Gerald R. Ford and the American Civil War
A total of 95 individuals bearing the surname Ford are listed in Michigan’s official registry of Civil War soldiers and sailors published in 1915. Genealogists can testify that some may not actually have borne the name. Historians can document that the published registry suffers from errors and omissions. It remains, however, a key source to discovering the service and sacrifice offered on behalf of the United States by 90,000-some individuals who placed their lives on the line for the nation. Gerald R. Ford did the same after enlisting in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
An interesting coincidence: the future President had a predecessor namesake who wore the uniform of the U.S. Army during the Civil War. “Jerry Ford” enlisted in Company C of the 1st Michigan Colored Infantry regiment on September 2, 1864, at Jackson, Michigan, for a 1-year term of service. He was 23. Not only did his decision involve volunteering, he entered as a draft substitute for William Sanders of Ann Arbor, enabling that individual to maintain his civilian status. Ford joined the regiment, now designated as the 102nd United States Colored Troops, on October 22 in the Deep South at Beaufort, S.C. He soon found himself under hostile fire in the Battle of Honey Hill on November 30. He was wounded in that action but recovered. He mustered out at Charleston, S.C., on September 30, 1865, having served several weeks longer than his enlistment required.[1]
The record of service of Michigan’s regiment of individuals of color is coming into clearer focus in the 21st century due to new scholarship such as Warriors of Liberty: William Dollarson & Michigan’s Civil War African Americans, recently published by the Michigan Civil War Association. Their service deep in the slaveholding South exposed these brave men to wounds, injuries, death, and enslavement. It also contributed to the ultimate Union victory by surmounting the resistance of the Confederacy through overwhelming strength of arms.
Congressman Gerald Ford fashioned his own record on civil rights, which has been recounted in studies and biographies. His votes as a Member of Congress in favor of civil rights legislation, including the proposed 24th Amendment in 1962 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, upheld the tradition of a State delegation dating from the Civil War era. Ford’s support fulfilled the best commemorative impulses of the Civil War Centennial (1961-1965).
As President – in an action remarkable under current circumstances – Ford was the central figure at a White House ceremony on August 5, 1975, when U.S. citizenship was posthumously restored to Robert E. Lee. The Virginian had resigned his Army commission in April 1861 to become the Confederacy’s leading military figure. A slaveholder himself, Lee fought the U.S. flag on U.S. soil, taking U.S. Army soldiers as prisoners of war, ultimately becoming responsible for more casualties than any other Civil War command officer. How did President Ford come to sign a measure and preside over a ceremony welcoming Lee back? Was it a neo-Confederate deed?
A near-unanimous congressional resolution authorized this restoration of full citizenship, based on an archival discovery of Lee’s signature on an oath of amnesty he signed in October 1865. By that deed, Lee solemnly swore to “faithfully support, protect, and defend” the U.S. Constitution “and the Union of the States thereunder” – and to obey “all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves.” The U.S. Government never processed Lee’s application before his death in 1870.
Ironically, the popularity of correcting this injustice contrasted with another act of clemency. Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon in August 1974 raised a firestorm of protest and contributed to election defeat in 1976. Perhaps not since Lincoln’s election in 1860 triggered a transition crisis leading to secession, forcible taking of Federal assets, and war upon the U.S. flag had a new Chief Executive faced such opposition. At the time, the Nixon pardon was criticized as an act of mercy without contrition or confession of guilt. Not so. Negotiator Benton L. Becker informed Nixon of precedent – Burdick v. U.S. (1915), rendered two years after Gerald Ford’s birth – establishing that acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt. The former President agreed to a pardon, thereby admitting criminal behavior against the United States.
The same principle applied to Lee’s application for amnesty under President Andrew Johnson’s proclamation of May 29, 1865. It provided that “special application may be made to the President for pardon.” An 1833 precedent (U.S. v. Wilson) ruled that a pardon “exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed” (emphasis added).
The restoration of citizenship to Confederate President Jefferson Davis under President Jimmy Carter is altogether different. Davis never sought absolution and went to his grave unrepentant for his disloyalty to and the crimes he had committed against the United States.
