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Executive Power and Republicanism: the Battle to Define Ulysses S

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Executive Power and Republicanism: the Battle to Define Ulysses S Executive Power and Republicanism: The Battle to Define Ulysses S. Grant’s Presidency 1868-1880 Annabelle Frances Grenville-Mathers Submitted for the fulfilment of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History March 2015 1 2 Thesis Summary This thesis situates the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877) and the attempts to provide him with a third term in the republican political culture of Reconstruction. Exploring the period through the lens of the press, pamphlets, and archival material, it shows how republican ideas – especially hostility to partisan politics and fear of concentrated power – in the era had the capacity to both augment and detract from the president’s ability to secure the post-war settlement. Early interpretations of Grant’s presidency, written by scholars often hostile to Reconstruction, accused him of overzealous support for African-American civil rights. In contrast, revisionists blamed Reconstruction’s failure in part on Grant’s weak administration. However, when viewed through the prism of the republican political culture of the era, it is possible to see how Grant’s presidency could be simultaneously strong and weak. Republicanism enabled the portrayal of Grant as both a model republican and a tyrant- in-waiting. This thesis argues that the very qualities which made him a strong president – his antipartisanship, self-sacrifice, and honour – gave Grant the independence and support which many feared would be the undoing of the republic. Republicanism had the power to define the parameters of the possible during Reconstruction. With the federal government in tumult and the boundaries of presidential power undefined, Americans’ fears over the safety of their liberties helped shape what could be achieved during Reconstruction. When Grant and his backers were able to portray the General as a model republican they helped to increase his political capital. But by painting Grant as a tyrant, political figures – beginning with his opponents and ending with his supporters – undermined his political capital to protect the fragile gains of Reconstruction. This thesis, by exploring several moments before, during, and after Grant’s presidency in which the question of presidential power came to the fore argues that a political culture shaped by republicanism contributed to the downfall of Reconstruction. 3 4 Contents List of figures and tables 7 Figures Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 9 Chapter 1: The 1868 Presidential Election: The Republican Paradox of the Silent Man 65 Chapter 2: The One Term Principle: A Battle over Presidential Power 125 Chapter 3: ‘Even now we have all the tyranny and despotism of an empire, with the outward forms and semblance of a republic’: Caesarism and the Third Term Movement 1873 171 Chapter 4: ‘The most important event of the administration’: The President vetoes the 1874 inflation bill 220 Chapter 5: The Third Term Movement: ‘the unwritten law of the republic’ and the necessity of a ‘strong man’ 273 Conclusion 324 Bibliography 340 5 6 List of Figures and Tables Figure 1.1 ‘Dignity and Imprudence’ Figure 3.1 ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Figure 3.2 ‘Our Modern Canute at Long Branch’ Table 4.1 Western responses to the veto Table 4.2 Western Democratic responses to the veto Figure 4.3 ‘The Nation’s tribute’ Figure 4.4 ‘The Cradle of Liberty Out of Danger’ Figure 4.5 ‘Stand Back!’ Figure 5.1 ‘The Third-Term Panic’ Figures Acknowledgement All Harper’s Weekly images – with the exception of figures 4.3 and 4.5 – have been provided courtesy of Harpweek, LLC. Figures 4.3 and 4.5 were provided courtesy of the British Library. 7 8 Introduction When Andrew L. Slap published his book, The Doom of Reconstruction, many a sceptical eye was cast over his claim that the political beliefs – rather than the racial prejudices – of the Liberal Republicans doomed Reconstruction.1 But Slap had a valid point. The dominant republican political culture of the nineteenth century, though beginning to splinter into what scholars have called pluralist liberalism, defined the parameters of the possible during Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency of 1869 to 1877.2 Republican ideas, such as hostility to partisan politics and fears over the centralisation of power, could both augment and detract from the President’s political capital and thus his ability to enforce the gains of Reconstruction. The portrayal of Grant as a model republican – the antipartisan, self- sacrificing, and duty-bound civil officer – helped provide the President with enough political capital to enforce radical and unprecedented policies to support universal male suffrage. However, when his detractors succeeded in portraying both his character and these actions as those of an unrestrained, dishonourable, unrelenting tyrant, they had the ability to undermine the reach of federal power into state politics. Grant’s willingness to put the Reconstruction settlement above his own political ends – to value antipartisanship, self-sacrifice, and honour above personal considerations – conversely gave rise to both his depiction as a model republican and tyrant-in-waiting. Given longstanding fears of centralised power, corruption, and the demise of the republic – no mere theoretical position considering the recent Civil War – his portrayal as the latter had the power to undermine efforts to entrench the Reconstruction settlement for future generations. 