Transcript History Through Literature

History Through Literature
UNIT 2
CHAPTER 5: GRANT AND RECONSTRUCTION
Grant
 From Ohio
 Graduated from West Point (middle of class)
 Good horsemen
 Sent to infantry in Mexican War
 Left army before court-martialed – alcohol
 Worked in father’s leather store in Galena
 Civil War started – great!
Bad Grant
 Butcher Grant
 Scandal
 Drinking, recklessness, disregarded the lives of his
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troops
Corrupt administrations
Abandoned the newly freed African Americans
Native Americans – turned over to Christians dogooders
Turned Republican party of common man, slaves,
and Lincoln into the party of big business
Grant the General
 Only General that beat Robert E. Lee
 Losses were regrettable
 After WWI – butcher again
 Everything is expendable, so long as you win
 Goal was not to annihilate the Rebels, but to force
them to lay down their arms and rejoin the Union.
Johnson and the Radicals
 Fought over reconstruction
 Johnson lenient towards Southerners
 Radicals , wants suffrage towards Freemen
 1867 – Radicals take over Congress – impeach
Johnson – survives by one vote
 Radical Reconstruction begins
Ku Klux Klan
 Scottish
 Founded in Tennessee in 1866
 African Americans subject to random terror
 Wanted to replace Freemen with Confederates in
local governments
 Operated at night – lynching, murder, arson, rape,
whipping, mutilation, and economic coercion
 Terrorize Blacks who would be leaders
Grant to the rescue
 Only ran because he thought he had to save the
Union – very splintered
 Goal was to bring peace and rights for citizens to
blacks – found out he couldn’t do both.
Grant as President
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Grant and Civil Rights
 1871 got passed the Ku Klux Act in response to the KKK
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attacking South Carolina’s state government (first ever
Civil Rights Act)
Sent 16 companies of troops to South Carolina
Threatened to send more troops – violence subsided
1874 – riots broke out in New Orleans – again threatened
to send troops – worked
Grant damned no matter what he did. If he supported
the blacks – charged with promoting the Republican
party. If he did nothing, then only whites would vote and
vote all Democrat and the blacks would be up the creek.
Sheridan
 In December of 1874 – New Orleans flared up again
 Sent Sheridan to take care of it
 Sheridan took on the “White League” and wanted
them declared banditti and tried in military courts
 Congress was outraged (Democrats had taken
control) – Grant defended himself, allowed Sheridan
to do his work, but never again sent troops into the
South.
The End
 Election of 1876 Samuel Tilden and Rutherford
Hayes
 Hayes could be president if the North removed
troops, the south promised not to use force to make
Tilden President and to treat the freemen
“humanely.”
 The Republicans gave up on the Freeman to keep the
Presidency
Ambrose
 Whished he would have wrote a book on Grant
 Next President to send troops to the south for Civil
rights was Eisenhower in 1957 to enforce Brown v.
Board of Education
 Tried to do more for blacks then any President until
LBJ in the 60’s. Only time Grant every gave up.
 “Failures have been errors of judgment, not of
intent”
 He was a great American who did far more good for
our country that most generals or Presidents can
even approach.
Read
 Read in the Kennedy book – pages 504-511
 Is there a big difference between Kennedy and
Ambrose? Explain some differences.
 Is Kennedy bias? Give some adjectives.
 Is there two different sets of history for Grant?