Bret Baier & The Contentious Election of 1876
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All right, boys and girls, we are back with another edition of the Ben Domenech podcast brought to you by Fox News. You can check out all of our podcasts at Fox News podcast dot com. I hope that you'll subscribe, rate and review this one if you like it. I am talking today with the great Brett Baer, newsman and host of Special Report. He is also the author of the new book To Rescue the Republic, Ulysses S. Grant, The Fragile Union and the Crisis of 1876.

It's a biography of Ulysses S. Grant, of course, but it's also a book that focuses a significant part of its narrative on the contentious election of 1876, where Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden were at each other's throats.

You may not be familiar with this election, but it resulted in a president not being named for 115 days and an electoral commission being formed before a grand bargain was struck over reconstruction and a number of other factors in order to allow Hayes to become president.

president. It's a controversial moment in American history, and Baer and his co-author Catherine Whitney have done a great job of pacing it out, as well as sharing a number of Grant stories, probably some familiar to you, some unfamiliar and new, that are certainly worth your time. Brett Baer was generous enough to sit down and talk with me about this and a little bit about what it's like to run Special Report. Brett Baer, coming up right after this.

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Brett Baer, thanks so much for taking the time to join me today. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me. I know that you started work on this book prior to the election dynamics that happened in 2020. How many echoes of 1876 did you see in the developments that happened in those days? How much did they inform your coverage of what was happening in 2020? That's a great question. As we...

We're coming to the end of this. And I was finishing up writing. We're obviously in the midst of all of this and this modern day election dispute.

arguably the most serious conflict we'd really experienced electorally since 1876. So I'm at the anchor desk on January 6th when the whole Capitol riot happens on Capitol Hill, and I'm focusing on that and the day-to-day, minute-to-minute, and watching some of that unfold.

While writing President Grant's actions after 1876. So it really did factor into my thinking about it. In fact, the book starts with the coverage of January 6th. But more broadly, it gives you a sense of how we've been mobilized.

Much worse places before as a country, even though it feels horrific right now as far as partisanship, we have been as a country on the brink of tipping back to a civil war again. And part of the climax of this book is Grant's leadership through that process to be able to keep the union together at all costs.

Yes. I mean, I think that had Nixon perhaps disputed the 60 election, we could have gotten close to it, but he obviously chose not to in part to avoid something like what happened in this context. Grant's undergone a historical reassessment as of late, especially as popular opinion assumes a more favorable stance toward his policies.

Did you view this book as part of that reassessment? Is that one of the reasons that you wanted to write it? Well, it was discovery, I will say. And, you know, I'm not a historian. I'm not. I call myself a reporter of history. But in the previous books I did, Eisenhower, Reagan, FDR, Churchill, and Stalin, the Three Days series, and that is the beginning, middle, and end of the Cold War, I

They were moments that were overlooked in history or that I felt that were overlooked or unfocused on in the big scheme of things. And that by shedding light on it, it maybe gives you a different view of that leader, of that moment, of a speech. I was looking for another one of those moments in history where maybe it's either...

conventional wisdom to think one way or the moment is just overlooked. And I think Grant's eight-year presidency is one of those times. I mean, if you hear about it, it's obviously described as being beset by difficulties and petty corruption within the administration, which is true. And

He trusted a lot of people, was a non-politician, and had some scandals that got a lot of coverage. But his most important role, which I kind of discovered more in depth, was to win the peace after the war. And in particular, to make sure the process of reconstruction in the South is successful. And he's trying everything in his power. And he makes great strides. The 13th, 14th, 15th Amendment was

They're all because of Grant's push. For the first time, blacks are voting, serving in Congress and the US Senate. They have farms, they're making livings, they're citizens and they eventually get the right to vote. But what the Civil War did is it made the South impossible to shrug off all that had happened very quickly. So when 1876 happens,

In order to make this grand bargain, part of it is that the South, there's no more federal troops and the reconstruction essentially comes to an end. But the South agrees to not have slavery and to sign on to the union. And that had catastrophic consequences civil rights wise for years. But in the moment, it was the thing that Grant had to do to keep the country together. If all the ballots were counted, do you believe that Samuel Tilden won?

