Tag Archives: White House

Video

Happy Days Are Here Again: The 1869 Inauguration

Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States (Source: Whitehouse.gov)

(Source: Whitehouse.gov)

The theme song from the 1930 movie “Chasing Rainbows” was the campaign song for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s successful 1932 Presidential campaign and would become the unofficial campaign song of the Democratic Party for years to come. But the song’s spirit aptly describes the atmosphere of Ulysses S. Grant’s first inauguration.

Grant’s opponent, former New York Governor Horatio Seymour, had waged an ugly, racist campaign. During the months between his nomination in May and his election in November, Grant had spent most of his time in his hometown of Galena, Illinois, and the rest of his time exploring America’s Great Plains. As was customary in most Presidential campaigns of the nineteenth century, Grant had left the public speaking to others.

The town’s citizens were in a celebratory mood. They had endured four years of war and almost four years with President Andrew Johnson and Congress at each other’s throat, culminating in Johnson’s narrow escape from conviction at his impeachment trial the past spring.

Julia Boggs Dent Grant (Source: National First Ladies' Library)

Julia Boggs Dent Grant (Source: National First Ladies’ Library)

Although the air was cool and misty on Thursday morning, March 4, 1869, eager onlookers crowded the streets of the nation’s capital. All of them wanted a glimpse of the President-elect, the man who had brought an end to the Civil War. Some in the crowd wanted to see the First Lady, Julia Dent Grant, bringing their spyglasses to determine if there was any truth to the rumor that her brown eyes peered in two different directions.

Grant had won the election in an electoral landslide. Within the next few months, work crews two thousand miles to the west would complete the wonder of the age, the transcontinental railroad. Land-hungry men, North and South, were filling America’s vast territories. Scandals about Congressional bribes and generous payments to railroad companies would come, but on inauguration day citizens took a deep breath and celebrated the war hero who promised to bring peace to a recently reunited nation.

Sources:

 

 

1 Comment

May 9, 2014 · 7:04 pm
March 4, 2014 · 2:19 am

The Presidential Election of 1876

Regardless of your political affiliation, you certainly remember the Presidential election of 2000, when George W. Bush ultimately prevailed over Al Gore. By a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court ultimately validated the election results certified by a Florida Republican official.

Flash back to the Presidential election of 1876. Inauguration day was set for Sunday, March 4, 1877, giving government leaders four months between November and March to resolve the election results of a hotly contested election. Three former Confederate states were in play: South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida.

Federal troops played a significant role in the South in the years after the Civil War (Reconstruction). The troops protected African Americans from white persecution and guaranteed that Republican officials ran the state governments. White Southerners strongly resented the presence of federal troops within their borders. In the months leading up to election day, organized groups of whites intimidated African Americans, working diligently and violently to suppress black turnout at the polls.

President Hayes (Source: Library of Congress)

President Hayes (Source: Library of Congress)

Republican officials in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida certified the results, in each case tossing out enough votes for the Democratic candidate, Samuel Tilden, to give the state’s electoral votes to the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes. But the game was not over. On the first Wednesday in December, the Democratic electors met separately from the Republican electors in each of the three states and cast their votes for Tilden. It appeared the country might be at the brink of another civil war.

Justice David Davis (Source: Library of Congress)

Justice David Davis (Source: Library of Congress)

The Democrats controlled the House of Representatives and the Republicans controlled the Senate. Ultimately, the politicians agreed to appoint an advisory commission consisting of five members from the Senate (3 Republicans and 2 Democrats), five from the House (3 Democrats and 2 Republicans), and five from the Supreme Court, who were to be selected by agreement of the 10 members from Congress. Two of the justices were Democrats and two were Republicans. Everyone expected the commission to select independent David Davis as the final member. Everyone was wrong.

In those days, each state legislature selected its United States Senator. The Illinois state legislature, deadlocked over its choice, chose Justice Davis as its compromise choice. Davis agreed to take the Senate seat and resigned from the Supreme Court. All of the remaining justices from whom the commission could choose its final member were Republicans. Thus, the commission, with a one-vote Republican majority in the Supreme Court, recommended that Congress accept the election results certified by the Republican election officials in the three contested states.

John Sherman (Source: Library of Congress)

Sen. John Sherman (Source: Library of Congress)

But all was not over. Many Democrats believed they had been robbed of the White House. In an unwritten agreement between the Hayes men and Southern moderates intended to calm the nation, the Hayes men agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, provide no further support for the carpetbaggers in Louisiana and South Carolina, and allow the Democrats to resume control of the state governments. Generations of African Americans paid dearly for the compromise. In the height of irony, the Hayes men included Senator John Sherman of Ohio, whose brother had made Georgia howl, and Senator John Gordon of Georgia, who had served as a general in the Confederate army.

For more information about the 1876 election and its aftermath, please go to the following sources:

H.W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union, pp. 567-577 (Random House 2012);

John Gordon (Source: Library of Congress)

John Gordon (Source: Library of Congress)

Jean Edward Smith, Grant, pp. 597-605 (Simon & Schuster 2001);

James W. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, pp. 639-646 (McGraw Hill, 3rd Edition 2001)

1 Comment

Filed under 1800s, American history, Civil War, Congress, history, Presidential elections, Presidents, Reconstruction

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 5, 2014 · 11:16 pm

The Willard Hotel and the Civil War

The Willard Hotel

The Willard Hotel, Washington, DC

Every theatrical performance requires a cast and a set. In the never-ending drama that is our nation’s capital, the Willard Hotel has served as one of the sets for Washington’s cast of politicians, generals, and lobbyists for well over 150 years, but perhaps most dramatically since the years leading up to the Civil War. People inside the Washington Beltway and Civil War buffs probably are familiar with the luxury hotel, which sits two blocks east of the White House. Most other Americans probably are not.

