Background
During the Civil War, many in the North believed that fighting for the Union was a noble cause—for the preservation of the Union and the end of slavery. After the war ended, with the North victorious, the fear among Radical Republicans was that President Johnson too quickly assumed that slavery and Confederate nationalism were dead and that the Southern states could return to the Union. The Radical Republicans sought out a candidate for president who would support their vision for Reconstruction.
In 1868, the Republicans unanimously chose Ulysses S. Grant to be the Republican presidential candidate. Grant won favor with the Radicals after he allowed Edwin M. Stanton, a Radical, to be reinstated as secretary of war. As early as 1862, during the Civil War, Grant had appointed the Ohio military chaplain, John Eaton, to protect and gradually incorporate refugee slaves in west Tennessee and northern Mississippi into the Union war effort and pay them for their labor. Grant also opposed President Johnson by supporting the Reconstruction Acts passed by the Radicals.
Grant's Reconstruction Efforts
Immediately upon inauguration in 1869, Grant bolstered Reconstruction by prodding Congress to readmit Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas into the Union, while ensuring their constitutions protected every citizen's voting rights. Grant met with prominent black leaders for consultation, and signed a bill into law that guaranteed equal rights to both blacks and whites in Washington, D.C.
During Grant's two terms, he strengthened Washington's legal capabilities to directly intervene to protect citizenship rights even if the states ignored the problem. He worked with Congress to create the Department of Justice and Office of Solicitor General, led by Attorney General Amos Akerman and the first Solicitor General Benjamin Bristow. Congress passed three powerful Enforcement Acts in 1870 and 1871. These were criminal codes which protected the Freedmen's right to vote, hold office, serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. Most important, they authorized the federal government to intervene when states did not act. Grant's new Justice Department prosecuted thousands of Klansmen under the tough new laws. Grant sent federal troops to nine South Carolina counties to suppress Klan violence in 1871.
Grant also used military pressure to ensure that African Americans could maintain their new electoral status, won passage of the Fifteenth Amendment giving African Americans the right to vote, and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which gave people access to public facilities regardless of race. To counter vote fraud in the Democratic stronghold of New York City, Grant sent in tens of thousands of armed, uniformed federal marshals and other election officials to regulate the 1870 and subsequent elections. Democrats across the North then mobilized to defend their base and attacked Grant's entire set of policies. On October 21, 1876, President Grant deployed troops to protect black and white Republican voters in Petersburg, Virginia.
Scandals and Declining Support
Grant's support from Congress and the nation declined due to presidential scandals during his administration and the political resurgence of the Democrats in the North and South. Furthermore, most Republicans felt the war goals had been achieved by 1870 and turned their attention to other issues such as financial and monetary policies.
By 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant had alienated large numbers of leading Republicans, including many Radicals, with the corruption of his administration and his use of federal soldiers to prop up Radical state regimes in the South. The opponents, called "Liberal Republicans," included founders of the party who expressed dismay that the party had succumbed to corruption. They were further wearied by the continued insurgent violence of whites against blacks in the South, especially around every election cycle, which demonstrated the war was not over. Leaders included editors of some of the nation's most powerful newspapers. Charles Sumner, embittered by the corruption of the Grant administration, joined the new party, which nominated editor Horace Greeley. The badly organized Democratic party also supported Greeley.
Grant made up for the defections with new gains among Union veterans and with strong support from the "Stalwart" faction of his party and the Southern Republican parties. Grant won with 55.6 percent of the vote to Greeley's 43.8 percent. The Liberal Republican party vanished, and many former supporters—even former abolitionists—abandoned the cause of Reconstruction.
Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president of the United States
Official White House portrait of President Ulysses S. Grant, completed by Henry Ulke on March 2, 1875.