America's Greatest 19th Century Presidents (32 page)

Taking office on March 4, 1869 at the age of forty-six, Grant became the eighteenth President of the United States, the youngest elected President, and the least politically experienced; he’d never held public office and had voted only once in his life, for Democrat James Buchanan.  In his inaugural address, Grant stated: “The office has come to me unsought; I commence its duties untrammeled.”
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Upon assembling his cabinet, Grant displayed his signature decisiveness of independent thought, as well as his lack of political experience. Grant chose some who were wholly unqualified to hold office, and others simply for personal reasons. His choice for Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, was based almost solely on a close relationship between the two men’s wives. 

Domestic and Foreign Affairs

On March 18, 1869, Grant signed his first bill into law, one that pledged the U. S. Government would redeem in gold the Civil War greenbacks in circulation.  Later that year, the President of the Dominican Republic offered to sell his country to the United States; with Grant supporting annexation, citing the strategic advantage a naval base there would provide the U. S.  However, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, immediately attacked the treaty, denouncing Grant as promoting another form of slavery.  As a result, other Senators rejected the treaty--all of whom Grant considered enemies from that time on.

Grant then tackled the issue of the damage the British-built screw sloop-of-war
Alabama
(and other Confederate warships) had wrecked on Northern shipping during the Civil War, effectively serving as a commerce raider by attacking Union merchant and naval ships over the course of her two-year commission.  On May 8, 1871, the United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Washington, which provided for monetary compensation by international arbitration commission in Switzerland.  The resulting Geneva Tribunal ruled that Great Britain should pay the U. S. 15, 500,000 in recompense.

By the end of Grant’s first administration, the general consensus was that he’d achieved some positive changes for a country on the mend.  The national debt had been reduced and the prevailing dispute with Great Britain over war claims had been amicably resolved.  But still, there were those who were not happy about where the nation was headed.  Grant had succeeded in offending many politicians who found his politics too liberal, and disappointed others who wanted civil service reform.  Additionally, businessmen who favored free trade opposed the high tariff then in effect, which Grant had done little to address.  Thus many sought to put a man in office who would address their needs, wishes, and concerns.

Second Term: 1873--1877

On May 1, 1872, a Liberal Republican convention controlled by Senator Carl Schurz and a group of journalists met in Cincinnati to denounce “vindictive Reconstruction and corruption” in the Grant administration, which they termed “Grantism.”  The Liberal Republicans chose
New York Tribune
editor Horace Greeley to oppose Grant on the ticket, who then got support from the Democrats who thought that by joining the Liberal Republicans, they’d have a better chance of unseating the incumbent. 

But many knew from the start that while Greeley was a respected journalist, his radical views on most social issues were far too extreme for even Grant’s critics.  And truth be told, it was widely known that the Democrats were even more corrupt than they were accusing the Grant Administration of being.  In several big cities, most notoriously the Tammany Hall machine in New York City, their political machines were actively swindling taxpayers of millions of dollars, and many knew it.  And the ace up the Republican’s sleeve was, of course, the new Black vote in the South, which they were certain to draw.  Thus, Grant won his party’s bid for reelection and took more than 66% of the popular vote in the Election of 1872, an even wider margin than in 1868.

Damage Control

As soon as Grant began his second term, he had to initiate damage control due to a scandal that had begun during his reelection campaign and greatly undermined Republican Party credibility.  It had been discovered that several high-ranking Republican officials, including Vice President Schuyler Colfax and Vice President replacement nominee Senator Henry Wilson, were part of a fraud scheme involving the Union Pacific Railroad and the Crédit Mobilier of America construction company, and had illegally netted a reported 50,000,000 through a clever scheme involving cash bribes to congressmen.  And though Crédit Mobilier had been formed in 1864 (during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency), and the actual fraud had taken place during the Andrew Johnson presidency in 1868, the public revelation during Grant’s presidency made it his mess to clean up.

The Panic of 1873

Before the smoke had completely cleared from the Crédit Mobilier scandal, in September of 1873, several substantial U. S. banks including the Fourth National Bank in New York City  failed, setting off a nation-wide panic.  The failure had actually been set off two years earlier by Minister President of Prussia (modern-day Germany) Otto von Bismarck, who had extracted a large indemnity in gold from France and then ceased minting silver coins. 

The first symptoms of the crisis were financial failures in the Austro-Hungarian capital, Vienna, which then spread to most of Europe and North America by 1873.  Hardest hit were bankers, manufacturers, and finally, farmers of the South and West who then joined the Greenback Party, a group who demanded that Grant inflate the nation’s currency to alleviate the depression. Grant ignored their demands and ultimately vetoed that bill.

Scandals and Cover-Ups

Although Grant would never be personally accused of wrongdoing during his presidency, ultimately his Administration is best remembered for rampant graft and corruption. In 1875, Secretary of Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow exposed the “Whisky Ring,” an operation with roots in the U. S. government, tied to several government officials conspiring with tax officials to rob the government of excise tax. Implicated in the conspiracy was President Grant’s own private secretary, General Orville E. Babcock. 