Looking back at the details, I think he might have won. I mean, obviously, some of those states said that there was coercion and a lot of hijinks. But part of the bargain was that Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, I mean, it could have gone Tilden's way. The situation that you have here is interesting because Grant's presidency was obviously a success in some respects, as you just listed. Right.

But if you have a presidency that ends with the likely failure of his party in Tilden's potential election and the willingness of that party to back off of the Southern policy for which it was most prominent and most known in this moment, do you see sort of the seeds of failure that come at the end of this, even if he rescued the idea of union in the final moments of

Yeah. And I think that that's where history picks up. And that's what the focus is. But erased are the things that he's trying to do. You know, the book ends with a modern day scene after the George Floyd killing and the protests that have happened after that.

San Francisco Park statue of Ulysses S. Grant is pulled down. And a reporter is asking the people pulling the statue down, why are you doing this? Why are you pulling the statue down? They say, well, he owned slaves and he was part of the Civil War era. And, you know, we need to pull this down as a marker to them. And so it just really got to me that

Here's a guy. Yes, his father-in-law gave him a slave of which he then freed. And he spent the rest of his life fighting slavery, fighting for blacks to have the right to vote and citizenship and equality and fight the KKK with federal troops and try to bring the country together, including black citizens.

And here is somebody who should be lifted up as high as Lincoln, who I hold in really high regard. If it had been Lincoln and then Grant, imagine where the country would have been post-Civil War. Instead, because of the assassination, we have Andrew Johnson in the middle who goes backwards. Anyway, so seeing that statue come down and the inability of them to answer the question why,

I think made this book feel like we really need to learn our history, especially young people. And because we've been there before and we need to look to it so that we can be better places in the future. - You recount a number of anecdotes that I love from Grant's life. One in particular that comes near the end is how instrumental Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens was

in ensuring that his memoirs were written and that they paid the family their full due. I appreciate that so much because Mark Twain, as the striving book agent for a former president, it's just such an odd circumstance. But, you know, it is kind of a new era with Grant in that

There was no expectation before that presidents would ex-presidents would recount their lives to the American people. And when they take that book out and it goes in and sells in such enormous fashion, it really marks a line of demarcation between beforehand when presidents were not expected to do such things and after when we all assume that they will do such things where

What did you think as you were going back through this of reading Grant, the author, particularly given that when he started out, he was someone who struggled even to spell what he was writing? He was horrible at the beginning. And then, you know, he, first of all, the reason he's doing this is because he makes an investment in

with somebody he trusts and loses all his money post-presidency. So think about that in today's day and even modern times going back a ways. I mean, presidents always found a way, right, to make money in some way, shape or form. And this time he loses it all and is because of his friends staying afloat. But this magazine, popular magazine, they offer to pay him $500 an article.

And he starts writing his memories of the Civil War. And at the beginning is horrific. And finally, they go talk to him and and he gets what they're looking for. And he becomes far more detailed and actually a fantastic writer. And.

Mark Twain, as you mentioned, is a friend. He finds out how little Grant is being paid and he's outraged and he convinced Grant to sign on with Twain's publishing company to write this memoir in full for which he would be well paid. And

Twain is describes it as saying I didn't touch the manuscript I edited here or there but it was beautifully written to the point where he Was he was accused of writing it himself Mark Twain? but the the interesting thing about it is that grant gets sick he's has throat cancer and is writing this memoir and

Sort of like a deadline is approaching because he's got to get it done so that he can make the money for Julia, his wife, and leave to his family. And he is writing through pain. He can't swallow, but he's still writing. And he finishes it. And a few days later, he dies. She makes $400,000, roughly $14 million in today's money.

