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  CONTENTS

  Cast of Characters

  April 14, 1865

  CHAPTER 1: Charles Sumner (1865)

  CHAPTER 2: William Henry Seward (1865)

  CHAPTER 3: Jefferson Davis (1865)

  CHAPTER 4: Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (1865)

  CHAPTER 5: Andrew Johnson (1865)

  CHAPTER 6: Oliver Otis Howard (1865)

  CHAPTER 7: Thaddeus Stevens (1865–1866)

  CHAPTER 8: The Fourteenth Amendment (1866)

  CHAPTER 9: Edwin Stanton (1867–1868)

  CHAPTER 10: Salmon Portland Chase (1868)

  CHAPTER 11: Benjamin Franklin Wade (1868)

  CHAPTER 12: Nathan Bedford Forrest (1868)

  CHAPTER 13: Ulysses S. Grant (1869)

  CHAPTER 14: Gold and Santo Domingo (1869–1870)

  CHAPTER 15: Ku Klux Klan (1870–1872)

  CHAPTER 16: Horace Greeley (1872)

  CHAPTER 17: Hiram Revels (1872–1873)

  CHAPTER 18: Grant’s Second Term (1873–1876)

  CHAPTER 19: Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1876)

  CHAPTER 20: Jim Crow (1877)

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Photo Credits

  For Sue Horton

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Benjamin Franklin Butler

  November 5, 1818–January 11, 1893

  The Union general occupying New Orleans. A Radical Republican, he argued for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and wrote the anti-KKK Act of 1871.

  Salmon Portland Chase

  January 13, 1808–May 7, 1873

  Ohio senator and governor and Lincoln’s Treasury secretary. In December 1864, Lincoln named Chase to replace Roger B. Taney as U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice.

  Jefferson Finis Davis

  June 3, 1808–December 6, 1889

  A West Point graduate, U.S. senator from Mississippi, president of the Confederate States of America. Captured by Union troops in 1865 but never tried for treason, Davis retired to Biloxi to write his memoirs.

  Nathan Bedford Forrest

  July 13, 1821–October 29, 1877

  Lieutenant general in the Confederate army, he was accused of—but never tried for—the slaughter of black Union troops at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in 1864. Said to be the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in 1867.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  April 27, 1822–July 23, 1885

  Commanded the Union army in victory over the Southern Confederacy. As the nation’s eighteenth president (1869–1877), he oversaw Reconstruction efforts and opposed the Ku Klux Klan. While Grant was personally honest, his second term was marred by corruption within his administration.

  Horace Greeley

  February 3, 1811–November 29, 1872

  Founder and editor of the New York Tribune, Greeley promoted the nation’s expansion to the Pacific Coast and was widely quoted for advising, “Go West, young man.” Greeley broke with the Radical Republicans to run for president against Grant in 1872 on the new Liberal Republican ticket.

  Rutherford Birchard Hayes

  October 4, 1822–January 17, 1893

  Republican governor of Ohio, Hayes succeeded Grant in 1877 when he became the nineteenth U.S. president by one electoral vote. His supporters had agreed he would withdraw the last Federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina, ending the twelve-year effort at Reconstruction.

  Oliver Otis Howard

  November 8, 1830–October 26, 1909

  A Union general, he went on to head the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. His emphasis on education for the former slaves led to the founding of Howard University.

  Andrew Johnson

  December 29, 1808–July 31, 1875

  A slave owner from Tennessee, Johnson became America’s seventeenth president upon Lincoln’s assassination. Clashing with Radical Republicans over Reconstruction policies, he became the first president to be impeached and was saved from conviction by one vote. Johnson was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1875, months before his death.

  Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback

  May 10, 1837–December 21, 1921

  Son of a white plantation owner and his slave, he became the nation’s first African American governor (Louisiana, December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873). Elected to both the House and the Senate, he was denied his seat by Democrats.

  Hiram Rhodes Revels

  September 27, 1827–January 16, 1901

  Born to free parents in North Carolina, he attended Union County Quaker Seminary in Indiana and was ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi in 1870, Revels became the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate.

  William Henry Seward

  May 16, 1801–October 10, 1872

  Governor of New York and Lincoln’s secretary of state, he survived an assassination attempt by the John Wilkes Booth cabal. Seward, who remained loyal to Andrew Johnson, bought Alaska from Russia in 1867.

  Edwin McMasters Stanton

  December 19, 1814–December 24, 1869

  Lincoln’s secretary of war, he refused Andrew Johnson’s demand that he relinquish the office because of ties with the Radical Republicans. Stanton died days after Grant nominated him for the U.S. Supreme Court.

  Thaddeus Stevens

  April 4, 1792–August 11, 1868

  A fierce abolitionist and member of the House from Pennsylvania, Stevens was a Radical Republican who drove the fight to impeach Andrew Johnson.

  Charles Sumner

  January 6, 1811–March 11, 1874

  An uncompromising U.S. senator from Massachusetts, he was a leader of the Radical Republicans who first introduced civil rights legislation for former slaves.

