The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant
Author: Ulysses Simpson Grant
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 536
Release: 2005
Genre: Manuscripts, American
ISBN: 9780809326310
GET BOOK

This looks at events of 1876 - a trying year for the White House. The Seventh Cavalry was wiped out by the Sioux, and Ulysees Grant's peace process lay in tatters as a result. Scandals diverted Grant's attention from larger policy questions. A series ofprosecutions culminated in the February trial of Orville Babcock, Grant's private secretary.

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: January 1-October 31, 1876

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: January 1-October 31, 1876
Author: Ulysses Simpson Grant
Publisher:
Total Pages: 540
Release: 1967
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:
GET BOOK

On May 10, 1876, Ulysses S. Grant pulled a lever to start the mighty 1,400-horsepower Corliss Steam Engine, powering acres of machinery for the nation's Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Grant summed up a century of American progress by saying, "Whilst proud of what we have done, we regret that we have not done more. Our achievements have been great enough however to make it easy for our people to acknowledge superior merit wheresoever found." That summer, Fourth of July celebrations coincided with early reports that Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and his Seventh Cavalry had been wiped out by Sioux. Grant resisted the subsequent clamor for volunteers to crush the Sioux, but his peace policy lay in shambles, and he later criticized Custer's unnecessary "sacrifice of troops." Soldiers sent to subdue Indians meant fewer available to help ensure a fair election in November. Grant's correspondents described a pattern of physical and economic intimidation throughout the South, as Democrats sought to keep blacks from the polls. After whites massacred black militia in South Carolina, Grant warned that unchecked persecution would lead to "bloody revolution." As violence spread, Grant struggled to position limited forces where they could do the most good. Scandals diverted Grant's attention from larger policy questions. A series of Whiskey Ring prosecutions culminated in the February trial of Orville E. Babcock, Grant's private secretary. A new scandal erupted in March when Secretary of War William W. Belknap resigned, hoping in vain to avoid impeachment for selling post traderships. Grant drew fire for having accepted the resignation, a move that ultimately led to Belknap's acquittal by the Senate. An investigation also linked Grant's brother Orvil to the scandal. Grant battled a Democratic House of Representatives until late that summer over issues as vital as the budget and as symbolic as the president's absences from the capital. He welcomed Rutherford B. Hayes as the Republican choice for his successor, despite private irritation at Hayes's pointed pledge to serve only one term. As his presidency waned, Grant planned a trip to Europe when he left office. Investments would finance his travels, and he staked his fortunes on western mining stocks. In June, a granddaughter born at the White House brought the family joy in an otherwise trying year.

John McDonald and the Whiskey Ring

John McDonald and the Whiskey Ring
Author: Edward S. Cooper
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2016-10-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1683930134
GET BOOK

The most flamboyant, consistently dishonest racketeer was Supervisor of Internal Revenue John McDonald, whose organization defrauded the federal government of millions of dollars. When President Grant was asked why he appointed McDonald supervisor of internal revenue he responded, “I was aware that he was not an educated man, but he was a man that had seen a great deal of the world and of people, and I would not call him ignorant exactly, he was illiterate.” McDonald organized and ran the Whiskey Ring but he always credited Grant with the initiation of the Ring declaring that the president “actually stood god-father at its christening.” The demise of the Ring rivals anything that the real or fictional Elliot Ness and his “Untouchables” ever accomplished during the prohibition era in America.

Translated Nation

Translated Nation
Author: Christopher J. Pexa
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1452960143
GET BOOK

How authors rendered Dakhóta philosophy by literary means to encode ethical and political connectedness and sovereign life within a settler surveillance state Translated Nation examines literary works and oral histories by Dakhóta intellectuals from the aftermath of the 1862 U.S.–Dakota War to the present day, highlighting creative Dakhóta responses to violences of the settler colonial state. Christopher Pexa argues that the assimilation era of federal U.S. law and policy was far from an idle one for the Dakhóta people, but rather involved remaking the Oyáte (the Očéti Šakówiŋ Oyáte or People of the Seven Council Fires) through the encrypting of Dakhóta political and relational norms in plain view of settler audiences. From Nicholas Black Elk to Charles Alexander Eastman to Ella Cara Deloria, Pexa analyzes well-known writers from a tribally centered perspective that highlights their contributions to Dakhóta/Lakhóta philosophy and politics. He explores how these authors, as well as oral histories from the Spirit Lake Dakhóta Nation, invoke thióšpaye (extended family or kinship) ethics to critique U.S. legal translations of Dakhóta relations and politics into liberal molds of heteronormativity, individualism, property, and citizenship. He examines how Dakhóta intellectuals remained part of their social frameworks even while negotiating the possibilities and violence of settler colonial framings, ideologies, and social forms. Bringing together oral and written as well as past and present literatures, Translated Nation expands our sense of literary archives and political agency and demonstrates how Dakhóta peoplehood not only emerges over time but in everyday places, activities, and stories. It provides a distinctive view of the hidden vibrancy of a historical period that is often tied only to Indigenous survival.

