Ulysses S. Grant’s first inaugural address, like the man himself, was modest and straightforward.
The hero of the Civil War, whose battlefield victories along the Mississippi and in Virginia saved the Union, took the oath of office on March 4, 1869. His predecessor, Andrew Johnson, had been impeached and almost thrown out of office (he survived his Senate trial by one vote) after two years of bitter conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress over Reconstruction.
After briefly reciting the usual pledges of fidelity to the duties of the office, Grant made it clear that he would conduct himself very differently from his predecessor.
“On all leading questions agitating the public mind I will always express my views to Congress and urge them according to my judgment, and when I think it advisable will exercise the constitutional privilege of interposing a veto to defeat measures which I oppose; but all laws will be faithfully executed, whether they meet my approval or not,” he told the throng assembled at the Capitol to witness his inauguration.
“I shall on all subjects have a policy to recommend, but none to enforce against the will of the people. Laws are to govern all alike — those opposed as well as those who favor them. I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.”
Grant was the natural choice of Republicans as their presidential candidate in 1868 even though he had been resolutely apolitical during the war. His victory over New York Democrat Horatio Seymour proved surprisingly close: Grant topped Seymour by just more than five percentage points in the popular vote. Grant won overwhelmingly in the Electoral College, sweeping Reconstruction Southern states except for Georgia and Louisiana. But he lost New York and its thirty-three electoral voters to the Democrat.
Rain fell from the skies as Inauguration Day dawned but the gloomy skies eventually gave way to sun as the parade from the Capitol to the White House began, the Washington Evening Star reported. “The crowds on the streets, the balconies and the house-tops lowered their umbrellas with a feeling of relief and there was a general craning of necks in the direction of the expected procession.”
Well-wishers who poured into the city overnight provided a festive atmosphere in the usually staid capital, according to the Evening Star. Other visitors came with less innocent motives. “Inauguration ceremonies are no more attractive to the honest people of the country than they are to the light-fingered gentry, who have wended their way hither in great numbers, in anticipation of a rich harvest,” the newspaper noted. Washington police, with the aid of detectives from New York, kept a close eye on crowds to keep pickpockets from plying their craft, the Evening Star told its readers.
Not surprisingly, much of Grant’s address focused on Reconstruction. After two years of intensely partisan conflict between Johnson and Congress, the new president urged Americans to take a calm approach toward the unresolved issues of rebuilding the defeated South. But he made it abundantly clear where he stood on those issues.
“In meeting these it is desirable that they should be approached calmly, without prejudice, hate, or sectional pride, remembering that the greatest good to the greatest number is the object to be attained,” Grant said. “This requires security of person, property, and free religious and political opinion in every part of our common country, without regard to local prejudice. All laws to secure these ends will receive my best efforts for their enforcement.”
Reconstruction would dominate Grant’s first term. Southern states resumed representation in Congress after ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment aimed at defining and guaranteeing the rights of citizenship for formerly enslaved Blacks. But he recognized Congress and the federal government needed to do more.
“The question of suffrage is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the nation are excluded from its privileges in any State,” Grant said. “It seems to me very desirable that this question should be settled now, and I entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the ratification of the fifteenth article of amendment to the Constitution.”
While the residual issues of the Civil War dominated Grant’s first term, the beginning of his presidency also pointed toward changes that would shape the politics of the Gilded Age. One involved presidential politics — Grant’s vice president was Schuyler Colfax, a former House Speaker and Indiana Republican. Colfax’s presence on the ticket reflected Indiana’s status as a battleground state and prompted Democrats and Republicans into the early 20th century to pick Hoosiers for the No. 2 spot on their presidential tickets.
Another involved monetary policy. Grant signaled his commitment to conservative views on money when he promised “To protect the national honor, every dollar of Government indebtedness should be paid in gold, unless otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract.”
Questions about money — and whether the federal government should pursue a “hard money” policy that emphasized metallic currency over the paper money that had come into use during the war and was widely popular in the West — would challenge Republicans in Grant’s second term.
But that was a long way off on March 4, 1869. Instead of looking ahead, the Evening Star marveled at how the beginning of Grant’s presidency compared to the tense circumstances surrounding Lincoln’s second inaugural.
“The Federal Metropolis, in many respects, had the appearance of a military camp,” the newspaper recalled. “This state of affairs, fortunately for the Republic and its Capital, has changed.”
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