money exchange and you know it is one of the best-selling books of all time in that you know those years he sells a tons

You know, it's such an incredible thing, this final race against time. And I assume that in doing your research for this, that you've gone and visited the various places that Grant lived. I found them, I've done that circuit, and I find them...

sort of like as you can in so many of these instances, they're shockingly small. They seem very, very cramped and somewhat depressing. And the vision of him laboring over this, you know, understanding how important it is to the future of his family and perhaps not understanding how important it is to the country that is just eager to hear from him, though I think he probably suspected. It's just an astonishing scene, I think, of

uh, the nature of this man who, who was so much a common soldier in his approach to life. And you throughout the book do this contrast of how the media wanted to depict him because they wanted to have the, the tall soldier, uh, for the North, you know, he wanted Robert Lee of the North. Yeah, exactly. Um,

And Grant was not that for them. So they had to do all these different things to try to pretend that he was when he was the man with the muddy boots and the cigar. That's exactly right. I mean, they had the earliest version of Photoshop where they put a different head on a general's body sitting straight and kind of broad shouldered. And.

and put Grant's head on it. And they would do all kinds of things. The great story in the book about Lincoln calls Grant up to Washington to meet with him. He's getting his fourth star, the only general to do that since Washington at that time. And they put him up at the Willard Hotel and he goes with his son Fred to the desk and he is rumpled and he has this old uniform and a kind of

ratty hat and muddy boots and he goes up to the desk and the guy at the Willard says we do not have any any rooms and and we we might have one room it's like a broom closet up on the top floor and Grant being Grant says that's fine you know whatever you have that's where we'll stay and

And so he signs the register, U.S. Grant and son Fred. And the guy looks at it, stares at it, stares at him, and then goes gets the manager and they're escorted to the bridal suite. So here is the top general going to be with the president and he was going to go sleep in a broom closet. But it's very depictive of Grant.

You know, you push back against one notion about Grant that I've seen pushback against before, but I think you make a point of it, which is a lot of people have inherited the idea that he was a drunk.

In fact, you kind of make the point that the actual indication is that he just really couldn't hold his liquor all that well. And that that was something that was used against him at various points by Halleck and by other people who were irritated at him and wanted to depict him as being someone who was unreliable. Exactly. And, you know, he was 5'8". He was about 130 wet.

and you know he didn't hold his liquor well and when he went out to the Northwest Territory lonely away from his his love he gets really depressed and he starts drinking and he gets busted by his commander who then says you're going to either be court-martialed or you're gonna have to resign and

His friends told him to go through and he would get off if he's court-martialed. He decides to resign, and that starts this downward spiral where he is doing all kinds of odds and ends, including selling firewood at his lowest point, and three years later is the commanding general of the Union Army. So I think that evidence would prove that he was not this –

big drunk that he is portrayed to be. In fact, you know, Lincoln says, you know, when his generals are trying to tell or tattle on Grant, alleging that he's drinking. And Lincoln says, well, what kind of whiskey is it? Because I want to give barrels of it to all of my generals. And I think in the White House, there's not really evidence of that at all. Mm-hmm.

you know uh the southern opinion of various uh victorious union generals uh varied quite a bit uh in fact you know william tokinson sherman was actually mildly popular in the south uh while he lived city of atlanta uh even uh hired him at one point to tout its its comeback uh and he only became a villain later yeah in the 1890s and then after

What did the South think of Grant while he lived and after he died? You have a couple of key moments where he's interacting with former friends and people who had fought on the other side. But what was the South's perspective on him as a man? Well, they thought that even in their loss, that Grant was magnanimous.