  Samuel Jones Tilden

  February 9, 1814–August 4, 1886

  A Democrat who stayed loyal to the Union, Tilden ran as New York’s governor against Hayes in 1876 and lost the brokered election by one electoral vote.

  William Magear Tweed

  April 3, 1823–April 12, 1878

  From a minor New York City job, “Boss” Tweed built a Tammany Hall political machine that controlled state legislators and judges. Tweed was the third-largest landowner in the city, after bribery and payoffs estimated at tens of millions. Convicted of corruption in 1877, he died in a New York jail.

  Benjamin Franklin Wade

  October 27, 1800–March 2, 1878

  As a Radical senator from Ohio, he was highly critical of Lincoln’s Reconstruction policies. Presiding over the U.S. Senate’s impeachment trial, Wade would have replaced Andrew Johnson if he had been convicted.

  Morrison Remick Waite

  November 29, 1816–March 23, 1888

  Waite was appointed by Grant in 1874 as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite his early antislavery position, he ruled regularly against new legislation protecting the rights of the former slaves.

  Thurlow Weed

  November 15, 1797–November 22, 1882

  New York newspaper publisher responsible for the political career of William Henry Seward.

  Abraham Lincoln

  March 6, 1865

  APRIL 14, 1865

  LT. GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT BEGGED OFF when the president invited Grant to join him and his wife later that evening at the theater.
Julia Grant felt she had been snubbed recently by Mary Lincoln, and since Grant had just accepted Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox five days earlier, he could offer the diplomatic excuse that he and his wife were eager to return to their home and children in Burlington, New Jersey.

  The Grants boarded the 4 p.m. train to New York, which entered Philadelphia on Broad Street to let passengers be ferried across the Delaware River. Grant had not eaten since 9 a.m., and at a restaurant near the ferry landing he ordered a plate of oysters.

  Before they could be served, an aide appeared with one telegram, and then a second and a third. “Is anything the matter?” his wife asked. “You look startled.”

  “Yes,” Grant answered. “Something very serious has happened. Do not exclaim. Be quiet, and I will tell you.”

  President Lincoln had been assassinated at the Ford Theater. Secretary of State William Henry Seward and his son had also been shot at their home and might not survive. General Grant was requested to return to Washington immediately.

  Grant was overcome with emotion. Like most of his relatives, he had supported Illinois Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas against Lincoln in the presidential election five years earlier. But before that, as a twenty-one-year-old soldier in 1842, Grant had shared Lincoln’s opposition to war with Mexico.

  By the time Grant was commanding troops during the Civil War, he had become the target of scurrilous reports to Lincoln in the White House. The editor of the Cincinnati Commercial summed him up as “a poor drunk imbecile.” But Grant was winning battles, and Lincoln stood by him.

  From their first meeting, they seemed to understand each other. Grant had listened sympathetically as the president admitted that he had no military expertise. What he wanted, Lincoln said, was a general who would take responsibility. And act. He would supply such a man with all the assistance at his command.

  Grant promised to do his best.

  Over time, the general had warmed to Lincoln’s generous heart, and he shared the president’s vision of a country reunited at the war’s end.

  Grant had concluded, however, that Vice President Andrew Johnson was a far different sort of man—vengeful toward the South and likely to set back the healing that would be required for a successful reconstruction.

  • • •

  With Burlington only an hour away, Grant decided to escort his wife home before he returned to the capital. By the time he disembarked in Washington once more, Grant saw that the news of Lincoln’s death had spread rapidly. Where there had been joy in the streets over an end to the war, Grant now saw faces contorted with grief. All of Washington seemed to be in mourning.

  He found that early rumors about the killings had been exaggerated. George Atzerodt, a German immigrant, had been assigned by the conspirators to kill Vice President Johnson but refused at the last minute to go through with it. Secretary of State Seward had been the target of a more determined attempt; he and his son were in critical condition but alive.

  From those first reports, Grant did not learn that he had been another intended victim. Details of the conspiracy emerged only later, weeks after John Wilkes Booth, the actor who had killed Lincoln, was trapped in a tobacco barn in Virginia and shot to death by a Union army sergeant.

  For the moment, Grant was forced to turn aside from the turmoil in official Washington and devote himself to winding down the war. Leaving Appomattox, he had ordered George Meade, the victorious general at Gettysburg, to take his armies back to camp and wait for Confederate general Joseph Johnston to respond to Lee’s surrender.

  Grant authorized another of his generals, William Tecumseh Sherman, to offer the same terms to Johnston that Grant had accorded Lee.

  • • •

  Grant remembered that Lincoln had set only two conditions for surrender: The Confederacy must agree to preserve the Union and to abolish slavery. If the rebels were willing to concede those two points, Lincoln had said, he was all but ready to sign his name to a blank piece of paper and let them fill out the balance of the terms.

  In that spirit, Grant had accepted General Lee’s surrender with the courtesies due a worthy adversary. He allowed Lee’s officers to retain their sidearms and Lee to keep his ceremonial sword. Confederate officers and enlisted men could also hold on to their mules and horses, including Lee’s famous Traveller. At General Lee’s request, Grant provided rations for the rebel troops, who had been near starvation.

