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U.S. History: 1865 through the 20th Century
Reconstruction: 1862–1877
Grant’s Presidency
As the presidential election of 1868 drew near,
Republicans nominated Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant.
Grant had proven himself an effective leader in the army and served
as a reminder that Republicans had won the war. Democrats nominated
former governor of New York Horatio Seymour. Seymour
hated emancipation, supported states’ rights, and wanted to wrest
control of Reconstruction out of Congress’s hands. In the end, Grant
received 214 electoral votes to Seymour’s 80, but only 300,000 more
popular votes. Republicans also maintained control of Congress.
During the Grant years, Congress funded more projects and distributed
more money than ever before in U.S. history.
A Multitude of Scandals
Scandal and corruption characterized Grant’s
two terms in office. Although the president himself was never involved,
his lack of political experience hampered his ability to control
other politicians.
The Fisk-Gould Gold Scandal
Scandal rocked Washington before Grant had even completed
his first year in office. In 1869 the financial tycoons Jim
Fisk and Jay Gould bribed many cabinet officials,
including Grant’s own brother-in-law, to overlook their attempt
to corner the gold market. They even conned Grant himself into agreeing
not to release any more of the precious metal into the economy.
On September 24, 1869, they succeeded in inflating gold prices.
The U.S. Treasury managed to prevent an economic catastrophe by
releasing more gold into the economy, in spite of Grant’s earlier
promise.
The Crédit Moblier Scandal
Corruption also infected the railroads. In
1872, Union Pacific Railroad executives created a dummy
construction company called Crédit Moblier.
They then hired Crédit Moblier at outrageous prices to lay track.
To protect their huge profits, the executives bribed several congressmen
and even Vice-President Schuyler Colfax to keep quiet.
Colfax ultimately resigned after an exposé revealed his shady dealings.
Even though Grant had no involvement in the scandal, it nevertheless
damaged his reputation.
The Whiskey Ring Scandal
Yet another scandal broke two years later in 1874, when
investigators discovered that several Grant-appointed federal employees had
skimmed millions of dollars from excise tax revenue. The president
vowed to hunt down and punish all those involved in the Whiskey
Ring but swallowed his harsh words upon discovering his own
secretary’s involvement.
The Election of 1872
Fed up with scandals in Grant’s administration, a significant number
of Republicans broke from the radicals and moderates in Congress
just before the 1872 elections. Known as Liberal Republicans,
these men wanted to end corruption, restore the Union as quickly
as possible, and downsize the federal government. They nominated New
York Tribune editor Horace Greeley for the
presidency.
Strangely enough, Democrats also nominated Greeley, because he
opposed the army’s presence in the South and wanted to end Reconstruction.
Despite the scandals, radicals and moderates again nominated their
war hero Grant. On Election Day, Grant easily won with 286 electoral
votes to Greeley’s 66, and received more than 700,000 more popular
votes.
The Liberal Republicans
Led by businessmen, professionals, reformers, and intellectuals, Liberal
Republicans helped shape politics in the postwar years. They disliked
big government and preferred limited government involvement in the
economy. Some historians have argued that the Liberal Republicans
even opposed democracy because they detested universal
manhood suffrage and didn’t want to enfranchise blacks.
The Depression of 1873
Although Grant faced as many problems in his second administration
as he had during his first, none were so catastrophic as the Depression
of 1873. Bad loans and overspeculation in railroads and factories
burst the postwar economic boom and forced millions of Americans
onto the streets over the next five years. The poor clamored for
cheap paper and silver money for relief, but Republicans refused
to give in to their demands out of fear that cheap money would exacerbate
inflation. Instead, they passed the Resumption Act of
1875 to remove all paper money from the economy. The act
helped end the depression in the long run, but it made the interim
years more difficult to bear.
The End of Radical Reconstruction
The Resumption Act proved politically damaging for the
Radical and moderate Republicans in Congress. Because they insisted
on passing hard-money policies during a time when up to 15 percent of
Americans had no work, many Republicans in the North voted with
the Democrats in the 1874 congressional elections. Their votes,
combined with white votes in the South, ousted many Republicans
from Congress and gave the Democrats control of the House of Representatives
for the first time since 1856. The remaining radicals in Congress
suddenly found themselves commanding the weak minority party. In
short, the elections of 1874 marked the end of Radical Reconstruction.
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