Posted on 06/03/2025 2:20:50 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The victorious Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant was the Republicans’ unanimous choice for president in 1868. As in so many other presidential campaigns, the Democrats made race the centerpiece of their appeal to the American people. They nominated former New York governor Horatio Seymour and ran him on a platform calling for the “immediate restoration of all States to their rights in the Union under the Constitution,” amnesty for all former Confederates, and “the regulation of the elective franchise in the States by their citizens.”
That last point meant the right of white Southerners, chiefly former slaveholders and all Democrats, to restrict the freed slaves’ right to vote. For good measure, the Democratic platform called the Reconstruction Acts “unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void.” A Seymour campaign badge proclaimed, “Our Motto: This is a White Man’s Country; Let White Men Rule.” Grant won handily, with 214 electoral votes to Seymour’s 80.
The renowned general’s only problem after that was having to govern. During the Civil War, the U.S. government had printed paper money, backed by neither gold nor silver, to cover its rapidly rising war debts. Grant attempted to curb inflation and restore some fiscal responsibility to the economy by phasing out the greenbacks and conducting the government’s business in gold coins. He also maintained high tariffs to protect American workers and industries.
The new president also had to deal with self-serving advisors. Railroad magnate Jay Gould and stockbroker Jim Fisk had personally exhorted Grant to take this course, and were poised to take advantage. They bribed Assistant U.S. Treasurer Daniel Butterfield for inside information and proceeded to try to corner the gold market. In September 1869, Grant discovered their scheme and ordered his secretary of the treasury, George S. Boutwell, to sell $4 million in gold ($75 million today)...
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
No, they invaded South Carolina's sovereign territory thus forcing South Carolina to fire to drive them away. And might never makes right. The side that has more might could be right as in the case of the
Just remember. One Southern man is tougher than any 10 Damn Yankees. Well, turns out that wasn’t true either.
Just remember, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers for 90 days. How realistic was that?
Just keep making up stories that make you feel good. The real history is out there and is far more interesting than your fictions.
You're the one making up stories here. The real history is radically different from the PC Revisionist propaganda you're spewing.
His administration was marked by massive corruption scandals. Everybody knew how corrupt it was even at the time.
As that generation died off and the scum Lost Cause historians began to distort history in the early 20th century your Democrat version of Grant took hold. In fact, if you listened to those “historians” there was never a “good” Republican president and never a bad Democrat.
Pure BS. What happened was by the late 19th/early 20th century people saw through the propaganda the federal government spewed during the war and looked at things far more objectively. That held until the hard left 60s generation started their long march through the institutions. By the 1980s they started reviving the "all about slavery" wartime propaganda. By the early 90s this PC Revisionist school of thought had become dominant within academia. Read what most historians even within Academia were saying in the first half of the 20th century. They were far more balanced and reasonable.
If you cared about history, which I seriously doubt considering your ridiculous posts here, you would learn more about Grant. He was a great man.
I was a history major and know more about history than you ever dreamed of knowing. Grant was a mediocre General whose primary advantage over others in the Union Army command was that he could do basic math and understood he could afford to take far more casualties - he just had to be willing to take them which he certainly did. As a president he was inept and was absolutely horrible at choosing honest subordinates.
In a Fort that the Federal Government spent years building staffed with troops who had been there for years? They invaded? You sure have strange definitions for common words.
At any rate your “sovereign” Confederates fired on the American flag and that started the war. There was no turning back after that. And the mightier side won. You claim to hate America, so why are you still living here?
So you agree with Beard and the Economic Determinists. Hummm. I didn’t take you to be a socialist, but considering you admire the old south and the plantation economy, I guess that figures.
As a history major, I figured you would know that Lee took more casualties than Grant… unless you only read the Lost Cause history. And how did such a mediocre General as Grant capture the Gibraltar of the Mississippi.
Agreeing with Beard that people fight over money/resources and that this has been the primary motivation for war throughout human history does not make someone a socialist.