And was always giving them dignity and allowing them in loss to take a firearm or a horse. In Appomattox, Lee specifically writes that he was struck by Grant's violence.

overall virtue in allowing dignity to continue. And one of his really good friends, another military brother of Grant, is his old West Point friend, James Longstreet, who had chosen to fight with Lee in the Confederate Army. He was second in command at the end of the war. And after Lee surrenders, Grant goes to Longstreet and calls him by his first name, Pete, and

And he wants to just tell stories and have a moment with these guys that he grew up with and went to West Point with. And so Grant travels there and he sits down and has a cigar with him and tells stories about a war that they're on two different sides. And Longstreet writes, why do men fight who were born to be brothers?

And what I think really sums it up is that when Grant dies, a million people turn out for the funeral procession in New York City.

And they are lined in the streets. Union soldiers, former Union soldiers, former Confederate soldiers digging up their old uniforms, putting them on, even though they're on two sides. And they're on both sides of the avenue as the procession goes on. The pallbearers are two Union generals and two Confederate generals. And I think that that

Really tells you that the South respected Grant and the fact that his presidential library is at Mississippi State is also pretty telling.

You know, there's this great theme of reconciliation that was so key to post-war American life. You think of, you know, a failed General Rosecrans' speech at the Chickamauga dedication or Chamberlain's speech on the passing of armies. The

The role that Grant had in trying to affect that reconciliation seems to be, you know, largely forgotten that unless you're someone who is a student of history, you know, he's viewed as.

Someone who, you know, came in was was a, you know, a relatively poorly judged president in a lot of people's minds. You know, he he's not viewed in that way as being kind of a postwar hero for what he attempted to do. But do you believe he deserves that status? Yeah, I do. I mean, I think that that was the driving force of of what he believed is that he was not fighting these men.

in the Civil War, he was fighting the thought that part of the country was going to break away from the Union and the Constitution that they had fought for together as a country. And, you know, he tells that to when he goes through as general, he tells that to the soldiers he's fighting, that it's not you that I'm fighting.

And I have respect for you. His, you know, his default is kind of kindness. He defeats General Buckner, who is also a friend. And Grant goes aboard the prisoner transport. And he says, Buckner, you may be going among strangers. And I hope you'll allow me to share my purse with you. And he hands him money.

And Buckner is touched by the gesture, writes about it, and he assures Grant that he had funds of his own. But he remembers that moment. So I do think that that kindness, the patience factored in. But when it came to war, when it came to getting things done, when it came to really exerting something, he had this cold resolve, which made him a unique leader.

Let's talk about that cold resolve for a minute. There's this idea, particularly among Southern partisans, that Robert E. Lee was the better general and that Grant won because he had the overwhelming advantage in men and material and support and that he was cold enough to use it when needed in order to affect things, while Lee, as good as he was, was also someone who

who had that southerner's weakness for the idea of knighthood and gallantry and great effect and believing. I think it's Shelby Foote who has the line about, at that point in the war, Lee really believed his men could do anything for him and that that's what failed him at Gettysburg. What are your thoughts on that divide?

Well, I think that I can't really speak to whether Robert E. Lee, he was definitely a tactician. He was very good at what he did. But I think that Grant, it was not just because he had, you know, in the end, more firepower or more men. I mean, if you think back to the Battle of Shiloh,

The grant forces are pretty much defeated. They had, the rebels had, had captured or killed entire divisions. And, um, he's sitting there at the end of the day, uh, as the rain's pouring down and he's with, um, Sherman. And, uh,

who is ready to propose plan for retreat because he saw no way they could win the battle and grant he saw grants face and he kind of thinks about it again and says well grant we've had the devil's own day of it haven't we and grant says yes he stares straight ahead and he says lick 'em tomorrow though and it turns out grant had conceived the strategy that was that was successful and obviously the rest is history turns around but

he's on the brink of loss, major loss, right?

And it translates that way in the presidency, too. He's on the brink of everything falling apart, that he had not only fought in the war, but fought as president to hold together. And it is teetering on the brink. And that's what the drama of that moment, as you get to 1876, really kind of builds to. I'll have more of my interview with Brett Baer right after this. So I have to ask you one non-grant related question, and that's just sort of this.

