History’s Headlines: Grant wins the heart of South Bethlehem | History’s Headlines

It’s the summer of 1869 in South Bethlehem. Gentlemen’s hats are high, cigars and whiskey plentiful and antimacassars, those little doilies designed to protect the backs of chairs from greasy male hair oil, are much in evidence. And on August 19 of that year, citizens were looking forward to something special: a visit from the President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant.



It is the high noon of America’s post-Civil War boom, and the Bethlehem Iron Company was shipping its rails around the country at a breakneck pace. A shipment had been sent around Cape Horn to San Francisco a year before for the Central Pacific Railroad that on May 10, 1869 joined the Union Pacific at Promontory Point, Utah, completing the nation’s first trans-continental railroad. That year Grant would oversee the completion of another railroad from Sacramento, California to Omaha, Nebraska. Not resting on its laurels, Bethlehem Iron that year sent executives Robert Sayre and John Fritz to Europe to investigate the new steel rail-making technology being developed there. Closer to home in Allentown the Board of Trade boasted it was possible to read a newspaper at three o’ clock in the morning by the light of that city’s iron rail mills working through the night.

It was also a time when political change brought on by the Civil War was recognized when Grant signed enforcement acts to suppress the Ku Klux Klan violence in the South and witnessed in 1870 the election of Joseph Rainey of South Carolina as the first Black person elected to the House of Representatives. Grant was also a vigorous supporter to the ratification of the 15th amendment to the Constitution, giving rights to recently enslaved Black people as citizens.

At this distance of time, it may be difficult to appreciate Grant the way the people of his time did. Into the end of the last century, because of many scandals in his administration that were uncovered, none of which Grant personally profited, he was regarded by historians as a do-nothing president almost certainly at the bottom of the barrel and probably a drunk. Prior to 1999 the vast majority of Grant biographers either ignored Grant’s presidency or portrayed it as a failure. In 1935 the influential and flamboyant University of Wisconsin historian William B. Hesseltine (according to one account by Ralph Havener, later archivist for the University of Missouri, and one of his graduate seminar students, Hesseltine used to stab unsatisfactory student papers in a pile with a large knife) wrote “Ulysses Grant: Politician,” the standard biography of Grant whose negative view of the man prevailed among biographers for the rest of the century. In a ranking of presidents done by historians in the 1950s, Grant was rated as a failure in the White House. “Grant was a loser,” Hesseltine wrote. “Even the dogs didn’t like the man.”



History's Headlines: Grant wins the heart of South Bethlehem

It was not until 1999 with Frank Scaturro’s “President Grant Reconsidered” that the historical tide began to turn. Many current biographers have taken another look and discovered that this view of Grant came from detractors in the 19th century, mostly political opponents, or condescending New Englanders like Henry Adams, who felt Grant lacked the sophistication or intelligence to be president and was “pre- intellectual, archaic and would have seemed so even to cave-dwellers.” As New England historians wrote the textbooks for the nation in that era, the pattern was set.

But for folks in his time, at least in the North, Grant was a hero. Not that it was always so. Born in Ohio as the first of six children he was said to have been a small, sensitive, quiet boy who early showed his talent in training horses. Grant entered West Point in 1839 where he excelled in mathematics, writing, and drawing as well as horsemanship. Like many officers who would later serve North and South in the Civil War, Grant fought in the Mexican-American War of the late 1840s. He took part in several major battles and was twice cited for bravery.

Before the war he had married Julia Dent. Grant’s father was not happy at first as the Dent family owned several slaves, and he was an abolitionist. He refused to attend the wedding. Later he became reconciled to Grant’s bride if not her family. The Grants were to have 4 children. Almost all photographs of Julia Grant were taken in profile. This was because she was cross-eyed. Asked why she did not have an operation to have it corrected, Grant said simply he loved her as she was.



History's Headlines: Grant wins the heart of South Bethlehem

In 1854 Grant resigned from the army. With children to feed him needed to support them. But from farming to selling insurance he was unsuccessful. The fact that the Panic of 1857 hit at the same time, throwing many across the country out of work, might have been in part responsible for this. By 1861 Grant was working in his family’s leather goods store in Galena, Illinois. He had voted for Democrat Stephen Douglas in the 1860 elections, hoping he would hold the country together but with the firing on Fort Sumter he knew he had to defend his country and rejoined the military.

Thousands of books have been about Grant the general. His rise was uneven at first but with the capture of Vicksburg in 1863 he came to national attention. His appearance in the North was controversial as bloody battle followed bloody battle; he was called Butcher Grant. But he had Lincoln’s support. “I can’t spare this man, he fights,” was the president’s response to Grant’s critics. Grant had this to say of his foes in his memories at their surrender, although he did not question the sincerity of those who fought against him: “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly , and had fought so hard for a cause, though that cause was I, believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought…”

By war’s end and victory, Grant was generally beloved by his men and respected as a war hero along with Lincoln, whose assassination brought Grant openly to tears. They were co-jointly regarded as the saviors of the Union. In 1868 the Republican party had decided he was the only one candidate that could get them the White House. Running under the slogan “Let us have peace,” he won.

