This created one of the more dramatic episodes of post-Civil War America when the highly regarded General of the Army of the United States, General Ulysses S. Grant, clashed with President Andrew Johnson over the latter’s Reconstruction policies. Fully aware of Grant’s popularity and influence, Johnson devised a scheme to send him on a diplomatic mission to Mexico. This was to put Grant out of commission for a time and replace him with General William T. Sherman, whom Johnson felt would prove more compliant with his ideas of Reconstruction.
But Johnson’s plan broke down almost immediately. On October 18, 1866, Grant, upon the request of Johnson, instructed Sherman to come to Washington. Privately, however, Grant believed that Johnson’s plan smelled of mischief. Sherman shared the same belief as Grant when he “The military ought to keep out of quasi-political offices,” and would not take part in any such maneuver. His loyalty to Grant did not waver.
Grant would not budge from Washington. He even reneged on plans to attend his aide’s, Colonel Orville Babcock, wedding, saying, “It will not do for me to leave Washington before the elections.” In his formal reply to Johnson’s request to go to Mexico, Grant said, “I have most respectfully to beg to be excused from the duty proposed. It is a diplomatic service for which I am not fitted either by education or taste.” It was a neat dodge, based on his calling as a soldier, which avoided the political trap that Johnson sprang on him.
This persistence culminated in a final attempt in one of these cabinet meetings. He refused again, and Johnson’s reaction was to send Sherman to Mexico while Grant remained in Washington to oversee events in Baltimore. Military intervention to support the governor was Johnson’s push to avoid violence, to which Grant was resistant. Such intervention, Grant argued, “would produce the very result intended to be averted.” The elections went forward without violence, but Grant’s suspicion of Johnson was further developed as he realized how the President had aimed to use him for political gain.
This conflict between military leadership and political aims was set against the backdrop of the Radical Republicans, who strove to reshape the post-war South. Firmly guided by Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, the Radical Republicans strongly supported the abolition of slavery and Blacks’ civil rights. Both Stevens and Sumner conflicted quite a bit with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson to take more extreme measures against the former Confederate states.
By 1866, it was the heyday of Radical Republicans because after the election they had acquired the majority in Congress. Such strength was evident as they ran over many of the vetoes of Johnson on the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. These were some of the very poignant laws to establish citizenship and equal protection of the laws for Blacks and the reorganization of the Southern states into military states.
These actions faced resistance from President Johnson and led to his impeachment at the hands of the Radical Republicans in the House of Representatives, albeit acquitted by one vote in the Senate. Not disheartened by this first failure, the Radicals continued to push with unrelenting force their policy, to be crowned with the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, giving suffrage to Blacks.
These intense political and military struggles mark what is called the Reconstruction Era. It was that time in history when the United States was to be made whole again when the rights of just-freed African Americans were to be determined. General Grant would later be elected President, but during this era, he was influential in encouraging civil rights and making use of federal power in battling racial violence.
Yet the era had its shortcomings, as well. There were indeed huge steps regarding civil rights, but violence and discrimination persisted against Blacks, Native Americans, and other minorities throughout the era. The eventual pullback of federal troops from the South in 1877 would bring an end to Reconstruction and mark the beginning of the Jim Crow era, which succeeded in deconstructing nearly every progressive gain made in that era of transformation.
Looking back, Reconstruction was a complex and convoluted era and even military men such as Grant were enmeshed in the darkest waters of rival political visions and issues of civil rights. The reverberations of that era continue to shape life in the United States today and will also remind them of the struggle for equality and true justice.