Every evening you come into people's homes from Fox with a news program that is in many ways a throwback to a time before cable news when respected newsmen would enter people's homes and give them everything that they need to know about what went on in the world today.

You're doing so, though, in a landscape where the 24-7 news cycle, social media, and everything else has essentially crowded out the ability for most places to take a step back and assess what are the most important things that people need to know about what happened today.

When you go about building that show, and I know that you're very much involved in the building of it, how do you make that determination for yourself? Meaning, you know, in the spirit of newsmen of the past, how do you say to yourself, this is the important thing?

This is less important. This is something that people need to know because it is a story that we will be talking about for weeks, and this is something that we can deal with in a small, brief reference and the like. How do you make that determination? It's a great question. It depends on the day, but I do go in in the morning with a thought about

you know, what the day looks like. But most days, Ben, it changes six, seven times during the day. And it, I think, is over,

24 years being at Fox, covering the Pentagon and the White House, and taking over the show in 2009, that over time, it just is inherent that you kind of know what's important, or at least that's the news judgment. So it's a collaborative effort. I have an executive producer, Rick DiBella, who's fantastic, and a team that works with me. But I am intimately involved, starting in the morning, throughout the day, and kind of going back and forth between

about how it goes. And the best days are where we rip up the rundown at five till six. And we say, this is the most important thing. And it shifts to number one. And we move reporters around and

And it is one of the reasons I love my job. It's different every day. It's like a puzzle piece. We're trying to figure out what's most important. But the most important thing for me is at the end of the hour, somebody says, one, I have a good sense of what's happening in the U.S. and the world that I need to know. Two, I think it was covered fairly. And three, I have some analysis from both sides that enables me to have a little ammo at the water cooler.

And, you know, that's from you and from people who've covered Washington for decades. And that combination, which is just building on what Brit Hume built, has really worked. And I think if you build it, they will come. And so far they have. I'll just I'll just ask you this then. What was one story, one one aspect of the last couple of years that

Where you felt like you and your news coverage was ahead of the curve in recognizing its importance before perhaps the rest of the

Yeah.

I'm not to be braggadocious, but we as a network could say that about a lot of stories. But me personally, I think the lab leak theory and breaking that story about U.S. intelligence officials believing that there was a good chance that it was coming from the lab. And despite everything that you were hearing, that that in fact happened.

The circumstantial evidence pointed that way and being, you know, having taking the elements of that story, putting it forward, having a fair discussion, putting the people on who said that was ridiculous and the conspiracy theory, but yet staying with it and covering it, just covering it and let people decide. Well, in the interim, obviously, there was a lot of time spent on saying that's crazy.

And that's out there. And now you look at it, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, New York Times all have their own lab leak theory stories that are back ending into what we covered April of 2020. So I think you could do that with the border, the border story. I think you could do that with the early days of Afghanistan and what we were seeing and reporting on the ground.

So we're breaking stuff all the time that I think is just about news. And it's not about what the story is or who it helps or doesn't help. It is just about news. And that's the one thing Brit Hume always told me is that it's not about you. It's about the news that drives the show. And if I can take that every day at 6 p.m. Eastern Time, I'm

I'm doing my job. Brett, thanks so much for taking the time to join me and to talk about this book, To Rescue the Republic, Ulysses S. Grant, The Fragile Union and the Crisis of 1876. Thanks a lot, Ben. So I'm sure by now you've seen the reports concerning the current iteration of Superman being used to check information.

an LGBTQ box by being categorized as bisexual. The New York Times, which is certainly full of people who read a lot of comic books, I assure you, greeted the news this way.

Up and out of the closet, the new Superman, Jonathan Kent, who is the son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, will soon begin a romantic relationship with a male friend, DC Comics announced Monday. That same-sex relationship is just one of the ways that Jonathan Kent, who goes by John, is proving to be a different Superman than his famous father. Since his new series, Superman, Son of Kal-El, began in July, John has combated wildfires caused by climate change, thwarted a high school shooting, and protested the deportation of refugees in Metropolis.