  • • •

  Grant suspected that Lincoln would have been relieved if Confederate president Jefferson Davis managed to escape across the Mississippi River and spared Lincoln from dealing with his punishment. “He thought,” Grant recalled, “that enough blood had already been spilled to atone for our wickedness as a nation.”

  Looking toward the future, Grant did not believe that most Northerners were in favor of Negroes voting. They might expect that development eventually, but only after a period of probation during which the ex-slaves could—as Grant put it—“prepare themselves for the privileges of citizenship before the full right would be conferred.”

  And the rebellious Southerners “surely would not make good citizens if they felt they had a yoke around their neck.”

  Charles Sumner

  CHAPTER 1

  CHARLES SUMNER (1865)

  CHARLES SUMNER DISAGREED, VEHEMENTLY, WITH General Grant’s vision of life after the Civil War ended. A fifty-four-year-old senator from Massachusetts, Sumner had already been a casualty of that war, four years before its first shot was fired.

  Sumner’s grandfather had fought in the American Revolution, but he had inherited his abiding fervor from his father, who opposed segregated schools and the law forbidding marriage between whites and blacks. A lifelong crusader, the elder Sumner was fond of saying, “The duties of life are more than life,” and he passed on that philosophy to his twins, a boy and a girl, born in 1811. Although Matilda Sumner died at twenty-one, her brother Charles never forgot the lesson.

  From Boston Latin Grammar School, Charles went on to Harvard, where he strongly impressed his law professor Joseph Story, who was also a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

  But a trip to Washington soured Sumner on a political career. He developed a loathing for the theatrical airs of the Senate and for what he derided as “newspaper fame.” Apart from Judge Story, he found the Court no better. Calling on Chief Justice Roger Taney, Sumner was disdainful of his “paltry collection of books, which seem to be very seldom used.”

  He chose instead to travel extensively throughout Europe, where he picked up fluency in German, Italian, French, and Spanish. Members of the British aristocracy were taken with this young Yankee’s erudition and welcomed him into their circle for fox hunting at their country estates.

  Sumner dined at the Garrick Club and took tea with Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. His hostess forgot his nationality so completely that as they chatted she exclaimed, “Thank God, I have kept clear of those Americans!” Sumner pretended not to hear.

  Invited by lawyers to Guildhall, London’s administrative center, Sumner was pleased to find a marble bust of an early British abolitionist in a place of honor. At Windsor Castle, he toured the private rooms, where he found the royal dining hall unappealingly “showy and brilliant.”

  When Sumner went home after eighteen months, it was only because his money had run out.

  • • •

  Sumner’s father had died during his travels. Back in Boston, he went to live with his mother on Hancock Street while he practiced law and oversaw the upbringing of his brothers and sisters. Friends decided that Europe had sent Charles home more portly but better tailored.

  Sumner found that, at six-foot-four and with a powerful voice, he was becoming a popular speaker despite his weakness for fustian language. In the past, Boston’s traditional Fourth of July oration had left John Adams unimpressed. By the time the nation’s second president died in 1826, he was complaining that the event featured “young men of genius describin
g scenes they never saw” and professing “feelings they never felt.”

  When Sumner was chosen for the honor of delivering the oration in 1845, he resolved to do better. The familiar ritual at Tremont Temple began with a prayer, the reading of the Declaration of Independence, and music from a choir of a hundred girls. Then Sumner rose in a dress coat with gilt buttons and white trousers to face an audience of two thousand patriots. Barely referring to notes, he spoke for the next two hours.

  Sumner began by denouncing the recent annexation of Texas because it would probably lead to war with Mexico. Amid murmurs of disapproval from supporters of President Polk’s war policy, Sumner spelled out his theme:

  “In our age there can be no peace that is not honorable; there can be no war that is not dishonorable.”

  Sumner lauded the glories of nearby Harvard University before pointing out that after two centuries, the school had accumulated property worth only $703,175. In contrast, the warship Ohio docked in Boston Harbor had cost $834,845.

  “War is known as the last reason of kings. Let it be no reason of our republic. Let us renounce and throw off forever the yoke of a tyranny”—war—“more oppressive than any in the annals of the world.”

  It was far from the thrilling martial rhetoric his audience had anticipated. Afterward, during the dinner at Faneuil Hall, Boston’s politicians and military officers angrily disavowed Sumner’s sentiments. To restore a semblance of good humor, the dinner chairman suggested that the problem with his friend Sumner was that since he was a bachelor, he knew nothing of domestic strife and therefore nothing of war.

  But at least one Boston general admired Sumner’s reaction to the discord he had aroused: He withstood “all these fusillades with the most quiet good nature, and even with good-humored smiles,” the man reported. “No man could have behaved with more exact and refined courtesy.”

  • • •

  When Judge Story died two months later, Sumner debated whether he wanted to succeed him as head of Harvard’s law school. He worried that taking the position would mean censoring his opinions; he would “no longer be a free man.” But after his Fourth of July oration, Harvard settled the question for him, and the job was not offered.