I spent three years working in Washington as a young attorney, and I recall the first time I saw the Willard in 1978. I was one of fifteen passengers in a vanpool that operated between D.C. and Columbia, Maryland. One evening, our driver drove past a massive, twelve-story Beaux Arts-style structure that I thought was beautiful but needed some work. I asked another passenger about the building and he said “It’s a dump full of nothing but rats.” I later learned he was not exaggerating.

Lobby of the Willard decorated for Christmas

Lobby of the Willard decorated for Christmas

The current hotel was built in 1901. Its predecessor was a four-story structure built in 1847 (which was preceded by a collection of six buildings built in 1816). The Lincolns lived in the Willard for ten days before Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861. (The Twentieth Amendment, adopted on February 6, 1933, changed the inauguration date to January 20. Inauguration takes place on January 21 if the 20th falls on a Sunday.)

In February 1861, the Willard hosted the obviously unsuccessful Peace Convention, held by delegates from 21 states, in hopes of averting war.

The Willard also served as U.S. Grant’s lodging in March, 1864, when he went to Washington to accept his promotion to Lieutenant General, commander of all the Union armies. In my novel, New Garden (Chapter 76, “A Third Star”), I include a scene where the protagonist, Major Jack Grier, accompanies Grant to the Willard, where Grier meets an old friend, Senator Eli Monroe.

Grant’s registration at the Willard is humorously depicted in Shelby Foote’s three-volume opus on the Civil War (Volume 3, Red River to Appomattox, pages 3-4):

A short, round-shouldered man in a very tarnished major general’s uniform, he seemed to a bystanding witness to have “no gait, no station, no manner,  … as if he was out of office and on half pay, with nothing to do but hang around the entry of Willard’s, cigar in mouth.” *** Still, bright or tarnished, stars were stars; a certain respect was owed, if not to the man who wore them, then in any case to the rank they signified; the clerk replied at last that he would give him what he had, a small top-floor room, if that would do. It would, [Grant] said, and when the register was given its practiced half-circle twirl he signed without delay. The desk clerk turned it back again, still maintaining the accustomed, condescending air he was about to lose in shock when he read what the weathered applicant had written: “U.S. Grant & Son – Galena, Illinois.”

Needless to say, the clerk abruptly changed his attitude.  He suddenly found that he could upgrade Grant and his son to the same suite the Lincoln family had enjoyed four years earlier.

The Willard has hosted many celebrities and politicians over the years, including Jenny Lind, Julia Ward Howe, General Pershing, and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others.

Now, back to when the Willard fell on hard times. The hotel closed in 1968, but was restored to its prior grandeur and reopened on August 20, 1986, as the Willard InterContinental. It’s nice to see I’m not the only one who thought it was a magnificent building well worth preserving.

For more information about the Willard, please go to the hotel’s website at http://www.washington.intercontinental.com. Additional information may be found at www.historichotels.org. The hotel is also used as a backdrop for many scenes in Gore Vidal’s historical novel, Lincoln.

1 Comment

Filed under 1800s, American history, Capitol Hill, Civil War, history, Presidents

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 10, 2013 · 2:15 am

Washington’s “It Girl” during the Civil War

Kate Chase (Source: Wikipedia)

Kate Chase (Source: Wikipedia)

Since the time of the Madison administration, when Dolly Madison set the tone for Washington Society, the nation’s First Ladies dominated the Washington social scene. Mary Todd Lincoln expected nothing less when she arrived in the nation’s capital in March 1861. She had not expected formidable competition from the Treasury Secretary’s twenty-year-old daughter, Kate Chase, whose primary goal in life was to see her widower father occupy the office then held by Mrs. Lincoln’s husband.

Kate counted among her admirers Governor William Sprague, Rhode Island’s largest and wealthiest citizen, and John Hay, one of President Lincoln’s two personal secretaries, who later in his career would serve as Secretary of State. Sprague’s successful pursuit and Hay’s infatuation with Kate are among the principal topics in Gore Vidal’s brilliantly entertaining Lincoln.

William Sprague (Source: Wikipedia)

William Sprague (Source: Wikipedia)

Kate also enjoyed the admiration of the capital’s women, who sought invitations to the Chase home and Kate’s companionship at Washington’s many social events.

In 1863, Sprague left the governor’s mansion for the United States Senate. In November of that year, he won Kate’s hand in marriage, presenting her with a diamond and pearl tiara rumored to have cost fifty thousand dollars – almost one million dollars in today’s money. The wedding guests included President Lincoln and the entire cabinet. Mrs. Lincoln chose not to attend her social rival’s grand wedding.

A young Kate Chase (Source: Wikipedia)

A young Kate Chase (Source: Wikipedia)

Although the couple had four children, their marriage ended in divorce in 1882, after her husband’s financial reverses and her alleged affair with Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. After the divorce, Kate dropped the Sprague name and lived in her father’s home (Chief Justice Chase had died in 1873.) in Washington, DC. She died in poverty in 1899.

The New York Times said of her at her death:

[She] was born in Ohio about fifty-nine years ago. She was educated under her distinguished father’s eye, and when she became old enough to be of assistance to him acted as his private secretary. * * * There was magnetism in her personality and the friendships she made were of the most loyal character. When she went to Washington to reside she found herself in a congenial atmosphere. She was a diplomat of uncommon tact, and within a short time the homage of the most eminent men of the country was hers. She was ambitious, and she wielded her power and the influence of her high social station as no other woman in this country had ever wielded such forces.

6 Comments

Filed under 1800s, American history, Civil War, history, Lincoln, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,