Andrew Johnson Breaks With His Generals: Grant and Sherman on Guard January 1868

In December 1867, President Andrew Johnson sent a message to Congress explaining his reasons for suspending Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in apparent defiance of the Tenure of Office Act. The issue went before the Senate to see if Johnson could rally enough conservatives to approve the removal of Stanton.

One of the bulwarks of Johnson in his first year as president was his generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. The two were national heroes for their roles in winning the Civil War and they were the highest commanders of the peacetime army. Johnson tried to associate himself with the popular generals as often as he could. Knowing they were being used for political ends, by 1866 both kept a professional distance from the president.

Grant and Sherman had a deep and abiding friendship, and both were politically savvy. With Stanton suspended, Johnson wanted Grant to take over as Secretary of War. Grant was worried about facilitating Johnson’s Southern strategy. He had seen Johnson remove generals who protected the civil rights of newly freed slaves and he suspected that if he were to take Stanton’s place that the process of restoration of white supremacy in the South would accelerate.

There was another problem, this one a legal concern. Historian Brenda Wineapple describes the situation in the second week of January, 1868.  Grant and the president were at odds, she writes:

The issue was Johnson’s suspension of Edwin Stanton as war secretary, a matter that the Senate Committee on Military Affairs was then discussing. When news leaked that the committee would soon vote on whether Stanton should be reinstated, Grant suddenly realized that if Stanton’s position was upheld, Grant, as interim war secretary, would find himself in violation of the Tenure of Office Act. He would have no business staying in the War Department—and could be sentenced to five years in prison and fined $10,000. So on Saturday, January 11, Grant told the President in person that if the committee voted to reinstate Stanton, then he, Grant, would have to step down. Johnson offered to pay the fine and serve the jail term, which in any case he assumed wouldn’t be imposed, but if Grant wished to resign, he should do so quickly so the President could immediately appoint someone else to the post. According to Johnson, Grant said he didn’t know what he’d do—but indicated, again according to Johnson, that if he decided to resign, he would submit his resignation before the Senate committee voted. When Grant left the Executive Mansion, Johnson expected to talk with him again Monday morning.

Grant remembered the Saturday meeting differently. Denying that he’d promised Johnson anything, he alleged that the President knew full well that he considered the Tenure of Office Act binding unless and until the proper legal tribunal set it aside. Grant also claimed he told Johnson that if Stanton was reinstated, Grant’s duties as interim secretary of war ceased then and there. And he’d never promised to continue the conversation on Monday.

No one really knows what happened between the two men that Saturday. And strict truth was not really the issue. The issue was the growing friction between the plainspoken General Grant—that is, when he did speak—and the prickly Andrew Johnson. The issue was the conflict between a bona fide war hero and a Republican apostate; between a popular presidential aspirant and a sitting President nursing his own aspirations. The issue was the execution of the reconstruction laws—or their undoing. Anticipating trouble, Grant consulted with Sherman over the weekend. They decided Sherman should tell Johnson that if the President were to replace Stanton with a moderate Republican, Grant could step aside. No one would object to Ohio’s outgoing governor General Jacob Dolson Cox, a tolerably popular Republican opposed to universal suffrage: he was perfect for the secretary of war job.

…Johnson did not nominate Cox. He did nothing. And Monday morning, Grant didn’t go back to the Executive Mansion to meet with the President. Instead, at about eleven, Sherman went to see Johnson to lobby for Cox’s nomination, but Johnson ignored him. Sherman suspected that Johnson might have a Copperhead in mind for the post. “Well I have done my duty, and if Stanton is white-washed and thrust back in the office it is not my business,” Sherman wrote his wife. “I want to befriend Mr. Johnson, but I cannot give my consent or assistance to having in the Cabinet a man who may decide that the war was wrong or unnecessary.” That evening, at eight o’clock, the full Senate overruled the President’s suspension of Edwin Stanton as war secretary in a 35 to 6 vote. Stanton was to stay. Even moderates had voted to sustain him. [Wineapple, Brenda. The Impeachers (p. 235). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.]

 

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