With the Civil War’s end, the United States had put itself back on course to become one of the leading economies in the world. Economic strength begets influence around the world, and America was no exception to this principle; it now was entering an era—an era that, as of the time of this writing, has not come to a close—of taking part in directing the world’s affairs. More than that, America now had the potential to reshape parts of the world in its image. After all, this was the 19th Century, and the era of empires was arguably at its peak—although its sun was setting. For the time, there was an expectation: if you had the opportunity and resources to expand, to take more land and more people into your orbit, you took full use of the opportunity. To abstain from this mode of operation was to concede a wealth of riches, and indulging in the taking of those riches was no cause for shame; every one of the major powers—some for decades, some for centuries—had carved up a part of the world, had made their own empire.
(more…)Category: The Gilded Age
-
Ulysses S. Grant: An American Hero
(more…)
As time passes and collective morals change, the legacies of prominent figures in American history often evolve. The context in which these individuals earned their place in American memory becomes increasingly difficult to uncover. -
The Hunt for Jefferson Davis
The president was on the run. He hadn’t just gotten away; he had been evading his pursuers for some time. This man had been the president of the Confederacy, and now he was the most wanted man in the country, overseeing the few remaining people and things that belonged to the breakaway country. By this time, the Civil War had ended for all intents and purposes: there was no army under his control anymore, but there was a loyal group of men who were helping him live on the run. And there was no telling how long he would live this way. Whereas his soldiers had laid down their arms and many had already returned home to begin their post-war lives, this man had been fleeing for some time—perhaps because the consequences of his actions were outside his control and were no longer applied to his soldiers or even his top advisors; those consequences would flow directly to him now. There loomed the possibility that those in power in Washington would see to his imprisonment or even his execution. Confederate president Jefferson Davis could take heart, as a Mississippian, that perhaps President Andrew Johnson—a Tennessean—would see to those federals going easy on Davis, but that was just a hope, a wish. And that would only be a possibility if Davis was captured.
(more…) -
The Legacy of Robert E. Lee
No figures in American history earn universal admiration. As years—and generations—pass, legacies change. As morals, priorities, and political issues evolve, so do understandings of those people in the past who brought change—good, bad, or otherwise—to the country. For some figures, like Abraham Lincoln, whose authentic genius is admired generation after generation, their merit is questioned only by those who unreasonably say the great should have been greater. For others, it becomes much more varied and nuanced, and for Robert E. Lee, his legacy has always differed depending on the part of the country where his legacy is measured and the tenor of the moment. This is because, perhaps more than even Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Lee became a symbol of the Confederacy—with all its ills but also its potential for what might have been.
(more…) -
The Legend of Winfield Scott Hancock
War heroes earn respect through their service. The Civil War brought out more heroes than perhaps any other war in American history. They were men who served their country at its inflection point, and they could be assured that their time on the battlefield could translate to time in public office. General Winfield Scott Hancock was but one example. He was “a patriotic hero, a stainless gentleman, and an honest man.”[i] He became one of the greatest Generals in the war: one that the soldiers, officers, and citizens were glad to have. He got out from under a famous name and created his own legacy, becoming a regular name in the wartime newspapers. But there was still a question of whether his post-war career would be as glamorous as his time during the war. Although he had a reputation for “honest heroism and personal character,” he was a Democrat; and at a time when Democrats simply could not expect to win the Presidency.[ii]
(more…) -
The Rise of James Garfield
It was a time of oratory and a time when Ohioans became President. James Garfield was a product of the time. He was born into “a poor family” and “an intellectual in love with books.”[i] He attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute as a student and janitor, and by the following year, he became an assistant professor.[ii] Garfield was a man who treasured intellect. When William Dean Howells came to Garfield’s home in Hiram, Ohio in 1870, he sat on the porch and told a story about New England’s poets; Garfield “stopped him, ran out into his yard, and hallooed the neighbors sitting on their porches: ‘He’s telling about Holmes, and Longfellow, and Lowell, and Whittier.’”[iii] At a time when the Midwest fostered “a strong tradition of vernacular intellectualism” that manifested itself in “crowds for the touring lectures, the lyceums, and later the Chautauquas,” the neighbors gathered and listened “to Howells while the whippoorwills flew and sang in the evening air.”[iv]
(more…) -
The Assassination of James Garfield
