Three days after Stanton's removal, the House impeached Johnson for intentionally violating the Tenure of Office Act.

On March 5, 1868, a court of impeachment was constituted in the Senate to hear charges against the President. William M. Evarts served as his counsel. Eleven articles were set out in the resolution, and the trial before the Senate lasted almost three months. Johnson's defense was based on a clause in the Tenure of Office Act stating that the then-current secretaries would hold their posts throughout the term of the President who appointed them. Since Lincoln had appointed Stanton, it was claimed, the applicability of the act had already run its course.

There were three votes in the Senate: one on May 16 for the 11th article of impeachment, which included many of the charges contained in the other articles, and two on May 26 for the second and third articles, after which the trial adjourned. On all three occasions, thirty-five Senators voted "Guilty" and nineteen "Not Guilty". As the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority for conviction in impeachment trials, Johnson was acquitted. A single changed vote would have sufficed to return a "Guilty" verdict. Seven Republican senators were disturbed by how the proceedings had been manipulated in order to give a one-sided presentation of the evidence. Senators William Pitt Fessenden, Joseph S. Fowler, James W. Grimes, John B. Henderson, Lyman Trumbull, Peter G. Van Winkle,^[16] and Edmund G. Ross of Kansas, who provided the decisive vote, ^[17] defied their party and public opinion and voted against conviction.

Before 1960 most historians held the impeachment of Andrew Johnson as a violation of American values regarding division of powers and fair play. Had Johnson been successfully removed from office, he would have been replaced with Radical Republican Benjamin Wade, making the presidency and Congress somewhat uniform in ideology, although in many ways Wade was more "radical" than the Republicans in Congress. This would have established a precedent that a President could be removed not for "high crimes and misdemeanors," but for purely political differences.

Christmas Day amnesty for Confederates

One of Johnson's last significant acts was granting unconditional amnesty to all Confederates on Christmas Day, December 25, 1868. This was after the election of U.S. Grant to succeed him, but before Grant took office in March, 1869. Earlier amnesties requiring signed oaths and excluding certain classes of people were issued both by Lincoln and by Johnson.

Post-Presidency

Andrew Johnson National Cemetery, the final resting place of Andrew and Eliza Johnson as well as their children in Greeneville, Tennessee.

Johnson was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the United States Senate from Tennessee in 1868 and to the House of Representatives in 1872. However, in 1874 the Tennessee legislature did elect him to the U.S. Senate. Johnson served from March 4, 1875, until his death from a stroke near Elizabethton, Tennessee, on July 31 that same year. In his first speech since returning to the Senate, which was also his last, Johnson denounced the corruptions of the Grant Administration and his passions aroused a standing ovation from many of his fellow senators who had once voted to remove him from the presidency. He is the only President to serve in the Senate after his presidency.

Interment was in the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery, Greeneville, Tennessee, where he was buried with a copy of the Constitution. Andrew Johnson National Cemetery is now part of the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site.

Historians' changing view of Andrew Johnson

Engraving of Andrew Johnson

Historians have gone through cycles on Johnson. The Dunning School of the early 20th century saw him as a heroic bulwark against the corruption of the Radical Republicans who tried to remove the entire leadership class of the white South. Johnson seemed to be the legitimate heir of the sainted Abraham Lincoln. By the 1930s a series of favorable biographies enhanced his prestige.^[18] Johnson's Republican critics of the 1860s appeared as disreputable to liberal historians as did the Republican critics of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Furthermore, a Beardian School (named after Charles Beard and typified by Howard K. Beale) argued that the Republican Party in the 1860s was a tool of corrupt business interests, and that Johnson stood for the people. Historian Eric Foner says that by 1948, historians regarded Reconstruction, "as a time of corruption and misgovernment caused by granting black men the right to vote." They rated Johnson "near great." By 1960, however, historians such as Erik McKitrick demonstrated that Johnson was a poor politician who could not build coalitions and was doomed to failure. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s brought a new perspective, akin to that of the abolitionists of the 1860s. This neo-abolitionist school gave muted praise for Republican efforts to help the blacks, and excoriated Johnson for siding explicitly with the white South.

Johnson's most important foreign policy action was the purchase of Alaska from Russia (the future Soviet Union), which would prove vital to national security later during the Cold War. The idea and implementation is credited to Seward as Secretary of State, but Johnson approved the plan. It should be remembered that gold was not discovered in Alaska until 1880, thirteen years after the purchase and five years after Johnson's death, and that oil was not discovered until 1968.