June 20, 1865---America's coup d'etat

JUNE 20, 1865:        

President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton are confronted in the White House by an enraged Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant.

Grant, who has developed a reputation for dispassion, belies that reputation this day as he lambastes the two men for attempting to prosecute Robert E. Lee and other Confederate leaders for treason.

Grant has already written to the two men regarding the indictment of Robert E. Lee: 

In my opinion the officers and men paroled at Appomattox C.H. and since upon the same terms given to Lee, cannot be tried for treason so long as they observe the terms of their parole.  This is my understanding.  Good faith as well as true policy dictates that we should observe the conditions of that convention.  Bat faith on the part of the Governm’t or a construction of that convention subjecting officers to trial for treason, would produce a feeling of insecurity in the minds of all paroled officers and men.  If so disposed they might even regard such an infraction of terms, by the government as an entire release from all obligation on their part.

I will state further that the terms granted by me met with the hearty approval of the President at the time, and of the country generally.  The action of Judge Underwood in Norfolk has already had an injurious effect, and I would ask that he be ordered to quash all indictments found against paroled prisoners of war, and to desist from further prosecution of them.

Grant’s perceived “sympathy” for Southerners has earned him a command appearance at the White House. President Johnson insisted to General Grant that he wanted “to make treason odious” and insisted that all Confederate parolees face punishment.

Grant became livid, and in a blistering argument with Johnson, said:

I have made certain terms with Lee, the best and only terms.  If I had told him and his army that their liberty would be invaded, that they would be open to arrest, trial, and execution for treason, Lee would never have surrendered, and we should have lost many lives in destroying him.  My terms of surrender were according to military law, and so long as General Lee observes his parole, I will never consent to his arrest.   

Grant angrily told the President that the paroled Confederates were under his protection and that he would do what he must to protect them.

It is unlikely that Grant meant anything more by this than that he would use his good offices as General-in-Chief to thwart any prosecutions, but Johnson was unused to his authority as President being challenged. The irascible Johnson lost his own temper in turn. Scenting a whiff of treason --- even the threat of a coup d’etat --- in Grant’s words, he rose up from behind the Presidential desk, and demanded, “What right does a military commander have to protect an arch-traitor from the laws? Who are you to question the authority of the Executive of the United States?”

Grant retorted that he was the commander of the armies of the United States, still a million strong, and that he would not tolerate the breaking of the Gentlemen’s Agreement of Appomattox. Such a thing, he warned again, could reignite the Civil War:

“I will resign the command of the army rather than execute any order to arrest Lee or any of his commanders so long as they obey the law.”

He added that he had already discussed the matter with General Sherman and his other senior commanders, and that they would all do likewise, effectively decapitating the Armed Forces of the United States.

Johnson knew then that he had been checkmated. The high profile mass resignations of Grant and Sherman and his other Generals and Admirals would throw his Administration into chaos, and the nation with it. The stubborn President sat back down.

“So when can these men be tried?” Johnson asked almost plaintively.  

“Never,” replied Grant.  “Never, unless they violate their parole.”

And with that Grant left the White House. He would return as President in 1869. Although he had never been political, this incident drove a wedge between Grant and Johnson and Stanton (the latter two men would soon have their own acrimonious split), and convinced Grant that the nation was on the wrong course, a course he hoped could be changed. Most historians believe that the General’s political aspirations were born out of this single ugly moment.

June 19, 1865---Juneteenth

JUNE 19, 1865:         

The Emancipation Proclamation is published for the first time in Texas. “Juneteenth” becomes an annual festival marking Emancipation, first in Texas and later nationally:

General Orders Number Three

The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.

Texas’ isolation on the western fringe of the Confederacy had allowed Texan whites to suppress all news of the Emancipation Proclamation, of United States Colored Troops, and of other Civil Rights advances. Even many whites were unaware of developments. It was not until this day that Union officials felt reasonably secure enough to announce Emancipation. The 1,800 troops requested by Philip Sheridan allowed the Union to deal with pro-slavery resisters.

 

Juneteenth is celebrated with music, dancing and feasting. One of the most honored of traditions is dressing in one’s “Sunday Best,” as slaves were generally forbidden to wear high-quality clothing.

June 18, 1865---A short, articulate life

JUNE 18, 1865:          

Seventeen year old Leroy Wiley Gresham dies in Macon, Georgia. A lifelong “invalid” unable to walk, Leroy was excluded from participating directly in the Civil War, though he assiduously kept a diary that chronicled all the social changes his family faced during the war years.

The Greshams had been one of Macon’s more prominent families, a Planter clan with more than 50 slaves.  Exactly what Leroy’s malady was is unclear. He was said to have “one leg drawn up” possibly from being broken, but he also weighed only 63 pounds, and suffered from a constellation of symptoms. 

His literacy is amazing. In one of his last diary entries he wrote brightly of the family’s former slaves who “have embraced their freedom and left us.”  However, Leroy was not always so accepting. In places he refers to Abraham Lincoln as “the royal ape” and derides the Second Inaugural as “a hypocritical praise God barebone piece of puritanical fanaticism.”

June 17, 1865---"Unmitigated hatred"

JUNE 17, 1865:                    

Edmund Ruffin (born 1794), the man who ceremonially fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, takes his own life by blowing his brains out with a shotgun. A sharpshooter, Ruffin, during the Civil War had declared his “unmitigated hatred to Yankee rule --- to all political, social, & business connection with Yankees, & to the perfidious, malignant, & vile Yankee race.”

  

To many people, north and south, even during the war the fire-eating Ruffin was a bad joke who sought to hold on to an irrecoverable, nay, fantasized, past.

Ruffin, who dramatically wrapped himself in a Confederate flag before pressing the gun barrel to his forehead, was a self-taught planter who abjured all forms of centralized government with a passion bordering on the insane.

His last act provided Confederate romanticists and Lost Cause believers with a ready-made martyr.  

June 16, 1865---"We have nowhere to go for protection and justice"

JUNE 16, 1865:         

Former slave-turned-Baptist Minister Fields Cook and four other African-American leaders meet with Andrew Johnson in Washington D.C., bringing forth a list of grievances against the State authorities in Virginia.

Cook tells the President: 

Under the old system we had the protection of our masters, who were financially interested in our physical welfare. That protection is now withdrawn, and our old masters have become our enemies, who seek not only to oppress our people, but thwart the designs of the Federal Government and of Northern benevolent associations in our behalf. We cannot appeal to the laws of Virginia for protection, for the old negro laws still prevail; and, besides, the oath of a colored man against a white man will not be received in our State courts, so that we have nowhere to go for protection and justice but to that power which made us free.

They specify five points:

(1)    Interference with black churches

(2)  The perpetuation of the prewar pass system without which blacks are not permitted to travel between points for work or pleasure

(3)   Police brutality, beatings and killings

(4) The persistence of the “Mayor’s Court” a segregated justice system applied only to blacks

(5)   Abuses by Federal officers

Johnson assures them that changes will be made, but his words are hollow, for in an interview given just around this time, President Johnson explains his Reconstruction plan. He calls his policy “Restoration” and lays out an extremely lenient set of conditions for white Southerners to abide by in order participate in the national life. The newly freed do not merit the President’s attention. Indeed, during the interview he states unequivocally that, “White men alone must manage the South.”

 

Under Johnson’s Restoration Plan, most white Southerners reclaim their prewar property and their appointed and elected offices in short order.  Before long, the postbellum South begins to eerily resemble the antebellum South.