Ulysses S. Grant

It literally was an arranged deal that the vote would be cooked such that Johnson would be acquitted.

Certain people had to cast their votes certain ways because of the presidential election that fall and Ulysses Grant, the famous general, is their candidate or most want him to be their candidate.

They don't want a tar grant.

with any of the responsibility of the impeachment so let's get rid of impeachment even though There's a lot of scholarship on this, and I have always personally agreed with that element of the scholarship, which I think is dead right, that Johnson should have been impeached, perhaps even earlier, for his brutal obstructions of Reconstruction policy, money allocated by Congress, laws passed by Congress, over and over and over, his personal obstruction to the process of reconstruction.

But that impeachment was a kind of a – It wasn't just a political spectacle.

It was almost a political blowout of much of this tension that had grown over Reconstruction policy.

And then Grant will narrowly, narrowly win that 1868 election in great part.

because of about 400,000 black male voters in the southern states that voted for Grant.

The achievements of history have been the choices, the determinations, the creations of the human will.

It was the will, quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim, of men like Wilberforce and Garrison, Goodyear and Cyrus Field, Bismarck and Grant that made them indomitable.

They simply would do what they planned.

Such men can no more be stopped than the sun can be or the tide.

Oh, what miracles have been wrought by the self-confidence, the self-determination of an iron will! What impossible deeds have been performed by it! It was this that took Napoleon over the Alps in midwinter.

It took Farragut and Dewey past the cannons, torpedoes, and mines of the enemy.

It led Nelson and Grant to victory.

It has been the great tonic in the world of discovery, invention, and art.

Sir, in compliance with the resolution of the House of Representatives dated April 16, 1867, I have the honor to send herewith a summary of the proceedings, etc., of the trial of Henry Wirtz.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, U.S. Grant, Secretary of War ad interim.

Honorable S. Colfax, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The Trial of Henry Wirtz.

There is enough of evidence in the case, although some was excluded, to establish these facts.

Any other whipping of negroes that may have taken place was in the quartermaster's department.

They were made to work, not being regarded by the Confederate government, whose officer and servant I was, in the light of prisoners of war.

As to my profane expressions wherein I am represented as comparing my services to the Confederate government with those of generals or regiments at the front, these too are gross exaggerations.

And Jeb Stuart, after being mortally wounded in battle, said to his close friend and lieutenant, Honey Bun, how do I look in the face? Famous Union General Ulysses S.

Grant's last word was water, which isn't nearly so good, but he said that last word after having survived the war and getting to be, like, President of the United States and stuff.

Right, but anyway, this all raises an interesting question.

Was the result of the war a foregone conclusion? The Confederacy had to create a nation from scratch and build national unity among people who were committed to the autonomy of their individual home states, so that's a problem.

But it talks about the enemy and his resources, which was kind of a Union focus, and more importantly, it talks about preventing him from using the same force at different seasons.

That makes me think it is a Union general final answer, Ulysses S.

Grant.

Yo! How do you like them apples? Grant was different from previous Union generals in that he was willing to sustain enormous casualties in pursuit of his goal to wear down the South.

It actually survives the Civil War Which itself is an interesting story.

Uh, President Grant is still interested in colonization.

Uh, we have an abundance of evidence that Lincoln never, uh, abandoned the idea of colonization for the freedmen, even in-- at the very end of the war.

We have, um, we have conversations, uh, with Lincoln, um, and, uh, congressmen in April of eighteen sixty-five, the same month where he is assassinated.

So Mr. Gibson was an eyewitness to the, the lead up to the Civil War.

He was living on his father's cotton plantation just outside of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

He witnesses the siege of Vicksburg by Grant.

Uh, he is there for the fall of the city and its occupation, and then he is there in the early years of Reconstruction, and he describes the turmoil of the time.

Fortified by all these elements of strength, the Republican held the presidency from 1869 to 1885.

The three presidents elected in this period, Grant, Hayes, and Garfield, had certain striking characteristics in common.

They were all of humble origin, enough to please the most exacting Jacksonian Democrat.

They had been generals in the Union Army.

Grant, next to Lincoln, was regarded as the savior of the Constitution.

Hayes and Garfield, though lesser lights in the military firmament, had honorable records duly appreciated by veterans of the war, now thoroughly organized into the Grand Army of the Republic.

It is true that Grant was not a politician and had never voted the Republican ticket, but this was readily overlooked.

Hayes and Garfield, on the other hand, were loyal party men.

The object of this survey was primarily to establish a means of communication with California to accommodate the heavy traffic included by the discovery of gold.

President Grant took a deep interest in the canal problem and in 1872 appointed a commission consisting of General A.

A. Humphreys, Chief of Engineers, C. P. Patterson, Superintendent of the Coast Survey, and Commodore Daniel Amon of the U.S. Navy to examine the information at hand and determine the most feasible route for an interoceanic canal.

The routes considered were the Tehuantepe, Nicaragua, Panama, and Atraro Napipi.