The marvelous material development of the North and West also drew attention away from sectional controversies. Settlers poured into the plains beyond the Mississippi and the valleys of the Far West; new industries sprang up; unsuspected mineral wealth was discovered; railroads were built. Not only bankers but taxpaying voters took an interest in the financial readjustments of the time. Many thousand people followed the discussions over the funding and refunding of the national debt, the retirement of the greenbacks, and the proposed lowering of tariff duties. Yet the Black Friday episode of 1869, when Jay Gould and James Fisk cornered the visible supply of gold, and the panic of 1873 were indications of unsound financial conditions.
These new developments and the new domestic problems which they involved all tended to divert public thought from the old political issues arising out of the war. Foreign relations, too, began to take on a new interest. The Alabama claims controversy with England continued to hold the public attention until finally settled by the Geneva Arbitration in 1872. President Grant, as much of an expansionist as Seward, for two years (1869-71) tried to secure Santo Domingo or a part of it for an American naval base in the West Indies. But the United States had race problems enough already and the Senate, led by Sumner, refused to sanction the acquisition. Relations with Spain were frequently strained on account of American filibustering expeditions to aid Cuban insurgents. Spain repeatedly charged the United States with laxness toward such violations of international law; and President Grant, seeing no other way out, recommended in 1869 and again in 1870 that the Cuban insurgents be recognized as belligerents, but still the Senate held back. The climax came in 1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cuba captured on the high seas the Virginius ¹ with a filibustering expedition on board and executed fifty-three of the crew and passengers, among them eight Americans. For a time war seemed imminent, but Spain acted quickly and effected a peaceable settlement.
¹ See The Path of Empire, by Carl Russell Fish (in The Chronicles of America), p. 119.
It became evident soon after 1867 that the issues involved in reconstruction were not in themselves sufficient to hold the North solidly Republican. Toward negro suffrage, for example, Northern public opinion was on the whole unfriendly. In 1867 the negro was permitted to vote only in New York and in New England, except in Connecticut. Before 1869 negro suffrage was rejected in Connecticut, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, and Minnesota. The Republicans in their national platform of 1868 went only so far as to say that, while negro suffrage was to be forced upon the South, it must remain a local question in the North. The Border States rapidly lined up with the white South on matters of race, church, and politics.
It was not until 1874, however, that the changing opinion was made generally effective in the elections. The skillfully managed radical organization held large majorities in every Congress from the Thirty-ninth to the Forty-third, and the electoral votes in 1868 and 1872 seemed to show that the conservative opposition was insignificant. But these figures do not tell the whole story. Even in 1864, when Lincoln won by nearly half a million, the popular vote was as eighteen to twenty-two, and four years later Grant, the most popular man in the United States, had a majority of only three hundred thousand over Seymour, and this majority and more came from the new negro voters. Four years later with about a million negro voters available and an opposition not pleased with its own candidate, Grant's majority reached only seven hundred thousand. At no one time in elections did the North pronounce itself in favor of all the reconstruction policies. The break, signs of which were visible as early as 1869, came in 1874 when the Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives.
Strength was given to the opposition because of the dissatisfaction with President Grant, who knew little about politics and politicians. He felt that his Cabinet should be made up of personal friends, not of strong advisers, and that the military ideal of administration was the proper one. He was faithful but undiscriminating in his friendships and frequently chose as his associates men of vulgar tastes and low motives; and he showed a naïve love of money and an undisguised admiration for rich men such as Gould and Fisk. His appointees were often incompetent friends or relatives, and his cynical attitude toward civil service reform lost him the support of influential men. When forced by party exigencies to select first-class men for his Cabinet, he still preferred to go for advice to practical politicians. On the Southern question he easily fell under control of the radicals, who in order to retain their influence had only to convince his military mind that the South was again in rebellion, and who found it easy to distract public opinion from political corruption by "waving the bloody shirt." Dissatisfaction with his Administration, it is true, was confined to the intellectuals, the reformers, and the Democrats, but they were strong enough to defeat him for a second term if they could only be organized.
The Liberal Republican movement began in the West about 1869 with demands for amnesty and for reform, particularly in the civil service, and it soon spread rapidly over the North. When it became certain that the "machine" would renominate Grant, the liberal movement became an anti-Grant party. The "New Departure" Democrats gave comfort and prospect of aid to the Liberal Republicans by declaring for a constructive, forward-looking policy in place of reactionary opposition. The Liberal chiefs were led to believe that the new Democratic leaders would accept their platform and candidates in order to defeat Grant. The principal candidates for the Liberal Republican nomination were Charles Francis Adams, Lyman Trumbull, Gratz Brown, David Davis, and Horace Greeley. Adams was the strongest candidate but was jockeyed out of place and the nomination was given to Horace Greeley, able enough as editor of the New York Tribune but impossible as a candidate for the presidency. The Democratic party accepted him as their candidate also, although he had been a lifelong opponent of Democratic principles and policies. But disgusted Liberals either returned to the Republican ranks or stayed away from the polls, and many Democrats did likewise. Under these circumstances the reëlection of Grant was a foregone conclusion. There was certainly a potential majority against Grant, but the opposition had failed to organize, while the Republican machine was in good working order, the negroes were voting, and the Enforcement Acts proved a great aid to the Republicans in the Southern States.
One good result of the growing liberal sentiment was the passage of an Amnesty Act by Congress on May 22, 1872. By statute and by the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress had refused to recognize the complete validity of President Johnson's pardons and amnesty proclamations, and all Confederate leaders who wished to regain political rights had therefore to appeal to Congress. During the Forty-first Congress (1869-71) more than three thousand Southerners were amnestied in order that they might hold office. These, however, were for the most part scalawags; the most respectable whites would not seek an amnesty which they could secure only by self-stultification. ¹ It was the pressure of public opinion against white disfranchisement and the necessity for meeting the Liberal Republican arguments which caused the passage of the Act of 1872. By this act about 150,000 whites were reënfranchised, leaving out only about five hundred of the most prominent of the old régime, most of whom were never restored to citizenship. Both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis died disfranchised.
¹ The machinery of government and politics was all in radical hands—the carpetbaggers and scalawags, who were numerous enough to fill practically all the offices. These men were often able leaders and skillful managers, and they did not intend to surrender control; and the black race was obedient and furnished the votes. In 1868, with Virginia, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas unrepresented, the first radical contingent in Congress from the South numbered 42, of whom 10 out of 12 senators and 26 out of 32 representatives were carpetbaggers. There were two lone conservative Congressmen. A few months later, in 1869, there were 64 radical representatives from the South, 20 senators and 44 members of the House of Representatives. In 1877 this number had dwindled to two senators and four representatives. The difference between these figures measures in some degree the extent of the undoing of reconstruction within the period of Grant's Administration.