In the late afternoon, during the summer, a thunderstorm rolled its way through the nation’s capital. Although it first had the effect of cooling the thick Washington air, the effect was fleeting. By 10 o’clock that night, the President could have hope for relief: a new apparatus—rumored to be quite effective against the oppressively humid air of India—had arrived. Staff assembled V-shaped troughs, made of zinc and “filled with ice and water,” and placed them under the windows of the President’s room.[i] The water lessened the humidity, and the ice cooled the air entering the room through the windows.[ii] The President’s pulse, temperature, and respiration satisfied his physicians, and there was optimism that “the worst was over.”[iii] It had been several weeks since the attempted assassination, and the 20th President of the United States, James Garfield, was having his secretaries attend to the pressing matters of the country as he rested.[iv] His wife and children visited his bedside, and his daughter, Mollie, “nestled her fresh face in his beard,” keeping her composure just as her mother did.[v] The President “kissed her and stroked her hair, and then she took a seat near her mother” when the “boys came in presently with manful bearing and remained a few minutes.”[vi] The cooling apparatus, the doctors said, was not giving “entire satisfaction,” and a new device—one that was “similar to that used in the mines to cool the air and send it into the chamber through the registers”—was set to be installed to relieve the President from his symptoms.[vii]
(more…) -
The Election of 1884
The Democratic Party was in turmoil. Its candidates were not winning, and many of its ideas had fallen out of favor. It was a long way from the days of the Party’s founding: Andrew Jackson and his disciple, Martin Van Buren, held power for the twelve years spanning 1829 to 1841 and—into the 1840s and 1850s—James Polk, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan continued to lead the Party into the White House albeit against candidates from the newly-formed and then soon-to-be-disbanded Whig Party. Then, following the emergence of the Republican Party—an emergence which culminated in its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, prevailing in the elections of 1860 and 1864—Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s Vice President and then successor as President, oversaw a one-term presidency which came to an end in 1869. Johnson, partly because he was serving between two titans of the century (Lincoln and Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant), was always going to struggle to earn admiration but, unlike Lincoln and Grant, Johnson was technically a Democrat, and perhaps because he was so thoroughly shamed for his actions as President, the Party would scarcely recognize him as a member. Whether a result of Johnson’s malfeasance or not, following Johnson’s presidency came an era of Republican dominance: Republican Grant won two consecutive terms, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes secured a succeeding term, Republican James Garfield then was victorious, and following his assassination, Republican Chester Arthur served out the remainder of that term. That brought the parties and the country to 1884. As the election of 1884 approached, it had been decades since a strong, effective Democrat—a Democrat who embodied the Party’s principles and would be a standard bearer for the Party, unlike the postbellum Democratic President, Johnson, or the last antebellum one, Buchanan—held office, and for Democrats to win this election, it would take someone special; someone who would be transformative even if only in a way that was possible at the time. As fortune would have it, it could not be a wartime presidency or a presidency that birthed fundamental change in American government, but that was because the circumstances of the era did not call for such a President; it could, however, be a presidency that tackled one of the biggest issues of the time: corruption.
(more…) -
A Fee-Based Government
Rutherford B. Hayes, from the moment that he “won” the Election of 1876, had many opponents. And, because he believed that having opponents meant you must be doing something right, he relished the fight with his opposition. One issue that Hayes prioritized was reforming the fee-based governance system, the system that empowered government officials to use “fees, bounties, subsidies, and contracts with private individuals or corporations to enforce laws and implement public policy.”[i] With the federal government having significantly grown from the antebellum era, those officials had accrued and would continue to accrue power in novel ways. Reforming that system—if, in fact, Hayes sought to do that—would not be something he could have hoped to do during his time as President.
(more…) -
Reconstruction
The years after the Civil War, until 1877, were replete with novel uncertainties. The country had changed: the qualities that defined antebellum America had vanished; those who had been the most vocal before the war—soon-to-be Confederates—had seen their soapbox taken by the “Radical Republicans,” Republicans who sought to not only end slavery but to bring into effect equality amongst the races. Regardless of political party or geographic location, the country and its citizens had the task of reconstructing the United States, every one of them, and that task began before the Civil War’s end. President Abraham Lincoln spoke of his hope to reconcile the “disorganized and discordant elements” of the country, and he said: “I presented a plan of re-construction (as the phrase goes) which, I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to, and sustained by, the Executive government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable.”[i] Lincoln died four days later without fully setting forth his vision for how the nation may reconstruct itself, but events would soon render that vision—broad and ambiguous as it was—antiquated: soon after his death, the same federal government that had grown to enjoy extraordinary power (such as suspending the writ of habeas corpus) would go from having an authentic political genius, Lincoln, at its helm to having Andrew Johnson, a disagreeable at best (belligerent at worst) as executive; and not so long after Johnson took power, roving bands of the Ku Klux Klan acted in concert with state officials throughout the South to subjugate—by any means—those who had been freed.
(more…)
Last Best Hope of Earth 