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Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877) was elected as a war hero—the Northern General who’d defeated the South in the Civil War. After the shooting stopped, the United States were anything but united. The Southern states were crippled as the Northern ones prospered…and corruption ruled the land.
Grant’s popularity declined as evidence of serious political chicanery came to light. As money and land grants were given to railroad companies in the West, it was discovered that members of Congress were bribed to vote in the interests of the Union Pacific Railroad. In the Whiskey Ring Scandal, a group of distillers and tax officers defrauded the U.S. Treasury out of revenue tax on whiskey. Grant was not found personally responsible in either scandal, but lost support by appointing people who turned out to be dishonest, and continuing to back them after their dishonesty was revealed.¹
The visionary leadership that an angry America needed after the Civil War, assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and divisive Presidency of Andrew Johnson, was not to be. In a time of money-grubbing self-interest, no constituency went less served than the former slaves over whom the Civil War had been fought. It is ironic that Grant’s narrow election victory was decided by African Americans in Southern states…considering that African Americans would have to wait another hundred years before their civil rights were finally legislated.
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