American Men of Action

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

A bearded, square-jawed, silent man, he caught the public fancy by two messages, the one of "Unconditional surrender," with which he had answered the demand for terms on the part of the Confederates whom he had entrapped in Fort Donelson; the other, the famous: "I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer," with which he started his campaign in the Wilderness. Both were characteristic, and if Grant had retired from public life at the close of the Civil War, or had been content to remain commander-in-chief of the army of the United States, his fame would probably have been brighter than it is to-day.

His training, such as it was, had been wholly military and his inaugural address showed his profound ignorance of the work which lay before him—an ignorance all the more profound and unreachable because of his serene unconsciousness of it. He fell at once an easy prey to political demagogues, and before the close of his first administration, demoralization was widespread throughout the government. A large portion of the Republican party, realizing his unfitness for the office, opposed his renomination, and when they saw his nomination was inevitable, broke away and named a ticket of their own, but Grant's victory was a sweeping one.

With this stamp of public approval, the boodlers became bolder and great scandals followed, involving many members of Congress and even some members of the cabinet, but not the President himself, of whose personal honesty there was never any doubt, and in 1873, came the worst panic the country had ever experienced. A political reaction followed, and in 1874 the Democrats carried the country, gaining the House of Representatives by a majority of nearly a hundred.

Following his retirement from office in 1877, Grant made a tour of the world, returning in 1879, to be again a candidate for the presidency, and coming very near to getting the nomination. It was characteristic of the man's egotism that, even yet, he did not realize his unfitness for the office, but thought himself great enough to disregard the precedent which Washington had established. He lived five years longer, the last years of his life rendered miserable by cancer of the throat, which finally killed him.

In the summer of 1876, the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, at that time Governor of Ohio, as their candidate for President—a nomination which was a surprise to the country, which had confidently expected that of James G. Blaine. Hayes was by no means a national figure, although he had served in the Union army, had been in Congress, and, as has been said, was governor of Ohio at the time of his nomination. Nor was he a man of more than very ordinary ability, upright, honest, and mediocre. The Democratic candidate was Samuel J. Tilden, a political star of the first magnitude, and the contest which followed was unprecedented in American history.

Tilden received a popular majority of half a million votes, and 184 electoral votes, out of the 185 necessary to elect, without counting the votes from Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana, all of which he had carried on the face of the returns. The Republicans disputed the vote in these states, however, and by the inexorable use of party machinery and carpet-bag government, declared Hayes elected. For a time, so manifest was the partisan bias of this decision, the country seemed on the verge of another Civil War, but Tilden led in wiser council, and Hayes was permitted to take his seat. It is the only instance in a national election where the will of the people at the polls has been defied and overridden.

Hayes was a sincere and honest man, and he felt keenly the cloud which the manner of his election cast over his administration. He was never popular with his party, and no doubt he felt that the debt he owed it for getting him his seat was a doubtful one. His administration was noteworthy principally because he destroyed the last vestiges of carpet-bag government in the South, and left the southern states to work out their own destiny unhampered. He was not even considered for a renomination, and spent the remainder of his life quietly in his Ohio home.

Hayes's successor was another so-called "dark horse," that is, a man of minor importance, whose nomination, was due to the fact that the party leaders could not agree upon any of the more prominent candidates. They were Grant, Blaine and John Sherman, and after thirty-five ballots, it was evident that a "dark horse" must be found. The choice fell upon James Abram Garfield, who was not prominent enough to have made any enemies, and who was as astonished as was the country at large when it heard the news.

Garfield was born in Ohio in 1831, in a little log cabin and to a position in the world not greatly different to Lincoln's. While laboring at various rough trades, he succeeded in preparing himself for college, worked his way through, got into politics, served through the Civil War, and later for eighteen years in Congress, where he made a creditable but by no means brilliant record. He was elected President by a small majority, and enraged the many enemies of James G. Blaine by selecting that astute politician as his secretary of state. One of these, a rattle-brained New Yorker named Charles J. Guiteau, approached the President on July 2, 1881, as he was waiting at a railroad station in Washington, about to start on a journey, and shot him through the body. Death followed, after a painful struggle, two months later.

Obscure, in a sense, as Garfield had been, the man who succeeded him was immeasurably more so. Chester Alan Arthur was a successful New York lawyer, who had dabbled in politics and held some minor appointive offices, his selection as Vice-President being due to the desire of the Republican managers to throw a sop to the Empire State. His administration, however, while marked by no great or stirring event, was for the most part wise and conservative, but James G. Blaine had by this time secured complete control of the party, and Arthur had no chance for the nomination for President. He died of apoplexy within two years of his retirement.