HIS SECOND ADMINISTRATION
The storm of criticism and calumny through which President Grant passed
during the election canvass of 1872 had no effect to change his general
course or open his eyes to the true sentiment of the nation. Instead of
realizing that he was reëlected, not because his administration was
approved, but because circumstances prevented an effective combination
of the various elements of sincere opposition, he and his friends
accepted the result as popular approbation of their past conduct and
warrant for its continuance. Things went from bad to worse with a
pell-mell rapidity that made good men shudder.
In the four years there were but two exhibitions of conspicuously
courageous and honorable statesmanship. One was the passage of the
Resumption Act of January 14, 1875, which promised the resumption of
specie payments on January 1, 1879, and gave the Secretary of the
Treasury adequate power to make the performance of the promise possible.
This was one result of the collapse in 1873 of the enormous speculation
promoted by a fluctuating currency and fictitious values. The demand for
a currency of stable value enabled the conservative statesmen in
Congress to take this action. Grant's approval of this act and his veto
in the previous year of the "inflation bill" must always be regarded as
highly commendable public services.
The only immediate change in the cabinet was the appointment of William
A. Richardson to succeed George S. Boutwell as Secretary of the
Treasury. Mr. Richardson had some qualifications of experience for the
place, but wanted the essential traits of firmness and high motive. In
the next year after taking office he was forced to resign, on account of
a report of the committee of ways and means condemning him for his part
in making a contract, while acting Secretary of the Treasury, with one
Sanborn, for collecting for the Treasury, on shares, taxes which it was
the business of regular officers of the government to collect. Immense
power was given by the contract, and the resources of the Treasury
Department were put at the service of a crew of irresponsible
inquisitors before whom the business community trembled. They extorted
immense sums in dishonorable ways which aroused popular resentment. The
President saw no wrong, and accepted Secretary Richardson's resignation
unwillingly, at once nominating him to be Chief Justice of the Court of
Claims, a reward for malfeasance which amazed the country, although the
administration supporters in the Senate confirmed it.
General Benjamin H. Bristow, of Kentucky, became Secretary of the
Treasury, a man of superior ability, aggressive honesty, and moral
firmness. He quickly uncovered a mass of various wrongdoing,--the
safe-burglary frauds of the corrupt ring governing Washington, the
seal-lock frauds, the subsidy frauds, and, most formidable of all, the
frauds of the powerful whiskey ring having headquarters in St. Louis.
The administration of the Treasury Department, especially the Internal
Revenue Bureau, was permeated with corruption. The worst feature of it
all was that officers who desired to be upright found themselves
powerless against the intrigues and the potent political influence of
the rascals at the headquarters of executive authority. When the
evidence of wrongdoing accumulated by the new Secretary of the Treasury
was laid before the President he was dumfounded by its wickedness and
extent, but showed himself resolute and vigorous in supporting his able
and resourceful Secretary. The trap was sprung in May, 1875. Indictments
were found against 150 private citizens and 86 government officers,
among the latter the chief clerk in the Treasury Department, and the
President's private secretary, General O. E. Babcock. All the principal
defendants were convicted except Babcock, and he was dismissed by the
President.
During all these proceedings, in spite of the President's professions,
the Treasury Department was beset by subtle hostile influences and
impediments. The politicians who had the President's ear made him
believe that it was the ruin of himself and his household that the
investigators sought. Only the enthusiastic popular approval of
Secretary Bristow's brave course prevented yielding to the political
backers of the corruption. When in the spring of 1876 Bristow initiated
a similar campaign against the corruptions rife on the Pacific coast,
the Secretary was overruled and the government prosecutors were
recalled. Whereupon the Secretary resigned, and no less than seven high
Treasury officials, who had been active in the crusade of reform, left
the department at the same time. Mr. Bristow was succeeded by an
honorable man,--the President had to appoint a man known to be
pure,--Lot M. Morrill, of Maine; but he was infirm, and all aggressive
reform work ceased.