Prosecuting the President

Prosecuting the President
Author: Andrew Coan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0190943866
GET BOOK

Prosecuting the President explains what every American needs to know about special prosecutors, perhaps the most consequential and the most mysterious public officials of our time. For more than a century, they have struck fear into the hearts of Presidents, who have the power to fire them at any time. How could this be? And how could the nation have entrusted such a high responsibility to such subordinate officials? As this book shows, the answer is that special prosecutors serve as catalysts for democracy. By raising the visibility of presidential misconduct, they enable the American people to hold the President accountable for his actions. Ultimately, the choice is ours.

Knights of the Golden Circle

Knights of the Golden Circle
Author: David C. Keehn
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2013-04-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807150061
GET BOOK

Based on years of exhaustive and meticulous research, David C. Keehn's study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret southern society that initially sought to establish a slave-holding empire in the "Golden Circle" region of Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. Keehn reveals the origins, rituals, structure, and complex history of this mysterious group, including its later involvement in the secession movement. Members supported southern governors in precipitating disunion, filled the ranks of the nascent Confederate Army, and organized rearguard actions during the Civil War. The Knights of the Golden Circle emerged in 1858 when a secret society formed by a Cincinnati businessman merged with the pro-expansionist Order of the Lone Star, which already had 15,000 members. The following year, the Knights began publishing their own newspaper and established their headquarters in Washington, D.C. In 1860, during their first attempt to create the Golden Circle, several thousand Knights assembled in southern Texas to "colonize" northern Mexico. Due to insufficient resources and organizational shortfalls, however, that filibuster failed. Later, the Knights shifted their focus and began pushing for disunion, spearheading prosecession rallies, and intimidating Unionists in the South. They appointed regional military commanders from the ranks of the South's major political and military figures, including men such as Elkanah Greer of Texas, Paul J. Semmes of Georgia, Robert C. Tyler of Maryland, and Virginius D. Groner of Virginia. Followers also established allies with the South's rabidly prosecession "fire-eaters," which included individuals such as Barnwell Rhett, Louis Wigfall, Henry Wise, and William Yancey. According to Keehn, the Knights likely carried out a variety of other clandestine actions before the Civil War, including attempts by insurgents to take over federal forts in Virginia and North Carolina, the activation of prosouthern militia around Washington, D.C., and a planned assassination of Abraham Lincoln as he passed through Baltimore in early 1861 on the way to his inauguration. Once the fighting began, the Knights helped build the emerging Confederate Army and assisted with the pro-Confederate Copperhead movement in northern states. With the war all but lost, various Knights supported one of their members, John Wilkes Booth, in his plot to assassinate President Lincoln. Keehn's fast-paced, engaging narrative demonstrates that the Knights' influence proved more substantial than historians have traditionally assumed and provides a new perspective on southern secession and the outbreak of the Civil War.

Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone)

Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone)
Author: Sam Wineburg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2018-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 022635735X
GET BOOK

A look at how to teach history in the age of easily accessible—but not always reliable—information. Let’s start with two truths about our era that are so inescapable as to have become clichés: We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percent of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-meaning but ignorant. Some of it is deliberately deceptive. All of it is pernicious. With the Internet at our fingertips, what’s a teacher of history to do? In Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone), professor Sam Wineburg has the answers, beginning with this: We can’t stick to the same old read-the-chapter-answer-the-question snoozefest. If we want to educate citizens who can separate fact from fake, we have to equip them with new tools. Historical thinking, Wineburg shows, has nothing to do with the ability to memorize facts. Instead, it’s an orientation to the world that cultivates reasoned skepticism and counters our tendency to confirm our biases. Wineburg lays out a mine-filled landscape, but one that with care, attention, and awareness, we can learn to navigate. The future of the past may rest on our screens. But its fate rests in our hands. Praise for Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) “If every K-12 teacher of history and social studies read just three chapters of this book—”Crazy for History,” “Changing History . . . One Classroom at a Time,” and “Why Google Can’t Save Us” —the ensuing transformation of our populace would save our democracy.” —James W. Lowen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Teaching What Really Happened “A sobering and urgent report from the leading expert on how American history is taught in the nation’s schools. . . . A bracing, edifying, and vital book.” —Jill Lepore, New Yorker staff writer and author of These Truths “Wineburg is a true innovator who has thought more deeply about the relevance of history to the Internet—and vice versa—than any other scholar I know. Anyone interested in the uses and abuses of history today has a duty to read this book.” —Niall Ferguson, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, and author of The Ascent of Money and Civilization

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: October 1, 1880-December 31, 1882

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: October 1, 1880-December 31, 1882
Author: Ulysses Simpson Grant
Publisher:
Total Pages: 572
Release: 1967
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:
GET BOOK

