For the past several days, my #stampoftheday discussion has used the day’s stamp to delve into deeper issues including what’s not shown on the stamp in question, often by exploring the backstory (and the untold backstory) behind whatever was being honored in the day’s stamp. Doing this has made me think a lot about the question of who and what gets honored, who gets to make those decisions, and what those decisions tell us about both the past and the present. This process has been spurred by the recent horrific events and facilitated by the fact that recent stamps – such as the 1951 stamp honoring the last gathering of the United Confederate Veterans—provided material that lent itself to those discussions.
I wasn’t sure that I could – or would – continue this practice with today’s stamp, a 5-cent stamp picturing Ulysses S. Grant that issued on June 2, 1890. But, as it turns out I was wrong.
Grant, of course, was the skilled Union general who was finally able consistently defeat Confederate force and was elected president in 1868, succeeding Andrew Johnson whose resistance to measures to help freed slaves and not empower recently defeated Confederate leaders and soldiers played a major role in his becoming one of the only two presidents ever to be impeached (our current President being the other).
A primary focus of Grant’s administration was Reconstruction, and he worked to reconcile the North and South while also attempting to protect the civil rights of newly freed black slaves. He supported pardons for former Confederate leaders while also attempting to protect the civil rights of freed slaves. In 1870, the 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote, was ratified. Grant also signed legislation aimed at limiting the activities of white terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan that used violence to intimidate blacks and prevent them from voting. And at various times, he stationed federal troops throughout the South to maintain law and order. Critics charged that Grant’s actions violated states’ rights, while others contended that the president did not do enough to protect freedmen. (Though personally honest, Grant’s administration also was marred by some serious corruption).
From today’s perspective, what strikes me is that whatever the federal government was doing to protect freedmen when Grant was president came to dramatic halt after the contested presidential election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, the governor of Ohio, and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, the governor of New York. Tilden won the popular vote by approximately 250,000 votes. However, the Democratic and the Republican parties in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina each sent their own conflicting ballot results to Washington. Because there were two sets of results from each state- with each party’s tally declaring its own candidate to be the victor-Congress appointed a 15-member commission to determine the winner of each state’s electoral votes. In the course of the deliberations, some key Democrats agreed to back Hayes if the Republicans committed to withdrawing federal troops from the southern states. The deal was made; Hayes was declared the victor; and within a year the troops had left, which paved the way for the many decades of overt segregationist policies.
The Grant stamp, by the way, was part of a series of 11 stamps issued between 1890 and 1893. Continuing with the general pattern of the time, the set depicted a variety of people – all of them white men, of course – who had been key political and military figures. These included Presidents Grant, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Garfield as well as Daniel Webster and Henry Clay (two of the most important pre-Civil war senators), Benjamin Franklin (who is famous for many things), General William Tecumseh Sherman (who led the March Through Georgia that broke the back of the Confederacy), Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry (remembered in part for the phrases “Don’t give up the ship” and “We have met the enemy and he is ours”).
A popular twist on that latter phrase seems appropriate today: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Stay safe, be well, be vigilant and work for peace.