The idea of replacing Clark Kent with another straight white savior felt like a missed opportunity. Tom Taylor, who writes the series, said in an interview, he said that a new Superman had to have new fights, real world problems that he could stand up to as one of the most powerful people in the world. So the bisexuality thing gets the headline here. The more interesting and more damaging part of this story is the actual way that this character, this new Superman is being portrayed.

Instead of standing up for truth, justice, and the American way, this new Superman is taking a stand on, quote, pressing social issues, according to the Times story. It includes a page of the comic where there's an interaction between Superman and his son. And he says...

Uh, he has an interaction with him where basically the son is demanding to know why every problem couldn't be, uh, couldn't be tackled by Superman himself. Uh, you know, it could be a place where every problem could be tackled. If only the world would unite a place where no one is left behind. Dad, why don't you do more?

Well, we know from other Superman stories why he doesn't do more. There's a great comic from back in the early 2000s called Red Sun, which is an alt history where Superman crash lands in the spacecraft bearing him as an infant crash lands in the Soviet Union instead of in Kansas. And he becomes a ward of Joseph Stalin himself is raised to be a communist Superman bent on maintaining a perfect society.

society. And it's an interesting story in part because, of course, he very quickly, when given the opportunity, turns to a do-gooding form of tyranny, total police state, total dominance, total shuttering of opposing views and the like, and ends up in a conflict with

American version of Lex Luthor in this alternate comic book who ends up becoming a kind of Elon Musk as president situation and it creates a whole scenario where

Superman is confronted by what happens basically if he tries to run the world as he sees fit, using his powers not to be an example for people but to subjugate them. And this is an interesting thing, and I want to stress here, people might think that this is unimportant.

But all of these superhero comics are important in the same way that sports is important in the same way that other aspects of pop culture are important. Music and movies and the like. It's because they teach people things, particularly young people. And comic books have mostly been about teaching young men how to how to become men. You had to move from being a teenage boy to being someone who understands what their obligations are within our society and within the world.

And that's something that makes these figures very important. And it's been true for as long as humanity has existed. You know, these larger than life figures that are dreamt up or that are imagined or that are built up out of real people become legend.

They are all about teaching certain values to younger people and to next generations. And one of the things that I think is happening here is that the left is not content simply to run down or to diversify the superhero universe in ways that often seem ridiculous and very obvious and dumb on their face. They're not satisfied with that.

They actually want to wreck characters who stand up for truth, justice, and the American way. People like Superman have to be destroyed and in their place, there need to be people who are espousing the idea that, well, if you won't do what I'm telling you to do because I believe it's right, then I'm going to force you to do it anyway.

There's a whole strain of comics called the Injustice series where Superman becomes kind of the villain being challenged by multiple other superheroes, in part because he believes that he wants to take over and essentially rule the world as this dominating tyrant because he believes he knows what's best for all the people of it that

There should be no guns anymore and there should be no cigarettes anymore and the like. Instead of having the ideal image of Superman, that is to represent our highest aspirations, to be a symbol for us to strive for and to try and as the phrase goes, to join him in the sun.

This all comes back to the question of why we need heroes, which is something that I think a lot of people don't really understand anymore.

But they're needed now more than ever. They help define for us what our values are. They help frame for a next generation what ideals they ought to pursue, what virtue really means, what bravery looks like, and more. And that's why it's important to understand what is being taken away when the left decides to turn Superman into just one more tyrannically-minded person who's urging people that they have to do the work.

I'm Ben Domenech. You've been listening to another edition of the Ben Domenech Podcast. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. The world of business moves fast. Stay on top of it with the Fox Business Rundown. Listen to the Fox Business Rundown every Monday and Friday at foxbusinesspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.