This was the Grant that citizens of South Bethlehem were waiting to meet under the broiling hot sun at the South Bethlehem railroad station. There was one resident of South Bethlehem that Grant knew well from his West Point days, Henry Coppee, the first president of Lehigh University. Born in 1821 in Savannah, Georgia from a prominent family of French ancestry, Coppee trained as an engineer before entering West Point in 1841 and graduated in 1845 as 11th in a class of 123. Grant graduated in 1843 as 21st in a class of 39.



History's Headlines: Grant wins the heart of South Bethlehem

Grant and Coppee served in the Mexican-American War together. Coppee’s later career was largely in education, teaching French and later geography, history and ethics at West Point. In 1855 he resigned from the army and took a teaching position in English history and literature at the University of Pennsylvania which he held until 1866. Despite pleas from North and South to rejoin the military, Coppee declined all of them. The one exception came when General Lee entered Pennsylvania in 1863, when he offered his services to Governor Andrew Curtin and served as provisional aide-de-camp to General DN Couch.

The news of Grant’s visit appeared in the August 19, 1869 column of the Bethlehem Times and combined disappointment with anticipation:

”President Grant was to have arrived in town at noon today but owning to a break-down near Slatington he has been delayed. He is on his way to New York but will stop here and dine with Dr. coppee dr Coppee and President Grant were classmates at West Point. The President will arrive here sometime this afternoon.”

Grant did appear later that day and an article on it appeared in the August 20th edition. Although his stop was short his welcome was no less enthusiastic:

“Yesterday our citizens had an opportunity to greet the President of the United States, who is at present on a tour through the coal regions of Schuylkill and Carbon counties. Many of our citizens turned their way at 10 and 11 o’clock AM and 12’oclock to the depot, and notwithstanding the intense heat which prevailed, stood under the full rays of the broiling sun, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the distinguished visitor.



History's Headlines: Grant wins the heart of South Bethlehem

Shortly after 12 o’clock a train arrived bearing a number of the distinguished and prominent men of the nation, among whom were Generals Meade and Patterson. They were the guests of Judge (Asa) Packer and Professor Coppee, of Lehigh University whither they were immediately conveyed by carriages.

The non-arrival of the President was a disappointment in the crowd, which had by this time been considerably augmented. At 1 o’clock however the long looked for train arrived and Bethlehem was favored with a short stoppage of the train containing General Grant, family and party of friends. The President soon after appeared on the platform of the rear car and was greeted with hearty cheers by the assemblage, which he gracefully acknowledged with a low bow. The ladies who were present in great numbers, had on this occasion the preference of position, which was altogether in order, and the first favor bestowed on the President was the presentation of beautiful bouquet to the fair ones. The General acknowledged the gift by extending his hand to the donor.

There followed a general handshaking, through which the President very well naturally agreed. Your reporter was favored with a grasp of the hand of the President of these United States. He must have been favorably impressed with the general decorum as well as enthusiasm of the people of Bethlehem at the depot during the greeting of yesterday.

The President spoke but little, but the warm grasp of his hand, and his friendly look, gave evidence of the gratification he experienced with his hearty reception. The train started soon, and three more cheers were given to the President on his departure. The visit of President Grant will always continue remembrance in the minds of the people of Bethlehem.”

Nothing is known of what all those high-powered folks up a Lehigh thought over lunch of missing the president. It may have not bothered them as Packer was planning to run as a Democrat for governor that year and would come within 4,000 votes of winning that office, votes historians believe were found by the city’s Republican political machine. Perhaps the presence of a Republican president would not have been welcome at Packer’s table.

But the reporter who shook the hand that had once shook that of Robert E. Lee ending the Civil War probably never forgot it. As history tells it, Grant’s later life had his good points, being re-elected in a landslide in 1872, and bad points, all those scandals by those he trusted.

In October of 1873 Grant was a house guest in Philadelphia of financier and railroad speculator Jay Cooke when the Panic of 1873 hit. It was to shift his political fortunes. The Democrats took over Congress. Labor riots were breaking out and Jim Crow was beginning its rise in the South. By the time Grant left office in 1876 he was still honored but no longer as politically popular as he once was.

After an around the world tour where he was feted by royalty Grant returned home to find he was wiped out financially. Dying of throat cancer and broke, he would write his memories and redeem his reputation and family fortunes. Veterans flocked to buy them. Grant died in 1885.

In 1897 Grant’s remains were placed, after much controversy, in a magnificent tomb in New York overlooking the Hudson. Julia Grant rests beside him.

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