The President was acquitted by a vote of 19 against and 35 for
impeachment--one vote less than the two-thirds necessary to impeach. The
Johnson-Congressional conflict proved one of the most mortifying
episodes in our country's history.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Ulysses S. Grant.

PERIOD V.

THE CEMENTED UNION

1868-1888

CHAPTER I.

POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE LAST TWO DECADES

[1868]

The presidential election of 1868 was decided at Appomattox. General
Grant was borne to the White House on a floodtide of popularity,
carrying twenty-six out of the thirty-four voting States. Schuyler
Colfax, of Indiana, became Vice-President. The Democrats had nominated
Horatio Seymour, of New York, and F. P. Blair, of Missouri.
Reconstruction was the great issue. The democratic platform demanded
universal amnesty and the immediate restoration of all the commonwealths
lately in secession, and insisted that the regulation of the franchise
should be left with States.

[1870]

The management of the South was the most serious problem before the new
administration. The whites were striving by fair means and foul to get
political power back into their own hands. The reconstructed state
governments, dependent upon black majorities, were too weak for
successful resistance. The Ku-Klux and similar organizations were
practically a masked army. The President was appealed to for military
aid, and he responded. Small detachments of United States troops hurried
hither and thither. Wherever they appeared resistance ceased; but when
fresh outbreaks elsewhere called the soldiers away, the fight against
the hated state government was immediately renewed. The negroes soon
learned to stay at home on election day, and the whites, once in the
saddle, were too skilful riders to be thrown.

[1872]

Congress, meanwhile, still strongly republican, was taking active
measures to protect the blacks. In 1870 it passed an act imposing fines
and damages for a conspiracy to deprive negroes of the suffrage. The
Force Act of 1871 was a much harsher measure. It empowered the President
to employ the army, navy, and militia to suppress combinations which
deprived the negro of the rights guaranteed him by the Fourteenth
Amendment. For such combinations to appear in arms was made rebellion
against the United States, and the President might suspend habeas corpus
in the rebellious district. By President Grant, in the fall of 1871,
this was actually done