1 Robert F. Engs, ‘The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era by Andrew L. Slap’, Journal of American History 94.4 (2008), pp. 1274-1274; and Charles W. Calhoun, ‘The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era by Andrew L. Slap’, American Historical Review 112.5 (2007), pp. 1547-1548. 2 Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 6-14. 9 Over the last decade historians have increasingly noted that fears of centralised power, corruption, and the stability of the republic, seemed to dominate the Reconstruction era.3 The Civil War, in particular, invoked old fears of the possible demise of the republic, and furnished republicans with substantial evidence that corruption had pulled their country apart, which led to – admittedly partisan – calls for the infusion of purer principles in politics.4 But despite the revival of antipartisanship in Civil War politics, which sought to unite the country behind a single purpose (or rather, a single indivisible common good), anxieties over the safety of their republican experiment remained ever present during the war.5 Though historians have been reluctant to extend these anxieties into the Reconstruction era, especially beyond the turbulent administration of Andrew Johnson, they have begun to acknowledge that many Americans still feared that the end of the republic was nigh.6 This fear of centralised power, rooted in republican antecedents, would undermine the federal government’s ability to protect African-American suffrage. The following chapters argue that both the ideas of antipartisanship and a single public good, and the fears of centralised power and corruption, collected under the umbrella term of republicanism, would work to create uncertainty around the intentions of President Ulysses S. Grant and undermine his ability to protect the gains of Reconstruction. Fears of centralised power had been around since the beginning of the republic, and indeed were a motivating factor in the American Revolution, yet their role in Reconstruction has been underexplored. Educated citizens were well versed in the examples of the Greek and 3 See Michael T. Smith, The Enemy Within: Fears of Corruption in the Civil War North (Charlottesville and London, 2011); Mark W. Summers, A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction (Chapel Hill and London, 2009); and Gregory P. Downs, ‘The Mexicanization of American Politics: the United States’ Transnational Path from Civil War to Stabilization’, American Historical Review 117.2 (2012), pp. 387- 409. 4 Smith, The Enemy Within, pp. 1-9, and Adam I. P. Smith, No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North (Oxford and New York, 2006), pp. 3-7, 9-10. 5 Ibid. 6 Downs, ‘The Mexicanization of American Politics’, American Historical Review, pp. 387-409; and Andrew Heath, ‘“Let the Empire Come”: Imperialism and Its Critics in the Reconstruction South’, Civil War History 60.2 (June 2014), pp. 152-189. 10 Roman republics, which, they believed, fell due to a lack of vigilance in guarding their liberties.7 As a result many Americans held onto their revolutionary republican ideology even as their country underwent dramatic changes.8 This ideology conditioned Americans to be suspicious of self-seeking politicians and to be ever-vigilant of challenges to their liberties which could endanger the republic. It emphasised the existence of a single public good, and the necessity of self-sacrifice in politics in order to privilege the nation above personal concerns. Plenty of Americans, of course, recognised – as James Madison had noted in the Federalist papers – that self-interest would shape politics, but even after the establishment of mass based party politics in the 1830s, parties continued to rally followers around the pursuit of a single common good.9 Republicanism encouraged Americans to ‘see politics as a struggle between good and evil, expressed as the eternal warfare between liberty and power, virtue and corruption.’10 Yet historians have been slow to appreciate how in the nineteenth-century corruption had multiple meanings – among them an anxiety over centralised power – and had a more encompassing definition than in later centuries.11 Harry L. Watson has explained how it included ‘social, economic, and moral changes that could undermine the basis of republican society.’12 In many respects, Americans’ interpretation of corruption was a warning against the rise of a modern society, which many believed would transform their country into a ‘state of decay’.13 In this sense Reconstruction, with its extension of the federal government, the retention of a standing army, the enlargement of the federal debt, the intrusion of the federal 7 Harry L.
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