The Ulysses S. Grant Administration

After the death of Lincoln, Andrew Johnson was elected president. Johnson favored abolition and believed that the leaders of the confederate south should be punished somehow, but he also believed that it should be made easy for the south to rejoin the union and have representatives in Washington. Congress however, tended to disagree. Johnson was a Democrat and congress at this time was controlled by the radical republicans. The radical republicans believed that the southern states should be dealt with very strictly. They believed in making freed slaves should be full citizens with full civil rights and they believed that the south should be ruled by military force until they met very strict standards for rejoining the union. Johnson and congress rarely agreed on anything. In 1867 Johnson suspended Edwin Stanton, secretary of war, and appointed Grant. Later in 1868 congress ordered Johnson to restore Stanton to his position which meant that Grant resigned. Johnson decided to threaten the unsupportive congress by forming his own army in Washington. This is when Grant withdrew his support of Andrew Johnson and began to support the radical republicans. In 1868 Grant won the election. (Riehecky, 43-45)

Grant was elected with much fanfare. He was considered to be the most popular general since Washington. To the American people he represented freedom and victory over tyranny and so he was very much loved as president. One thing that Grant did that angered some people, however, is that he chose cabinet leaders that were not necessarily experienced at the job that he gave them, and he did not announce his cabinet changes before he picked these people for the job. Being president this close to the end of the civil war presented a few problems. The first problem and the problem that Grant seemed to care about most was restoring the credit of the country. After the civil war, the value of the dollar dropped considerably and Grant realized how important it was to restore the dollar’s value. He signed his first bill on March 18, 1869. The bill was called the Act to Strengthen Public Credit. It basically helped to guarantee that people who had bought government bonds during the civil war would be paid back in gold or, at least, it’s equivalent. (Havilen 67-70)


Ulysses S. Grant
Grant's Whiskey Ring. Web. 13 Dec 2010. http://killerhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ulysses-s-grant1.jpg.

There was also a dispute between America and Britain that had to be settled. Three ships were built in British shipyards called the Alabama, Florida, and the Shenandoah. The Confederates had used these ships during the war to attack union vessels. Grant wanted Britain to pay for the damages and people thought that this could potentially lead to another war between Britain and the US. Grant realized that another war at this point would lead to the destruction of our country in this weak stage in our history. He sprung into action and ordered the Secretary of State Hamilton Fish to negotiate a settlement. The legislation worked and Britain agreed to pay the United States 15.5 million dollars. (Havilen, 71-72)

On September 24, 1869, two men named Jay Gould and Jim Fisk decided that they were going to take advantage of the weak state of the dollar and corner the gold market. They were going to buy enough gold that they could control the price of the precious metal. This was bad because when the price of gold rose, the value of the dollar would go down. The United States could not afford this at this point because the war had weakened the dollar’s value enough already. Gould and Fisk raised the price of gold from $135 an ounce to $165 an ounce. Treasury Secretary George Boutwell began selling the government’s shares of gold to drive the price of gold down and this was the first time in US history that the U.S. government stepped in to control the economy. (Havilin, 73)


George Boutwell
Financing the Civil War: The Office of Internal Revenue and the Use of Revenue Stamps. Web. 13 Dec 2010. http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/image001.jpg.

It was during Grant’s administration that Congress passed the fifteenth amendment, giving black men the right to vote. He also made sure that the southern states would honor the amendment because he wanted the south to honor the laws of the United States and not just the state laws of the south. It was during his presidency that the Ku Klux Klan became a problem. In response, Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871 to give the US government the power to act out against the offenses of the Ku Klux Klan. Federal agents under Grant arrested over 500 clansmen. (Havelin, 73-74)

Brinkley, Alan. American History: A Survey. 13th ed. 1. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2009. 418-420. Print.

Havelin, Kate. Ulysses S. Grant. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2004. Print.

Riehecky, Janet. Ulysses S. Grant: America's 18th President. New York: Children's, 2004. Print.