Then in 1876, Grant made the reckless decision to allow Secretary of War William W. Belknap to tender his letter of resignation the same day he was to face impeachment for accepting bribes from an Indian agent.  Although Belknap was still impeached, it reflected very badly on Grant. And just before the Republican National Convention of 1876, rumors began to spread about a suspicious connection between the Union Pacific Railroad and former Speaker of the House, James G. Blaine.

In short, Grant’s second term in office was characterized by a series of scandals and cover-ups, with his many accomplishments buried beneath shame and suspicion.  Even today, history tends to forget that in April of 1874 it was Grant’s wise veto of the Greenback bill that resulted in diminishing the currency crisis of the final decades of the 19
^th
century, and that his lenient Reconstruction policy did much to reunite the nation. 

In his final address to Congress before leaving office, Grant assured them, “Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent.”
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Chapter 8: Later Personal Life, 1877 to 1885

Grant the Businessman

Immediately after leaving the White House, Grant took his family on a world tour spanning from Europe to the Far East, all the while basking in the celebrity that came with being a world-renowned war hero and former President of the United States. 

Returning to San Francisco in September of 1879, he found the Republican Party anxious to capitalize on his new-found international popularity by nominating him for a third term as President.  Although he did nothing to encourage his nomination, he did nothing to discourage it either.  While he received more than 300 votes in each of the thirty-six ballots of the 1880 Republican Convention, James A. Garfield eventually got the nomination. The decision may have indirectly saved Grant’s life at the expense of Garfield, who was assassinated within months of taking office by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled Republican Party supporter who was upset he did not receive a job in the new administration.

In August 1881, Grant moved to New York City, where he invested his life savings (about $100,000) into forming the banking/investment firm
Grant & Ward
, along with businessman Ferdinand Ward and son Ulysses S. Grant, Jr.  Unfortunately for Grant, Ward would later become known for shady business deals and for creating the forerunner of “Ponzi” schemes, and he hoped to profit through a connection with the former President, assuming his powerful Washington friends would run to open accounts with the firm. 

When Grant refused to solicit his friends or lobby for government contracts, Ward did so in his name, and then borrowed great sums of money from Marine National Bank using Grant’s reputation.  Ultimately, Grants business naiveté resulted in the company going bankrupt by 1884, leaving Grant penniless. Grant had proven inept at business one last time.

Grant the Author

Failed business ventures weren’t the only bad news Grant received in 1884. That same year, the general known for constantly smoking cigars learned he had throat cancer, a certain death sentence. Grant was one of the most famous people in the world, but he also knew that his family would have nothing if he died tomorrow. As a result, Grant set about writing personal memoirs that would not only secure his legacy but also provide for his family.

Although Grant had studied French at West Point and picked up some Spanish during the Mexican-American War, he was never known to write or speak in any language other than Anglo-Saxon English, and unlike most learned men of his time, he rarely incorporated Latin or Greek terms.  Thus he seemed an unlikely man to write what is generally considered to be the best account of the Civil War, and one of the finest military memoirs ever written, especially when taking into account the fact that he was gravely ill while working on it.

Grant’s memoirs were well received by critics due both to its candor and his writing style. Grant’s writing style can be best described as unpresumptuous and “epigrammatic”, direct and sometimes witty, with adjectives used sparingly but chosen well. Grant rarely used metaphors, but when he did they were always poignant and highly effective. 

That is not to suggest that Grant’s writing was simple or bland. In fact, Grant’s memoirs make for an enjoyable read even among those less interested in the Civil War. Grant had a knack for presenting his thoughts in what may best be described as a series of highly evocative mottos, exemplified by such statements as, “The best means of securing the repeal of an obnoxious law is its vigorous enforcement,” and “I shall take no steps backwards.”
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  And it’s said that what left his desk was grammatically correct, well punctuated, and seldom contained a misspelled work.

Deeply in debt and his health failing, in late 1884, Grant began supporting his family by writing of his various war experiences for
Century Magazine,
and they were so well received that he began writing his memoirs.  That November, Grant was stricken with a persistent ache in his throat which was subsequently diagnosed as throat cancer, quite possibly due to his cigar habit.  Despite excruciating pain, he signed a contract with friend and noted writer Mark Twain to publish his memoirs, promising to complete the work before his death. 

In June of 1885, Grant moved his family to Mount McGregor in the Adirondacks to avoid the Summer heat.  Six weeks later, on July 23, 1885, Ulysses S. Grant died at the age of sixty-three, just days after fulfilling his promise to Twain. Completing
The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant
, shortly before his death, the first volume was published in late 1885, and the second in 1886, both of which proved extraordinary popular, bringing the Grant family nearly $500,000.  Even today, his accounts of the Civil War contained in these volumes are
must-haves
for war buffs and Civil War aficionados, and continue to rank high among all military biographies. 

In Memoriam

Amidst an outpouring of public mourning, Grant was laid to rest in Riverside Park in August of 1885.  His wife, Julia Boggs Dent Grant, lived 17 years more, passing away in 1902.  By then, the nation had helped establish Grant’s Tomb, a massive mausoleum in Riverside Park that serves as a memorial and tomb for Grant. It was dedicated on April 27, 1897, which would have been Grant’s 75
^th
birthday. Julia was buried next to her husband in the massive structure.