No he did not - not by any honest accounting. OH! You mean you want to count the longer time Lee was in Command of a larger army that was fighting against a much larger enemy army as compared to Grant having a smaller army and fighting against smaller a Confederate army. Gee, that's not disingenuous or anything. LOL!
Why did Grant's own men call him the "fumbling butcher"? Hint: it wasn't for the effect he had on the enemy. Why did Grant lose more men in the Army of the Potomac, than Lee even had in the Army of Northern Virginia total? Why did Grant attack at Cold Harbor over ground he had not even bothered to recon - against a well entrenched enemy - and get about 7,000 men mowed down in 15 minutes?
Grant understood the North had a much larger population and could pay the butcher's bill if he just kept up the pressure. He was willing to bear those casualties. He didn't do anything particularly brilliant. It was just one frontal assault after another all of which failed, but he could afford to keep it up and did. It did work in the end though at great human cost to the Union states.
Well if they are going to war against you for failing to abide by the constitution (which is what they claimed) then you would think the thing they would absolutely do is *ABIDE BY THE CONSTITUTION*.
After all, if it is so terrible for the Confederates to not abide by the constitution, why is it not also terrible for the Federals to not abide by the constitution?
So you just dodge the question because you don't have a good answer. Well I knew you wouldn't, because there is no good answer for why a corrupt, dictatorial regime decided to initiate a war that killed 750,000 people directly, and perhaps millions indirectly, all because they claimed the constitution didn't allow secession. (It is silent on the topic.)
The real reason the North launched a war had nothing to do with "rebellion" or "slavery", but was entirely because the South was going to take it's 750 million dollar per year amount of money it was pumping into the Northern states, and spend it on themselves instead of the powerful men of the North.
But the North telling the public the truth that they were fighting for money. doesn't sound as good to the public as "We are doing God's work."
Blacks weren't even allowed to vote until after the 14th amendment, and even then, there were residency requirements that put the earliest date for black voting at 1872.
So who was voting between 1865 and 1872?
Carpet baggers, Union Army soldiers, and anybody else that wasn't a citizen of the occupied states.
Yes. Yes they did. Or specifically, Lincoln did.
And *YOU* don't know the story. You only know the official narrative that is designed to make Lincoln look blameless and make it look like the Confederates just decided one day to attack the Union garrison that had illegally seized Sumter in the middle of the night after Christmas of 1860.
Lincoln sent a fleet of warships to attack the confederates around Sumter, and the orders were publicly known by the Confederates at the time.
It was the arrival of "Harriet Lane" that initiated the conflict. Though General Beauregard knew of the orders, the arrival of the Harriet Lane confirmed that Lincoln had indeed sent this fleet of ships with orders to attack them.
At that point he had no choice but to neutralize the fort before the rest of the warships arrived, else he would face attack from both the warships and the fort at the same time.
General Beauregard had requested of Captain Anderson that he remain neutral in the coming conflict with the Warships, but Anderson informed him that if he fired on any of those warships, Anderson would attack him with the guns of Sumter.
This pretty much made it impossible for Beauregard to ignore the fort. He would get his men killed if he allowed Anderson to attack him at the same time as the warships.
"Warships? What's this you say? I have never heard of any warships sent to attack the Confederates first!"
Well no you haven't. It makes it look like Lincoln started it, (which he did.) and so they weren't going to allow people to think that Lincoln deliberately started it. It wouldn't do because the public wouldn't like it.
Just remember. One Southern man is tougher than any 10 Damn Yankees. Well, turns out that wasn’t true either.
You are right. With a manpower advantage of 4 to 1, it appears the Southerners were almost equal to 4 Northerners, because it took 4 times their number, and perhaps 20 times their industrial capacity, to beat the South.
And that doesn't even include all the Irish they dragooned off the ships to go down and fight people who had never done them any harm.
It also doesn't include the free blacks they incorporated into their army.
So maybe the Southerner was equal to 5 Northerners, if you add those other two groups into the mix.
The real history is out there and is far more interesting than your fictions.
Yes it is, and you need to learn it if you are going to discuss this topic.