Jerry Ford of the 102nd U.S.C.T. never received recognition for his loyal service to the Constitution, made possible by the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, and the rapid response by Michigan’s military apparatus to Federal permission to raise a colored regiment in 1863. No award, badge, or insignia existed during the Civil War, such as the now-revered Purple Heart, to mark his being wounded in the service of the United States. Not until 1905 were veterans given the opportunity to be honored with the newly approved Civil War Campaign Medal.
On January 10, 1977, President Ford bestowed the nation's foremost civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on author Bruce Catton. The citation stated: “Man of letters, preeminent historian of the War Between the States, he made us hear the sounds of battle and cherish peace. He made us see the bleeding wound of slavery and hold man's freedom dear.” Catton deserved the award: during the depths of Jim Crow, he wrote This Hallowed Ground: The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War.[2] It served as powerful counterpoint to the “Lost Cause” mythology that sought to portray the Civil War as a states’ rights struggle, rather than one caused by and ending the practice of human bondage within America’s borders. Instead, Catton maintained, “the deep intolerable wrong of slavery” was the central issue that divided the nation and led to the war.[3]
President Ford was no Lost Cause apologist. He revered the 16th President and invoked Lincoln’s legacy more than once during the nation’s Bicentennial celebration. In Memorial Day proclamations, he remembered the ultimate sacrifice by soldiers on behalf of Union and repeated Lincoln’s call to ensure “that these dead shall not have died in vain.”[4] Lincoln spoke only of those who fought under Old Glory and the Emancipation Proclamation. Ford laid a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial on the 165th anniversary of Old Abe’s birth, offering that “none of our problems today are as severe as those facing Lincoln – human slavery and civil war between the states. … As President, I believe it would be fitting to memorialize Abraham Lincoln by rededicating this Administration to reviving the moral and spiritual strength which he bequeathed to the United States.”[5]
In those remarks, the 38th President left Americans with a message that resonates today. Ford said:
In these days of new hardships, new responsibilities and new challenges, it is important for us as a people to reflect upon the past -- to draw strength from triumphs over great trials in other times.
We honor the memory of Lincoln best – not only by formal ceremonies -- but by doing our best to preserve for the next generation the legacy he so proudly handed down to us: government of the people, by the people and for the people.
The legacy of the Civil War is a Constitution that continues to govern an entire nation and affords citizenship to “We, the People” – all people.
Ford’s death the day after Christmas 2006 as the then longest-living U.S. President prompted numerous eulogies extoling his lifelong service to America. The congressionally authorized commemorative document spoke of how he had “assumed the Presidency amidst the gravest constitutional crisis since the Civil War.”[6] Former Speaker Thomas P. ‘‘Tip’’ O’Neill eulogized Ford: ‘‘God has been good to America, especially during difficult times. At the time of the Civil War, he gave us Abraham Lincoln. And at the time of Watergate, he gave us Gerald Ford — the right man at the right time who was able to put the Nation back together.’’ Those words are inscribed on the base of the statue of Ford installed in the National Statuary Hall in 2011.
In March 1865, Lincoln envisioned binding up the wounds of the nation as the suppression of Rebellion and prospect of victory shone brightest. President Ford, a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, hailed how Lincoln had given the Republican political organization “its moral charter as a party dedicated to racial justice.” The self-described “plain-spoken Midwesterner” humbly characterized himself: “I am a Ford, not a Lincoln.”[7] In important ways, however, the resemblance to the leader whose shrine on the National Mall proclaims that he “saved the Union” proves inescapable.
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[1] Record of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War, 1861-1865, Vol. 46, 35.
[2] Garden City: Doubleday & Co., © 1955-1956.
[3] Id. 15.
[4] President Proclamation Designating Memorial Day, May 26, 1975, as a Day of Prayer for Peace.
[5] Remarks at Lincoln Wreath Laying, Feb. 12, 1975.
[6] House Document No. 110–6, 110th Congress, 1st Session.
[7] Address, U.S. Senate Leader’s Lecture Series, May 23, 2001.