In the War Department, Secretary Belknap, sustained by the President,
stripped General Sherman of the rights and duties properly pertaining to
his rank, of which Grant himself, in the same place during Johnson's
administration, had protested against being deprived. Sherman was
subjected to such humiliations by his old commander, turned politician,
that he abandoned Washington and retired to St. Louis. Congress was a
subservient participator in this shame, repealing the law that required
all orders to the army to go through its general. But in February, 1876,
it was discovered that Belknap had been enriching himself by corrupt
partnership with contractors in his department, and he hurriedly
resigned, the President strangely accepting the resignation before
Congress could act. He was impeached, notwithstanding. He set up the
defense that being no longer an official, he could not be impeached, and
this being overruled, he was tried, but was not convicted. Of his guilt
the country had no doubt. Then Alphonso Taft, an Ohio judge, was made
Secretary of War. He was soon transferred to the Attorney-General's
office, and was succeeded by Don Cameron, already his father's
lieutenant in control of the Republican party of Pennsylvania.
Columbus Delano, Secretary of the Interior, had so mismanaged affairs,
especially in the Indian Bureau, which teemed with flagrant abuses, that
public opinion turned against him with great force, and in 1875 he had
to abandon the office, in which he was succeeded by Zachariah Chandler,
against whom no scandalous charge was made, although he was a rank
partisan of the President.
Marshall Jewell, of Connecticut, became Postmaster-General in 1874. He
was a successful business man, and on taking the office he declared his
purpose to conduct it on business principles. He attacked effectively a
system long in vogue known as "straw-bids" for mail-carrying contracts.
He introduced the railway post-office system, that has been of so much
use in facilitating promptness of transmitting correspondence. But he
also insisted on conducting his office with respect of its personnel as
a business man would, that is, by making appointments and promotions for
merit rather than for political influence. This was intolerable to the
spoilsmen in politics; and within two years he was summarily dismissed
in a manner as graceless and cruel as any President, no matter how
unfortunately bred, was ever guilty of. Jewell was succeeded by James N.
Tyner, an entirely complaisant official. In 1875 Congress neglected to
make any appropriation for the civil service reform commission, and its
work was suspended.
During this time affairs in the Southern States were, as a rule, growing
worse and worse. The unreasonable arrogance and oppressive extravagance
of the freedmen where they were in control, under the leadership of
reckless carpet-baggers, and still more reckless and malicious white
natives, had produced a revulsion in the minds of all at the North who
regarded justice, honor, and honesty as essentials of good government.
There were exceptions, like oases in the desert of ignorance and vice.
The administration of Governor Chamberlain in South Carolina was an
instance of an earnest and partially successful endeavor to educe good
government from desperate conditions. The colored race abused its
privilege of the ballot with suicidal persistency. The experiment of
maintaining bad State governments by the presence and activity of
federal troops did not tend to social pacification. Reconstruction in
its earlier fruits was an obvious failure; and again, if the apparent
paradox can be understood, lawless violence began asserting itself as
the only hopeful means of preserving property, civil rights, and
civilization itself.
During the second term the report was persistently circulated that Grant
and those who followed his star were scheming for another term, in order
to give him in civil office, as in military rank, a distinction higher
than Washington or any American had obtained. The proposal shocked the
public sense of propriety; but its treatment by those who alone could
repudiate it became ominous. The Republican State Convention of 1875 in
Pennsylvania boldly declared unalterable opposition to the third-term
idea. Grant then spoke. In a letter to the convention's chairman he
said: "Now, for the third term, I do not want it any more than I did the
first." After calling attention to the fact that the Constitution did
not forbid a third term, and that an occasion might arise when a third
term might be wisely given, he said that he was not a candidate for a
third nomination, and "would not accept it, if tendered, unless under
such circumstances as to make it an imperative duty--circumstances not
likely to arise."
This was justly regarded as a politician's letter, and increased alarm
instead of allaying it. The national House of Representatives (which the
elections of 1874 had made a Democratic body), by a vote of 234 to 18,
passed the following resolution: "That in the opinion of this House the
precedent, established by Washington and other Presidents of the United
States after their second term, has become, by universal consent, a
part of our republican system of government, and that any departure from
this time-honored custom would be unwise, unpatriotic, and fraught with
peril to our free institutions." As 70 Republicans voted for this
resolution, it was practically the voice of both parties, and it
dispelled the spectre of "Cæsarism," as the third-term idea was called.
There is reason to believe that if it had caused less alarm it would
have assumed a more substantial aspect.
During the excited and perilous four months after the election of 1876,
when civil war and anarchy were imminent on account of the disputed
result of the people's suffrage, the conduct of the President was
admirable. He let it be understood that violence would be suppressed,
without hesitation, at any cost. He preserved the _status quo_, and
compelled peaceful patience. The condition was one which summoned into
action his genius of supreme command, and it shone with its former
splendor of authority. On the 4th of March, 1877, he became a private
citizen.