In the final weeks of the 1880 campaign, Ulysses S. Grant left Galena and headed east to stump for the Republican ticket. At rallies in New England, upstate New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York City, sometimes several times a day, the reticent Grant warmed to his role. Sounding a familiar postwar theme, he repeatedly condemned voter harassment in the South, asserting the right of "our fellow-citizens of African descent, ... to go to the polls, even though they are in the minority, and put in their ballot without being burned out of their homes, and without being threatened or intimidated." James A. Garfield won a narrow victory over Major General Winfield S. Hancock and welcomed Grant's advice on matters ranging from cabinet choices to foreign policy. Rootless since their White House days, unsatisfied with backwater Galena, the Grants now decided to settle in New York City and took rooms at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. In January, 1881, Grant accepted the presidency of the 1883 World's Fair Commission, charged with bringing an exposition to New York City. Initial enthusiasm soon gave way to rancor, as factions split over where to place the fair. Grant favored Central Park, but public sentiment intervened, and funding evaporated. By March, Grant resigned. A friend told a reporter, "Grant and I had a long talk over the matter across the way in his son's office, and we both arrived at the conclusion that the people of New-York don't want a World's Fair." Grant's business interests reflected the international stage he now occupied. Competing plans for an isthmian canal through Panama, Mexico, and Nicaragua jockeyed for support, and Grant had his favorite. "The only feasible route for a canal across from the Atlantic to the Pacific is by the Nicaragua route. I have been all over the routes myself, besides having examined all the reports made regarding each of them carefully, and that is my firm conviction." Grant published an article championing Nicaragua even as momentum swung behind Panama. But Grant's attention was drawn more to railroads and to Mexico. When his friend Matías Romero promoted a new line through Oaxaca, Grant jumped on board. A speech to American capitalists in November, 1880, led a few months later to the incorporation of the Mexican Southern Railroad, with Grant as president. By April, 1881, he was in Mexico City, where he told lawmakers: "I predict, with the building of these roads, a development of the country will take place such as has never been witnessed in any country before. . . . There is nothing, in my opinion, to stand in the way of Mexican progress and grandeur, and wealth, but the people themselves." In June, Grant returned from Mexico with a new charter in hand. But his mind was on Garfield and Secretary of State James G. Blaine, two men who had thwarted him at the Republican convention one year earlier. Grant supported his Stalwart ally, Roscoe Conkling, in a power struggle with Garfield and Blaine. From New Orleans to New York City, Grant spoke candidly. "If you want to know what I think of the manner in which Mr. Conkling has been treated by the President and his colleagues in the Senate, I will tell you without any hesitation. I think it is most outrageous." The feud ended after Garfield was shot on July 2. When he died in September, Grant wept with the nation. Fitz John Porter had sought restoration to the army since his dismissal after the Second Battle of Bull Run. Grant had previously rebuffed Porter but now reversed course. "I believe I have heretofore done you an injustice, both in thought & speach." Taking up a case that divided former commanders now in Congress, Grant forcefully argued for Porter's vindication. Grant and wife Julia bought a home just off Fifth Avenue in New York City. In the summer, he commuted from his seaside cottage at Long Branch, New Jersey, to his office on Wall Street, where he greeted a steady stream of admirers and influence-seekers. A silent partner in the brokerage firm his son Ulysses, Jr., formed with Ferdinand Ward, Grant left finances in Ward's hands. Surveys for the Mexican Southern proceeded. Banquets and parties filled many evenings. The Grants settled into Manhattan society.

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: November 1, 1876-September 30, 1878

The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: November 1, 1876-September 30, 1878
Author: Ulysses Simpson Grant
Publisher:
Total Pages: 600
Release: 1967
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:
GET BOOK

In his eighth and final annual message to Congress, Ulysses S. Grant reminded the nation that it was his "fortune or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training." The electoral crisis that dominated Grant's last months in office left little room for political error. On November 7, 1876, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote, but Republican Rutherford B. Hayes could claim the presidency by a single electoral vote if he captured all disputed electors from Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon. Uncertainty gave way to deadlock as the crisis deepened. Grant's mail included a steady trickle of anonymous threats. In late January 1877, Grant signed a bill creating an electoral commission to end the dispute. Hayes won all disputed electors and succeeded Grant without incident. Out of the White House, without a settled home, the Grants spent two months visiting family and friends before embarking on their long-planned European tour. On May 17, Grant left Philadelphia aboard the steamer Indiana. When he arrived at Liverpool, crowds thronged the docks and streets to give him a hero's welcome, and Londoners welcomed Grant with similar enthusiasm. In July, the Grants crossed to Belgium, traveled through Germany, and summered in the Swiss Alps and the lakes of northern Italy. Back in Great Britain, they toured Scotland and northern England, then visited daughter Ellen Grant Sartoris at Warsash, the Sartoris country home near Southampton. Grant spent November in Paris, later writing "no American would stay in Paris if he found himself the only one of his countrymen there." The Grants wintered in the Mediterranean, sailing down the Italian coast to Sicily, where they spent Christmas, then to Alexandria, and a long trip up the Nile. The party toured the Holy Land, visited Constantinople and Athens, and spent a month in Italy. After another month in Paris, the Grants were off to Holland, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, Austria, and Switzerland, exploring the Alps again before returning to Paris in September, 1878, to ponder their next move. Abroad and out of office, Grant freely talked about the war and his presidency. Several interviews stirred controversy in America and stoked talk of a third term in 1880, despite Grant's own protestation: "I never wanted to get out of a place as much as I did to get out of the Presidency." The Grants had seen Europe. Now they faced a choice between home and a journey to distant Asia.