President Grant, Frederick Douglass, and the 1872 Presidential Election

President Grant, Frederick Douglass, and Grant’s 1872 Reelection

Imagine the United States in 1869 when U.S. Grant took office as President. The country had just been through a war resulting in over 600,000 deaths out of a population of about 31 million. In comparison, the Vietnam War, which divided the country in the 1960s,  incurred almost 60,000 fatalities, when the United States had a population of about 200 million. Adjusting for population, the Civil War was over 60 times more lethal than the Vietnam War. Put another way, if the military deaths occurred in Vietnam at the same rate as the Civil War, instead of almost 60,000 deaths, we would have incurred over 3.8 million fatalities. How would the United States have dealt with that circumstance?

Grant was the general most responsible for the Union victory in the Civil War. He initially led the Western armies winning a series of victories culminating with the July 4, 1863 capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi. With this win, the Confederacy was split in two. The Union now controlled the Mississippi River from Illinois in the North to New Orleans in the South. Grant then took command in Tennessee. The Confederates had defeated the Union in the Battle of Chickamauga, and the Union army was under siege in Chattanooga. Under Grant’s leadership, the North broke the siege and pushed the South out of Tennessee. This set the stage for General Sherman’s invasion of Georgia and subsequent capture of Atlanta. President Lincoln named Grant supreme commander of all the Union armies in March 1864. Within 13 months, the Civil War was over. Grant had saved the Union.

Now,  he was going to have to save the Union again. The South resisted granting full rights to the newly freed enslaved people. The Republican Congress passed laws to protect Black Civil Rights, and President Andrew Johnson vetoed them. Congress overrode those vetoes and eventually impeached Johnson. In the nation’s first-ever Presidential impeachment, Johnson survived by a single vote. 

In March 1869, when Republican Grant took office, some of the Southern states were not yet part of the Union. In many of those States, Black Civil Rights were still under assault. President Grant was determined to protect those rights. From his Inaugural speech:

“The question of suffrage is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the nation are excluded from its privileges in any State. … this question should be settled now, and I entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the ratification of the fifteenth article of amendment to the Constitution.”

To rejoin the Union, Southern States had to approve the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed voting rights. This occurred by February 1870.

However, Black Civil Rights were still under attack. Grant worked with Congress to pass three laws, known as the Enforcement Acts or the Ku Klux Klan acts. Grant used the authority provided by these acts to dispatch Federal troops to the South to enforce voting rights. These forces made numerous arrests, and the Ku Klux Klan disappeared until the 1920s.

Grant ran for reelection in 1872. Frederick Douglass was the leading African-American advocate for abolishing slavery and Black Civil Rights. He strongly endorsed Grant’s reelection in 1872 and produced a pamphlet titled “U.S. Grant and the Colored People.” The subheading: “His wise, just, practical, and effective friendship thoroughly vindicated by incontestable facts in his record.” Some highlights from the pamphlet:

Douglass starts as follows: “There are many dissemblers and falsifiers of the Greeley party [Greeley ran on the Democratic ticket in opposition to Grant] in the South who are seeking the control of the colored voters, by declaring to them that President Grant is not, and never has been, and sincere friend of my race….I declare that President Grant’s course, from the time he drew the sword in defense of the old Union in the Valley of the Mississippi till he sheathed it at Appomattox, and thence to this day in his reconstruction policy and his war upon the Ku-KIux, is without a deed or word to justify such an accusation.”

Douglas explains that even during the war, then General Grant freed enslaved people and cared for them. Douglass provides one example of Grant’s actions in 1862, before the Emancipation Proclamation’s January 1, 1863 effective date.

“General Grant, commanded the armies…operating in territory un-affected by the proclamation…General Grant was always… in advance of authority furnished from Washington with regard to the treatment of those of our color then slaves. Thus a large number of our people, through his orders, were furnished employment within his lines, or transportation to home and places of comfort for themselves and families and education…he issued on November 11, 1862 before the Emancipation Proclamation and before authority was furnished from Washington, but solely on his own conviction of the military necessity and right, an order caring for our people.”

Douglass explains that Grant ordered that the former slaves be fed, clothed, and provided jobs.

Grant supported organizing troops, as Douglass explains: “…the Government determined to employ the freedmen as soldiers, General Grant [orders that] It is expected that all commanders will especially exert themselves in carrying out the policy of the Administration, not only in organizing colored regiments and rendering them efficient, but also in removing prejudice against them.”

Douglass summarizes his support for Grant: “…my devotion to General Grant rests upon high and broad public grounds, and not upon personal favor. I see in him the vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of my race from all the malign, reactionary, social, and political elements that would whelm them in destruction.”

Douglass includes the Republican Party in his endorsement: “In the midst of political changes, he is now as ever—unswerving and inflexible. Nominated regularly by the time-honored Republican party, he is clothed with all the sublime triumphs of humanity which make its record. That party stands to-day free from alloy, pure and simple…embody the precious and priceless results of the suppression of rebellion and the abolition of slavery. We can no more array ourselves against these candidates and this party than we can resume our chains or insult our mothers.”

If you have the time, it is well worth reading the pamphlet, click here.

Grant easily won reelection in 1872, winning almost all of the Electoral College, as shown in the nearby image. However, it would be over 90 years before these Southern States voted again for a Republican.

 Grant continued his defense of Civil Rights in his second Inaugural speech:

“The effects of the late civil strife have been to free the slave and make him a citizen. Yet he is not possessed of the civil rights which citizenship should carry with it. This is wrong and should be corrected. To this correction I stand committed, so far as Executive influence can avail.”

We may think politics is divisive today, but I think it has frequently been that way. Grant concludes with this statement in his second Inaugural speech:

“…throughout the war, and from my candidacy for my present office in 1868 to the close of the last Presidential campaign, I have been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever equaled in political history, which to-day I feel that I can afford to disregard in view of your verdict, which I gratefully accept as my vindication.”

With the spate of recent biographies reclaiming his reputation, as with the 1872 election, once again, Grant has been vindicated.