Ulysses S. Grant - Presidency - Encyclopedia II

Grant was the 18th President of the United States and served two terms from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1877. He was chosen as the Republican presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, on May 20, 1868, with no real opposition. In his letter of acceptance to the party, Grant concluded with "Let us have peace," which became the Republican campaign slogan. In the general election that year, he won against former New York Governor Horatio Seymour with a slim majority of 3,012,833 out of a total of 5,716,082 votes cast, but by a commanding 214 Electoral College votes to 80. When he entered the White House he was politically inexperienced and, at age 46, the youngest man yet elected president. He easily won reelection by a wide margin in 1872 against Horace Greeley.

Grant's presidency—particularly his second term—was plagued with scandals, such as the Black Friday gold-speculation financial crisis in September 1869, the Sanborn Incident at the Treasury, and problems with U.S. Attorney Cyrus I. Scofield. The most famous scandal was the Whiskey Ring of 1875, exposed by Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow, in which over $3 million in taxes were defrauded from the federal government with the aid of high government officials. Orville E. Babcock, the private secretary to the President, was indicted as a member of the ring and escaped conviction only because of a presidential pardon. When it became clear that Babcock was involved in the scandal, Grant regretted his earlier statement, "Let no guilty man escape." After the Whiskey Ring, Grant's Secretary of War, William W. Belknap, was involved in an investigation that revealed that he had taken bribes in exchange for the sale of Native American trading posts. Grant foolishly accepted the resignation of Belknap; when Belknap was impeached by Congress for his actions, he escaped conviction since he was no longer a government official.

Although there is no evidence that Grant himself profited from corruption among his subordinates, he did not take a firm stance against malefactors and failed to react strongly even after their guilt was established. He was weak in his selection of subordinates, favoring colleagues from the war over those with more practical political experience. He alienated party leaders by giving many posts to his friends and political contributors, rather than listen to their recommendations. His failure to establish adequate political allies was a factor in the scandals getting out of control. At the conclusion of his second term, Grant wrote to Congress that "Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent."

Despite all the scandals, Grant's administration presided in generally positive ways over significant events in U.S. history. The most tumultuous was the continuing process of Reconstruction. He supported amnesty for Confederate leaders and protection for the civil rights of African-Americans. He favored a limited number of troops to be stationed in the South—sufficient numbers to protect rights of southern blacks and suppress the violent tactics of the Ku Klux Klan, but not so many as to create resentment in the general population. In 1869 and 1871, Grant signed bills promoting voting rights and prosecuting Klan leaders. The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, establishing voting rights, was ratified in 1870. The first law that he signed, on March 18, 1869, established the value of the greenback currency issued during the Civil War, pledging to redeem the bills in gold. In 1874 he vetoed a bill to increase the amount of a legal tender currency, which defused the currency crisis of the time.

A number of government agencies were instituted during the Grant administration:

• Department of Justice (1870)
• Post Office Department (1872)
• Office of the Solicitor General (1870)
• "Advisory Board on Civil Service" (1871); after it expired in 1873, it became the role model for the "Civil Service Commission" instituted in 1883 by President Chester A. Arthur, a Grant faithful. (Today it is known as the Office of Personnel Management.)
• Office of the Surgeon General (1871)

In foreign affairs the greatest achievement of the Grant administration was the Treaty of Washington negotiated by Grant's best appointment, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, in 1871. It settled American claims against England concerning the wartime activities of the British-built Confederate raider Alabama. He attempted to annex Santo Domingo in 1870 to provide for a state for the freedmen; the Senate refused to ratify the treaty due to ( Foreign Relations Committee Chairman) Senator Charles Sumner's personal animosity toward Grant. In 1876 Grant helped to calm the nation over the Hayes-Tilden election controversy by appointing a federal commission that helped to settle the election.

Grant was known to visit the Willard Hotel to escape the stress of the White House. He referred to the people who approached him in the lobby as "those damn lobbyists," possibly giving rise to the modern term lobbyist.

Grant appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

• William Strong – 1870
• Joseph P. Bradley – 1870
• Ward Hunt – 1873
• Morrison Remick Waite (Chief Justice) – 1874

• Colorado – August 1, 1876

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Presidency", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page