To be fair, the corruption was left over from the Lincoln administration. Simon Cameron is a prime example of the sort of corrupt people Lincoln had running his government.
They filled the federal bureaucracy with like minded corrupt-o-crats, and the Federal government has been riddled with these worms ever since.
The short administration of Andrew Johnson did nothing to weed out the corrupt people Lincoln and his cronies allowed to become part of the government, so Grant was left holding the bag from Lincoln's previous administration.
As a president he was inept and was absolutely horrible at choosing honest subordinates.
Once the buzzards have started circling, it's hard to make them go away.
They had *NOT* been there for years. The fort had *NEVER* had troops in it. According to the original land grant from South Carolina, the Federal government had a limited time to build and garrison the fort in order to retain the land, which they did not do.
The Federal government actually lost title to the land because they *DID NOT KEEP UP THEIR SIDE OF THE BARGAIN."
A Decade later, they belatedly started building the fort. It wasn't even finished in December of 1860 when Anderson seized it from the workmen in the middle of the night.
It had never been garrisoned, because it had not been finished at the time Anderson seized it.
And this was after the Secretary of War John Floyd had informed South Carolina that all forts in their territory would be turned over to them.
They invaded?
Yes, Anderson seized the unfinished fort in the middle of the night after Christmas of 1860. He burned all the cannons in Fort Moultrie and spiked the barrels. All acts of an enemy, and not of an ally.
Everything he did implied that he was a hostile force. His men even discussed turning the guns of Sumter against Charleston, as Northern newspapers had urged be done, but they did nothing more than discuss it. (According to Union Captain Abner Doubleday)
At any rate your “sovereign” Confederates fired on the American flag and that started the war.
After Lincoln had already fired on them. Their's was a return shot, not the initial shot. Lincoln's sending of the war fleet was the initial shot.
During his administration Lincoln joked that he at least had confidence Seward would not try to steal a red hot stove. (ie he would steal everything else and perhaps the stove too once it cooled down a little).
Diogenes answered most of the above. I have never claimed to hate America. This is a pure strawman argument on your part. Also, my family arrived here in 1649 - that's over 100 years before there even was a United States of America. I'll be staying on my native soil thanks.
And again when the Lost Causers don’t have an answer, they just make stuff up.
Satisfactory explanations being made, the formal cession to the United States of all right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Sum- ter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory was made on the 17th day of December, 1836.
Source: https://archive.org/details/genesiscivilwar00crawgoog.
Who’s the butcher?
Grant. His own men called him that. Also, its far from sure that Lee should have just sat back and fought defensively. He had far fewer men and fewer resources. Fighting conservatively would have resulted in certain defeat. Fighting more aggressively at least gave his side a chance despite the fact that they were always heavy underdogs.
Congressman Thaddeus Stevens said it. When Lincoln told Simon Cameron what he said, Cameron was furious and demanded Stevens retract it.
While speaking with Lincoln on the matter, Stevens said “Well, he is very mad, and he made me promise to retract.” “I will do so now. I believe I told you he would not steal a red-hot stove. I now take that back.”
Firstly, everything I said is true. The Federal government did not live up to the requirements for the initial land grant. (1805) The Legislature of South Carolina later gave them another land grant (1836) without any conditions, but they didn't live up to the requirements of the original land grant.
Secondly, of all the points I put forth, you focus on the most trivial one to make a response? What about the gunships? What about Lincoln *ORDERING* them to go attack the Confederates?
No response on that? Have you checked it out and found out it was true, and now you don't want to talk about it?
What gives?
oops. Wrong cabinet member. Mea Culpa.
The point though still stands. There was massive corruption in the Lincoln administration. If you read 38 Nooses about the Sioux uprising in Minnesota and how the Lincoln administration first caused it then handled it, you will see the way people throughout the Lincoln administration were lining their own pockets picking up land seized from the Indians at knock down prices, then flipping it for huge profits. Lincoln personally did the same with buying land where he knew he was going to situate railheads, etc.
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