Ulysses Simpson Grant in the United States
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), American soldier, and eighteenth president of the United States, was born at Point Pleasant, Ohio, on the 27th of April 1822. He was a descendant of Matthew Grant, a Scotchman, who settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630. His earlier years were spent in helping his father, Jesse R. Grant, upon his farm in Ohio. In 1839 he was appointed to a place in the military academy at West Point, and it was then that his name assumed the form by which it is generally known. He was christened Hiram, after an ancestor, with Ulysses for a middle name. As he was usually called by his middle name, the congressman who recommended him for West Point supposed it to be his first name, and added thereto the name of his mother’s family, Simpson. (1)
Election of 1868: Ulysses S. Grant, First Presidency
The most important domestic event of Grant’s first term as president was the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution on the 30th of March 1870, providing that suffrage throughout the United States should not be restricted on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude. The most important event in foreign policy was the treaty with Great Britain of the 8th of May 1871, commonly known as the Treaty of Washington, whereby several controversies between the United States and Great Britain, including the bitter questions as to damage inflicted upon the United States by the “Alabama” and other Confederate cruisers built and equipped in England, were referred to arbitration. In 1869 the government of Santo Domingo (or the Dominican Republic) expressed a wish for annexation by the United States, and such a step was favoured by Grant, but a treaty negotiated with this end in view failed to obtain the requisite two-thirds vote in the Senate. In May 1872 something was done towards alleviating the odious Reconstruction laws for dragooning the South, which had been passed by Congress in spite of the vetoes of President Johnson. The Amnesty Bill restored civil rights to all persons in the South, save from 300 to 500 who had held high positions under the Confederacy. As early as 1870 President Grant recommended measures of civil service reform, and succeeded in obtaining an act authorizing him to appoint a Civil Service commission. A commission was created, but owing to the hostility of the politicians in Congress it accomplished little. During the fifty years since Crawford’s Tenure of Office Act was passed in 1820, the country had been growing more and more familiar with the spectacle of corruption in high places. The evil rose to alarming proportions during Grant’s presidency, partly because of the immense extension of the civil service, partly because of the growing tendency to alliance between spoilsmen and the persons benefited by protective tariffs, and partly because the public attention was still so much absorbed in Southern affairs that little energy was left for curbing rascality in the North. The scandals, indeed, were rife in Washington, and affected persons in close relations with the president. Grant was ill-fitted for coping with the difficulties of such a situation. Along with high intellectual powers in certain directions, he had a simplicity of nature charming in itself, but often calculated to render him the easy prey of sharpers. He found it almost impossible to believe that anything could be wrong in persons to whom he had given his friendship, and on several occasions such friends proved themselves unworthy of him. The feeling was widely prevalent in the spring of 1872 that the interests of pure government in the United States demanded that President Grant should not be elected to a second term. This feeling led a number of high-minded gentlemen to form themselves into an organization under the name of Liberal Republicans. They held a convention at Cincinnati in May with the intention of nominating for the presidency Charles Francis Adams, who had ably represented the United States at the court of St James’s during the Civil War. The convention, was, however, captured by politicians who converted the whole affair into a farce by nominating Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who represented almost anything rather than the object for which the convention had been called together. The Democrats had despaired of electing a candidate of their own, and hoped to achieve success by adopting the Cincinnati nominee, should he prove to be an eligible person. The event showed that while their defeat in 1868 had taught them despondency, it had not taught them wisdom; it was still in their power to make a gallant fight by nominating a person for whom Republican reformers could vote. But with almost incredible fatuity, they adopted Greeley as their candidate. As a natural result Grant was re-elected by an overwhelming majority. (2)
Election of 1872: Ulysses S. Grant, Second presidency
The most important event of his second term was his veto of the Inflation Bill in 1874 followed by the passage of the Resumption Act in the following year. The country was still labouring under the curse of an inconvertible paper currency originating with the Legal Tender Act of 1862. There was a considerable party in favour of debasing the currency indefinitely by inflation, and a bill with that object was passed by Congress in April 1874. It was promptly vetoed by President Grant, and two months later he wrote a very sensible letter to Senator J. P. Jones of Nevada advocating a speedy return to specie payments. The passage of the Resumption Act in January 1875 was largely due to his consistent advocacy, and for these measures he deserves as high credit as for his victories in the field. In spite of these great services, popular dissatisfaction with the Republican party rapidly increased during the years 1874-1876. The causes were twofold: firstly, there was great dissatisfaction with the troubles in the Southern states, owing to the harsh Reconstruction laws and the robberies committed by the carpet-bag governments which those laws kept in power; secondly, the scandals at 358 Washington, comprising wholesale frauds on the public revenue, awakened lively disgust. In some cases the culprits were so near to President Grant that many persons found it difficult to avoid the suspicion that he was himself implicated, and never perhaps was his hold upon popular favour so slight as in the summer and autumn of 1876. (3)
Resources
Notes and References
- Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)
See Also
Further Reading
Adam Badeau’s Military History of U. S. Grant (3 vols., New York, 1867-1881), and Grant in Peace (Hartford, 1887), are appreciative but lacking in discrimination. William Conant Church’s Ulysses S. Grant and the Period of National Preservation and Reconstruction (New York, 1897) is a good succinct account. Hamlin Garland’s Ulysses S. Grant, His Life and Character (New York, 1898) gives especial attention to the personal traits of Grant and abounds in anecdote. See also Grant’s Personal Memoirs (2 vols., New York, 1885-1886); J. G. Wilson’s Life and Public Services of U. S. Grant (New York, 1886); J. R. Young’s Around the World with General Grant (New York, 1880); Horace Porter’s Campaigning with Grant (New York, 1897); James Ford Rhodes’s History of the United States (vols. iii.-vii., New York, 1896-1906); James K. Hosmer’s Appeal to Arms and Outcome of the Civil War (New York, 1907); John Eaton’s Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen (New York, 1907).